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Sthitch

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Posts posted by Sthitch

  1. While I browsed the menus, I enjoyed a large pour of NV Marquis de la Tour "Vin Mousseux" Brut ($9) from the Loire Valley. No, it's not champagne, but unlike a lot of sparkling whites, this had character of its own that made it worth drinking, then ordering a second, and then a third, glass. This can't retail for much more than $15 a bottle, and I'm going to go on a hunt for it, and use it as a house sparkler for awhile.

    It is a Palm Bay wine, it should not be that hard to find - the Palm Bay site says that MoCo has it, as does the way over-priced Fern Street and a place called Cornicopia in SE, or you could just ask someone that deals with Palm Bay to get you a case.

  2. If you are going follow the other lemmings and use a star system I believe that the way the San Francisco Chronicle does it is the most helpful. They give an overall number of stars, but then they break that down and give ratings for the food, service, and atmosphere. I would add wine list/drinks program as well, since not everywhere they review has a liquor license I understand why they would not include it, but it would still be helpful.

  3. Environment/travel costs would be a big one but I am sure someone will educate me on the efficiency of wine from Croatia traveling by llama to the sea and on a big boat for awhile and then a truck for a minute, vs me picking it up 30 miles from home.

    Travel costs have a negligible impact on the price of wine, a single refer carton packed filled with wine costs pennies per bottle as for environmental costs you probably consume more energy driving to and from a vineyard to pick-up a case of wine then it takes to put a case of wine on a truck in France, drive it to the port, ship it across the ocean, and then drive it from New Jersey to your distributer. Over-road trucks and container ships are very efficient per pound of freight, a car is not.

  4. Joe, we have far different tastes in reds, you like them big and voluptuous while I like them a bit more reserved and elegant. For example you like Amarone, while it is not my favorite my tastes in red lean more towards Pommard. Reading your write-up of Octagon and seeing the examples you give of the wines that RDV is tasting their wine against I can assure you that they are wines that match my taste – I find Caymus to be over-ripe and over-extracted, and without knowing the 2nd growth I am going to lean towards the belief that it has been overly Parkerized (unfortunately most of them have). I am happy that you like the wines and advocate for them, there are different wines to satisfy different tastes.

    But you also did not answer my challenge; I am looking for a drinkable white from Virginia or Maryland.

  5. From what I have tasted locally, I really do not think that I am missing much - I am a fan of cooler climate wines for instance right now I am rehydrating from my afternoon workout with a glass of 2003 Domaine Follin-Arbelet Corton-Charlemagne (it has been a long week). I might start to get excited about more local wines if one of them would produce a drinkable white, no not a Corton-Charlemange, that is not possible outside of Burgundy, but something dry, medium bodied, with no more than a kiss of oak, and a modicum of complexity, oh and not charge me what I paid for the wine I am drinking now.

    A clue on what I meant by PM, I was drinking Champagne.

  6. I usually dredge in seasoned flour and bake. I haven't tried the salt and baking powder, though I do read his columns religiously. Maybe I should try refrigerating before baking. For sauce, I use Frank's, melted butter, and lime juice.

    Read his whole write up on the baked wings, once you do I think you will ditch the flour. I do not follow his sauce recipes, just his cooking methods. By the way his method for making risotto works very well.

  7. Kenji Lopez-Alt, the evil genius that runs the food lab at Serious Eats has come up with three different wing recipes that can be a bit time consuming, but are worth it in the end. The traditional fried method he calls for confiting the wings first and then letting them cool and frying them again. The slow oil bath draws the collagen to the surface and produces a wing that has the crunch of being breaded, but without the sogginess.


    The second method is for baking the wings. Here he calls for them to be dusted with salt and baking powder then allowed to rest in the refrigerator for at least 8 hours before baking them. So far my results from using this method have been nothing short of astounding, the wings are almost as crispy as the confiting method and without the added fat.

    The third method does not really work with a thin sauce like Buffalo, but is great with a thicker sauce like a Korean wing sauce. For this method the wings are dipped into a flour/cornstarch batter before being fried. To prevent gluten from forming in the batter he calls for using vodka instead of water – it works like a charm. Like the other two methods this has worked beautifully each time I have tried it. The recipe is for frying cornish game hens, but I have always used it for wings and it works just fine.

  8. Where to buy really fresh whole fish in NoVa or DC?

    I want to start cooking whole fish at home-- saw "Secrets Of A Restaurant Chef" today and Burrell made salt-crusted branzino, which looked great and easy. I'd like to get recs for where to buy branzino or perhaps snapper or any other suggestions for a good fish to cook this way.

    MediterraFish in the Mosaic District has them.

  9. The 3 best things I've had at Nationals Park are Ben's Original Half Smoke (all the way),

    Have they improved? When I had one last year it was worse than what you get at Ben's - I honestly thought that it was impossible to get worse, but they nailed it. The bun was stale, the sausage was overcooked and chewy, and the chili tasted like it came from a can, and not even on par with Hormel. I still do not understand the facilitation with the sub-par food that Ben’s puts out.

  10. There's nothing exactly "mouth watering" about Blue Smokes's pulled pork sandwich. It is certainly better than that cold hockey-puck of a hamburger I had a few years ago at RFK, but at $8+ that's not saying much.

    The way the weather forcast is looking for Friday we will not have to worry about the sandwich providing the "watering"...

  11. Save the nouveau restaurants for dinner, for lunch get some classic New Orleans flavors packed into a loaf of Leidenheimer bread at either Parkway or Domilise. If you want something a bit more fancy hit Galatoire's for some old school Creole.

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  12. This is somewhat apocryphal at this point, but in the 1970s, I remember my dad would go out to dinner at some place in Rockville called (I think) Rio Grande, or maybe El Paso, and he said it was some Mexican lady's house, and whatever she cooked for her family that night, that's what she served the customers. There were no menus, and you ate whatever they ate.

    Was that off of Rockville Pike behind where the White Flint Metro is now?

  13. Was #8 Bonito or Artic Char? I thought that it was the weakest offering of the night.

    I actually don't think I got my money's worth (I should've ate more). Steve, on the other hand, ate like a champ. Not sure if it's food fatigue or anything other than I'm just a lot less enthusiastic about Japanese food in general than Steve, which enthusiasm and taste he acquired from having lived in Japan. Alcohol also puts me to sleep.

    Yes, I did get my money's worth!

    I don't know what the food vs. booze cost was but the total with tax (tip not included) was $237 per person. I might have missed a few things I ate (due to tossing back some really smooth soju and sake). Steve ate many more sashimi dishes than me, including one of the scallop that was sitting in a bowl on the counter as we sat down.

    We were drinking $100+ bottles of Sake, so the price is not representative of what most people would pay. The scallop was delicious, plus the Tokyo style omlet (made with ground shrimp) that I got when I asked for dealers choice on my last few pieces of sushi was the best egg dish I have ever eaten. I think that I am going to have to make another reservation soon.

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