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La Vie, Corporate American at The DC Wharf, Owned by Social Restaurant Group


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Do nicer restaurants usually use straws?  I can't recall having a straw at a nicer restaurant, except for maybe a metal one on a mint julep or something like that.  I am not a big straw person anyway, but I wouldn't not go somewhere that uses them, but I do think you are unsure of the cleanliness of your glass rim if you provide me a straw at anywhere that isn't casual.

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12 minutes ago, funkyfood said:

Fun read, but that criticism about the plastic straws almost delegitimized it for me.  SO few restaurants have paper/metal straws and I've literally never seen him mention that before. 

I had the same reaction.  Trendy bans on plastic straws are mostly bunk, by Adam Minter, June 17, 2018, on chicagotribune.com.

Quote

[T]wo Australian scientists estimate that there are up to 8.3 billion plastic straws scattered on global coastlines. Yet even if all those straws were suddenly washed into the sea, they’d account for about 0.03 percent of the 8 million metric tons of plastics estimated to enter the oceans in a given year.

I still support a ban on plastic straws because every little bit does count.  But let us not delude ourselves about its impact or divert our attention from reducing the other sources of plastics defiling our oceans.

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3 minutes ago, dcs said:

Trendy bans on plastic straws are mostly bunk, by Adam Minter, June 17, 2018, on chicagotribune.com.

I still support a ban on plastic straws because every little bit does count.  But let us not delude ourselves about its impact or divert our attention from reducing the other sources of plastics defiling our oceans.

i'm not making a normative statement about whether straws are good or bad.  i'm only saying that it seems odd for Tom Sietsema to single out La Vie for this when he's never done it before and most restaurants are offenders 

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6 minutes ago, ktmoomau said:

Do nicer restaurants usually use straws?  I can't recall having a straw at a nicer restaurant, except for maybe a metal one on a mint julep or something like that.  I am not a big straw person anyway, but I wouldn't not go somewhere that uses them, but I do think you are unsure of the cleanliness of your glass rim if you provide me a straw at anywhere that isn't casual.

yeah if you order an iced tea, coke or even a highball cocktail (often), they'll come with a plastic straw almost everywhere (Cotton & Reed is actually the only place I recall having a paper straw recently)

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2 minutes ago, funkyfood said:

i'm not making a normative statement about whether straws are good or bad.  i'm only saying that it seems odd for Tom Sietsema to single out La Vie for this when he's never done it before and most restaurants are offenders 

I meant to imply that I agreed with your reaction to Sietsema singling out what I consider to be a less than weighty concern in the grand scheme of things, but I just started discussing the issue.  So, rather than a sad attempt to imply, I clarified the post above.

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51 minutes ago, funkyfood said:

Fun read, but that criticism about the plastic straws almost delegitimized it for me.  SO few restaurants have paper/metal straws and I've literally never seen him mention that before. 

I thought that comment from him was odd too, and it undercut his review. He shot himself in the foot with that, especially with the "woke" reference. That made something into a loaded comment that didn't have to be.

At some point in his chat today--after posting a number of complaints about the straw snark--Tom mentioned that he hadn't been to a restaurant in a while across a variety of price points that was still using plastic straws.  Instead of making the "woke" comment, he could have simply said something to that effect: that he's seeing fewer and fewer places using plastic straws but they haven't caught on to the issue at this restaurant.

I don't usually order a drink with a straw in a restaurant, though often they are included at bars with nonalcoholic drinks or water, which I've always understood to be in part a way of distinguishing alcoholic from non-alcoholic drinks. Cocktails get the tiny straws that look like coffee stirrers.

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I appreciated the review.  It punch listed a number of problems I have had with different restaurants, in this case many of them all in one restaurant.  Fair warning.  

The comment on straws was one of many issues.  The comment was one sentence compared to long descriptions of other problems.  It had no impact on me  while the other issues, all of which I’ve experienced elsewhere and been a turn-off were all found in one restaurant.

Thanks for the warning.

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Has anyone been in here in the ~4 years since Tom's review?  I need a place to eat at the Wharf on Saturday and was targeting Officina but they are fully booked.   (Lots of Yelpers have nice things to say about it, whatever that's worth)

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Thanks Eric!  I've been to ilili and Moon Rabbit a couple of times and was looking to change things up a little.  Never been to Del Mar......every time I look at the menu it seems very pricey.  I'm sure it's great, but I haven't been able to pull the trigger on it.

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