MikeR's Profile
Lao menu at Bangkok Golden in Falls Church - Report
Just walked past Bangkok Golden today and saw a banner in the window advertising fresh sugar cane juice. Just in time for Summer!
Pigheaded: Standard’s New Smoked Summer Special
You really have to be dedicated to eating a pig's head to go to all of that trouble. I'll dig into a batch of crabs once every few years, but that's about as messy as I get.
Last week at a Greek/Pizza restaurant in Charlton, MA, I had BBQ pork hocks, something new to me. Anyone see them around here? I guess it's the part just above the foot, five to an order, very meaty with a bone that makes a good handle. I ate them like popsicles.
Pigheaded: Standard’s New Smoked Summer Special
So how do you approach a pig's head in a restaurant? What parts do you eat, what parts do you play with, and why>
Real Buffalo Wings Needed
I don't really like wings very much. I'll nibble at them at a happy hour but I never order them. They're messy and there's so little meat on them that they're just too much trouble. Do wings in Buffalo have a worthwhile amount of meat on them? And is it still tender after all of that hard frying?
Real Buffalo Wings Needed
Frying something with as little meat on it as a wing for 15 minutes doesn't sound very appetizing to me. I guess it's what you get used to. If you were to open a shop that cooked wings like that, you probably would get most of your traffic from homesick Buffalonians.
Real Buffalo Wings Needed
Out of curiosity, how many places "back home" made really good wings? Were they all good, or were some, like here, better than others, and some, like here, unacceptable?
Sure, I'll bet. Like barbecue and chili, it's both a regional and a cultural thing, It probably took you a while for your taste preferences and sources for wings at home to meld. Maybe you need to get used to DC wings.
Staying in Vienna, visiting DC, where to get healthy cheap eats?
I just noticed last night that there was a new name up, though Tamarind doesn't ring a bell. I had a green light so I didn't get time to look too carefully. I suspect that it's the same people who have that whole string of Indian stores there, just trying a different concept, perhaps a regular sit-down restaurant again.
And there's another new (coming soon) Chinese restaurant in Vienna, next to Tara Thai, replacing Panjshir II.
Staying in Vienna, visiting DC, where to get healthy cheap eats?
And since the topic includes Vienna, Aditi Bistro, also well described as "Chipotle for Indian food" appears to have gone dark. I ate there a couple of times and it was OK, probably better for lunch than dinner. I thought it was a good concept - pick your bread, pick your filling, and they make a wrap while you watch.
A Good Uyghur Restaurant?
So what do they eat there? laghman, da pan ji, shorpa, manta, samsa, and the ubiquitous "etc." are all unfamiliar to me. Are these similar to dishes that might be more familiar? I'm just curious as to whether I'd be curious about such a restaurant.
Ray's to the Third (^3)
Don't recall seeing much other than cheese steaks at lunch about what's probably the latest Ray's. Had dinner there last night with my two regular Sunday dinner companions, after prying them out of Vienna and getting them to come over to my territory.
Since I know they both like steak (though one usually orders chicken), I thought this would be a good place to bring them, so Sunday afternoon I called to ask about a reservation for 6:30 that evening, and there was no problem. The person who took my reservation asked if it was a special occasion (they do a free dessert), and since one of my companions had a birthday the next day, I told them so.
The place was less than 1/4 full when we arrived, though it began to fill up during our stay, though still wasn't full when we left a bit before 8 PM. It's small, it's not noisy, and the service was attentive but didn't get in the way.
The menu is really limited and is a bit different from what's on the web site. There are a few cuts of meat seasoned and sauced in a few different ways. A few were served as "steak frites" with a salad and kind of skinny French fries, most were served with mashed potatoes and broccoli as the sides, though I suspect they'd substitute.
I had the hanger steak as "steak frites," and my friends had a sirloin with diablo sauce, and a rib steak (quite a thick chunk) with a sauce that I didn't remember. I had mine medium, they had theirs medium-well, and we were all happy with the degree of cooking and the flavor of the meat. We shared a side order of sauteed mushrooms, similar to what you get for free as a topping at Ray's Hellburger ($5 for an ample sized portion at ^3). Steaks were $17-$20 depending on the cut and saucing. Not huge, but ample portions, I'm guessing 8-10 ounces. There was a hunk of a sort of focaccia-textured but wheat-looking bread on the platter with the meat and sides. All in all a good meal and we didn't leave hungry.
There was a fried chicken and some kind of Hell chicken on the menu, but our chicken lover figured that at a steak restaurant she should have steak.
As for the free dessert, milk shakes are the dessert there. Our birthday boy doesn't care for milk shakes so he passed, but it was a nice gesture. Another good-to-know thing is that they validate parking at the garage next door (garage entrance is just to the right of Ray's door). We parked on the street, but that's a pretty busy neighborhood, being just about across from Ray's Hell Burger and Hell Burger Too, plus a few other restaurants.
A good meal at a fair price, for something that I don't eat very often. With tax, tip, a share of the mushrooms (we drank only water, which started out with three filled glasses and a full carafe for refills) my share of the bill was $25.
Info and partially accurate menus at http://raystothethird.com/
BBQ--looking for the best
You may have a point there, though not quite as blunt as "want something for nothing." Generally we don't think of BBQ as being expensive food (anywhere) so when the cost of making the authentic thing with authentic ingredients which have to be shipped in, the cost becomes great enough so that it just doesn't seem like BBQ any more.
Perhaps what we need here, if we don't already have it, is BBQ that's been adapted to local sources, just as they do in Texas and Kansas City or Georgia. I'm not sure what that would be, but it would be different from what you get in one of the places that's famous for BBQ.
I think that people would go for a $9 BBQ platter, but serving food to the public involves more than digging a pit and cutting some wood. I think you'd go broke at that price, not from buying the ingredients, but from all the stuff you gotta do to satisfy the local health department.
But you could invite us over for a taste of the real thing. ;)
Kabobs in NOVA
Restaurant web sites can be notoriously out of touch with the actual menus. I guess most of them don't have anyone on staff to maintain the web site and when they have to pay someone every time to update the web site they add or subtract something from the menu, the smaller ones may not figure it's worth the cost. Mostly it's to give you an idea of what they serve, post the hours (which sometimes aren't correct) and location.
I guess if you're looking for something specific, you can always call the restaurant. There should be enough info on the web site so that you can do that.
Mosaic District opening Fall 2012 in Merrifield, VA
Oh, around the corner, then. I've had lunch at that Lebanese place, but not for a while. Thanks for the reminder.
I've found the reborn Lebanese Butcher restaurant (Mount of Olives) to not be very lunch-for-one conducive. I'm not even sure if they're still surviving.
ISO quiet restaurant in Fairfax, Reston, Vienna
Kabob Tavern, which is where Nizam's used to be, has a quiet and fairly intimate dining room upstairs that's open now. Good food, not too expensive. Go have a cheap lunch downstairs one day and ask to have a look upstairs. The upstairs room (it actually has a different name that I don't remember) has a few more things on the menu than the order-at-the-counter-styrofoam-plates-plastic-utensils downstairs but all the food comes from the same kitchen.
Mosaic District opening Fall 2012 in Merrifield, VA
Mario's? Shopping Center? The shopping center with the Great Wall, Five Guys, Uncle Lui's, and the big thrift shop?
I haven't been up there in a while (mostly due to the horror show from the construction of what I guess is the new Mosaic center, but there was a food shop near Five Guys that keeps changing hands. Maybe that's now Mario's.
Too greasy for me, though. When I'm there for a quick lunch, I'll stick with the Five Guys. It seems to be one of the more consistent of the local ones of the (now too big) chain.
Mosaic District opening Fall 2012 in Merrifield, VA
More a comment on web site design than food, but I looked all over the Mosaic District web page and couldn't find out just where this is located. Can you give me a clue? A cross street? Probably Lee Highway and something. There's a lot of construction around what might be considered "Merrifield" these days.
Pelican Seafood in Annandale?
I was heading in that direction today so I stopped in there for lunch. No buffet, the $5.95 banner is for the 34 lunch specials - entree with soup (wonton, egg drop, or hot and sour) and rice.
There isn't a lot of seafood on the menu - just about everything with shrimp, fried seafood platters with oysters, scallops, squid, and fish. They have steamed crabs, currently $15/half dozen for boys and $13 for girls (the crabs, that is, not the eaters), snow crab legs, and the only Chinese crab - with ginger and onion. They also have (on the menu anyway) duck - Peking, Roast, and Crispy, $13 for half, $25 for whole.
It's order at the counter, with a few tables. Real plates and metalware (you have to ask for chopsticks). Lots of take out business. The menu is nearly, maybe exactly identical except for the name, to that of Hong Kong Express, which is a couple of doors down from the Lake Barcroft Harris Teeter Even the same round "Chinese Food" neon sign in the window, and the same chicken wings. I usually eat at Hong Kong Express before shopping at H-T to keep me from buying too much). In fact I think I recognized one of the cooks at Pelican as being from Hong Kong Express. Even the photos of the dishes above the ordering counter are the same as HKExperess, which has had some changes recently (though not to the menu or, it seems, to the cooking). Maybe there was a split and this is the "second coming."
Anyway, it's a passable cheap lunch. I had the shredded pork with garlic sauce. Could have had a little more garlic, and a little less, I think, hoisin, as it was a bit sweet.
It's certainly not a destination restaurant. If you're a chowhound and are in that area, you'll probably be after Korean food and Pelican Seafood is no reason to detour from that mission. But it's OK if you want a quick, cheap lunch that's Chinese-ish.
For the GPS-dependent, the address is 7327 Little River Turnpike, Annandale. We once had a chowhound dinner gathering at a Korean place that's just behind it with a completely unpronounceable (and that, for me, means unrememberable and unspellable) name, but I'll bet Steve knows what I'm talking about and can spell it.
tysons chain hell
Sounds like Uncle Lui's, as he says, on Gallows Road between Lee Highway (Rt 29) and Arlington Boulevard (Rt 50), first big strip shopping center as you go south from Lee Highway. Big sign for Unique (which I always read as Junque) a thrift store.
Tandoor in Arlington - Report
Well, what would _you_ name an Indian restaurant? I figure "Tandoor" is so generic that it's bound to have been used many times over in a given area.
Harris Teeter in Locust Point
Wow! I wish my local Harris Teeter stores were as glorious as that. I shop there regularly but I've never seen aged beef and the seafood and fish is good but availability is inconsistent (which may be a good thing if they don't bother getting what isn't very good).
I don't go to grocery stores to eat a meal, but your description sounds inviting.
BBQ--looking for the best
I go to the Red Hot and Blue Express in Falls Church a couple of times a month for the Tuesday $5 special pulled pork sandwich. I ask them to serve it as a platter, no roll, no sauce on top. They give me a little container of slaw (OK, but small enough not to complain about) and a scoop or potato salad, which I like, or beans, which I also like.
I mix a bit of their hottest sauce with their medium sauce and that's a good moistener for the pork, which is I've not found to be dry, but it needs a little sauce to make it taste like barbecue.
I don't care for the ribs, though. They always have a nice smoky flavor, but are usually just a little overdone and too dry for my taste. For places like that, I prefer Famous Dave's St. Louis ribs, but I haven't tried the one in Falls Church (Steve didn't care for it), but usually go with friends from Vienna to the one in Oakton.
Interesting places in Dunloring/Fairfax/Tyson's Corner
Kabob Tavern's upstairs dining room is open now. There are a few things on the menu that aren't available downstairs, you get real plates and metalware, and the room, though pretty small, is pleasant and fairly quiet. Prices are higher, of course, but not bad. Most of the entrees are in the $14-$18 range as I recall.
pizza for a crowd in South Arlington?
Not everyone is a Costco member, though pizza for 50 might just represent enough saving to cover a membership.
pizza for a crowd in South Arlington?
Do you need a place for the 50 people to sit, or are you looking for carry-out? Flippin' Pizza (a few shops in the area) is pretty decent New York style and reasonable considering the size of the pie (but I think it's smaller than 20"). There shops can barely seat 30 people. They also do catering, so you can have them bring their truck to your venue. I have no idea what that costs but apparently they do a lot of that for school groups.
sushi grade fish in northern va??
Harris-Teeter used to call their tuna "sashimi grade" though I can't recall if they still do. Might be worth a call.
DC Weekend - looking for Lebanese & other ethnic; also solid Gourmand option
I probably did try it then. I guess I don't remember it as a standout.
Been back there yet? I haven't. Probably should, just to try a "normal" lunch.
DC Weekend - looking for Lebanese & other ethnic; also solid Gourmand option
OK, I googled it to see what you were talking about. What's not to like? According to the first recipe I found:
I
Ingredients
1 Pound Lean Lamb or Beef
1 Cup #2 Cracked Wheat
1 Large Onion Cut in Chunks
1/2 Stick Softened Butter
Ice Water
Salt and Pepper
Maybe they just don't want to serve raw meat to Americans. We eat steak tartare and kitfo. What could be wrong with kibbe nayee? It probably wouldn't be the reason why I'd go to a restaurant, but I'd be willing to try a sample from someone else's order.
tysons chain hell
Actually, Seasons 52 is a chain. They have restaurants in several cities in Florida, Georgia, the midwest, the northeast, even one in California and another local one in Rockville (that part that's now euphemistically called "North Bethesda".) I counted 22 on their web site.
Ground venison?
The first time I had venison it was in the form of deerburgers. I suppose it would work in chili.
Where can I buy minicupcakes for a bridal shower in Washington DC?
I just walked past a display of pretty small cupcakes at Safeway, $6 for a dozen. It's probably a Valentine's special, or maybe a weekly special. When's the shower?
They may not be DC gourmet cupcake quality, but shower food is just food.
