a1234's Profile
Hell's Kitchen tonight - potential spoilers - who do we want to see go home?
They work with the flu?
Great.
Harris Crab House @ Kent Narrows
An entire cup of mayo? Fry in vegetable oil? I don't think so.
Cut way down on the mayo and mustard and use butter instead of oil, and that is pretty much the way I make them.
Looking for bakeries
Re Bonaparte, only in DC would you see a long line to buy baked goods without a price list.
They were not amused when I told them even Tiffanys has a price tag on their jewelry, and I do not buy anything from someone so ashamed of their prices they do not display them.
And no doubt they are heavy - pure butter I was told by a nearby vegetable vendor.
Mannequin Pis
Haven't been in several years, but it was quite good then, though the owner/chef quit and there is a new chef now. The service was amateurish but well-intentioned. Nice small, quiet atmosphere.
If you want a snooty atmosphere and arrogant service, go to Brasserie Beck or the Mussel Bar.
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Brasserie Beck
1101 K Street, NW, Washington, DC 20005
Hell's Kitchen 7/27 comments? (and spoilers)
How do we know? He may just intentionally shut down once or twice when somebody is screaming at him, or it may be a habit. The show is necessarily heavily edited. Everything is edited to advance a story line, so everything is selective and ambiguity can be eliminated.
Hell's Kitchen 7/27 comments? (and spoilers)
That could be they just don't like her, not that she can't cook. Again, we can't taste the food and we can't even smell it, so how can we judge?
(So it is very different from American Idol, where you can hear them sing and know they are all god-awful, no matter how much the judges shill for them.)
And what about Master Chef?
I did not watch, but good for them if they called oversalting. It must have been really bad. Some people think that many chefs smoke, which has dulled their tastebuds so they need the salt to waken their tastebuds.
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1. Like many Americans who consume large amounts of salt you are confusing flavorings with seasonings. It is a traditional culinary principal (see LaRusse for example) that salt is a seasoning, not a flavoring, as it is used to bring out the natural flavor of a food, not add a new flavor. Herbs and spices, which add a different taste to a dish, are called seasoning by some but are also flavorings, as they are intended to add a different flavor to the dish. .(To a purist, salt should not be noticed in a dish, as its role is to bring out other flavors, not add one. I might not go that far, but it's interesting that the modern American accustomed to processed foods and oversalting has lost all sight of that concept, and doesn't understand that oversalting is often used to simply cover up bad or non-existent flavor..)
2. It once was quite traditional to have salt and pepper shakers on a table so people could adapt the intensity of the taste of he food. This was never so with flavorings, as this was always considered the provence of the chef. The recent rather arrogant idea that the head chef always knows what is best for the diner and every diner must accomodate himself to the chef's particular sensitivity to flavor has led to the idea that there is no need for individual salting. Again, the use of salt is to bring out flavor in meats and vegetables, not add them, as is the case with seasonings like herbs and spices. Lemon juice plays a similar role with seafood, and it is usually served in a wedge on the side so the diner can control it.
3. Perhaps most important as a practical matter, some people can't tolerate a lot of salt (over half of people with hypertension will have their blood pressure rise with salt), so it is a matter of regard for the health of others that should be of concern to the chef. A diabetic knows to avoid certain foods but someone with salt sensitivity may not even know it and in any case is forced to accept the chef's prescription for salt when it is poured into everything on the menu.
It is interesting to note that in on-line reviews of a new restaurant run by super chef Yannick Cam (Bistro Provence in Bethesda. MD), 2 of 7 on-line reviewers thought their dishes were undersalted. The waiter brought them a salt shaker. Should they have put themselves in "in hands of the chef" and not added salt? I think not.
Robert Weidmaier's Mussel Bar
My prescience is only surpassed by your omniscience in saying that there are no edible mussels in Bethesda. I am basing my opinion on my experience at Brasserie Beck, of which it appears to be a dumbed-down version. Sounds like the owner has found a formula - overcharge for beer and simple but trendy food, then get the "foodies" all a-tweeting. (His Marcels is in another league - it is a high quality restaurant with a reasonably varied menu, though it does take itself a little more seriously than warranted, which is seems to be a common theme with the owner's places.) I am not saying the food at the Bar is good or bad or that it is not worth spending a few bucks there when you want a simple meal - just that you can go only so far specializing in cheap shellfish and overpriced beer, so I don't get what all the fuss is about.
If you couldn't find edible mussels in Bethesda, it would truly be a culinary desert. Steamed mussels and fries is the one of the world's easiest and most inexpensive dishes to make. Mussels are indeed tasty, but it is really really hard to screw them up. (Well, unless you add grilled pineapple to them, like they do in one dish at this palace of gastronomy.) Throw them in a pot, add wine and a few simple ingredients (not pineapple) and let them steam in their own juices - big deal! (Why this is suddenly considered the height of gastronomy in the DC area I will never know.)
But you claim there is only one other place for edible mussels (Blacks) and it is more expensive. Untrue. If you live in Bethesda, you might want to try Nest Cafe, Rarely Legal, Jaleo, Steamers, or Mon Ami, to name just a few off the top of my head. They might not all be equally good, but despite your high culinary standards chances are you would be able to choke the mussels down at one or two of them. You can also go to Addies (Rockville) or Mannquin Pis (Olney).
(Though according to your post, you tried them all and found them all "inedible", right?)
The Bar apparently has the same prices at lunch as at dinner and has no happy hour, so despite the claim in your post, you can indeed get a much better deal at Black's, which has a very good happy hour, including mussels ($6.50). Otherwise, any half-competent cook can make mussels at home for less than $5 a serving, including the beer, without all the noise and overcrowded yuppie bars that supposedly adds "ambience" to places like Becks.
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Brasserie Beck
1101 K Street, NW, Washington, DC 20005
Mannequin Pis Restaurant
18064 Georgia Ave, Olney, MD 20832
Robert Weidmaier's Mussel Bar
Just what I would expect from a Beck place. Only extremely overpriced beer available and an emphasis on one of the easiest and cheapest dishes in the world to prepare at home - steamed mussels. Instead of real good homemade tea, they sell the bottled stuff. Sounds like they mark up the beer about 400% over wholesale. (BTW: Beck seems to have a habit of running out of the lowest priced beer, even if it is $7+.)
The profit margin on this place must be through the roof.
Do they require solo diners to eat at the bar, or just make it uncomfortable for them not to?
Maybe the "Belgian pizza" is worthwhile?
PS: You can get mussels many places in Bethesda, and a lot cheaper beer.
Hell's Kitchen 7/27 comments? (and spoilers)
The truth is since we are not there, we cannot taste the food and the show is very heavily edited to emphasize conflict, we really have no idea who is the better chef.
What TV Chefs have given you ‘mostly’ consistent recipes vs those that have been hit and miss.
Most of them are pretty good. I find the Test Kitchen the most consistent - usually a good balance of quality and relative simplicity. Rachael Ray and Martha Stewart are underrated by the chef snobs. Lydia Bastianich's food is pedestrian, and Batali's is overrated, but I find most Italian food very easy to prepare ad hoc.
But Paula Dean is by far the worst - so bad that I won't even try them. Too much of her food is fried, greasy, fatty, oversalted, overbuttered, overcreamed, unhealthy southern garbage. But then I don't like a lot southern cooking, except for bbq and NOLA/Cajun. For example, shrimp and grits - at least as prepared by most chefs - is my idea of a truly awful combination.
Hell's Kitchen 7/27 comments? (and spoilers)
Is it just me, are all the contestants insufferable? I hope they all lose. Is that what you have to be or pretend to be to get on these reality shows?
And what about Master Chef?
On most matters of food, I would certainly defer to their opinions. But again, this a matter of taste, and these chefs are no doubt used to a LOT of salt. That is my point - it may be a blind spot with them, no matter how refined in other respects their palates are. (The food lacks flavor? Quick, it needs more salt!)
Preferring the subtlety of herbs and spices, I add very little salt to food at home. I have almost never had anything in a restaurant that I felt needed salt, but I very often feel that the food has too much salt. I detest most processed foods with their enormous amounts of salt. Perhaps the chefs are unconsciously doing the same thing the processed food manufacturers are intentionally doing - hiding shortcomings in inherent flavor with sodium.
I can't imagine adding salt to such a salty dish, unless, as you say, he used a non-salty cheese, which is problem in itself - the dish wouldn't need salt, maybe it would need a different cheese!
In any case, if it's still not salty enough, you can always add it at the table, but you can't take it out. Rather than let the diner decide, their chefly egos require them to decide for the diner and salt shakers are no longer on restaurant tables. (We don't have that excuse at home.)
(Historically, of course, the taste for excessive salt grew out of the need to use it to preserve food. In general, the fresher the food, the less you need to enhance - or mask - flavor.)
And what about Master Chef?
Tasted "bland" to who? "Well-cooked" by whose standards? People who douse all their food with salt and consume three times what is recommended in their diet? (I would love to see how much salt is in a typical restaurant meal that all these top chefs are accustomed to consuming.)
I did not say you should not add salt and pepper to some foods. But consider the ingredients in mac and cheese. (1) The pasta has some salt in it and was probably cooked in salted water. Adding salt to a pasta dish is like pouring it on your bread. (2) Most cheeses are inherently very salty. (3) Even cream has some salt, and in any case does not need salt (do people add salt to their coffee and cream)? So the dish needs MORE salt? Do they add salt to EVERYTHING?
Yes, I do happen to know salt is a seasoning, but in this case "seasoning" and "salt" were equated. To me "seasoning" is not just salt and pepper, but also herbs and spices, which also enhance flavors. But we do not use them in large amounts in every dish. Perhaps the mac and cheese needed something else to kick it up (a dash of pepper or a drop of sherry, perhaps), but salt added to an already inherently salty dish?
Salt may sometimes "enhance flavors", but, as in every seasoning, if overused, it may also overwhelm them or may simply be inappropriate. If the chef added too much pepper or oregano to a dish, for example, most people would immediately object that it was overseasoned. Apparently we are so oversalted in this country we do not say the same about salt - we need it in large amounts in every food. Most foods (like cooked pasta and cheese) already have more than enough in them, except for those who have been oversalting their food for years and have lost their taste for the large amounts of salt already in many foods, like pasta cooked in salty water and cheese. This is no doubt in part a result of all the heavily oversalted processed foods we eat in this country,
A cooking tip to those chefs: If somebody doesn't think the mac and cheese has enough salt and want to exceed their recommended daily minimum, that is very easily fixed - they can ask for a salt shaker. Maybe this is an insult to the chef, but it's a matter of taste. People like me, who would probably think it tasted too salty, and people who are sensitive to salt (50% of the people with high blood pressure), have no such recourse.
And what about Master Chef?
I think Ramsay is probably a terrific chef (I'm a little skeptical about the other two). but the first episode revealed a dirty little secret of so-called haut cuisine. The mac and cheese presented by one amateur was praised for its appearance and texture (t did look good), then the judges all said it was "underseasoned" - because it didn't have a load of salt in it. So why should a dish already loaded with cheese need SALT? And since when is salt a synonym for SEASONING? . The fact is most restaurant chefs load their foods with way too much salt (and butter for that matter), and claim that "brings out the natural flavors". This is utter nonsense, and is necessary only for people who have jaded tastes from using way too much salt in their food, which overwhelms the real flavors and makes it actually dangerous for some hypertensive people. It's no great trick to make anything taste "good" at first bite by loading it with fat (e.g., butter) and salt, but try eating that way every day.
MiniBar: How Many Calls Before You Were Able To Get A Reservation?
So Justice Scalia and Rahm Emanuel's brother just strolled on over to Minibar. And Andres was rewarded with this article.
I'M SHOCKED!
The beginning of the article:
"It was dinner to settle a bet about whether health care reform would pass. Justice Scalia owed me. Initially we were scheduled for Komi—a wonderful Washington restaurant whose signature goat dish I recently reviewed. But the Justice did not like the blogosphere's attention to the dinner, and Komi canceled because of an event for an employee's wedding. So, at the suggestion of Richard Wolffe, I took the "strict constructionist" to the restaurant that deconstructs food—José Andrés's Minibar.
I have been a great fan of José's. But I had not been to the Minibar in more than a year."
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Komi
1509 17th St NW Ste 1, Washington, DC 20036
MiniBar: How Many Calls Before You Were Able To Get A Reservation?
Of course, that's the point. In every way, it is designed to appeal to the well-to-do, food snobs and jaded food critics, who seek something "new" and above all "exclusive", regardless of relative merit. It also is a physiological fact that the first bite of a new food is the most intriguing and often the most appealing - hence the single bite course that creates the illusion of tasty novelty. (Why do you think they give out small free samples at Costco or TJs?)
The self-selected customers tend to be more vocal, and they spread the word, i.e. create a buzz, for the "celebrity chef" and by implication, his other restaurants
A smart marketing trick.
MiniBar: How Many Calls Before You Were Able To Get A Reservation?
Art has many meanings. To quotes one dictionary, here are two:
1.The principles or methods governing any craft or branch of learning: the art of baking; the art of selling.
2. The class of objects subject to aesthetic criteria; works of art collectively, as paintings, sculptures, or drawings: a museum of art; an art collection
Some "foodies" call cooking "artistry" equivalent to the Louvre so they can masquerade as aesthetes, as if only they truly understand the "art" of cooking.
I object to the dumbing down of the word artist. Nowadays everyone who makes a pop record, no matter how bad, is an "artist", as are celebrity TV cooks. To some, American Idol features "artists" and rap musicians are "artists", comparable to Michaelangelo or Beethoven or Shakespeare. The latest fad foam or "deconstructed" dish becomes equivalent to great art that has endured for centuries. I don't think so.
For one thing, real art should endure and embody some overarching meaning beyond satisfying an immediate itch or hunger. In fact, by those standards my grandmother is a greater "artist" than any cook in a restaurant,as it represents something more than mere food. But she and her family would not be so pompous as to claim that she is an artist or that enjoyment of her cooking constitutes the extraordinary perception of a "foodie".
Nor would she claim it is the same as going to the Louvre, with the implication that she is as great an artist as those exhibiting there.
Georgetown Cupcakes
So what do they cost? I would say they would have to be the best cupcakes in the world given their tiny size to be worth more than a couple bucks, since on an ounce for ounce basis, at that price a cake would cost $100.
Like all too many bakeries, their website menu does not even list the prices! How arrogant is that? (It's a CUPCAKE for gosh sakes, I don't care if they are on TV!)
Reminds me of that French baker at the DuPont Circle Market - no prices listed, but they line up for a block to buy whatever at whatever price they will be charged. So DC.
Your 10 favorite DC Metro restaurants
Nice list (at least the 14) but I don't believe 2 Amys is the fourth best restaurant in DC by any standard, and certainly does not belong in that company, except maybe for The Italian Store.
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Italian Store
3123 Lee Hwy, Arlington, VA 22201
MiniBar: How Many Calls Before You Were Able To Get A Reservation?
The first sentence of the OP says it all: "It is the most difficult reservation in the United States". Comments like that, repeated enough times, is worth a million dollars in publicity. Create the buzz so every foodie snob in town twists themselves into contortions for a reservation and the resulting bragging rights.
Repeat after me: It's only food, not art. They are only cooks, not artists. You are only eating, not accomplishing anything..
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United States
400 Maryland Ave SW, Washington, DC 20202
MiniBar: How Many Calls Before You Were Able To Get A Reservation?
So who needs to spend several hundred dollars to gorge themselves on 27 gimmicky courses? Masochists and snobs.
Andres has learned from Costco when they give out those samples, yes, the first bite is always the best, but the taste buds get jaded before the first dozen courses. As for cotton candy eel, popcorn dipped in nitrogen and all that foam - you can have it, I'd put it in the garbage can where it belongs..
Andres should be using all that money to do something about improving all that bad food at his Jaleo chain. He is a genius at publicity if not cuisine.
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United States
400 Maryland Ave SW, Washington, DC 20202
August Restaurant Week 2010
Like I said, it usually equates to a limited menu and at best a free dessert. Big deal.
The pre-theatre menus at Tosca, Poste, Marcel's, etc. are generally somewhat better deals. (For example, Poste's pre-theatre menu looks similar but better than their RW menu - many more dessert selections and no added charge for salmon.)
Maine (Portland, Wiscasset, Camden, Bar Harbor) Advice Sought
AVOID YOUNGS AT ALL COSTS.
I don't know if they got new management or what, but if you want to pay too much for stale food at high prices - example, bowl of clam chowder $14. Inadequate utensils, lousy service, try to rip you off.
Planning a weekend. What do you think?
Central really not moderate but good, Zaytinya good, don't waste your time at Beck (incredibly overpriced beer), others OK.
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Zaytinya
701 9th St NW, Washington, DC 20001
Periogies in Baltimore
The Kielbasi factory in Rockville has them but I believe like the Krakus perogis they are packaged/pakaged, not freshly home made, though unlike Mrs. T's, they are made in Poland.
If you can't find a Polish church that makes them, I would try:
St. Mark's Orthodox Church on River Rd. in Bethesda annual Fall Bazaar. (I has these yeasr ago and they were homemade, but Russian I believe.)
Baltimore's Polish Festival (June)
Baltimore's Ukrainian and Russian festivals (Sept-Oct.)
House made sausage
Though the hot sausages are hot enough for me, I do agree on the fennel - still, it is very fresh and good indeed, as everyone who I know who has had them agrees.
