Entries tagged with 'restaurants'
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Word Of Mouth asks, "What's your best worst restaurant name ever?" Thaitanic? Butt Savories? Chickpizz? The possibilities are endless. And mildly disturbing....
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Washingtonian’s annual “100 Best Restaurants” issue just hit newsstands, with Santa-resembling Michel Richard (how festive) on the front cover. Juggling a lemon, no less. His modern French culinary gem Citronelle inside Georgetown's Latham Hotel took first, a repeat from last year, when the magazine first started issuing formal rankings. Before that, Citronelle consistently won four shiny stars on the four-star scale. It’s been a big year for the big man, who opened Citronelle’s baby brother, the jeans-approved brasserie Central off Pennsylvania Avenue. Central didn’t make the magazine’s competitive cut, but their fries ($7 an order) sure wow-ed the magazine earlier, and their burgers won a "best in the city" nod from the Post. That might change given recent competition, which...
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Ever notice how rarely you see a clock in a serious restaurant? Ever wonder why not? Mario Batali reveals how restaurateurs use the timepiece's absence to their advantage in this week's Mario Unclogged.
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Do you find yourself continually stumped on what restaurant to try? Add a special occasion and the pressure only goes up. There's nothing like a little personalized concierge service from someone who knows the local restaurant scene backwards and forwards. If you're in San Francisco, Marcia "Rhymes with Garcia" Gagliardi is offering diners a pretty sweet deal through her well-read Tablehopper newsletter. Previously a "friends-only" service, Tip Please offers Gagliardi's expertise for the measly cost of an email. If you ask me, that's a bargain for even a whiff of the kind of inside dope that Gagliardi collects as one of San Francisco's most energetic restaurant reviewers. You fill out a short web form, which asks all the salient facts...
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Recently Jason Kottke had a terrific post on Kottke.org about Ssam Bar. He loved the place, as has just about every person I know who's gone there, but what was interesting was his take on why he liked it so much: "And ok, a word or two about the food. Is it even Asian? It's more like food that tastes fantastic and you can eat with chopsticks. I would describe it as truly international food, drawing upon many influences without being obvious about it. And who cares anyway...Chang could put Swedish food on the menu and make it work. I have no real evidence or experience to back this up, but the approach to food at Ssäm seems like a...
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New York Magazine's just released their Best Of listings for 2007 and as always the eating & drinking section is interesting reading. Some shoo-ins, some surprises, making it this a good but not earth-shatteringly great list of places to revist or try for the first time. Our Adam Kuban's already written about their 2001 burger picks over an A Hamburger Today, but I'm more interested in personally verifying their best places for Sunday Brunch....
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Do men get better service than women at restaurants? asks Cynthia Kilian of the New York Post. Tim Zagat of the eponymous guidebooks says yes: "Women arriving together very often get shown to less-desirable seats. Men always seem to be offered the bill, regardless of who's paying, even the female boss. And when it comes to tasting wine, "very often they'll give it to almost every man at the table before they get around to [the woman] ordering the wine," Zagat says." Is the poor service because women tend to tip less than men do? Or do women tip less because they don't get treated as well? All I know is, shoddy service means I'll never go back—and I'll tell...
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Laura Shapiro on gender and molecular gastronomy in the New York Times, Kitchen Chemistry Is Chic, but Is It a Woman’s Place?: Maybe all the machines and chemicals are contributing to a revolution other than the one about frozen air and warm gelatin. “Restaurant kitchens were organized like military brigades, because that was the only way to turn out such a volume of work and make all the fast decisions that were necessary,” said Mr. Goldfarb of Room 4 Dessert. “Now it’s more like the modern military, using technology as opposed to brute strength.”But many women dreaming of a restaurant career still may not see the appeal of a laboratory kitchen. Ms. Yung and Ms. Sanchez have been struck by...
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Novel Noshing: When Dining Rooms Upstage Menus by Fodor's Katie Hamlin discusses six different restaurant concepts from around the world. Most of them are old hat (kitchen tables and conveyor belt sushi, especially) but I'd love to eat at the Fukuoka branch of the Zauo, The Fishing Boat Café chain, a restaurant that has "500 seats on two giant boats "anchored" side by side in the restaurant's massive indoor pond. After casting your pole (there is one stationed by each seat) and making your catch, your fish or lobster is wisked away to the kitchen for proper cooking." (There's also a Belgian restaurant that lifts your dining table 50 meters in the air, but I'm not really one for heights.)...
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The five best Chinese Restaurants in Southern California according to NYTimes' Mark Bittman. His favorite out of the bunch is Triumphal Palace: Six of us — one of whom now claims she will be married here — shared 24 dishes (about 18 of which came within 10 minutes), and while all except the predictably sad desserts were good, some were incredible. These were barbecue pork belly, firm cubes of slow-cooked, crunchy-skinned fresh bacon that, I swear, were a dead-on replica of a dish Alain Ducasse used to serve at about five times the price; Chiu Chow-style dumplings, with thick, chewy, slightly crisp rice-flour exteriors filled with (could it be?) jasmine-scented meat; deep-fried carrot cake, in fact a savory-sweet custard-filled dumpling;...
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