Tuesday, March 31 at 11 AM

Eagerly awaiting your meal report.

Causing a stir or making complaints, I want to point out, doesn't have to be awkward; you can get up from the table and speak to a manager and never let on to anyone at the table that you have brought something up. 

Your best chance of having something dealt with — generally; in this case, there'd be nothing to deal with — is to bring a matter to the manager's attention immediately. 

Re: your Citronelle story. Ugh. 

Very, very poorly handled, I'd say. Bad enough to get a form LETTER. But a form email? A real kiss-off.

It's a good SANDWICH. It's not what I'd call a hoagie.

They use good bread (Sarcone's, direct from Philly), they use good meats, they use good cheeses.

But a hoagie should have lots of thin shaved onion (white onion, not red), and it should be nicely lubed up with lots of oil and vinegar. I could barely taste the oil and vinegar on my sub. And no oregano. You want a good shake of oregano on there. 

It's not just a matter of ingredients.

A hoagie's a hefty thing. It's loaded up with meat and cheese. It should be a huge handful. It's a thing of generosity.

This was — sorry — a yuppie thing.

Very nice and neat, very careful construction, nothing flopping outside the roll, not so much meat or cheese that it would cause anyone around you to make unwelcome, flippant remarks about the obesity epidemic — the kind of thing you could easily eat on a first date or driving back to work in your Lexus.

A hoagie is a 12th date kind of thing, unless you're lucky enough to have found someone who really, really likes food and isn't afraid to show it — someone who goes at life with great gusto.

You should get dirty from a hoagie. 

What?

I've written a lot about Annapolis, and spend a good bit of time there. Lewnes's, Potato Valley, Joss, Yin Yankee, The Rockfish, Les Folies, O'Leary's.

I was out at the Boatyard recently. Not great, not even particularly good — but not bad, either. The place itself is terrific, though — a real getaway, very relaxing.

What are you excited about these days?

I haven't yet gotten to Osteria 177, but have plans to. What else?

Both Ravi I and Ravi II are cash.

If I'm not mistaken, I believe we do mention it in the review. But I'll try to make a point of it in anything I write about the place here on this chat.

I'm with you: It's no fun to show up somewhere hungry and ready to chow and then have to ditch the premises and run out and get cash.

We say that two of you should be able to eat at a place like that for $50.

And that's true; you can, very easily.

Your two dishes more than filled you up, I'm sure, and I doubt you finished everything that was on the table. With two, you could have gotten by with ordering just one more dish.

Did you miss the boat on the bbq? I like the pork belly — called spicy pork on the menu — a lot. Crusty-edged, rich and fiery-hot. I think that's a terrific dish, once it's layered onto a giant leaf of lettuce, with rice in there, and a good bit of the bean paste, and maybe a sliver of garlic.

Next time you need to get the seafood pancake. I think Gom Ba Woo's is the best around, supremely light and fluffy.

The pancake and the soon du bu.

I'd have been PO'd too.

But you have to realize something — they'd never seat two adults and a small child at a big table with a Lazy Susan.

That'd be a waste.

So why did they seat a table of two adults and two children? Only thing I can think to say is that four is different from three. There's slightly more justification. Slightly.

I hope you got a table soon after, though.

Full Key, Wheaton, is not the warmest place around, but the food sure is good.

I was waiting for this.

Look, I understand your point. My point, though, was about happiness. You're in the business, are you not, of sending people away happy?

It's a serious question. Not all restaurants can answer in the affirmative.

If that's your goal, then you do what you can to make sure that the customer goes away happy. (By the way, can you and your fellow managers, restaurateurs and chefs all refrain from using the word "guest"? If someone is a guest in my house, they don't pay.)

I did not advocate — go back and read what I wrote — letting a customer try three expensive wines. I said this was not an ice cream shop with its samples.

But if the customer is acting in good faith, and genuinely is disappointed by the wine, why would you not want to correct the problem? Why would you want him or her to go away unhappy?

And the time to bring this matter to the attention of the restaurant — the only time — is when the bottle is presented and you are invited to take that first sip.

Again: It comes down to whether a restaurant is really and truly interested in making sure that customer goes away happy.

I think there are restaurants who are, and many more who are not. 

I'd like to think you're right. And a friend of mine has been, and reports that it's promising.

But my meal was nowhere close to fantastic. It was nowhere close to good.  

Too much astringency in my ceviche. A chicken soup that had a lot of good things going for it — lots of fresh, coarse-chopped veggies, and a robust broth — but that was, in the end, much, much too busy (a soup should be a single effect, I think, no matter how complex it might be). A chifa dish, a kind of stir fry of shrimp and chicken (chifa refers to the synthesis of Chinese and Peruvian cuisines), was gloppy and surprisingly dull.

The one thing that stood out was a selection of fresh cheeses, including a local cherry cheese and a ripe blue cheese; they were terrific. 

It's a nice place, simply and beautifully decorated, the cocktails are good, and I liked the service a lot.

I'll be back, and I'm hoping — as I always hope, when things don't work out that first time — that I was wrong, wrong, wrong.

How about a little meat on them bones? : )

Come on, Annapolis: details, details … 

Just so I can have it out there, on record — the best burger isn't in the finals. (The best burger is Ray's Hell Burger. By far. Nothing else, for me, comes close.)

Between the two of those? I'd probably go with EatBar. 

They're both good.

But I have an aversion, when it comes right down to it, to turning a burger into something it's not. It's not an entree. It's not a meal.

It's a burger. It's a sandwich. It should be simple.

Too much embellishment, too much tricking out, too much forethought, too much planning, too much sourcing, too much self-congratulation, too much hype-age … it kind of kills it, don't you think?

Thanks for chiming in to the discussion/debate.

And look, I know that that's what the first sip is for.

But if you're acting in good faith, as I said, and you do not like the wine that you're tasting — above and beyond its being corked or oxidized or whatever — then that's the time to speak up, not later.

A really good restaurant is going to take this request seriously, and offer to fetch another bottle.

I'm well aware that a restaurant loses money on this. But how much? That bottle can be turned around and sold by the glass. One man's trash is another man's treasure. And that makes up some of the money right there.

And tallying losses and gains like this is, again, missing the larger point. Just like restaurants who fail to understand the worth of RW — who stint on their menus, and who don't bother to instruct their servers to see the week as a kind of recruitment week, a week to be open and optimistic.

You gain, later, with a customer who — happy, fulfilled — decides to come back. Or, who decides to become a regular. Or, who tells everyone he or she knows to go.

Yikes.

All around, just — yikes.

(And I'll bet Beck desperately wishes it knew the identity of that waiter.)

Honestly? I don't think any of the museum cafes are worth, as you put it, the time and cost.

Mitsitam is interesting, and better than most, but still, that's not saying that much.

If I were you, I'd go to the museum, and then go somewhere else for lunch. Cafe du Parc isn't far, or you could spend some of that money on a cab and hit Central or Poste or Oyamel or Rasika, etc.

I really like the new Cafe Assorti, in Clarendon — across the street from the plaza with Ray's Hellburger and Pho 75.

A sunny, modern, multipurpose space (a coffeehouse, a full-fledged restaurant, a late night place for dessert and drinks), and a long and interesting lineup of Kazakh food. 

They do two terrific salads — one carrot, the other beet. There are huge, meat-stuffed dumplings, called manti, with two kinds of sauce; it's enough for an entree at dinner. They've also got an array of stuffed breads, including a wonderful cake-sized egg bread filled with beef and cheese and vegetables.

It's all very reasonably priced, too. 

I'm surprised to hear that.

I've had some pretty terrific meals at the Source, both upstairs and in the lounge. And some dishes, like the magnificent crispy sea bass and the pork belly dumplings, knocked my socks off. 

Good for the staff for reading the signals at your table, and also for agreeing to take the charge off. A class move.

That says something to me, and, from the sound of it, to you, too.

True, but I didn't see anything in the post about needing a place that is open on the weekend.

You can hit a museum at any time, you know — and a lot of people I know tend to take time off when guests are in from out of town.

I'm just saying.

Thanks for the kind words.

There's lots that's safe. Presuming, of course, you stay away from fried stuff — they use peanut oil in stir frys. 

But papaya salads, grilled quail with lime dip, bowls of pho, summer rolls, some curries — all are, or should be, okay for her.

So go — go chase the dragon and enjoy yourself in good conscience …

That's true, it doesn't — but neither does the Inn at Little Washington match the area profile of Washington, Va.

That's a simple, pretty much poor country town. 

It'll be interesting to see what develops over there, huh? Thanks for the heads-up.

Gotta run, everyone.

Be well, eat well, and let's do it again next week at 11.

(TEK, we miss you … )

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