Text 11387, 101 rader
Skriven 2007-02-05 18:52:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: tastes - beef - 13
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Dinner and sonatas at Ellen and Joel's. I broke my fast, as
it were, or at least fell off the wagon, by going to my friends'
house for supper. Supper was ribeyes, medium-rare to medium-rare
on the rare side, rice with seeds (kind of like the brown rice
and daikon seeds stuff that Trader Joe's came up with and that
I detest, only this was made with decent-tasting rice, and
chicken broth, which improved things royally, and a salad.

The steaks were Kosher, which means by definition kind of
bloodless, but according to modern and rabbinically approved
customs, still able to be cooked pink in the middle. They were
pretty decent, well aged, and so on; but as is the custom in
this family, they were brushed with a standard Bulls-Eye type
bbq sauce, so much for Atkins. I had a bit of the rice, which
was good as it had been enriched with broth made from a chicken
boiled specially for the dish. With this we had Rodney Strong's
Zinfandel, I think 04 but am not sure - nice blackberries,
chocolate, and a whiff of herbs. A bit too sweet, but given
the circumstance a good choice.

For dessert I brought the Peter Lehmann Liqueur Muscat - a quite
remarkable wine available only at the cellar door. Aroma of
apricots and marmalade, with citrus, almonds, and green tea on
the palate. The average sweetness was balanced with lots of acid.
Longish finish of orange drops and more tea. I enjoyed this but
could take only a tiny glass of it.

=

My father doesn't get out much these days - he walks painfully
slowly, and now his feet and ankles are swollen owing to perhaps
the diabetes and perhaps the congestive heart failure and perhaps
the kidney insufficiency. So it takes two of us to haul him around,
so he goes out only when both his sons are in the same place at
the same time. This weekend the only decent place we could find
that would serve the regular menu on Sunday afternoon was
Houston's, of which Carol and I went to a branch with Ian and
Jacquie during our visit to Napa Valley a couple years back
(that branch is called Rutherford Grill or something). We
headed out after Jonathan got back from church, and after a
lengthy delay on finding that my father couldn't fit into shoes
without pain; picked up uncle S.Y. and met Carol (who was to
drop off my Arkansas music, which had been mailed to home) there.
The original plan was the oZ Chophouse, sort of halfway between,
but my father is doing worse in the bathroom department, and so
we decided to try to stick closer to home. It was freezing cold,
barely in the 20s I think, and we were glad to get into the
warmth of the place, which is enhanced by a fireplace (I think)
in the main area and by real gas lights on the side where we were.
Friendly staff. The soup of the day was welcome - S.Y. and Carol
each had a bowl - it was mushroom and artichoke and tasted sort
of like clam chowder minus the clams and plus artichokes, dusted
with tarragon. Pretty good and nice and warm. My brother had a
side of shoestring fries as his appetizer - quite good, actually,
and Carol and I both stole some. Neither my father nor I had a
starter. He had a burger, medium rare with Cheddar, and it was
apparently to his liking - he ended up eating all the 10 oz or
so of meat and, having had the fear of God put into him, didn't
eat the bun. This comes with fries, but he substituted the
vegetable medley of the day (roast carrots, Brussels sprouts, and
potatoes, and he didn't eat all the potatoes). Jonathan had, at
my recommendation, the chicken, which, although apparently good,
was served with cold couscous, a miscalculation at 20F outside.
My Thai noodle salad with beef was surprisingly good - over 1/3 
lb of pretty good filet done "as rare as possible," not unlike
seared sashimi, in chunks underneath a mound of okay noodles.
The vegetables mixed in - red bell peppers, peanuts, basil, and a
sprig or two of greens -, were reasonably fresh and actually quite
good for the season. The menu promised mango and avocado as well -
I found some cubes of mango of varying ripeness from excellently
sweet to green, and there were in fact, if you looked hard for
them, a couple smears of avocado goo at the bottom. The dressing
was a quite spicy, not very Thai Sriracha-sweetened vinaigrette
that might have been way hot for some diners (Carol said it was
too hot for her; she read in some review that you could substitute
peanut sauce, doubling the calories but saving a sissy's taste
buds). Carol also had a salad, a big bowl of greens of a fairly
standard variety, with a fair amount of battered and fried chicken
tenders (actually tender, juicy, and not bad at all), all with
blue cheese dressing. Hers was also supposed to come with avocado,
but close investigation showed none; the helpful waitress came
back with a small ramekin of avocado chunks. S.Y. took my cue
from a week or two ago and ordered the French dip au jus, which
was much superior to the one at the previous place (which wasn't
strictly speaking bad itself). Real pink Angus prime rib, shaved
thin, about 6 oz, sandwiched between a couple of slices of garlic
toast; Raifort sauce (excellent) and jus (decent - tasted as
though the packaged stuff had been improved with real beef
drippings, mushrooms, and not too much salt). A surprise was that
underneath the nicely medium-rare meat was a layer of quite tasty
debris in the New Orleans style. I could have made a whole meal of
the debris. On the whole, a quite respectable meal, one of the
best I've had on Rockville Pike. The waitress was good, keeping
Carol's iced tea, my father's diet Coke, and my brother's regular
Coke full and myself and S.Y. with a sufficient quantity of Sierra
Nevada Pale Ale. The place puts on an automatic 18% service charge
for parties of 5 or more. We added a fiver to this.

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