reesesWeb

WD-50 is not a great restaurant. Out of nine courses on the tasting menu in place when I ate there, I enjoyed probably three. The first shouted "Hey, I read about that Adria guy!" and consisted of carrot juice or soup stabilized by calcium chloride and sodium alginate over a similarly thickened disk of coconut milk. I don't remember the name, other than that it included "over easy" so you can easily visualize the presentation. It was quite good.

I also enjoyed the miso soup with soba noodles. It was a normal white miso, all of $.30 of paste and hot water at home, but the soba noodles were delivered in a squeeze bottle, still in semi-liquid form. I squeezed the pre-noodle goo into the hot miso soup and made my own noodles. I should like to declare that I was well along in the wine-pairing part of my meal, and the clumps were a result of my reduced coordination and the small size of the vessel.

Grapeseed Bistro
4865 Cordell Avenue
Bethesda, MD 20814
(301) 986-9592

Hours of Operation:
Monday thru Thursday: 5:00 - 10:00pm
Friday: 5:00 - 11:00pm
Saturday: 5:00 - 11:00pm
Sunday: 5:00 - 9:00pm

This place is right down the block from us (we're 4835, they're 4865.) so we've been here a couple times. We're always the shabbiest-dressed people in there, because, honestly, getting Kat to dress up for dinner is just a little tough.

The wine list is pretty good, and the preparations are not bad. As neighborhood bistros go, this isn't as good as Chez Papa near our old place on Potrero Hill, but it could be a lot worse. It's just that they take themselves a tiny bit too seriously, or that could just be the Bethesda "we're the young and affluent part of Washington, DC" scene, which is pretty thick around where we live.

Khan's Mongolian Barbecue, 500 E 78th St, Minneapolis

I'd never had mongolian barbecue before. The idea of piling up a bunch of meat in a bowl, taking it to some guy who throws it on a big hot-table and stirs it around, and then scoops it into another (I hope) bowl -- it ain't my cup of meat.

But, Choadbite said that it didn't suck completely, and that this place, Khan's, was "tolerable".

After last night, I know that if he had to, he could eat the raw ass of a german shepherd and call it tolerable. That's not a rimming reference.

Let's start with the smell of the place. Actually, let's not, because it's too nasty.

Vincent, 1100 Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis

Having been consistently gaining weight over the past month or so, Choadbite and I were both seeking lighter fare. Minneapolitans don't eat out that much, so most decent restaurants favor the super-fatty high-caloric plates that special-occasions demand. I'm also really bloody picky about food, so I either make it myself from fresh ingredients (yes, I'll cook it on the hotel TV), or I'll eat out.

After lots of heavy meat dishes, we happened on fish. There's only one semi-decent sushi restaurant in Minneapolis (Origami), so it comes down to the two chain seafood restaurants: Oceanaire, and McCormick & Schmick's. M&S is an old Seattle restaurant (like Palomino, one of those to break out across the country), and seafood lovers in Seattle avoid it. If you're a seafood restaurant and you can't get it right in Seattle, you're hopeless. It's like getting laid in a women's prison with a fistful of pardons and a prehensile tongue. It probably smells the same, too.