Where can I get it?
Lauriol Plaza
1835 18th Street Northwest
Washington, DC 20009
How much?
$14.20 (entree size)
Many of those who read this blog already know I grew up in New York City. For those that don’t, I was raised in Midtown Manhattan just north of the United Nations. While not known for the best restaurants, my neighborhood had some bright spots. I didn’t get to experience the place that inspired this recipe until I was in college — though I probably shouldn’t have been enjoying their tasty orange margaritas at that time. But hey, they didn’t card, so whatever.
Where can I get it?
Kushi
465 K St NW
(between N 4th St & N 5th St)
Washington, DC 20001
How much?
$6.50 per skewer
"Ugh, now I have to deal with alcoholics, along with snobby coffee-drinkers." Photo Credit: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg
Starbucks recently announced it would introduce beer and wine onto its drink menu at 25 of its 10,700 U.S. locations. Sadly the DC Area will not be participating… But the lucky citizens of Atlanta, Southern California, and Chicago will be able to imbibe in some wine and beer while sitting next to their java-drinking, laptop typing counterparts. Lucky drunks…I mean ducks.
According to Clarice Turner, a Senior VP of U.S. Operations, the stores will price beer around $5 and glasses of wine between $7 and $9. Along with beer & wine, these locations will also be serving bistro-inspired fare, like warm foccacia with olive oil and fruit & cheese plates, to pair with their alcoholic beverages.
This isn’t entirely new for Starbucks, as they have been serving alcohol at some of their Seattle & Portland based stores since October 2010. However Mrs. Turner mentioned this effort would be a test run, and that the specific stores were “carefully chosen.” Which means the company would not be deploying the concept to other stores any time soon…. Oh well. I prefer to drink my beer at grimey dive bars or in the comfort of my own home anyway. Best of luck Starbucks!
I just stumbled onto an article at the Washington Post regarding a new website called Food Meets Drink… And while it is still in “Beta”, so far it’s pretty neat, and quite fun to use, with just a handful of kinks to be worked out.
Basically it’s a food and drink pairing website comprised of almost any beverage and food ingredient you can think of… And you pair as many as you want together to get recipes compiled from all across the web. But what makes it so fun is that the website uses graphical icons for each ingredient with no text or writing required. I know, crazy right?
To give a clearer explanation, each item is categorized into main groups… For food, it’s: meats, seafood, dairy/eggs, vegetables, fruits, nuts/grains, and spices. For alcohol, it’s: hard liquor, beer, and wine.. And then those are split into more subcategories like whiskey, pinot noir, or stout. Then there’s cooking method choices (grill, sautee, steam, etc…), occasion choices like barbecue, thanksgiving, birthday, and cuisine (french, italian, american, etc…)
For each category, you have many ingredient choices, and in each specific listing, you can scroll through similar items by clicking an arrow to the right or left of the item. See the graphic at left for a more visual explanation.
So let’s say you have a Cabernet Sauvignon you were planning on drinking, and want to pair it with something tasty. Just click on the Cabernet icon and it will highlight other ingredients to pick from. Once you choose what you want to use, it will populate recipes on the right side.
Again since it is in Beta there are a bunch of things to fix — like the fact it can be hard to find the ingredient you are looking for since the categories aren’t well defined. Or the lack of pairing options for some rarer beverages… Really the only thing to pair with my American Wheat Beer is chicken and eggs?
Regardless of all the glitches, kinks, and slight gimmickyness, Food Meets Drink should prove to be pretty handy in time, especially if it is converted into a smartphone app.
Do you have any recommended ingredient pairing recipe websites? If so, I’d love to know what they are and how you found out about them.
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog. Thanks to all who visited this year. I look forward to writing a whole lot more in 2012!
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 9,800 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
It’s the last night of Hanukkah tonight, and while I don’t usually find the holiday to be anything special, this year was a bit different. To be completely honest, I’d be remiss if I didn’t say I’d be looking back on it quite nostalgically.
Just 8 days ago, my wife and I hosted our first Hanukkah party at our townhouse to celebrate night #1 of the Festival of Lights. We really pulled out all the stops for the party, especially since we had 30 guests coming.
I slow-cooked a brisket and got challah bread. The wife (who happens to be Catholic) made apricot chicken, a homemade noodle kugel, and some delicious chocolate-toffee matzah our friend Lauren over at Southern Jew BBQ made for Passover a couple years back. We even played the dreidel game with gelt & Hanukkah music in the background, all while drinking Manichewitz. But most notably (according to the guests who attended) we made Potato Pancakes (or as they are called in Yiddish — Latkes). And they came out AWESOME. Continue reading
