Wow. What can I say? Where else can you go and get self-service wines ranging from a dry white to a f*cking Chateau d’Yquem Sauterne? You’re buying the Yquem for $18 an ounce, but HOLY CRAP is that affordable compared to the $200 bottle price!

Ok, so I didn’t actually try the Sauterne. I wasn’t in the mood for it, but I really enjoyed trying three different wines for ~$12 total.

I sampled a 2007 Conundrum, a Barbaresco, and a 2007 Eos Paso Robles Zinfandel Port. Because I was with my knitter friends, I did not wine geek out and write everything down to blog about later. I came to share and enjoy.

Here’s what I can remember. Nothing has been as good as the 1996 or 97 Conundrum I had a long time ago. That was when it was still label Caymus Conundrum, and what a conundrum it was! The flavor was so complex that it evolved on the tongue. You got nuances of peaches and melons with some buttery hints. Nothing since has come close I’m sorry to say. The 2007 was ok, but nothing I’d want to buy for more than $15.

The Zin Port was very nice. So nice, that I’m thinking about it. I really don’t like port very much at all, but the two that I have liked, were both Zin Ports. (The other was a Charles Krug, who does not usually make a port. Whenever they make something they do not usually make, it’s because they know it will be effing spectacular, like their cream sherry I had years ago.) It was raisin-y and delightful without being cloyingly sweet. It was the perfect foil at the end of our cheese plate experience. I am actually thinking of buying a bottle of this one because I could keep it around for post-dinner relaxation.

The dealio with the Enoteca that you fill up a smart card with money and then serve yourself measured pours from the machines. It’s ingenious stuff. You can dispense in different amounts, 2, 4, or 6 ounce pours of the regular wine, and 1, 3, 5 ounces of the sweet dessert wines or the super-duper fancy stuff (Like the Yquem or the Tokaji at $18-$25/oz!!!).

My only tip is do not put your smart card into the machine till you are certain of your choice. My friend made the slight error of sticking her card in and pointing at a very expensive wine, only to have it spill out at the slightest touch when she pointed at button for the ridiculous price. It zeroed out her card, landed wine everywhere and she was bummed out. (I bought her a glass of the port to cheer her up. A cheap $3 treat.)

As for the cheese plate, it was not bad. The guy staffing Enoteca that night was very young and not that knowledgeable about the cheeses, but extremely earnest. He treated us well. We decided to forgo the pre-defined cheese plates to some extent because we really wanted to skip the blue cheese option due to someone’s mold allergy. (Ironically, not me!) So he suggested we do the 5-cheese plate selection for $22. He was out of one of the cheeses so he graciously brought us a variety of seasoned olives for free and filled out the plate with a little extra of everything, including, almonds, sliced apples and delicously delicate herb crackers. It was enough for 3 of us. Oh and some other patrons who were likely friends of his left nearly a whole pumpkin pie. We eyed it, made a joke about it, so he gave us some pie for free as samples! (Yes we are hooked. It was pretty good pie. Nice crust.)

Next time, I think I want to try and order food from the counters below and eat a full dinner while I’m there. We saw other people doing that.

Total for the evening was $31 with $4 left on my wine card. Not bad for an experimental dinner with some decent wines. Next time, I’m going straight for the Yquem. I don’t care. I MUST KNOW what it’s all about. (Seriously, it cannot be that great. It just can’t.)

However, I also got very little knitting done due to the finger food we ate along with the wine-drinking, which ruins your tensioning. Luckily, nothing had to be ripped out.

Whole Foods Enoteca Review (Fairfax, VA) is a post from: Mapgirl's Fiscal Challenge

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I had a great time at dinner. Mercer Kitchen was delicious. As mentioned in the comments, this dinner was sponsored by Intuit’s TurboTax. (Not particularly a product I enjoy, but I do love my Quicken, which is an Intuit product.) I had the butternut squash soup for appetizer and the seared scallop with pea green ravioli entree. I shouldn’t have ordered dessert, but my eyes were bigger than my stomach so I got the Valrhona chocolate cake with toffee crunch ice cream. The only bad part of dinner was being too full to devour the whole cake, and the vinaigrette on the ravioli was so acidic it hurt my lips! After a little chapstick, I was A-ok though.

Service was funny. I had a waiter pour some water and I could see his tattoo on his inner arm. I found it distracting while I was dining, but I have friends who wear full sleeves. I guess it was unexpected with the clean look all the other servers had. Plus it drove me nuts that I could quite make out what it said!

I suspect that in the spirit of frugality, we were shown an abbreviated, but still delicious menu. I passed over the figs with prosciutto and the shrimp over salad appetizers for the soup and I was not sorry. The other entrees offered were chicken and a cut of fish, which ultimately did not feed my eyes the way the scallops did. (The greens were verdantly bursting through the ravioli dough.) Oh this will be a memorable meal for quite a while.

I even enjoyed the beverages of a gingery fresh soda for happy hour, a vodka lemonade with dinner and an Elderflower Cosmo for nightcap.

Now that the food stuff is out of the way…

In attendance were:

-Dan from Everyday Finance – An interesting investment blog. (I’ve bookmarked but I think it’s over my head for investing.)
- Shawanda from You Have More Than You Think
- Pinyo from Moolanomy – Who is moving to DC soon! Yay!
- Kelly from The Centsible Life – Looking very elegant. (Loved the neckline on her dress, but never got to tell her that.)
- Jon from Betterment – Whom I never got to meet.
- My Journey To Millions – Who sat on the other side of someone so I barely got to speak with him either, but a clear family man.
- Vilkri-He and Vilkri-She from Money Obedience – A new blog I’m excited to read. A wonderful pair.
- Mary Pilon from the Wall Street Journal (She writes a lot for The Wallet and other features.)
- Chelsea Marti and Ashley Kirkendall from Intuit TurboTax – Chelsea was a peach with some good advice for me about Quicken.
- Emily Johnston and S from the PR firm

And our wonderful host, Flexo!

I talked myself hoarse on Saturday night and I’ve been drinking tea all morning today. If there’s another dinner like this, I encourage everyone to go and make a new connection! There was a lot of sharing going on about spam-catching, shopping for boots, software tips, etc.

NYC Meet Up @ Mercer Kitchen is a post from: Mapgirl's Fiscal Challenge

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I’ve been meaning to rave about Heidi’s Pies for a while. Boyfriend and I ate there for brunch and picked up some pies for dinner, boysenberry, chocolate cream and apple. All of them were amazing. Freshly baked with interesting specials like strawberry and German chocolate.

It’s on El Camino Real north of the Hillsdale Caltrain station. (Closest to Hillsdale Mall)

Warm pie with ice cream is wonderful stuff. My nephews couldn’t get enough of it. I also took a pie to my cousin and her husband for hosting us. (And a bottle of wine.)

The pies weren’t too expensive. About $15 each which seems about right to me. (I sold pies at a bakery in high school and we charged about $15. Remember in CA, you don’t pay as much for fruit ingredients.)

Heidi’s Pies is a post from: Mapgirl's Fiscal Challenge

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My birthday dinner was delayed because my boyfriend was ill. We finally got to go Cafe Atlantico last Saturday night. It is Jose Andres’ restaurant that houses ‘Minibar‘, but Minibar is a separate restaurant and features molecular gastronomy. It’s also $120 a seat and they serve a lot of food I can’t eat. So Minibar was a no go for me. (They will work with food allergies, but mine are limiting and extensive enough that I can’t eat most of their posted menu. However, the main restaurant was excellent at working with me.)

Cafe Atlantico features Latin cuisine, but there were a lot of interesting touches. Everything was foamy. Different. Our first drinks were cocktails. Boyfriend had a pineapple caipirinha and I had a magic mojito. It was a mojito with cotton candy. I got distracted from the sommelier’s speech while the server poured the cocktail over the cotton candy and it melted into a wonderfully balanced drink. So far it was so good. Delicious.

Boyfriend got the sweetbread appetizer with leeks, morels, bacon bits and bacon foam. I got seared foie gras with corn puree, corn and Mexican ‘truffles’. Boyfriend says I got the better dish. It was damned good. I liked the so-called truffles. They were savory. But the foie gras itself was creamy, delicate and wonderful. Boyfriend’s dish was great too, but he didn’t like it so much. Normally he doesn’t like mushrooms, but he really liked the morels. That’s saying something.

Our entrees were the Feijao Tropiero for boyfriend and Striped Bass Veracruz for me. I loved my dish. There were cherry tomatoes cut in half with capers, olives and pearl onions in a savory, sweet, salty combination which I really liked. There was a lime foam to complement the fish, which was moist and tender with a skin that was a little crispy on the edges, tail on, which I don’t mind at all. Leaving it on reminds you where fish comes from, and not just some weird inorganic rectangular shape. Boyfriend’s dish was a pork tenderloin with greens, oranges, black beans, rice, and a crazy, crazy, INSANELY HOT habanero sauce. Basically we think it was pureed habanero peppers. Oh, and more bacon foam. However, it was overkill on his dish and didn’t really add anything to it. But the pork medallions just fell apart. They were pink and tender. Adding a dab of habanero was fantastic.

The wine we selected was a great Malbec from Argentina. It was a 2005 Catena, a half-split (375ml), so just enough for the appetizer and entree courses. I was still drinking my first cocktail when the main course arrived. The sommelier, Jill Zimorski, was fantastic. She was super helpful in selecting a wine. We were looking at a 2007 Seghesio Zinfandel, also a split, but not convinced it would go well with a pork dish and a white fish dish. She said the Seghesio was actually a decent choice, but gave us two other options, including the Malbec and some third option which I didn’t hear because of the magic mojito distraction. I have to say, Jill is great. She’s one of the best sommeliers I’ve ever met. Extremely knowledgable and friendly. She could really speak to us without really specific wine snob language. We’re still developing our palates, so we need to be able to communicate what we like with ‘imprecise’ language. She was really great about that.

Cafe Atlantico gets a thumbs up from me and a neutral mark from boyfriend. It’s not someplace I could eat once a month, but a few times a year maybe. But I know we’d rather eat at Jaleo (his original tapas place).

(Oh yeah, don’t ask. It was for my birthday and the tab, with tip was just under $200. The only thing I paid for was a cab ride home ($10) from the bar we went to meet our friends later. Boyfriend paid the bar tab there too.)

Cafe Atlantico is a post from: Mapgirl's Fiscal Challenge

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One of my friends runs a side operation raising angora goats for mohair fleece. She participates annual in a craft fair and some other local artisan marketplaces. Because she’s got the inside scoop, our little crowd took a country excursion on Saturday to some places she recommended.

We stopped at her particular fair which is an annual church fundraiser in Markham. It’s actually quite well organized and the crafts were of very high quality. I was only windowing shopping but I was so impressed with what I saw, that I bought an early Mother’s Day present for my mom and a token gift for boyfriend. In the back of my mind, if I wasn’t hoping to merge kitchens eventually with boyfriend, I’d have bought a beautifully cobalt blue glazed serving bowl. It was perfect for a ginormous summertime salad for one, or for serving salad at the table for two. Of course, I was running late to meet my friends and had very little cash on me. I had to borrow $20 from my friend who was vending to buy something from her!

The church ladies had all kinds of baked goods for sale, like Red Velvet Cake and holiday cookie platters. If you are looking for a holiday treat without having to break out the pans yourself, a good old fashioned bake sale may be the right way to go. I however would feel disingenuous about buying a cake from the bake sale, freezing it for a week and then passing it off at the holiday party as something I made. Tempting, but no.

Later after a terrible experience at lunch, (Which may end up as a post on how NOT to run a restaurant operation. Word to the wise, don’t eat at The Rail Stop in The Plains, VA if you are in a hurry for lunch. Terribly, terribly slow with awfully rude and condescending waitstaff. How can you possibly run out of bread service by lunchtime? That’s just insane, but I digress.) we made a stop at the wonderful Hunt Country Yarn Shop a few doors down from the restaurant. I had never been there, but my friends spoke highly of the owner, Bob and it was worth the stopover to cheer ourselves up with wonderful yarn. However, I was good and bought nothing there. Though the Crystal Palace Panda Silk yarn is hubba-hubba delightful. The fern colorway rocks my boat. But again, I was good whilst my friends were shopping. I’m still on a yarn buying moratorium.

After that, our goat farmer friend pointed us to Archwood Green Barns in The Plains for some holiday craft fun. Hidden Views Farm had two of their cute alpacas on display and there were ponies! Ponies! PONIES!!! If I was a kid again, I’d definitely would have taken a pony ride. He was mega cute with his miniature saddle. There were also a few kids in the paddock, human and goat. I got a special kick out of a kid dressed as a shepherd for the living nativity turn a cartwheel. No money could ever pay for that priceless joy.

The site usually hosts a regular farmer’s market where you can get fresh eggs, milk, butcher items, cypress furniture, handmade quilts, pastries, greenery, Christmas trees, raw local honey, beeswax, jewelry and wine. Again I was very good about doing mostly window shopping, but then I spotted Lanea with a cannoli! Hidden Views raises alpacas, but they had an assortment of wonderful baked goods and MY GOD they had the best cannoli this side of Vaccaro’s in Baltimore. The ricotta was thick and creamy without being gritty with chocolate chips. (We all agree that spumoni is a little weird. How on earth does the fruit get that way?!) The woman fills them right on the spot and because she does not thin out the filling to pipe it in, the shell stays wonderfully crisp enough for you to take home a box for boyfriends left behind. (Not mine, someone else’s.) I was short a dollar after lunch so gratefully a friend loaned me a dollar and I was in pure heaven.

If you are in the DC area, I highly recommend a drive out to The Plains to this holiday market. It’s going on for one more weekend, December 13-14th.

Craft Fair Saturday is a post from: Mapgirl's Fiscal Challenge

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Let’s see. Where to begin?

Saturday we were sloths. We went shopping for a new blanket, candy thermometer, and groceries. Lunch was a miserable time at La Creperie at Pentagon City. Damage was something like $30 including tip. Don’t eat there. The crepe I had was terrible. Too thick and too rubbery and the filling was not very good. (Really, they have a hard time keeping up with Ti Couz in San Francisco or Crepes a Go-Go in Berkeley. Or pretty much any place in France or Switzerland.) And the music was so loud they couldn’t hear my boyfriend’s order and brought him the completely wrong item.

Dinner was an excellent Chicken Tikka Mahkni, pakora, paratha and Chana Masala, with a bottle of Little Penguin Merlot. Our tab was about $66.00 including tip. The name of the restaurant is Capitol Hill Tandoori. As much as we love eating at White Tiger on Massachusetts regularly, the Butter Chicken (Murg Makhni) at Capitol Hill Tandoori is ten times better. There were only two annoying items: 1. charging for a cup of raita (BOO!) 2. not bringing enough rice and then forgetting that we wanted more when the waitress was the person who suggested it. But really, if that’s all that is a problem, it doesn’t matter. The food is **excellent**.

Sunday was a little less slothy. We returned the blanket and found a different one that was much cheaper. (Thank you Macy’s coupons!) We also got some hand towels for my mom, but those are for Mother’s Day next year and secretly for me. (I hate washing my hands at her house and not finding a hand towel in the bathroom. I don’t know what my mom does with them, but I often the only small towel I can find in her linen closet is a golf towel, grommet and all.)

Lunch was eaten at home and not nutritious. But we had Auntie Anne’s and a Diet Coke before hitting the supermarket for some last minute items for yummy homemade pizza. So even though this wasn’t expensive as far as eating goes, buying the groceries still added to the overall feeling of spending a lot this weekend.

Spendy Weekend is a post from: Mapgirl's Fiscal Challenge

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Sticky Rice is a new H Street restaurant here in DC. It has its origins in Richmond, VA at the original location. It seems to have a huge following with kids who went to college around Richmond.

Sticky Rice is the second closest sushi shop near boyfriend’s house and down the street from Joe Englert’s hip locales, Rock & Roll Hotel and The Argonaut where my friends work.

Boyfriend and I were hoping to get in on their pre-opening evenings when they were trying to work the kinks out, but alas, we couldn’t get an invitation. So we waited a respectable amount of time after their official opening in late May and headed there on a week night early in the week in late July.

The night before we had dinner, we were there after a show at R&R Hotel for a Bucket of Tots and their Tot Sauce, having been warned by a friend that they don’t have sushi after hours, just drinks and tater tots. My though, it was very good drunk food and a good time. The Tot Sauce was spicy-licious! They give you a little pail of tater tots, perfectly crisp without being soggy or fishy (important from a place that makes tempura). They also gave you a ranch sauce for dipping, but forgo the ranch and ask for two containers of the Tot Sauce. It’s got a good bite to go with your beer.

The next evening we went back for a real sushi dinner. I’d perused the menu before and I was kind of excited about it. But once I was in the restaurant I was seated facing a picture of a woman’s bare bum. For some reason, on that particular night, I found it unsettling to stare at this picture, but I didn’t ask boyfriend to switch seats. Mistake on my part.

The menu looks fantastic, but there was cream cheese in every special fried roll. Boyfriend remarked that I seem to be a sushi snob in favor of traditionalism. In my defense, I told him that sushi to me is comfort food. Back in the day, Pop and I would eat 50 pc trays together leaving only a few bits for my mom. Before his stroke, my folks ate out all the time and so the sushi chefs would often produce special treats just for us. I’ve had some really good stuff so I think I am qualified to say what’s good, what’s fresh, and what’s not. (Live squid counts as fresh, right?)

I’m 100% genetically Asian. This means I’m lactose intolerant and I have to choose carefully when I feel like being gassy. Thus I get irritated when all the fancy and appealing rolls use dairy. The other thing I find suspicious about this is that cream cheese a cheap way to get good mouth-feel on substandard oily fishes like salmon and mackerel. I’d like to judge the food without the mucousy feeling that dairy products leave in the mouth. ick. I suspect the cheese protects the fish from the heat of the deep fry, but still did all three available options have to have it?

The Sticky Balls dish was really good. We liked those a lot. We also ordered a lot of nigiri, including my personal trifecta, salmon, mackerel and yellowtail (Sake, Saba, Hamachi). These three fish are really essential for me. I use them as my baseline to judge all sushi restaurants. Therefore it was really disappointing that they forgot the sake when they brought our platter. There was extra tuna on the plate and I hate maguro. There’s something unpleasant about its texture and the fact that it’s not oily the way toro is. The waitress acknowledged the error on our plate and brought out two pieces of sake. But that’s when things went really far downhill for me.

The sushi rice had stuff in it. Edible stuff mind you, but there was a little flake of bonito or tempura breading and a piece of scallion stuck to the rice. WOW. OH WOW. This tells me the sushi chefs aren’t keeping their work place clean. BAD SIGN. In all my years of eating in roach-infested dive sushi joints in San Francisco (I will always love you WeBeSushi, both locations. $10 sushi dinners, what’s not to love? OMG is the Geary location closed?), never has this happened to me. I really don’t know what to think. The fish wasn’t thrilling me. It wasn’t crazy huge slices like at Ace Wasabi’s in San Francisco (Another annoying yuppie hipster joint, but g-ddamn the nigiri was huge, fresh and sublime). Nor was it it super eyes-rolling-back-in-head orgasmically great like Kaz Sushi in DC. ($14 Norwegian toro and my god that was delicious.) It was ok fish. The kind of fish I could eat once every other week because it’s close to home.

The service was a little slow on both nights we went, the fish not that fabulous, but I certainly will eat there again for an afterhours snack that rocks and give it another try for their cooked entrees.

Damn. I forgot how much it cost because boyfriend picked up the tab. All I remember was that it was not cheap and we ate too much, i.e. over ordered in our enthusiasm to try the place. I am sure you could walk out of there for less than we did. I think the check with tip, 2 beers for boyfriend, none for me, was close to $70.

Final nitpick point: This is **REALLY** picky though. They have chopsticks for **Chinese restaurants** rather than Japanese ones. You can tell by the wrapper. Not a big deal, but it was the super cheap round kind that roll off the un-level tabletop. Since they don’t provide chopstick rests, I’d really appreciate it if they had squared off chopsticks. (You know, the kind you pull apart.) (FWIW, boyfriend thinks I’m crazy to do origami and make a rest out of the paper wrapper, but there are times when it matters and not just occupying yourself while you wait.)

Final good point: The decor is awesome there, even if I don’t like one of the paintings. I especially love the origami paper decoupage on the walls of the upstairs bathroom.

Restaurant Review: Sticky Rice is a post from: Mapgirl's Fiscal Challenge

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All I can say is that I love Anthony Bourdain. What’s not to like about a guy who puts duck, sausage, bacon and beans all into one dish? Or serves duck confit with foie gras sausage and another blood sausage? AND STILL puts rabbit on the menu?

Now that I’ve grossed out my vegan and vegetarian readers, I shall get on to my dinner review.

WARNING: The restaurant websites listed herein all seem to play loud accordian music, so turn it down before you click.

A few weeks ago my boyfriend asked me where I’d like to go for my birthday. I instantly told him Les Halles would be great. I have been meaning to eat there for a while, but commuting towards the White House for dinner after working near Dulles Airport is an exercise in mid-week futility. With the new gig closer to DC, it’s reasonable to make a 7pm reservation for mid-week. His response was to look up the menu and ask me if I didn’t want to go someplace more expensive for my birthday. Silly man! It’s not the expense of dinner, but the fact we love his show that inspired the choice.

Inside the restaurant, what can I say? It’s very French. It is just like a real Parisian brasserie. (Yes! I’ve been to one in Paris! I’m not just saying that. It’s what they really look like.) They have the dark wood panels and tables, tile flooring in white and black patterns, and lots of vintage absinthe and Pernod posters and of course, the obligatory Toulouse-Lautrec ones. We even had a French waitress! We thought could tell because she even spoke her English impossibly fast, so maybe not, but certainly continental.

February is choucroute month at Les Halles. Honestly, beats me what that means. All I saw was meat, meat, and more MEAT. It was a toss up for me. I love Bistrot Du Coin in DC for relaxed French fare. Pate de campagne with a salad is usually a great summertime lunch for me. Since it’s winter (Damn you Punxsutawney Phil!) and time for hearty fare, I had a hard time choosing between the rabbit entree, the cassoulet, and the choucroute au canard. For some reason I feel it’s my duty to order Bunny Foo-Foo when it’s on the menu since I like game meats and they turn up very rarely.

However, tonight, it was all about Mr. Quackers. I had not had cassoulet in years. The last one was at Bistro Jeanty in Yountville, CA about 4 years ago. It was delicious, but the beans were too much for me later on. Seeing as dinner was not on a Friday night, I decided that I would pass on the cassoulet (the aforementioned dish of duck, sausage, bacon and beans baked in a pot). I have very fond memories of my first boyfriend’s parents making cassoulet at home and letting me try real French cuisine for the first time in my life. It’s a sentimental favorite for me, but the choucroute au canard was calling my name.

‘Canard’ means duck in French. The choucroute had duck confit, same as the cassoulet, but the sausages were different. It was blood sausage and foie gras sausage on a bed of sauerkraut with boiled potatoes. I suspect the cassoulet sausage was made of pork, but that’s because boyfriend ordered it and let me have a wee bite to compare. The foie gras sausage was amazing. The cassoulet sausage couldn’t hold a candle to it. But the cassoulet beans were creamy and quite nice. I’ll have to get it one day when I’m able to be anti-social for the entire next day.

We also had a black olive and potato cake appetizer (Petatou de chevre) which comes with a little frisee salad and vinaigrette. It was very tasty. We couldn’t figure out the special seed/spice on it. It drove us nuts, because we couldn’t put our finger on it, but it was very yummy. I look forward to going back and trying it again.

Because my boyfriend and I do not enjoy the same kind of wine or beer, we did the non-frugal thing and ordered wine by the glass. The Gewurtztraminer the waitress recommended for me was ok, not great. The choucroute’s bed of sauerkraut was cooked in the same wine, so they tasted alright together, but the wine typifies what I dislike most about whites, crisp, light, ick. The second wine she recommended for me was a red one, a 2003 St. Emilion, “Les Halles,” Château Toinet Fombrauge (from the online wine list). Very delicious. But later she recommended a 2003 Pinot Blanc, “Bergheim,” Marcel Deiss for boyfriend, and we agree that was the best wine of the night for both of our dishes. (And we agreed that the sauerkraut on my plate was the best we’d ever had and he grew up in a place that has a lot of German-Americans.)

No dessert for us, just a stroll back to the metro in the cold with wine and food to warm us. Don’t ask me what the check was. Easily 3 figures because of the 5 glasses of wine we had between the two of us. Really, ordering a bottle is the best way to go, but everyone has to agree on it, and sometimes, having your own palate satisfied is priceless.

Though a brasserie is basically a restaurant with a fairly static menu and specials that reflect the season, it was still pricey enough that I don’t feel justified eating dinner there more than once a month. But it’s still inexpensive enough that you can make it nice treat for lunch more often than that, just don’t order wine and your check will be much smaller.

Total check was over $100 without tip, but could have been half that with a single glass of wine for each person. I think boyfriend spent at least $150, but I didn’t spy on what he wrote down.

A few weeks later, I went back for their new Sunday brunch. I don’t think the $18 Sunday brunch menu is worth it. It’s an omelet with frites or salad (I forget which), croissant and orange juice. Way more than I wanted to eat. Since I was going as someone else’s guest, I opted for the regular lunch menu and had the merguez grillade plate. Very nice. The frites were crunchy and potato-y, just the way I like them. It was about $13 for the merguez, so much cheaper than brunch, but still very filling. So don’t think it’s crazy expensive to dine there. The menu has lots of choices in a wide range of prices.

Brasserie Les Halles is a post from: Mapgirl's Fiscal Challenge

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As SingleMa has posted, we had a wine tasting dinner at Fleming’s with Debt Hater. It was wonderful to meet Debt Hater in person. She was rocking some red heels on top of being really tall already! We also got to meet, Nina, her car.

Dinner was great. A little more of the breakdown when it comes to the food and wine experience and some tips for a good wine flight experience. (Who the hell comes up with names like “flight”? Dumb.)

All of us got the same thing, petite filet (8oz), cooked in various states. The server was kind enough to get me a steak that was rare+plus, i.e. some where between rare and medium rare. We worked the server really hard for us. That wasn’t intentional, but she was there to serve and it was really nice. I made the mistake of saying ‘pretty good’, my default phrase when asked how things are going. She paused and asked what wasn’t up to par. OOPS. Everything was actually pretty great on the food front, the bearnaise sauce, the grilled asparagus, the Fleming’s au gratin potatoes, the fabulous chocolate lava cake suggested by the server. The food was top notch. It was one of the best steaks I’ve ever had and I dine at a serious steakhouse at least once a year.

As SingleMa mentioned, the Riesling was a disappointment. I asked SingleMa and DebtHater what wines they liked they voiced a preference for sweeter wines and more lighter wine. I was leaning towards 2005 Caymus Conundrum from Rutherford Valley. It’s a fantastically fruity white, but they had run out of it! The server asked the sommelier to come over and he suggested a 2004 J. Barry Riesling, which I didn’t see on the wine list. Sure, ok.

Frankly, it tasted like rubber balloons soaked in water, and the water poured in a glass for us to drink. The finish on it had an underlying sweetness to it, but nothing overt. It was crisp and citrusy. Ugh. I hate whites like this. It was extremely dry which was not what I wanted. I was trying to cater to the desires of my guests for a sweeter wine and I should have been specific with the sommelier about that quality. I felt like this was going pretty badly, so I moved on fast to the second wine, the 2004 d’Arenburg Shiraz from France.

Debt Hater liked the red berry fruit flavor of the second wine. But SingleMa was taken aback by the tannic flavors. What’s funny is that the second wine was probably the deepest and most tannic of the three wines we drank. I would have put it last in the order of drinking, but without knowing the wine from a prior tasting, I couldn’t have known that. I encouraged SingleMa to go back to the Riesling and taste the difference. The food was served at this time too and we started to experience the difference that food makes with the enjoyment of wine.

Finally we reached the last wine, a 2004 Clos Du Bois Merlot, and I wasn’t too sure SingleMa was going to like it because it smelled sharply tannic, but ultimately, it was the smoothest of the three wines. Not as fruity as the Shiraz, but still, quite nice. It was very drinkable. What’s funny was that the server made a suggestion on the Merlot and pointed us at Alexander Valley right in the middle of the list, but I nixed it because I know it’s harder to find than some of the other wines on their Merlot list like Beaulieu, Mondavi or Clos Du Bois. Also, the CDB was higher on the list, so a lighter merlot than the Mondavi towards the bottom. I wanted to make sure that SingleMa and Debt Hater were going to be able to find this wine at their local wine shop if they liked it. It’s always good to have a fall back wine you can grab at the market before going out to a dinner party. After all, what is the point of tasting and drinking stuff you cannot buy or remember enough to purchase later? Tasting notes are key! The restaurant graciously gives you a little card with the wines written on it. Perfect. It’s those little details that make dinner like this worth the money.

Value. We got a lot of value out of dinner. The sommelier came around and asked how we liked the substitution. I told him the truth, not that great, but I didn’t tell him the rubber flavor observation. He was kind and took the Riesling off our check. Dinner was $200, but I added a few extra dollars to my check since I felt they did a great job putting up with my finicky requests. I am not normally that picky but I really wanted my two new wine drinking buddies to enjoy the evening so we can do it again!

I highly recommend Fleming’s in Tysons Corner.

I also recommend if you are going to do a wine flight, do three things:

1. Peruse the menu before you go to the restaurant so you have an idea of what you want to eat.
2. Ask to talk to the wine manager/sommelier about the flavors you like and let them make suggestions. If possible, tell them what wines you’ve had that you’ve really enjoyed in the past.
3. MAKE NOTES. If you are going on a research dinner, this is important. Memories are foggy, but pencil and paper are admissable evidence in court. Clearly if you are going out for a fancy dinner, this isn’t a good idea unless you want to make your mark as a serious wine geek or have very tolerant friends. Don’t do this to impress anyone. It’s a bad idea and your dorkpoints will go through the roof.

Bon Appetit!

Wine Tasting: My Weekend: Part II is a post from: Mapgirl's Fiscal Challenge

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And no, I didn’t write them. *sticks tongue out*

Aside: I am not so grouchy anymore today. Halloween was slightly more than I wished to spend, but still coming to about $38.00 including appetizer, dinner, beers, safe metro and bus rides, and then someone else buying some more cider and a shot. The conversation ended up being key as my friend was also a grouch and boy, did we need the drinks. (Piratz Tavern in Silver Spring is highly recommended. Service is still a tad slow, but the bartenders are excellent and the kitschy pirate decor is fun. Get the cod fritters and the bison burger!)

Anyhow, onto the articles:

The first is from Free Money Finance and how he’s sick of hearing about burdensome student loan debts. I agree that I’m sick of hearing about it as well. I agree with FMF taking on student loan debt is foreseeable and preventable. There are a great many ways to make undergrad and graduate studies more affordable. But if you read my comment, you’ll also see that I agree with some of these former students and I would like to know why the heck college is getting so expensive. Even in-state tuition is getting expensive, thus taking away an affordable option for many students for a first-rate education.

The second is from Justin McHenry at The Personal Finance Weblog and how he’s sick of hearing about ARM sob stories. Again, I agree with him because I’m a Ranty McRant Pants, but also because he has a point. Why isn’t his rate getting lowered for being a good borrower and paying his loan promptly? Why are we rewarding bad behavior? So what if Countrywide renegotiates the terms of the ARM? What if they extend favorable rates for 24 months? Does that mean the borrower will still be able to cope with a mortgage that readjusts in 2 years? Probably not. If they were foolish enough to take on the mortgage they couldn’t afford in the first place, who is say they have learned their lesson and will be able to pay an ARM with rising rates in the future?

Now I understand why on a macro market level why we need to do something about lots of defaulting mortgages. But very few people have said that we need to ensure that borrowers truly understand what they are getting through sound education.

Very few people have said we need to crackdown on liar loans and shady mortgage brokers. Fraud charges need to get filed against people who have knowingly duped the banks. Having been part of a federal fraud investigation by a flipper, I believe there isn’t enough oversight to catch collusive business practices between borrower, broker, appraiser and settlement attorney.

I think the banks are idiots for not reviewing their risk models more closely. Is everyone an effing Yes Man there? It’s a known fact that in real dollars, wages are falling, so why on earth would a bank think that making extremely risky loans to people who will be earning less in the future is a good idea?

I’ll right. I’m done.

Two Grouchmeister Articles Worth Reading is a post from: Mapgirl's Fiscal Challenge

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First off, I have to say that we went to Bond Street Sushi in NoHo on a Sunday night after a serious deluge that afternoon. There were rivulets of water in the streets because it came down so hard. All three of us had to change when we got home for we forgot umbrellas at brunch.

Therefore when we were in the downstairs lounge area, it was empty. It has a lot of atmosphere. Dark, but well lit in the right spots. It filled up a little more by the time we were done, but we ate around 8pm and it was still pretty empty by our departure an hour later.

We each had a cocktail for $14 each (oy vey!). I had the lychee martini, to which fortunately I wasn’t allergic because it was from canned lychees. It was tasty. My friends had the wasabi-spiked bloody mary. It packed quite a punch. I don’t think I could have drank an entire glass of it. In fact, one of them didn’t. The other one had been jonesing for one all day that she finished hers off.

We started with some edamame, which weren’t impressively plumpy. I love fat beans, but these were alright. Then we had grilled sea bass on skewers at the recommendation of one of my friends. It was delicate, creamy white flesh with a deliciously sweet sauce that wasn’t cloying or syrupy. It was as delicious as promised. It’s definitely worth having if you come here.

Our sushi platter:
Bluefin Toro with garlic chips
Soba Zushi, in soy skin with soba noodles and snow crab
Mentaiko – spicy caviar
Kinmedai – Goldeneye Snapper nigiri
Scottish Salmon nigiri
Salmon and avocado roll
Toro and scallion roll
Chili mayo, which was dipping sauce for something I forget. But we all loved the chili mayo

There were a a few other items, but I forgot them now. I try not to be too much of a dweeb and note everything we ate. Sometimes you have to roll with the good times.

Over all, the fish itself was very good. Not the best salmon nigiri I’ve had, but definitely not the worst. I use sake nigiri as my baseline for sushi places. I like it fresh, not smoked. But this time we had Scottish Salmon because I wanted to avoid the smoked one I saw on the menu. I’d rate it an 8 out of 10. Part of that I think was that the rice was just ever so slightly undercooked and was a very small amount of rice. My friend stripped off the fish one one and that left me a lump of rice to dip into the nummy chili mayo. I think I am complaining about the quantity because I wanted more to dip!

But the soba zushi was amazing stuff. It was so unusual for a sushi item and fun to eat. Concept-wise, the waitress said a lot of people don’t expect it to come out the way it does since the outer skin isn’t nori seaweed. However, the skin it had was sort of like a soy skin I’ve had before at vegan Chinese places, so it didn’t bother me. I could have had a seaweed skin for it and it would have been just as yummy. (For my mommy cuts up seaweed on top of the soba noodles she serves at home.)

I was bummed out they were out of Japanese red snapper (Tai), which is why we chose the Goldeneye. I can’t say what it was like because I let my friends eat the 2 piece serving we received.

The Bluefin Toro was a special roll that night. There was something else in it, with a fried garlic chip on top. The crunch of the chip was good, but it didn’t thrill me much since I’d rather have cuts of toro sashimi. I didn’t argue with my friends though since they seemed to like the rolls best.

Now that it’s a few days later, none of the other sushi really sticks out in my mind. I feel bad that I can’t remember what the chili mayo was for, because it really did complement it well.

The total damage was $70 per person. Quite a lot, but it did satisfy my sushi jones. We were thinking of Megu, but I kept telling my friends that quantity over quality was important here since I can eat a lot and didn’t want to bust the bank with an overly expensive dinner. (If given my druthers, I could have eaten $120 of sushi by myself at Bond Street.)

Bond Street Sushi in NYC is a post from: Mapgirl's Fiscal Challenge

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Moominoid asked me if my dessert was really $22.

I just pulled out the receipt again. MOMA charges a 15% gratuity. I added a little less than 10% on top of it because the waitress was being extremely nice after the long wait for service, the spill that landed on me, and the free drink.

But the math works out. I gave her a 25% tip for making up for the poor service.

Check:
Lunch (Soup and entree) $25
Dessert (which I thought was included in the fixed price) $8
Soda (gratis) $4
Tax charged on subtotal $2.76
15% gratuity $4.95
Total: $40.71

In NYC and SF, I usually put about 17-20% for tip. But I also tend to calculate 15% of the POST tax total, rather than before. In DC, that’s 9% extra, so the math kind of evens out to about 17% with things like rounding up, etc.

I tacked on an extra $3.29 for tip to cover the lost 60 cents for the free soda, and to give a little more for the good service.

In the end, I gave her 25% of the check, and 22% of the total with soda. Which is inline with what I wanted to give her. But it was complicated to figure it out since I had to do these weird adjustments with the gratuity they added in. I would rather they charge a cover charge like in European restaurants so I’m not stuck diddling with the calculator on my cellphone.

Really. The killer app on your cellphone is actually the calculator!

Side note: A quick review of MOMA’s current exhibits. I loved the work of Richard Serra. The massive scale is wondrous. The balancing of heavy steel juxtaposes the lightness you feel seeing something floating mid-air. Really neat. Worth the admission price of $20, but on top of that you get to see stuff like Picasso’s Three Musicians, Braque, DeKooning, Pollack, Rothko, Monet, Manet, Cezzane, Johns, Miro, Brancusi, etc. Turning a corner and seeing a painting I learned about in Art History staring back at me makes me smile. It’s like seeing an old friend you haven’t visited in a long time. My last visit there was probably 15 years ago in high school for my Art History course.

Because MOMA is one of the few museums open on Mondays in NYC, admission can take a while. I showed up right at opening time, but didn’t get in till about 15 minutes later because of the queue. It was worth the wait.

Also, one reason why I ate in the expensive, but extremely delicious cafe was that I wanted to sit and eat without having to go out and back in. To relax on the 5th floor was worth it. Sometimes you are buying experiences, and that luncheon was pretty amazing food. It was sublime. The soup was a cold creamy cucumber soup with shrimp and cress. The entree was a grilled salmon, but very well cooked. It was tender and not gross and dried out. I hate when restaurants overcook my fish. This stuff was delicate and tasty with a nice teriyaki-style sauce. The dessert of $8 was two types of sorbet, raspberry and fromage blanc. This is where the waitress earned her money. I asked if I could get scoops of each flavor and not just one. She said yes and I got two of each. That lunch was better than anything I was going to find on the street for $12. OMG it was really good. It still makes my mouth water while I think about it.

As you can see, I really like food and art. I put a priority on experiences over things a lot of times. I try to deny myself nothing, but I know that people think I’m crazy because I don’t have a TV. To each their own.

My Wonky Check at MOMA + Review of the 5th Floor Cafe is a post from: Mapgirl's Fiscal Challenge

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Mapgirl does not cook. She CAN cook, but she does not like to cook for one and so rarely cooks. She uses dining out as an excuse not to hide in her apartment from the rest of the world.

Getting that out of the way, I am actually a very decent cook. There are a few things I do really well, like a full-on Thanksgiving dinner with homemade cornbread dressing. I can do it with my eyes closed at this age. But I leave the candied yam recipe to my mom, she likes the little marshmallows on top.

Korean food is a challenge for me. I can cook it at my mom’s house, but I really am not interested in slaving away in the kitchen to make all the little side dishes, plus the smell of kimchi is not so nice when it pervades the entire apartment. 500 sq feet isn’t hard to air out, but I’d rather not have my bedding smell like food in the first place.

This post was inspired by a dining budget disaster at Make Love Not Debt. I totally feel for you guys. Your post inspired this little rant of mine.

I do not typically eat Korean food in restaurants. It’s too expensive. I’d rather have a $4.00 taco for dinner and split a basket of chips and salsa with a friend. But every once in a while, I love to take my non-Korean friends out for their first meal of Korean BBQ. Usually I plan it out so it’s a wooden charcoal place that serves family style. So, when I went out this weekend to a highly recommended restaurant in Annandale called Hee Been, I was a little cheesed off. I should have taken the many recommendations by non-Koreans for this place with a grain of salt.

Don’t get me wrong, THE FOOD WAS GREAT. But it wasn’t the experience I like to have. I like the little side dishes on the table. I like the smell of burning charcoal, not gas grills. I like getting soup and BBQ. I like to cook it myself since I’m not slouch and I prefer my beef a little rarer than most Koreans do. At buffet, it’s just plain WEIRD. They cook the meat for you, the side dishes you have to get yourself on one plate and it makes it weird to share with non-Koreans who don’t get how Korean food really should be served.

The kicker? Well I expect Korean food to be expensive in the first place. I do. But the killer part was the cost of the buffet. For three people having two soft drinks, hot tea and no beer, it was over $100.00. I was very displeased. I think at a full service restaurant we could have eaten for cheaper, but it wouldn’t have been the mix of sushi and BBQ that we got. I was shopping for VALUE here in an authentic meal experience, not so much a smorgasbord of Asian food. (Again, let me stress, it was all really good, but as I told my friends, it was all banquet food, rather than the really homey stuff I like. And the sushi wasn’t good at all.)

Pitiful. The per person price for dinner was under $30, and I did see it on a small table sign, but since I veritably kidnapped my friends in Arlington to eat there, I couldn’t exactly get up and walk out. (It was at the request of a friend who is permanently leaving town.) But I was really really unhappy and stressed out about it. How do you show someone how to eat Korean properly when everyone is eating something different? BBQ in lettuce with garlic, scallions, and cho-jang is really good, but not exactly something you’re going to try without some prodding. And that’s exactly what happened. It’s not that I’m a control freak, but to me, dining Korean is a whole experience, and it is severely lessened by eating buffet-style. Family-style is the way to go, and trying the exotic stuff as a group is part of the fun.

There’s no crying in it for me, but certainly I had to turn down a last minute invitation for brunch on Sunday because I just felt I couldn’t do it after overspending on Saturday.

BTW, I’m going offsite this week for work, so there will be few posts during the day, but perhaps a post or two in the evening.

I Don’t Cook (Korean Food) is a post from: Mapgirl's Fiscal Challenge

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I’m sorry, this is the real reason why I want to be rich. Forget that scholarship stuff.

Though this article did not meet the 84th Carnival of Personal Finances’ two-week requirement, I still liked it. The Digerati Life on how living in a rich neighborhood can be dangerous for the poor Yet another reason why inequity can be dangerous. (no second link for you for being a bad submitter!)

George at Fat Pitch Financials reports that Macy’s is asking for your Social Security Number. Don’t give your social security number unless you are applying for an in-store credit card. (which you shouldn’t do anyway!) Someone possibly faking as a Macy’s rep left a comment, so stay tuned to find out what happens.

Frugal Duchess wrote a great post about what teaching has taught her about money. I think her brief lessons are true. I was a better student when I had more discipline imposed on me in life. (Straight A’s in high school, till I was accepted to college, and then 4.5 years of slacking off mightily. Sorry Mom & Dad!)

Frugal Duchess again on John Travolta’s frugal money lessons. I love it. DIY projects with dad make for life long memories. Mom shopping thrift for good looking quality clothes. Good stuff. Did you know that disco was nearly dead till Saturday Night Fever revived it? That white suit? I read somewhere that the wardrobe people found it on sale in a store and it became the indelible image of disco.

Trent says Change your routines to change your financial habits. Absolutely. They say that it takes 21 or 27 days to create a new habit. Just think about your daily financial wastes. Can you break yourselves of those wasteful habits?

HC at One Big Mortar Board tells it like it is when it comes to helping your kids pay for college and why. She wrote something pretty compelling. The quote I liked best? In contrast, while I’m immensely proud of getting a master’s degree from Big 10 U., the fact that I paid for all of it out of my own savings, work-study, and lots of loans doesn’t make the accomplishment any more meaningful to me. I spent a lot more time being worried about money than being proud that I was paying my own way.

Make Love Not Debt tells us to hit White Castle for a frugal, yet romantic Valentine’s Day dinner. There’s something about those little sackfuls of burgers. But now that I’m in DC, I prefer Julia’s Empanadas as my late night post-nightclubbing snack. SOOO GOOOD… SOOOO CHEAP…. SOOO TASTY…. Even the next day. I ignore the first reviewer in the link because I don’t eat fruit so her review does not apply. I go straight for the meat ones and they are amazingly tasty.

Articles I Liked This Week & Last is a post from: Mapgirl's Fiscal Challenge

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Why do people think this is a taboo subject? One of LAMoneyGuy’s most controversial and popular posts was about this subject. Even Blunt Money writes about what to do when friends aren’t supportive about financial efforts.

Dinner last week was great. We totally talked about money. My friends know I blog and it turned into this really great conversation about a great many personal finance topics. One of my friends recently quit a hateful job, which stressed her out to no end. We talked about emergency funds and what we’d do if we were 100% truly down and out. We had a discussion of Virtual Bank vs Net Bank vs ING Direct. (On various stuff, interest rates, features, ease of use, etc.)

At one point I paused the conversation to tell them how great it was to be able to talk freely about money. We’ve always been this way. One reason why the whole subject came up was that one of us had gone to B-school and watched classmates go full tilt into consumerism. All of us agreed that’s no way to sustain one’s self and feed the soul. In the end, none of us are materialists, but we are realistic about why we need or want money. But large screen plasma TVs? None of us need that.

Money doesn’t really drive any of us. And none of us feels like we need to spend a lot of money for a good meal. All of us prefer places that sink money into the food, not the decor. (But everyone did like my suggestion of Bangkok54, one of the DC area’s best Thai restaurants. Pretty decor and delicious food!) Hearing about the $200K+ salaries people are pulling down and their crazy consuming lifestyles, it didn’t seem like a life any of us wanted to have. Having all those consumerist possessions feels like entrapment.

Is it that I seek out like minded folks like me? I suppose it is. Do your friends effect how you spend money? Or how you save it? These friends live pretty darn well, but none of us throws it around like it’s nothing. We all save and are doing just fine. I guess I feel good that we’re all in a good places in our lives headspace and finance-wise.

Friends & Money is a post from: Mapgirl's Fiscal Challenge

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