mongo

l’industrie was very good. very long line but it moved surprisingly fast.

thanks all, for the recs. we really enjoyed the pizza at mama's too when we were in the city with the boys in 2019--the rest of the experience? not so much.

or just by penn station, i suppose. this is for the purpose of a quick bite on arrival in the city before heading to one or the other museum. oh yes, on a saturday.

should be by a line from penn station and within (relatively) easy reach of either the whitney or the met--say no more than a 20 minute walk away. for lunch. please advise.

my memory is that the first third is slow. and then it suddenly gets going.

eater has also just done another big round of layoffs. to celebrate the 20th anniversary, i guess.

over/under on number of shows before restraining order?

on the other hand, everyone was very nice at the conveyor belt sushi place in kyoto station where we ended our eating out in japan. (the boys had really wanted to eat a conveyor belt sushi meal; of course, the quality of the fish was better than at most neighbourhood sushi places in the u.s where you'd pay a lot more.)

just realizing that i never closed the loop on this. we did go to japan for 10 days in june/july. we arrived in tokyo on june 23, stayed a week and then took the train to kyoto for 3 days (and then headed to seoul and delhi before returning to msp). the tldr version: it was great but it was also much hotter and more humid than we had anticipated--especially in kyoto. we probably did about 65-70% of what we would have in cooler weather. luckily, with the exception of one day in tokyo we didn't see much rain but boy, was it humid. i'd thought that being from delhi i would be fine but, of course, when in delhi in the summer (which now starts in march and runs through late october), i'm only in the heat/humidity for the time it takes to get into a car and then get from the car to a restaurant or store. in japan we were walking 20,000 steps a day. our sightseeing in kyoto was guided by colleagues in art history and religion who work in kyoto regularly (and one japanese colleague who was just finishing up a year of teaching at a univ. in kyoto). they all warned us away from a few of the more iconic sites on account of the crowds and told us to go to all the shrines/temples as early as possible. we still went up and down fushimi inari and went to kiyomizu-dera. we started the fushimi inari climb at 7.15 am and it was not busy at all on the way up; the base was a zoo when we came down 90 minutes later. alas, we didn't make it to kiyomizu-dera till 9 am and it was already quite zoo-like. still glad we went though. the stunning tofuku-ji complex was absolutely empty, on the other hand. the tourist horde apparently doesn't care about it till fall foliage season. sanjusangendo was likewise deserted though in that case it's hard to explain why as it's indoors (and is neither remote nor takes very long to get through). the food was as good as we had expected/hoped. we mostly used tabelog to figure out all our meals. we didn't do anything fancy and it was still mostly all very good (from udon at haneda to a low-stakes omakase in nihonbashi). we ate some very good ramen in tokyo and very good low-mid tier sushi (all of which in the u.s would have cost 4-5x as much, from the meal where we paid $55 for all four of us to the meal in which we paid $250 for all four of us). and we ate a few other things besides. didn't notice any anti-foreigner feeling in tokyo but kyoto was more of a mixed bag (especially at a sushi restaurant where we were treated with a mix of disdain and amusement). well, i guess we tourists are to blame: we've completely overrun the place and the feelings of residents are naturally mixed, given that they also depend on the tourist trade. if so inclined, you can read my reports on our tokyo meals here (haven't got around to posting the kyoto meals yet). as noted before, we didn't try to eat anywhere that would have required a special handshake/introduction. though we did almost take a japanese food writer up on an introduction to a kaiseki restaurant before deciding that the boys would probably not eat about 25% of the food. in retrospect we may have underestimated them: at the omakase in tokyo they ate every single thing, including the lightly pickled eggplant that even i was not crazy about. well, there's a 50-50 chance right now that we might go back again for a week next june (this time earlier in the month) and if so, we'll go one level up for an omakase and to the kaiseki place.

yeah, no lines or rao's for us. people line up to look at me, not the other way around. i am giving hearth strong consideration--have to admit though that on the basis of currently posted menus, foul witch looks more compelling. and the resy tasting table thing for foul witch is in a listicle they have of 25 tasting menus in nyc. apparently, it's by request but it's not clear if that request needs to be made with the booking or can be made at the restaurant. the same article includes hearth's family-style meal (nine dishes, four courses for $95/head): anyone know if this is just dishes from the regular menu presented in a different format or a separate thing? i would guess the former. via carota also looks good, i have to say.

can either of you (or anyone else) offer details on the individualized tasting menus foul witch apparently offers on sundays? this is indicated on a resy list of tasting menus in nyc but there’s no mention of it on their website.

the missus and i will be in nyc in mid-october for a few days. as we wait to learn whether foxface will be open again by then, i am looking around for backup options for dinner. italian seems like a good bet. we'd like to spend less than $100/head on the food. ignoring the question of reservation availability, which are the places you'd recommend? preference given to places that are consistent over places which might have higher highs but also the real possibility of misfires. resy currently shows me lots of tables available at foul witch in mid-late september (which suggests we won't have trouble a month later) and prices seem in the ballpark (not listed on their site but actual menu pics are available on yelp). are they still good?

the whole world got tapas first.

when it happens in japan, it's cosmpolitanism. when it happens in mexico, it's colonialism. those poor mexicans: absolutely without agency. of course, the article tries to have it both ways.

planning a trip to atlanta just to eat here.

surprised they didn't change the name. can it be a big restaurant again under that name without people thinking first, second and third about batali?

if the lazy proprietors would stop being on vacation, i could make our foxface natural bookings--everything else will naturally follow from there.

sometime in october, probably...

though as i think about it, it seems unlikely that the washington metro's quarter million or so strong ethiopian community would be larger than those in cities in countries like saudi arabia, israel or the u.a.e with far fewer urban centers to divide their large overall populations...

maybe not in dc proper, but the washington metro as a whole does seem to have the largest population of ethiopians outside ethiopia*. that doesn't excuse the purple prose, however. *though as a country, saudi arabia has the u.s as a whole beat.

it was just banal beyond belief. probably didn't help that i watched it right after watching anatomy of a fall. this review gets at some of what grated on me. but mostly i was bored to tears by what felt like the movie equivalent of a heavily workshopped mfa piece that's had everything that might have been interesting sanded off to look pretty.

i thought "past lives" was appallingly, embarrassingly bad.

i think that happened already when they let priya krishna do it for a year.

curry leaves are earthy now?

this photograph of a very tranquil sistine chapel was taken just a few seconds before the guy at left-front told me photography was prohibited. i didn't bother saying i was photographing the crowd, not the ceiling. my favourite part of the experience was that they periodically, very loudly, over a microphone, call for silence.