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Like others I disagree that the burden of proof for negative reviews is greater than positive reviews. Personally, I'm no more likely to visit a place because someone gushes over it without specifics than I am to dismiss a place because somebody was seated next to a person that they didn't find attractive and that colored their entire visit. In fact, those reviews get the least consideration of all due to the fact that I can't sure that such a review wasn't penned by a miserable, truly friendless, attention whoring sonofabitch (possible, maybe even likely) or a fawning, free-drink-grubbing, loyal sycophant (also possible). Any review, good or bad, that doesn't mention specifics is ignored. Then again I am an individual and not the notoriously fickle reading public whose restaurant knowledge does not extend to goofing off at work on a forum dedicate to such things. Such things may have a greater impact on a public that is looking for concise, Zagat-blurbed advice about where they should spend their dining dollars. As others have said restaurants just have to deal with it as part of their operation. Well run restaurants serving good food do not go out of business because some moron slammed them anonymously on the web.

Fort Myers Beach We're headed down to Ft Myers Beach for a couple days post-Xmas for an event. Any tips on the area? We are staying on Estero Blvd on the southern end of the island itself. Walking to places would be a good option, but I have no knowledge of that part of FLA at all. Is there a food "scene" down there, or are we confined to chaindom?

But I think we can agree that the premise is just kind of useless. Ignoring the human element doesn't make any sense when the human element is all that really matters. Did you have a good time? Did your taste buds have a good time? That's what this all boils down to. We can't fake this like in figure skating and fall back on technical parameters. OK, we could, but that would be boring: "I found that the salt content of the fritters was aggressive at 547 ppm where an optimal concentration would have been closer to 450. Additionally the viscosity of the veloute was far to thin at a measurement of 96 cP, whereas the accepted standard is in the 120-125 range." (Actually, OK, I'm a geek; that might be a good diversion) Exactamundo: you have limited your pool of subjects to one that closely approximates your own tastes and/or aspirations. Now we can talk stats! On a site like this, where the participants share at least vaguely similar backgrounds and experience with dining and food, we could hope that the same thing mihght hold true, but it's clear from the differences of opinion expressed here that even those similarities are washed out by others. Pick your battles, get to understand where your fellow contributors are coming from, and for godssake learn to accept that yours is not the only voice that matters.

Ah, but there is one huge flaw that you are overlooking here: any "statistical analysis" you can throw out there for restaurant reviews is completely and utterly bogus. Primarily you are ignoring the fact that the basis for any behavioral study (after all that is what we are talking about here) is fundamentally based on the fact that you subject groups come from the same pools. There has to be some independant variable here, and in the case of restaurant reviewing there is none aside from the fact that reviewers are (supposedly) human, cognizant of their surroundings, and have eaten at the restaurant in question. Apart from that there is a HUGE amount of variability: diner's background, socio-economic status, familiarity with cooking technique, familiarity with ingredients, knowledge of restaurant operations, pickiness, grumpiness factor, baseline level of assholeness, egocentricity, etc, etc. The results you mention are not a false positives/negatives. A false positive is having your blood work come up positive for HIV when in fact you are not infected; the test is showing something that just isn't there. Who says that a good review of a "bad" place is a false negative? According to whom? The diners, and as we've seen that is worthless. I know people who love Bucca di Beppo, a "bad" restaurant. But they like it. genuinely LIKE it. No false positive there. Same goes for bad reviews of good places. To illustrate: we were at Hank's this past summer on a gorgeous day and a small family of tourists had wandered over to our part of the neighborhood and sat down for an early dinner. They were clearly not Hank's target audience: the food was not to their liking, the prices were too high compared to what they were used to, and they were frustrated that the the restaurant could not offer them something more akin to their liking (all of this gleaned from their comments to the staff and to each other while the staff was away since we were seated next to them in the closely-spaced restaurant). They would undoubtedly have given the place a bad review if asked about their experience, and could have probably detailed specific examples of their unhappiness. A false negative is someone deliberately panning a restaurant for spite (happens all the time). A false positive is a PR type fluffing their client anonymously (lord knows this happens all the time). These are clear violations of the social contract that cloud the pool of reviews. So is life, restaurants have to deal with it. If I have a bad time at a "good" restaurant and someone asks me about it you can be damn sure I'm going to tell them what I thought. Same goes for the good experiences at a supposedly "bad" place. There are several DR.com members that I've learned to ignore when it comes to certain restaurants. Having read their thoughts and responses to critical reviews it is clear that their personal views of an establishment precludes them from accepting that others may have had different experiences, and, more importantly, that those views are just as valid as their own. That is kind of sad, and it devalues the otherwise meaningful contribution of sites like this to the collective DC dining experience. There, I said it!!

Yeah, I had read up on some of the banned substances. I figure nobody is going to really miss the lungs. The thought of ordering the haggis crossed my mind, but where's the fun in that?! Are there any butchers in the area that folks have had success with ordering non-standard ovine and/or bovine parts?

Resurrecting this thread since a friend of mine is planning on making haggis for Burns Night in January, and I'm investigating the possibilities. There seem to be several doable recipes floating around on the web with varying degrees of, ahem, authenticity. So, to begin, anybody know a good sheep's stomach vendor? Barring that, a suitable substitute. I'm expecting the rest of the bits to fall into place; one would assume a sheep's stomach guy would also have a beeline on liver and heart. Barring that I'm prepared to go with more readily available beef parts, or mix them in with lamb. The casing is the limiting factor at this point. Would more traditional sausage casings work as well? Are they available in the proper size? This may need to be a largish haggis.

There are some informed persons on the local beer lists that are saying that it will be in Seven Corners. I'm just wishing for the original Silver Spring rumor to bear fruit, or at least somewhere Metro accessible. At least they will no longer be hamstrung by the MoCo liquor regime so growlers are a good possibility.

I always comment on that space when we walk by, but haven't been around recently to notice the new permit. I had always assumed, in a completely uninformed way, that it was difficulty in obtaining a new liquor license on that strip that was holding the space back. Someone on here has to know what's up!

Pureeing soups without having to take them off the stove (probably #1 usage). Making fruit shakes in the morning after working out when I don't feel like hauling out the "real" blender. Putting your hand over a glass doesn't make too much of a mess, as long as you do it in the sink. And don't mind getting some on your clothes. Or the floor. Or the walls sometimes ...

I guess you're right (confession: I've never been to Joe's), but as I was reading I kept expecting the next entry to be about a place in Seven Corners. Tom really does seem to love his pho, and those places get a lot of press from him, so maybe he decided to spread the wealth. edit: errr, thanks, JG.

The whole rind, or just the pith? I like the pith, especially the really thick ones you get with navels at this time of year; the pith really isn't that bitter on them and I like the texture. But the zest itself?

This week: a sampling of soups But ... no pho?!?!

It actually wasn't a "damn hop bomb", which is what made it so great. Not all Imperial IPAs are Stone Ruination clones, although many are in the ever-increasing brewery pissing contests. I think the descriptor here was more for the alcohol content (it was intended to be an IPA/dubbel hybrid). The additional malt body and the Belgian yeast characteristics provided some great balance.

We were there last Friday, and if they still have La Gnomette it is a must try. It's an IPA offering from Garrett Oliver (Brooklyn Brewery) in conjunction with the d'Achouffe folks; basically a Belgian interpretation of an American Imperial IPA using Belgian yeast. Outstanding. Bartender said there were a couple kegs left last weekend, so you should be in luck. I normally try not to repeat orders when there are so many good beers on tap, but this one required a second glass. Edit: Crap, sorry, saw you were going last night.

Thanks, Principia, my thoughts exactly. Anyway, anybody ever actually *been* to one? I work literally on the same block, and if it is: a) Fast Cheap c) Good, honest food it could be the cure for what ails lunch options in the area. I often get takeout and bring it back to my desk (there are plenty of great options there), but on those occasions when I simply have to get out of the office for lunch the choices are surprisingly slim given the restaurant density. It's either expense account joints (I don't have one) or places that dont' seem to understand that the vast majority of lunchers south of the circle actually need to be back at work in about an hour. At best I'm hoping for Wagamama efficiency and quality; at worst I'm dreading CPK or Bertucci's mediocrity.

The spot on 18th & L that formally housed the Italian takeout/lunch joint and was then rumored to be a new Big Bowl has window signage up for Vapiano. Not much (English) info on the web, but it appears to be a German "fast casual" Italian chain: Vapiano. Their claim to fame seems to be a 'chip card' ordering system where the customer does all the ordering at different stations I'm assuming. Anybody ever been to one overseas? A link on the corporate page references a store opening in Ballston as well. Overall it reminds me of an Italian Wagamama (which could be a good thing if done right; I love Wagamama!)

The Cairo is a good-but-not-great central beer source; when I first moved next door I was pleasantly surprised at their "bomber" selection. I've been careful to track new inventory, though, since a lot of thier stock seems to sit (especially the Belgians). The Glover Park WF has a pretty decent selection of singles plus the benefit of actually being able to sell them as singles and not the "two-packs" that P St is forced to stock (don't get me started ....)

I've always personally wanted to believe this, although having witnessed the child of a close friend become seriously ill due to a difficult-to-diagnose food allergy I have grown to see the other side. There is something perversely satisfying in believing that this is Mother Nature's big "Up yours!" response to the massive increase in hermetically-sealed, bubble-wrapped child rearing. That is obviously not the whole story, but I can't believe that it doesn't play a role. Then again I'm proud to say that I engaged in more-threatening activities by the age of 8 than most of today's kids will experience in a lifetime

New Belgium is a CO brewery. It's very popular on the left coast but is only slowly making it eastward. I had some on draft on a business trip in Kentucky (?) a couple years back, and Chicago as mentioned. That's about as far as it's come, which surprises me given its incredibly loyal following. Their website doesn't give distribution info surprisingly. I personally think it's only a so-so beer, but that's only because I rarely like American amber ales (typically not balanced enough). Fat Tire is one of the better ones though, along with Bell's Amber which has finally made it's way to DC/MD/VA.

Oh, and if you have the willpower and focus to keep with it (I don't), My Food Diary is a great tool. The cool thing is that it allows you to build and save menus and recipes to reuse so you can precisely track calories; tough if you eat out a lot (it has precompiled items from a lot of national chains I believe, but you'd have to guess for anything else or have detailed inside knowledge of what went into your dish). It adds up everything you do daily (eat and exercise) and gives you a detailed rundown on what you did well that day, down to smiley faces and frowns for hitting/missing your water target, fiber intake, % fat and protein, etc. It's $10/month (?), but I know people who use it and they swear by it.

If it applies to you a *really* easy way to cut a bunch of completely empty calories is to go cold turkey on soft drinks. I have never been a coffee drinker, so I basically was kept alive by soda during late nights in grad school. When I came to D.C. I was doing 3-4 a day, enabled by the free drink fridge at work. I stopped cold and switched to water (and now tea) and dropped 6 or 7 pounds in a month while changing nothing else. I can't really stomach the stuff anymore. Water is king! I'm actually getting back into watching what I eat since I've signed on for an Olympic distance triathlon in the spring . I've switched over to the 4-6 small meals a day routine to drop some weight so that my knees stop complaining on long runs (or, more correctly, so that I can get back into enough shape to do long runs). It's hard to break out of the lunch/dinner routine though, especially since I love to cook in the evening and tend to make too much. I haven't gone hard core with the precise portioning yet. That's the real key if you want to be scientific and fastidious like uber-elite endurance athletes, but I've seen what they eat and that's a sacrifice I'm NOT willing to make!

An acquaintance in college landed an internship to drive that thing around one summer. I personally prefer the Weinermobile's second cousin, the Goldfish Mobile, which we saw ona road trip a couple years back. Cars with gigantic sunglasses are cool.

Let me subtract from that list .... sorry, no go tonight for me

Donk, son!! The next logical step in the ever-increasing ridiculousness that is the custom car world. Although I don't get the corporate food tie-ins that seem to be pretty common on these things. You don't see it on any other types of rides. Perhaps a clever outlet for viral marketeers.

Was it BK that recently pushed the "Meatnormous"? That is a fantastic name for a burger. Wasn't it also shown that with their dressings some of McD's "healthly" salad alternatives were just as bad as the normal fare?