My #1 top favorite for food is Lebanese Taverna. I just go and order mezze, no entree, so it's even better with a group and you can sample just a little of a lot of things. The fatayer bel jibne, the hummus with ground meat and almonds, the shankleesh, the tabbouleh, the kibbeh, the m'saka, Um Ali for dessert, YUM. For atmosphere, Marrakesch, where they also serve a really good fixed-price seven-course dinner (I especially love the chicken in a pastry with powdered sugar on top - odd and delicious combination). It's an experience: to start with, from the street, the name of the restaurant only appears in Arabic, not English. You can't open the front door from the outside, you have to knock and they open it for you from inside. It's an old converted warehouse, so no windows and you really step into a different world when you go in: you sit on low, cushioned benches, and the waiters kneel when they come to your table, the walls are covered in oriental carpets, your party eats from a common bowl and there's no silverware, just bread to scoop with, and there's a belly-dancer who comes out midway through the meal. It's popular -- on a typical Friday night they bring out birthday cake 4 or 5 times for different guests. Then back in the hallway where the bathrooms are, there are pictures of all the celebrities who've eaten there. Along with various Presidents and other pols (this is DC, remember), the one I remember is of Cher with Greg Allman -- the place has been there for a while! And one more deserving mention: the "lomitos", steak sandwiches ubiquitous in every hole in the wall in Buenos Aires. Argentine beef has got to be the best in the world!

Yes, FOAS, I agree about multiple servings per meal. But, the next time you order pasta in a restaurant make a guage of how much is on the plate knowing that 1/2 cup is 1 serving. Here, a plate usually has 2-3 cups (I've had plates with even more than 3 cups). That's too much pasta & it's also likely white pasta. I'd be surprised to learn that Americans are not getting enough grain in their diets. Whole grain? Yes, not enough but white flour products...no. Many people who eat the huge plate of pasta for dinner also have had a large sandwich for lunch (likely a roll that's more than the 2 servings of bagged sandwich bread) and possibly more grain for breakfast (English muffin, toast, cereal, donut). Also, with the pasta dinner...often it is served with a crouton containing salad & garlic bread...more grain servings. I eat 5 meals/day...always have. I started doing that when I was young because I was always hungry. Eventually, found out I had thyroid problems, had surgery, but still continued with the 5 meals/day just much smaller. I was fortunate in that my jobs allowed me to duck away somewhere & eat pretty much whenever I felt the need. I know/understand that not all jobs have the benefit of flexible schedules. Still, mid-day snacks can quite easily be upped to mini-meal status. Something like hummus/pita crisps & a piece of fruit. One benefit of more meals/day is to help keep blood sugar levels even & not get ravenous unless you're a lumberjack, or equivilent. Piling all your grains (carbs) into an evening meal is also not condusive to weight loss. Better to have that restaurant pasta meal at lunch. My point is that I believe that due to supersizing many Americans do not realize what's a "serving". Our perceptions are also supersized. While I'm ranting (and I'll quit after this)...people also eat too fast! It takes our bodies about 20 minutes of chewing to feel satiated. If we gulp our meal in 12 minutes we'll likely still think we're hungry even after an appropriate amount of food. If we just stop eating though our bodies will eventually catch up with our forks & register that we're full. So, just slowing down is a great weight management tool. Eating too fast is a pitfall of many singles & families that don't eat meals together. Eating together around a table & enjoying a conversation naturally slows down our eating. My DH is struggling with this issue now. After 6 years of living apart Mon-Fri he had started gulping his dinner down in front of the TV. Now, together full-time he's being forced to slow down because I'm talking to him. He'll still gobble a sandwich when he's alone in 3 minutes flat. :) /t

I was surprised Antonio didnt make it, and he looked really shocked. I think the girls are very likeable and their story touches people, but they're definitely not the best singers. But the fact that they're singing like that is amazing, considering their illness. I thought Antonio was good but her performance last night kinda bored me. It was just alot of fire all over the place and I didnt think the act itself translated on tv as well as it may have in person. I think that cost him votes.

I'm really looking forward to what you find out about early Chinese American food. My impression is that when Chinese first came to the US around the 1860s, in the Gold Rush era, they weren't professional chefs. The ones who started restaurants were mostly home cooks, using their traditional techniques with unfamiliar ingredients, sometimes in rough conditions, to improvise dishes pleasing to a non-Chinese clientele, probably looking for hearty filling and tasty rather than refined. For example, "chop suey" would probably have generically meant some meat and some veg, stir fried in some sort of thickened sauce. Exactly what ingredients must have depended on what was available. I'm imagining that chop suey in a mining camp in 1865 might not have much resembled Chinese food as we think of it today. Later on, I'd imagine Chinese restaurants became more urban and less improvised. As Chinese populations grew and Chinatowns formed, the customers were more likely to want some variant of the dishes they remembered from China. As some Chinese restaurants became stylish with elaborate china and attracted Western (non-Chinese) customers, the diners could pay for better food and would have demanded finer fare. There might have been more culinary talent and resources available, as chefs in China heard about the opportunities in the West. So perhaps the dishes became more refined and certain "standard" dishes were named - "chow mein", "Orange chicken", "General Tso's", "Mongolian Beef", etc. I'm actually quite curious where the early Chinese American cooks came from. I've read that early Chinese American cusine was dominated by one particular type of Chinese cooking - Cantonese maybe. Is that because early emigration to the US was primarily from that area of China? This is a really interesting project, thanks for thinking of it!