Liam O.'s Profile

Got my first tattoo here from Amy (AX, I think) this past weekend and it was a great experience. Super easy, very welcoming and inviting, and it was a total polar opposite experience from what I got at another tattoo shop when I was TRYING to get my first tattoo (and failing - see my other reviews if you want the story).

Anyway Rick's was fantastic. Competitive price, nice atmosphere, walk-in Saturdays (only waited about 15 minutes), and great artists.

I wish I could write a good review for this place. I wanted so much to have a good experience - it was my first time, and my wife's first time, getting tattoos. I don't doubt that there are good artists working here - Butch's work is impressive and it was his portfolio and the other good reviews that brought me here - but I really just had a terrible experience with Champion.

My wife and I both wanted pretty simple tattoos. Our daughter's name. She wanted it on her wrist with a ladybug, and I wanted it on my shoulder in a particular font. I called ahead during the week to see if we needed an appointment, and after I spoke to someone (pretty sure it was Butch) and told him what we wanted he said it'd be fine just to come in and have it done, but that we might have to wait an hour or so if they're busy. Fine, no worries, that's perfect.

So we came in around 4:30pm on Saturday, two weekends ago - my wife's birthday. We had been talking about the tattoos forever so I knew she wanted it, but it was a surprise to actually take her there for her birthday. I figured they'd be expecting us, even if we had to wait.

We didn't have to wait long until Dr. Mookie started helping us. My wife picked out a cursive font and a ladybug picture for hers and was good to go, then we started sketching mine with the font I wanted. It was a fairly simple Celtic font and I had an image for it that we looked at on their computer, but he was unable to trace it so that it was straight. For some reason this was a big struggle, and it took a long time. Eventually he thought it was okay and put the little sticky/temporary thing on my arm but it turned out that it wasn't straight so he'd have to redo it again. So instead he did my wife's tattoo first and got that out of the way.

After that, he comes back to me and says that he doesn't think he can do my tattoo that day. It's now about 8pm and they are closing up shop, but even if he stayed late he couldn't do it because he was having an allergic reaction to some kind of disinfectant that were using in the shop - this is where it got weird. He says it was his first day working there (great) and he didn't know they used that stuff. Came off pretty sketchy to me. He was apologetic and said that he'd work on my design and I could come back next Saturday, and took my email address to discuss with me throughout the week. I paid for my wife's tattoo and we left. I'm totally blown but try to maintain for my wife's sake since it's her birthday and all.

So I wait until Thursday, don't hear from him, and call the shop. But then I'm told Dr. Mookie doesn't work there anymore. I didn't find this terribly shocking, I have to say. So I said that I still wanted to come in and get my tattoo, and it was just a simple name in a particular font so anyone should be able to do it. Stacy told me - okay sure, just come in around 1pm and it'll be no problem. I told her I couldn't make it at 1pm but it'd be more like 2pm-3pm and she said fine.

I wait until Saturday again and go in the shop, eager but nervous from already getting burned once. I told them I spoke with Stacy about coming in and that I was the guy who was there last week with my wife. They didn't seem to know who I was, and were not very welcoming in general. The only woman working there - I have to assume it was Stacy - says that she's now all booked up for the day, as are all the rest of the artists. So I'm screwed again.

At that point I couldn't be more done with this place. I started calling around and found out about Rick's Tattoo in Arlington - which has been in business for 30 years, has walk-ins on Saturdays, and Amy (whose been there 5 years) could see me as soon as I could get there. So we rushed over and I got the whole thing done with the font I wanted and no trouble whatsoever in about 30 minutes. It was a night-and-day experience, and Champion was just a nightmare.

Meanwhile as all this is going on, my wife's tattoo has healed since she had it done on the first Saturday, and it leaves much to be desired. The lines are not straight and the weight of the font is not even. I will be taking her to Rick's next weekend to have it fixed.

Champion Tattoo might be a decent place if you have experience with tattoos and manage to actually get the attention of some of the more skilled artists, but they are not the place you want to go if you're looking for someone to help you along the way and make your first experience a good one.

I went here for a Slow Food DC event about a month ago. The food was really fantastic, I was very impressed with every dish. They used ingredients from the Slow Food Presidia which were explained in detail at our table by one of the chefs.

The decor was nice but the atmosphere a little stuffy, it's jacket required so I didn't expect casual but even so. Later on into the night it eased up a bit as the bar filled up with regulars (it was a Friday night).

The prices are pretty high, but they are arguably worth it. For this night it was a special prix fixe meal that was a good deal.

That's the long and short of it. It's a good place. I've written a more extensive review and account of the whole evening's event on my own blog http://mysocalledknife...

I'm surprised to see so many negative reviews on this place. I had a coupon to go here from http://restaurants.com so my decision was already made, and when I looked it up on yelp before going I must admit I was a bit worried.

There was no reason for it at all, though. Great food and great service.

We showed up a half hour late for our reservation but that wasn't a problem at all. As I mentioned before I had a printed out coupon for $50 off any purchase of $100 or more, which also gave me trepidation as I was afraid it might be a pompous kind of place that would be annoyed at me trying to use a coupon there. That wasn't the case at all. I had the coupon sitting out on the table and was going to give it to the server (it says present before ordering) but she took it without saying a word and when I started to say something, she said "Don't worry, I've got this," and tried to make it as nonchalant as possible. Very classy move on her part as I was already feeling a bit awkward about it.

Our server's name was Bridgette and she was super friendly. She made some great suggestions which turned out to be delicious. My wife and I shared a carafe of their red sangria, and started our meal with fried green tomatoes and calamari. The tomatoes were awesome, I wish there were more places that served this dish up here. The calamari was good but my wife orders that everywhere so I am a bit bored with it in general.

As an entree I ordered the grilled lamb chops on mashed sweet potatoes with a cranberry sauce and green kale, and my wife got the smothered fried chicken. I thought the chicken was just a wee bit dry but still yummy. The lamb chops were absolutely perfect. Also got a side of mac and cheese which was delicious as well.

We had sherbet and bread pudding for dessert, the bread pudding was really good but I couldn't make it all the way through. Polished off the meal with a laphroaig on the rocks and a black velvet for the wife.

Great meal, great service and a beautiful dining room. Maybe lunch or weekend nights is a different story there, but my experience on a Thursday night was fantastic.

I liked this place so much, I had to create it as a business in yelp.. it (amazingly) wasn't even here before.

So I went up to NYC this past weekend for my bachelor party. Okay, it was insane. We had planned on making Friday a chill night and Saturday would be the big night. Of course, once we all arrived and went out on Friday (Dubwar at Club Love - totally sick), we didn't wind up getting to bed until about 5am.

Saturday morning, we somehow managed to get up by 10am, and after breakfast the first order of the day was to hit the Russian and Turkish bathhouses. This was kind of significant for me, since I studied a bunch of Russian in high school and college, and went there as a foreign exchange student.. and I knew the importance of the russkaya banya and wanted to experience it myself. Of course, the other guys in the group were more skeptical (there were 15 of us), but with the hangover from the previous night clouding their minds we were able to convince them to tag along.

Oh my, this place was the best thing ever. For $30 you get access to about 3 or 4 different types of saunas, and an ice plunge pool. We spent about 5 minutes in the Russian sauna, dumped some ice cold water over ourselves, and were already back to normal and ready to take on the world. I splurged and spent another thirty bucks or so for an oak leaf treatment, where you lie in the sauna and they beat you with soaped up oak leafs.. might sound weird to some, but it's completely awesome. It was kind of combo'ed with a massage and it was great. A friend of mine also got a massage and he said the guy giving it was hanging from the pipes in the ceiling and walking on his back. Crazy stuff.

I should mention that it was coed during the time we went, and I am thankful. Though I am getting married and wasn't heading to the bathhouse with anything in mind other than detoxing, I was thankful for the requirement that everyone wear shorts.. because there are all-male and all-female timeslots at this place and I don't doubt for a second that it's full of old guys with their junk hangin out. Just like any local gym :shudder:. Must be a generational thing.

Anyway, I am so sold on this place, after coming to NYC for ten years and just discovering it, I now know that no future trip to NYC will be complete without a visit to the Russian and Turkish baths.

It's really hard to even come up with a single negative thing to say about this place.

I took my fiancee out here to dinner last Monday and we were really impressed pretty much every step of the way. First of all, the decor of the place is really nice, and the bar that I just reviewed across the way (on the other side of the lobby) makes an excellent warm-up to a meal at the bistro.

It was pretty slow in the restaurant (Monday night, what would you expect?), so we may have gotten a little more attention than is typical. The server was very friendly, excellent with his recommendations, and prompt with his service without being overbearing. The manager also assisted with our choice of wine - an Argentinian Malbec that was quite awesome.

The appetizer may have been the best part of this meal, though. Not because the meal itself was bad, but because the appetizer was so damn good - chicken and mushroom crepes. They were absolutely perfect. For entrees, I had a NY strip steak and my fiancee had a seafood paella with saffron sauce. The steak was just about perfect, although my fiancee wasn't quite as appreciative of the paella. She said it was too "fishy," too "salty." I was happy to bring to her attention that she DID order a seafood paella, after all. The saffron sauce was kind of lost in the mix though, which was a bit of a disappointment. I was, of course, a gentlemen as always, and finished off the dish for her.

For dessert we shared a coconut creme brulee, which was large enough to actually be enough for both of us (I've met few creme brulees in my life that can actually satisfy two people). As the place was slow, the chef came out to meet us and deliver the dessert for us. He was, admittedly, just a slight bit pretentious about it, announcing "...The Perfect Creme Brulee!" as he set it down between us. Perfect or not is debatable, but it was certainly pretty damn good.

The server was, again, prompt and on the ball with coffee, check, receipt, and the like. All three saw us off at the end of our meal - server, manager, and chef, and made us feel very welcome to join them again.

Also considering all that we had ordered, the check was actually a bit less than I had expected it to be... a pleasant surprise and certainly a rarity.

Very nice spot, but quite pricey. I have been here for quite a few happy hours, the location is very central to the downtown area and the atmosphere inside is great.

On a warm day when the patio is open, their couches and beautiful furniture are put right outside on the sidewalk with some greenery and tables and it makes for a great spot for people watching.

On a cooler day when you want to stay inside, the music is low but interesting (as in you might hear some music you actually like, not just elevator style easy listening), and the decor is great. The place is always very clean and the staff is attentive.

And while the drinks and food are expensive, you won't necessarily pay your bill feeling ripped off. The food is fantastic, and they are fairly generous with the drinks as well.

What Le Bar really needs, unless they already have it and I just don't know, is a few really solid happy hour specials.

So I'm getting married soon. Like, real soon. I was shopping around for tuxes for myself and my groomsmen recently and of course Masters came up in my search. I went in to check out what they had to offer, and found out about a little secret. Masters is going out of business!

Which means they're having an incredible sale on tuxes and on pretty much all their stock. They will be shutting their doors for good in February. In the meantime, you can buy any tux in their stock at rental prices ($99, $149 for Ralph Lauren), so we were all able to actually buy instead of just renting. Pretty sweet deal.

On top of that, the staff was really friendly and easy to work with, and Jay was very helpful throughout it all.

It's a shame to see Masters go out of business, I got my prom tux (all white, tails, top hat and cane... I'm entirely serious) from them way back in the day.

Another awesome GAR restaurant. I have been here many times but I was here again recently on Friday for lunch with a friend.

We stopped by for a few drinks and a quick meal after picking up tuxes in the neighborhood for my upcoming wedding... and as usual, Carlyle impressed me.

We both started with a lobster bisque. I had one of their specials as my entree - filet tips in penne pasta with a tequila lime cream sauce. The sauce is what attracted me to the dish and it definitely delivered. It was wonderful and paired beautifully with the very well made caipirinhas I was drinking. My friend, Carlo, ordered the hanger steak, medium.

There was a bit of a debacle with the steak, which turned out for the best. It came out medium rare, definitely a little more rare than had been ordered, and as I was showing my friend the pinky-finger-palm-muscle-trick thing to tell how firm a steak should be, our waitress Alyssa noticed what I was doing and came over to check. She saw that it definitely wasn't medium, and repeatedly insisted that she take it back so the chef can finish cooking it. Carlo doesn't like sending food back and really didn't care all that much anyway, so he said it wasn't a problem. In the end, after a couple minutes of back and forth, she was so apologetic about this fairly minor mishap that she wound up buying him a dessert to make it up for him. I wasn't sure whether this was typical Carlyle hospitality but I told him that he was slack if he didn't leave the place with this girl's number... and of course, he did. Leave. Without her number.

At any rate, that's neither here nor there, and the point is that this is a fantastic restaurant. I have only been going here a few times and I can't wait for the summer when they open up the outdoor area again.

Oh and I almost forgot to mention, but they do also have some awesome desserts here. The bread pudding and the chocolate mac nut waffle are both incredibly good.

Great restaurant.

I went here for a NYE dinner 2008-2009 (I never know which one it is) with some soon-to-be-family and we had a fabulous time. We showed up for their second seating which was an $85 fixed price meal which was just amazing. I had an appetizer of crab ravioli with saffron sauce and the sauce was incredible. They supplied us with plenty of delicious  bread to sop it all up with as well. My entree was two lobster tails which were *huge*, and I had a pomegranate/blueberry panna cotta for dessert. Very light and fluffy, and pretty much perfectly executed. All of the food was very impressive.

The ambiance of the place was really nice too. It did not feel as if they had taken any shortcuts to create a real authentic French atmosphere.

The only downside was that our service was a little lacking, but I am willing to attribute that to it being NYE and they (apparently) were a little understaffed. It was odd though, because they didn't really have that many tables seated. We never actually really knew who our waiter was throughout the whole meal, we kept winding up having to ask whoever was passing by at the time where things were. It took 15 minutes after sitting down before drinks orders were taken, and when some of the members of my party were being served a soup they had ordered, the waiter put down the bowl with some lobster in it, and never came back with the bisque! There were definitely some pretty significant missteps with the service, but the owner was present and very apologetic and helpful throughout the meal, so I don't really have a problem still giving them 5 stars regardless. Everything else about the place was great.