Tom Sietsema is Mixed on the New Ted's

For his First Bite, Tom Sietsema gives the new Ted's Bulletin on 14th Street a try. It's a noisy place, though there are big portions and some solid comfort food offerings like chicken fried steak.

Some dishes are just .?.?. big. For all its supporting ingredients — strawberries, goat cheese, slivered almonds, orange slices, poppy seed dressing — the "citrus" salad is lackluster eating. Ted's hamburger is a major letdown, too. My patty arrived tasteless and woefully undercooked, with french fries that a server said were house-made but that smacked of a factory kitchen. [WaPo]

The $20 Diner gives another Peruvian Chicken spot a try, sampling the offerings of Chicken Rico in Langley. Dishes like rice and beans are great, but people really want to know about the poultry.

Where was I? Oh, yes, chicken. You know what's almost as good here as the charcoal chicken chopped into your preferred portion? It's the pollo a la plancha, a flattened half-bird (bones and all) griddled into a slightly crispy, slightly hardened slab that's surprisingly moist at its core. It tastes sort of like rotisserie chicken cooked under a very hot and very large rock. [WaPo]

Tyler Cowen visits the straightforwardly named Thai Food. "Appropriately, you should ask for the Thai menu. Then you should get two dishes: the raw shrimp with fish sauce and the catfish pile with mango, they are Foo Goong Chae Namplaand Yam Pla Dook, respectively. Then you are eating one of the best Thai meals in this area." [TC]

Don Rockwell has two reviews up this week, one of Beuchert's Saloon and the other of the Bailey's Crossroads Full Key. Of the latter, he says, "I *never* order Chow Foon because it's so often glop, but Full Kee's Dry Stir Fried Beef Chow Foon ($11.95) was anything but – they waited until I arrived to fry it (because it only takes a couple minutes), and it was piping hot (a critical trait), not greasy, was fried in very clean oil, not overcooked, and spiked with just the right amount of dry beef. It was the antithesis of everything I normally detest about Chow Foon, and it was delicious." [DR]

THE BLOGS: EatMore DrinkMore previews Osteria Morini...DMV Dining checks in on Casa Luca...Bitches Who Brunch give a B+ to Union Street Public House...DC Wrapped Dates awards 3.5 stars to Doi Moi.