Friday Night Dinner: Demartino
Styling themselves as a New York neighbourhood Italian restaurant, Demartino is situated on Great Portland Street. When we visited it was busy, with elderly couples, a bunch of friends, and a birthday party. Very much a low-key neighbourhood restaurant. Unfortunately, that meant we had a small table right in the middle of the restaurant, which meant we were on something of a busy thoroughfare with serving staff and fellow diners moving around close to us.
For our starters we picked courgette fries and arancini, or rather, one big arancino. The courgette fries were nicely seasoned, and were served in a cone — just like Belgian fries. The big arancino was served in a spicy sauce, that had a very nice strong tomato flavour.
As her main, my wife selected a ravioli filled with ricotta and spinach, served in a lovely butter and sage sauce. I had the wild mushroom risotto, with the rice just a little al dente. A decent sprinkling of Parmesan added the right level of cheesiness.
We had a lovely bottle of red wine to go with our excellent meal. The service at Demartino was good, and the atmosphere lively.
The only downside to our visit was the position of the table we were seated at, so if we returned we'd try to be seated elsewhere (almost anywhere else).
Xdebug Update: November 2024
In this monthly update I explain what happened with Xdebug development
GitHub and Pro/Business supporters will get it earlier, around the first of each month.
On GitHub sponsors, I am currently 43% towards my $2,500 per month goal, which is set to allow continued maintenance of Xdebug.
If you are leading a team or company, then it is also possible to support Xdebug through a subscription.
In the last month, I spend around 10 hours on Xdebug, with 22 hours funded.
Xdebug 3.4
PHP 8.4 was released at the end of November, and with that it was also necessary to release Xdebug 3.4 with support for it. Before I did that, I had another good look at many issues to try to find out what the problem was.
I fixed a few issues, and another set of issues disappeared due to fixes in PHP itself.
If you find any issues with Xdebug 3.4, then please send me a bug report through the issue tracker.
Xdebug Videos
I have created no new Xdebug videos in the last month, but there is a new video in my "Writing Extensions" series.
All Xdebug videos can be watched on my channel.
If you have any suggestions, feel free to reach out to me on Mastodon or via email.
Business Supporter Scheme and Funding
In the last month, no new business supporters signed up.
Besides business support, I also maintain a Patreon page, a profile on GitHub sponsors, as well as an OpenCollective organisation.
If you want to contribute to specific projects, you can find those on the Projects page.
Xdebug Cloud
Xdebug Cloud is the Proxy As A Service platform to allow for debugging in more scenarios, where it is hard, or impossible, to have Xdebug make a connection to the IDE. It is continuing to operate as Beta release.
Packages start at £49/month, and I have recently introduced a package for larger companies. This has a larger initial set of tokens, and discounted extra tokens.
If you want to be kept up to date with Xdebug Cloud, please sign up to the mailinglist, which I will use to send out an update not more than once a month.
Shortlink
This article has a short URL available: https://drck.me/xdebug-24nov-iwh
Friday Night Dinner: Het Schilderij
Het Schilderij (The Painting) is a gastropub in the small village of Dieren, where I grew up. The pub has been around for as long as I can remember, and I've had many a merry evening there in my youth. But it has evolved, and now has the feel of an English Gastropub, with a decent (although hardly changing) menu, with seasonal additions. They also have a great selection of interesting beers. It is a spot we frequently eat in as well, when we visit my parents.
In that context, we found ourselves here on a cold and rainy autumn evening. As a starter we shared an "Oerbrood", a rustic loaf, with butter, (very garlicky) butter, and some tapenade which worked well with a glass of Hertog Jan's Grand Prestige beer.
In autumn, it is quite common to see game on restaurant menus, and Het Schilderij is no exception. My wife and I both selected the venison steak, served with a thick wine jus. The venison was still moist and a little pink in the middle, with a nice grill-seared outside — adding a bit of colour and flavour. My parents both had wild boar loin which looked similarly delicious.
Accompaniments are shared with the table, and the chips, pan fried potatoes, and brussels sprouts with lardons (a seasonal addition) worked very well with our choices. Although the sprouts aren't everyone's favourite, I thought they were cooked just right.
We had a lovely evening, with enjoyable food and drink in a good atmosphere. We'll certainly be back.
Shortlink
This article has a short URL available: https://drck.me/het-schilderij-iwf
Shortlink
This article has a short URL available: https://drck.me/demartino-iwp