Thai Coast, Washington, D.C.

Today is the Thai New Year. In celebration, we went to a little restaurant between here and Georgetown called Thai Coast for the observance. It wasn't a bad place, but I doubt we make a special trip to go there again.

They have a dark, narrow dining room with a bar and several prep stations visible, plus a large sunroom-type porch on the street side of the building, which was where we were seated. L Street is one of the bridges into Georgetown, so there was a lot of foot traffic back and forth for us to watch. Neither the waiter nor the waitress spoke good enough English to understand us when we asked what traditional New Year foods were in Thailand, and the waitress kept talking about some custom of going to people's houses and throwing water around or something. So, we just ordered some things to share, not knowing if we were violating any traditional holiday mores or not.

We started with an appetizer platter, which had two kinds of dumplings, one pair steamed and one pair fried, a couple of fried spring rolls that looked like taquitos, some long conical fried things with whole, large shrimps inside, a couple of skewers of chicken satay, and something that looked a bit like an empañada stuffed with curried meat, accompanied by two sauces. a clear sweet and sour fish sauce and a variety of peanut sauce. My favorite was the steamed dumpling.

Our main courses were the basil seafood and the shrimp pad thai. The pad thai was a bit disappointing. I think perhaps it had been made some time in advance, because the noodles were stuck together and I found the flavors rather bland and uninspired. I did like the basil seafood, though. It included scallops, shrimp, mussels, and scored squid cooked with a huge quantity of large snow peas and sprigs of fresh basil leaves. The menu gave the dish a two pepper "hotness" warning, but I thought the heat rather mild. It was served with a small bowl of uninspired, not terribly fresh white rice.

We shared a single dessert, but it was more than ample for two. The mango sticky rice is a very traditional dish, and while I was impressed with the size of the mango half on the plate, the mound of accompanying rice topped with sweetened condensed milk and ground peanuts was so salty it was barely edible. Thai iced coffee rounded out the meal.

The prices at this restaurant were modest, but on the whole, the experience was rather disappointing, especially since the online reviews we saw before heading over there were all so positive, and since the restaurant seemed not to observe their own cultural holiday.

American Red Cross Cafeteria, Washington, D.C.

A friend from the solicitor's office and I walked over to the national headquarters of the American Red Cross to eat lunch in their very modern cafeteria. They had quite a variety of foods, and I ended up with a very nice and quite ample Greek salad topped with sauteed-at-the-station shrimp.