El Chalán, Washington, D.C.

In keeping with our tradition of observing international independence days in the month of July, tonight we celebrated the 1821 independence day of Peru from Spain by dining in D.C.'s western downtown area at a Peruvian restaurant called El Chalán. El Chalán is a name which my fading high school Spanish tells me translates roughly to something like "The Horse Trader." Located in a very unpretentious storefront underneath a row of shops across the street from the Uruguayan Embassy, the restaurant is a simply decorated, two dining room operation. The walls were covered with large poster-sized photographs of the Andes, Mayan ruins, and street scenes from Lima, which were approaching sepia-tones with age.

We didn't have a reservation, but were seated immediately at a tiny two-top table covered by a thin white cloth in a niche in the main dining room with a view of the bar and the entry way. I noticed that all of the larger tables were merely arrangements of the same two-tops. There were quite a number of mature waiters and assistants running around the restaurant, and I did see one female waiter. All were clad in black trousers and bow ties with white shirts. When we arrived a little after 8, probably about half of the tables were filled. There was an older gentleman in the other room (he later visited our room) who played the guitar and sang what I would call standard "Miami-style" nightclub music, heavy on the Elvis and showtunes, but with a few Latin standards.

We drank a Peruvian beer called Pilsen Callao while we pondered the menu. The beer was light and pleasant and very much in the pale pilsner tradition. The three-page menu was very straight forward and fully translated into English. There was a page devoted to soups, salads, and simple appetizers, a page with the "better" (mostly seafood) appetizers or first courses and house specialties, and a page with chicken, beef, and steak entrees (I thought the division between "beef" and "steak" was interesting). Many of the offerings looked very traditionally Spanish, while others had a decided South American flare to them. I didn't see anything at all on the menu which was exotic or unfamiliar. As soon as I saw the listings, I saw immediately what I wanted for my entree, since it was something I've not had in years and years.

Our first course was the ceviche mixto, the traditional Spanish raw seafood dish where the seafood is "cooked" by marinading it in lime juice. Their version also included some very hot pepper spice in the marinade, as well as a goodly quantity of sliced red onion rings. The ceviche included at least two different types of fish, plus shrimp, a mussel, some squid, and some conch. I'm usually not wild about conch, but this version was good and not tough or chewy at all. Along with the fish we received a basket of sliced bread with a distinctly sweet taste and a sauce which resembled brown mustard but that was not mustard at all, and which had a very hot, "heavy" pepper taste.

For entrees, Leo had the arroz con mariscos, a paella-like dish with traditional saffron rice and vegetables with an assortment of seafood, including both mussels and clams. Apparently it was good, since he ate the whole plateful (his Atkins diet notwithstanding!).

I was excited to have cabrito norteno, as this is the first time I've been to a restaurant in over a decade that featured cabrito. The cabrito was explained in the menu very simply as being a "goat stew" (a bit of a misnomer, since "cabro" is goat and "cabrito" is kid), so I was totally not expecting what arrived on the table. The cabrito was almost like a gourmet braised lamb shank, with two pieces of large bone with large chunks of melt-in-your-mouth cabrito, all in what was more of a long-simmered, rich, brown, reduction sauce than a traditional stew or soup. The meat was just wonderful, with no tinge of toughness or strong taste (so they didn't cheat and use "young" goat), and I think this was the best meal I've had all week. Also on the plate were a scoop of white rice, some lettuce and spicy marinated onions, and a serving of some variety of white bean that was fully cooked and which had an intriguing butteriness to the flavor.

The dessert offerings were a little limited, with only flan and rice pudding. We were already feeling full from the meal, so we passed on the dessert.

During the course of the meal, the restaurant crowd picked up considerably, so that when we were leaving around 9:45, all of the tables were full and there were people standing waiting for tables. Ten o'clock is a "normal" dinner hour in Spain and many hispanic cultures, so that's not all that unusual. Later in the evening, a lot of big families were coming in, but earlier on, I was noticing a lot of tables with three men and one unusually beautiful and exotic young woman. I assume that most of the patrons were either Peruvian or at least South American, since I was hearing Spanish being spoken at most all of the tables other than ours. Since this is not a weekend night, I don't know if the late crowd is normal for this place, or if people were coming in to celebrate Independence Day. There were no particular holiday food specials, though, and when I mentioned to the waiter we'd come for the holiday, he didn't seem overly excited about it. That may have been more of a language issue, since Spanish seemed to be his primary language.

I'm looking forward to another visit to El Chalán, especially to try some of the other traditional Peruvian specialties such as lomo saltado, lamb in beer, and the chicken in peanut and onion sauce. El Chalán, 1924 Eye Street Northwest, between the Foggy Bottom and Farragut West Metro stops.

Cactus Cantina, Washington, D.C.

After another Summer Music Festival performance at the National Cathedral tonight, my friend Bob from the State Department (who'd dragged me out to the concert tonight) and I wandered up the street a bit from the cathedral close and had a little late evening supper at Cactus Cantina, a "Mexican" place that's a part of a small local chain. For some reason, the restaurant's decor included not only the traditional Mexican-looking stuff, but several posters and a big display case of Plains Indian regalia such as a feather war bonnet, a porcupine-quilled pipe bag, a beaded buckskin shirt, and other articles near the entrance. I'm not really sure why they had the Indian stuff there, since there weren't any Indian food items on the menu, and nothing else at the restaurant referred to it. Odd. Very odd.

The restaurant was loud, noisy, and crowded. The menu was pretty standard "contemporary"-Mex. Service was rather young and untrained, but typical for this type of restaurant. A few times, I noticed our waitress slowly reaching for our table nearly suspended in limbo as she was busy giving the Suzie Sorority fake "hiii-eeee" to other female patrons she seemed to recognize.

I ended up ordering the spinach enchillada platter. It had two enchilladas in flour tortilla wrappers, stuffed with a lot of too-intense spinach (probably from them using a goodly quantity of chopped frozen spinach inside), covered with some kind of strangely flavorless white sauce, and topped with a few slices of avocado. A big helping of plain white rice was on the plate, and a small bowl of black beans came along on the side There was also a mound of salad on the platter, but I wasn't expecting the large amount of shredded cabbage along with the lettuce and tomato.

Bob had a combination plate that looked very good. There was a taco, a tamale, and an enchilada with ample shredded beef on the plate, plus salad like mine, and he got some Spanish rice with a bowl of brown beans. We were tempted to get dessert, but it was late and we really weren't still hungry, though I was quite curious to try their strawberry-almond charlotte.