Zorba's Cafe, Washington, D.C.

Happy Passover!

Today is the first day of Passover (seasonal felicitations to any of you Jewish readers!), which means the observance started last night at sundown. My friend Eugene has some Russian Jewish ancestors, so we decided it would be fun to have a meal with traditional Passover foods, but we didn't want to do a formal religious Seder meal (the original "Lord's Supper," for you Christian readers). Several of the nicer restaurants in town have special Passover menus this year, including Felix in Adams-Morgan, Gallileo in the West End, and Rosa Mexicana in Penn Quarter, but they were booked up with reservations (not to mention pretty expensive!). Nonplussed, we looked for a place with roast lamb on the menu.

And, we happened upon Zorba's Cafe, just across from the Q Street exit of the Dupont Circle Metro station. Zorba's is always a fun place for a quick and inexpensive meal. They are a rather casual place where diners go to a counter on the lower level to order, pay, and pick up their own food, then they can select their own table on the main level, upstairs, or out on the patio where we chose to eat. The best thing about Zorba's, though, is the "home cooked" food from old Greek family recipes.

This place has some of the best kotósoupa avgolémono I've tasted. This is a simple chicken, vegetable, and rice soup enriched with eggs and lemon juice—a very classic Greek dish—and theirs is always well balanced, hearty, and delicious. They didn't have any matzo ball soup (matzo is not a traditional Greek food!), but we brought our own box of matzo crackers to eat in lieu of the leavened rolls Zorba's serves.

For our main course we had a sort of "blue plate special," their arnáki sto foúrno. They roast a leg of lamb and pull the tender meat from the bone and allow it to mingle with its own natural juices. They serve it on top of a mound of lightly tomato-sauced Greek pasta called manéstra, which looks like large, oversized grains of rice. Along with the lamb and pasta is a large serving of Greek salad with crumbled feta cheese and black Greek olives. Along with our meal, we split a carafe of Greek red wine, since the Passover tradition is to drink four glasses of wine with dinner!

Oh, I'm really curious about the "Mexican Passover" food at Rosa Mexicana, so if anybody is feeling bold and adventuresome and wants to try it out, let me know.