La Crêperie, Arlington, Va.

In our last couple of soujourns to the mall at Pentagon City, we've ended up dining at La Crêperie, a French place in Pentagon Row just outside the mall. Ryan seems to like the place, and so long as he isn't eating hamburgers, I'm happy.

Trip number one was with Edward and Jeff. While Edward was getting his hairs cut, Jeff had a little McChicken sandwich at the food court McDonald's, so he wasn't hungry when we got to the restaurant for dinner and only drank water. Edward ended up getting a "pesto cavatappi," which is some kind of spiral macaroni dish they serve at Noodles & Company next door. It seemed simple enough, with a pesto sauce tossed with the macaroni, and there was supposed to be a diced up chicken breast in there somewhere, too, though I wasn't really sure I saw it. He picked up his meal "to-go" and then joined us on the patio to eat.

I wasn't terribly hungry, so I got the salade maison and the soupe tomate. The salad was your basic everyday iceberg and romaine lettuce salad with tomato, carrot, cucumber, olives, and beets in a typical French olive oil emulsification dressing. I love their soupe tomate. Not only does it have a nice roasted tomato flavor, it's rich and very, very thick—almost like eating a thin pudding. It's a great explosion of tomato flavor in the mouth.



Ryan ordered the crêpe monsiuer, a crêpe based on the classic croque monsieur sandwich that is a fancy French version of a ham and cheese sandwich, except with the cheese melted. They put a stripe of tomato sauce across the crêpe as a garnish.



For dessert, Ryan ordered two crêpes for the whole table, a crêpe nutella with extra bananas and strawberries, and a crêpe aux pommes, an apple pie tasting thing.




For trip number two, we were with Ryan's friend Gustavo. His English is a little limited, as is my French, but Ryan has some French but no Spanish, and I have a little Spanish still, so we managed to communicate all around. Our waiter was a French, Arabic, and English speaking Moroccan, so we were able to eek out a mutual understanding.

Gustavo had the hangar steak aux poivre avec pommes frites. He said the steak was good ("Es bueno."). It seemed to me to be two thin, little slices of meat in a pepper sauce. In addition to the French fries, there was a serving of what looked to be frozen mixed vegetables.



Ryan had a crêpe ratatouille, a little vegetarian thing filled with that nasty eggplant and vegetable stew (I don't do eggplant).



I did a series of little dishes to make up my meal, starting with a bowl of the soupe tomate (see above picture) for all to sample. Then I had some of their paté du maison garnished with cornichon pickles and little cocktail onions, served with a small, thin loaf of French bread, followed by the pommes du terre au gratin, a sort of French version of scalloped potatoes. The potatoes were disappointing and it was the first time I got something at La Crêperie I didn't like and didn't think was very good. The crumbs on top comprising the "au gratin" were dry, the cheese and bechamel sauce in the potatoes seemed grainy, and the thin layers of potatoes seems to be soaking in some kind of oil or grease. I couldn't finish it.





Ryan insisted on desserts for everyone, so he ordered another crêpe nutella with bananas and strawberries (see above picture) and a crêpe aux peches avec glace vanille (see the apple crêpe picture above and add ice cream). I liked the peach crêpe.

The best part of the meal came at the end when Ryan paid for everyone! Yay!