Duplex Diner, Washington, D.C.

Last night, Ian and I made our way up to Adams-Morgan to have our Cinco de Mayo Mexican dinner at Lauriol Plaza, thinking that at 10:30 the Friday night dinner crowds would have thinned out. We were wrong. Lauriol Plaza was absolutely jam packed with people and there were huge crowds in the bar waiting for tables as well as lines out on the sidewalk still just trying to get in to the establishment. Thinking the noise and crowds (not to mention wait) were not for us, we continued walking up the street and came upon the Duplex Diner.

Duplex is always fun, though I've always thought that it was more of a "gayified" version of diner food. It has a bar and the menu is all rather too upscale to qualify it as a true diner.

To celebrate Cinco de Mayo, we shared an appetizer of grilled vegetable and pepper jack cheese quesadillas. The vegetables were actually quite tasty and had a nice grill flavor without being smoky or burnt. For our main courses, Ian had chicken fingers and fries and I had their classic meatloaf (I like the meatloaf itself but I could do without the big topping of tomatoes on top) with green beans and some wonderful, rich, garlic mashed potatoes. For dessert, we split an absolutely enormous brownie sundae with a cake-sized layer of brownie topped by four big scoops of vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce, whipped cream, and several cherries. Even half of it was more than we needed for a single serving!









We had a very personable waiter who had just finished taking a six hour constitutional law final over at Catholic and his brain was a little fried and ditzy. He was amusing, though.

Brasserie Les Halles, Washington, D.C.

This afternoon Ian and I were over at the passport office, and after we completed our business we walked across the street to have a late lunch at Brasserie Les Halles to begin our Cinco de Mayo celebration.

Cinco de Mayo is an interesting American holiday. American, you say? Cinco de Mayo is the observance of a Mexican military victory over the French army back in the 19th century. While it's technically a bank holiday in Mexico today, it isn't a holiday that Mexicans "celebrate." In Mexico, one doesn't find Cinco de Mayo parties; even in the highly Mexican parts of the U.S., the Mexican community doesn't celebrate. So why is it a big deal? Marketing. The tequila and cerveza companies "created"—quite successfully, mind you!—a holiday to sell liquor. Consequently, we media-driven Americans are the only people in the world who party and celebrate Cinco de Mayo.

Anyway, getting back to Brasserie Les Halles, we thought it would be fun to do French food on Thursday and then celebrate the Mexican victory with Mexican food on Friday. The food was absolutely delicious!

Les Halles is a Parisian style bistro nestled in between government office buildings on a plaza along Pennsylvania Avenue about half way between the White House and the Capitol. They have ample al fresco seating as well as a large interior space. We chose a quite table inside.

Ian chose the ravioles de Royan au fromage et à la crème. These were small demiluna shaped raviolis stuffed with cheese and presented in a rather French style cream sauce and garnished with a heavy layer of broiled parmesan cheese. He said it was very good.

I had the confit de canard avec pommes Salardaise, which was so good the explosion of flavors in my mouth had me craving more and more almost to the point of wanting the lick my emptied plate! I've always been a fan of duck confit—traditionally a roasted duck leg which is then fried in duck fat and sliced. Their presentation at Les Halles was quite interesting. They balanced a large crouton on its side then put a large mound of frisée (curly endive) salad in a vinegary dressing on the plate; the duck confit was then placed atop the salad with the Frenched bone resting on the crouton; the rest of the plate was then filled with wonderful, savory, hot pommes Salardaise. Pommes Salardaise are one of the great gifts of God to the French. They begin by dicing potatoes which are then seasoned, fried in duck fat, and truffled. Mmm. My mouth is watering even now.

We both had other obligations elsewhere later in the afternoon so we were unfortunately unable to stay for dessert.

Butterfield 9, Washington, D.C.

After staying late at the office tonight to get caught up, Leo called and wanted to go to dinner. We started to walk down to Old Ebbitt Grill, but as usual, there was a huge line of people (mostly cocktailers) trying to get in an we weren't in the mood to wait. So, we walked around the block and walked in to Butterfield 9, a place I'd been with Tony last January but Leo had never been. We got a nice banquette corner with both a view of the restaurant and the sidewalk outside. At the table next to us were a doting man and a bored looking woman we later heard were there celebrating their anniversary (poor guy), and a few tables over was a gaggle of young women who obviously needed no more wine.

I started with a celery root and potato chowder that included some tiny clams and vegetable greens. Then I had the grilled pork chops with tempura squash blossoms and flavorful bits of fried pancetta with a slightly sweet current-cumin sauce. The squash blossoms were a little on the large side and seemed a little flaccid. The pork chops were thick and juicy, cooked to just a little beyond medium rare—had we not been in a nice restaurant, I would have been tempted to gnaw the bone! For dessert I had the blackberry shortbread. It was a brief little thing with a lot of unmet potential. They'd taken a piece of shortbread, split it, topped the bottom half with a dollop of lemon-scented crème patisserie, then arranged four blackberries in a square on the crème and then one blackberry on either side of the shortbread to rest on the overflow and flank the shortbread, then topped it with the top half of the shortbread. Lovely idea, but where were the blackberries? Back in Oklahoma, six blackberries would barely make a garnish!

Leo started with an appetizer of diver scallops, grilled and crusted with coriander, and artfully arranged on the plate with flash-fried strips of various root vegetables and some pea sprouts. It was sauced with a red chili and lemon grass emulsion. Next he had the barbequed eel and halibut. Using a Japanese theme, there was a thick brown miso glaze on the eel, and the meats were accompanied by some rutabaga slices fried and then glazed with honey; a wild herb salad was also on his plate. He washed all this down with a couple of glasses of Domaine Bernier chardonnay. For dessert, he saw my little blackberry shortbread and decided to order himself a dessert sampler plate for two. I love his diet! The sampler included a little tiny version of the blackberry shortbread along with a miniature ramekin of crème brulee, a warm apple tart, some vanilla ice cream, a triangle of "chocolate cloud" (sort of a mousse cake), a fresh strawberry on an almond pineapple mousse, and a warm ginger snap.

The food Wednesday night was all delicious and very pretty. Too bad I didn't have my camera. The only problem with the evening was the service. Our waiter was dismal. What highlighted his lapses even more was the fact that the waiter at the next table was excellent, helpful, and solicitious to his tables. The waiter we were assigned seldom came by the table; he made no recommendations or suggestions for the meal; we had to ask twice for water refills; our table was never crumbed; our bread was never refilled; my dessert had been brought out shortly after the main courses only to be taken away by another waiter (I think they had the wrong table), then when my actual dessert arrived, I had to sit there looking at it for fifteen minutes before the waiter came to take Leo's dessert order; we had to wait inordinately long times both to receive our check and then to have the waiter come pick up the credit card and process it. I also noticed that the next table had two visits from the owner and one visit from the manager during the course of the evening; we had none.

I feel sorry for the chef. No matter how wonderful the food from the kitchen, patrons will soon tire of surly service and high prices in the very competitive D.C. restaurant market. We can only hope that this was a very off night for Butterfield 9.

Au Pied Bistro and Pizzaria Uno, Georgetown, D.C.

Last night, Ian and I made a late night visit to Au Pied Bistro on the east side of Georgetown. I think I've mentioned before that Au Pied Bistro is the remnant of the old Au Pied du Cochon, an old standby country French restaurant which used to be on Wisconsin Avenue where the Five Guys hamburger place is now. Way back in the Dark Ages when I was at Georgetown, we'd pop in to the Pig's Foot for late night, simple, inexpensive, French suppers. After Au Pied du Cochon sold out to Five Guys and closed down, the former staff moved down to the M Street/Pennsylvania merge area to Au Pied Bistro, a simplified version of the original.

Well, alas, it isn't Au Pied du Cochon anymore, and Au Pied Bistro has declined even since my last visit there last August with Leo. Now, we haven't been avoiding going to Au Pied, but they've just not been open every time we've attempted to eat there; they advertise that they stay open til 2 a.m. or so, but they close when the restaurant gets slow, which could be as early as 10 or 11. Even when Ian and I wandered in last night about 10:30, we were the only table in the restaurant and they seemed to be closing down.

It was a bad sign and a harbinger of things to come when our waiter brought our drinks and my iced tea had the distinct taste of coffee—they'd brewed the tea in their coffeemaker! I sent it back.

Ian wanted to compare the food at Au Pied Bistro to that at Bistro Français, where we usually get stuck dining on our late night soujourns, so he ordered the omelette aux fines herbs et fromage avec pommes frites, something he'd had last week at Français. Well, the differences were immediately obvious. The Pied version was a simple, flat omelette with herbs in the eggs and a little bit of Swiss cheese inside; Français' version not only gives diners a choice of cheese but includes a much more ample quanity and they also whip their eggs before cooking to give the omelette "lift" and a light fluffiness. The waiter brought no condiments with the food and Ian had to wait a long time for his ketchup. He said the Français omelette was much better.



My eggs Benedict experience was similar. The hollandaise sauce had the distinct taste and texture of a commercial quick sauce, the Canadian bacon tasted rather more like ham, and the whole dish was just rather ordinary.



We were going to order some dessert, but our waiter said the kitchen was closed. Well, several of the desserts require no preparation and he could have plated them himself if there was no one from the cook staff to dish it up.

Ian still wanted dessert after we left Au Pied Bistro, so after wandering the streets of Georgetown for a while, we landed at Pizzaria Uno, where Ian made me eat and split with him one of those enormous brownie/ice cream/whipped cream desserts that it seems everyone has these days. This is the first time I've been to an Uno in literally decades and the chain has changed quite a bit. When last I ate at one, it was a pizza place; today it's a typical full-menu franchise restaurant like a T.G.I.Friday or Applebee's or Bennigan's. We had a friendly waitress who's about to graduate from GU and she's moving to New York City for a job, so she and Ian chatted about NYC apartments and neighborhoods. At least we had a fun ending to the evening.

Alero Mexican Restaurant, Washington, D.C.

Tonight Kody and Ian took the GU Shuttle Bus from the campus and we all met up at Dupont Circle so we could wander up to Alero and have Mexican food. Mexican was Ian's idea, and we were all also curious as to whether or not there would be any employees there tonight or not, but it wasn't a problem and the food was just as good as ever. I didn't notice any impact at all from the immigration protests around the country.

While Kody drank his pitcher of margaritas, we ordered. Kody had spinach enchiladas, Ian had a chicken burrito, and I had a chicken chimichanga. Ian doesn't like guacamole, so he got it as a side instead of on his burrito, and I was the grateful recipient of another scoop of pureed avocado.







For dessert, the other two guys split a fried ice cream.



Alero, as always, is tolerable Mexican food. It's probably one of the best places in the District (we don't have that many Mexicans, but we have thousands of Salvadoreans!) for Mexican food, but it certainly doesn't compare to the food out in the Southwest. They make great margaritas, though, and they pour heavily!