Panevino, Washington, D.C.

Tonight we dined at Panevino in the Embassy Suites Hotel in D.C.'s West End. It wasn't bad for a hotel restaurant. It's actually a very large space in a contemporary, but not starkly modern, setting with white lattice room dividers and big series of 2'x2' frames grouped together covering the walls, each holding a completely different piece of art which looked very much like student work painting a detail section of a famous great artist masterwork. It was all quite colorful.

The menu is quite simple and moderately priced. "Panevino" is Italian for "bread/wine," so as one might imagine, Panevino is an Italian restaurant.

We started with white wines, Leo a chardonnay and me a pinot grigio, then we ordered.

Leo started with the fried crab cake with cabbage slaw, then moved on to an absolutely enormous bowl of rigatoni in a red sauce (I couldn't tell if it had any meat in it or not), and he ate every bit of it.



For dessert, yet again, he had the tiramisu. I sampled the tiramisu, and, while it was tasty, it was very much a "commercial" version far from the authentic recipe.



These are the only pictures....I forgot to photograph the main courses.

I had the chop chop salad, which was chopped romaine with chopped bits of chicken, cashews, ginger, other vegetables, and some fried won-ton strips all in a slightly sweet, soy-tasting dressing. I thought about dessert, but all three of the things I wanted included either ice cream or gelato, and they were out of them both, so I just did without. My salad was big, so I was already full, anyway.

We had a pleasant waitress from Eritrea who offered a number of menu suggestions.

On the way out, we got some of their soft, lemoncello-flavored, Italian candy to suck on—it's quite different.

Beacon Bar and Grill, Washington, D.C.

Ed, Robert, Leo, and I all got up bright and early yesterday morning so we could meet up for brunch at 11:30 at the Beacon Bar and Grill at the Beacon Hotel. Beacon is always a fun place to go....they have a $19 all you can eat breakfast buffet on Sundays with a live pianist, and what's even better, unlimited bloody Marys, mimosas, and champagne. Let's just say that Robert and Leo got their money's worth!

The food is always basic but okay. This morning the executive chef and one of his assistants were running an omelette bar—chef made me an omelette with ham, onions, red peppers, spinach, and cheese—and there were large chafing dishes set up with an egg casserole, sausages, bacon (I love their bacon!), fried potatoes, a chicken dish, linguine and mussels, dirty rice, and steamed green beans and baby corn. The salad table had half a dozen different green or vegetable salads and a huge bowl of fresh fruit. The bread station was laden with croissants, muffins, and other breads, and the dessert table had all kinds of things from a big fresh fruit on crème patisserie tart to a tiramisu cake to a glazed lemon-lime cake.

Odéon Cafe, Washington, D.C.

Lured in by the maitress d' at the Odéon Cafe, an Italian bistro in the Dupont Circle area at which none of Robert, Ed, Leo, or I had ever before eaten, we decided to pop in for dinner and we were immediately taken to a table upstairs on the mezzanine level.

The place was packed, but we had a nice quiet corner table, so thus we got to eat without being rushed.

Robert chose the pane con gorgonzola for his appetizer. It was grilled bread covered with gorgonzola cheese (the Italian version of "bleu") and cream sauce, then broiled and melted. For his second course he chose the scallopini di milano, something I thought resembled a veal piccata. Dessert was the chocolate tartufo, and the whole meal was washed down with a couple of Dewars on the rocks.



Calamari fritti started off the meal for Leo, then he had the linguine con fruitti di mare and a glass of pinot grigio. He tried the tiramisu for dessert, which I also sampled, and we thought it was nicely authentic.



Ed ate a bunch of calimari then the tortellini alla panna, a tri-color cheese-stuffed tortellini dish with slices of Italian prosciutto, eating the squid and the ham even though he's Jewish! Dessert was the cheesecake.



I had a little insalata della casa, the house salad, to start, then the "special" advertised downstairs on the sidewalk, which was a whole lobster steamed and split accompanied by some linguine in a non-marina red sauce. They pulled the meat out of the claws back in the kitchen and split the lobster down the middle. The lobster was nice for the price ($16), but I thought the tail was just a touch overcooked and a tad bit tough. I tried the hazelnut mousse for dessert which was good in its own way, but it's not something I would order again.



Over all, I thought the food was pretty good, though there were several items we tried to order, but they were out of them. The service also wasn't really up to par, but it was a very, very busy night and the staff was constantly moving.

Leo and Robert had to mug for the camera for their traditional Kody Pose: