Belga Cafe, Washington, D.C.

Drew is a big fan of beers, so we thought that the perfect place for him to endulgence his passion during Restaurant Week was Belga Cafe, the Belgian restaurant on Barracks Row that has a list of about 72 beers—the Belgians take their beer as seriously as do the French their wine.

So, Drew, Edward, and I got up bright and early this morning and made our appearances in public before noon, planning to do brunch at Belga. We ended up, however, doing their R.W. lunch menu instead of brunch food. Unlike many of the R.W. participants, Belga always crafts a limited special menu with a fixed appetizer and dessert and then the patrons get their choice of two entrees.

The appetizer was quite an interesting thing. Perhaps I should quote the menu description: "Cold shrimp ragout with lemon grass surrounded by a lobster consommé gelée bleeding with red beet juice and topped with a baby frisée salad and a spice tuile." The dish basically was a scoop of shrimp salad in a soup plate full of cold, thick lobster broth and spotted with beet juice. The "spice tuile" was a long, thin cracker. I liked the shrimp ragout. It was very tasty and I should have liked a serving of it by itself. I'm not quite so sure what to think of the cold, jellied lobster consommé. It had a definite seafood taste to it that I didn't really like cold, but I eventually got used to it and forced myself to eat it. The beet juice didn't really add any different flavor to the soup, but it did help to make a striking presentation and a dramatic food description. With the appetizer, Drew drank a Hoegaarden Belgian white beer. I tasted a tiny sip and it was a very light beverage without a lot of "beer" taste and it had, I thought, a slight citrus taste to it.

For the main course, we had a choice between steak or mussels. Drew and I both opted for the steak, whilst Edward picked the mussels. After tasting the mussels, Edward didn't like them; it turns out he's never had mussels before. So, I offered to trade entrees with him and he jumped at the chance. I'd already had an opportunity to taste the grilled steak, which was tender and juicy and seemed quite nice. Slices of steak alternated on the plate with some beer-battered onion rings, and a little ramekin of beer-infused bearnaise sauce accompanied the meat. I also sampled a bit of the garlic potato napoleon; I didn't get enough to really analyze, but it seems like mashed potatoes layed with sort of a potato chip-like divider between the layers. A row of tiny green summer vegetables lined one side of the long, thin, rectangular plate. To go with our steaks, Drew and I ordered a Leffe blonde, which is one of the Belgian beers Belga keeps on tap. He loved it; I hated it; I have him mine to drink. One of the fun things about this place is that they seem to have a different glass for every beer.



The mussels for which I traded actually turned out to be quite good (having had mussels last night I hadn't ordered them myself originally). They had been steamed in Corsendonk blonde beer, which I saw on the Trappist and Abbey beers section of the beer list, along with chopped celery and quite a lot of shitake mushrooms. A lot of chopped parsley garnished the top. A little order of Belgiesche frieten, or what we rather inaccurately think of as "French fries," since this form of deep-fried potatoes actually orginated in Belgium. And, also in keeping with the Belgian tradition, a little ramekin of delicious house-made mayonaisse accompanied the fries for dipping.



The dessert was an interesting melange, though I'm not sure I found a thematic connection. We each got a long, rectangular plate with some slices of bread pudding garnished with a big strawberry, a little dish of rice pudding topped with fried soba noodles and drizzled with raspberry coulis, and a scoop of sorbet they said was orange, but that tasted more like a tropical mix to me. The rice pudding was interesting since it seemed to be made with a thick, chewy rice (perhaps arborio??) in more of a pudding.

With our dessert, Drew and I split a bottle of Premium St. Louis Framboise, a Lambic raspberry beer I though tasted very fruity, very effervescent, and not at all beery, It came in a bottle with a cork that the waitress had to open tableside.

Belga is always a fun place to go. I think perhaps they fell victim this Restaurant Week to an attempt to be overly creative with their appetizers and desserts, and I'm not so sure that creativity worked. The regular menu items (as well as the R.W. entrees) are great though, and it's always a pleasure to come here.

Filomena's, Georgetown, D.C.

It's the morning after and I'm still stuffed.

Last night, Robert, who'd opted to use food rather than cash as currency, "paid" for my set of golf clubs he bought (did you know that he was on the golf team when he was in college? I keep trying to imagine him in knickers and Argylle socks) by taking Ryan and me out to a Restaurant Week dinner at the establishment of my choice. Don't fret—that's not something I can take advantage of since all participating restaurants have a special three-course $30.06 dinner menu. Robert has had an unusually busy week at the office, so I thought some "down home" cooking in an elegant atmosphere would fit the bill, so after pulling a few strings I managed to get us reservations at the usually-booked-on-Friday-nights-weeks-in-advance Georgetown ristorante Filomena's, the place I've always thought was the best Italian place in Georgetown.

Filomena didn't let us down.

As expected, the canal-side lower-Wisconsin place was jam-packed, and we even had to navigate our way through the crowds of people on the sidewalk just getting in the front door. We were just on time for our late 9:30 reservation and they were clearing the previous diners' plates from our table, so they very apologetically asked us to wait about five minues. They then cruelly forced us to look at the dessert case in the entry area, making our abject hunger all the more urgent.



We also got a chance to begin looking at Filomena's ecclectic decor. They go with the thematic idea that their diners are eating at an Italian grandmother's country house (albeit a very wealthy grandmother), so they have a lot of home-type items around one might find at a grandmother's house. There is a mix of upholstery on the seating areas, fresh flowers abound, the walls are painted like frescos, Italian and Roman statues are everywhere, bits of gardening equipment are here and there, and a lot of kitchen things like copper pots and other items of cooking equipment hang on the walls. I even saw an accordion resting in one grouping. The tables all have little milk glass lamps and each place is set with hand-crocheted placemats. It wasn't more than a couple of minutes, though, that we were escorted to our table alongside a very comfortable banquette.

They have an enormous menu at Filomena's, so I was glad that the R.W. menu shortened our choices. Still, it was a challenge picking just three items.

Robert ordered first. He chose the mozzarella di bufala, which is in essence a caprese salad, the polpettone di carne or meat rolls, and the white chocolate mousse. The salad was an interesting choice for him, since it was layers of slices of fresh water buffalo milk mozzarella cheese interspersced with slices of red and yellow tomatoes highlighted with fresh basil leaves and drizzled with olive oil; Robert doesn't like tomatoes! I was the unexpected beneficiary of his unwanted tomato slices, and they were quite nice. I guess he just likes fresh mozzarella.



His polpettone was enormous! They take ground sirloin, veal, and pork and make a roll stuffed with mozzarella and "rosemary ham" that is then baked and smothered with marinara sauce. Roasted potatoes came on the side. The meat roll was so large he had to take half of it home in a doggie bag.



I started with the zupetta, a big bowl of fresh mussels and baby clams that had been steamed in a rich white wine, garlic, and tomato broth. They gave me a thick piece of crostini bread to go with it, and it had the smoky taste of having been grilled.



Once again, I was able to talk the restaurant into giving me a salad instead of a dessert course, so I got the insalatina di stagione, a plateful of mesclun greens with toasted pecans and bleu cheese crumbles (I thought it would be gorgonzola, but it tasted like bleu to me) in a simple balsamic vinaigrette.



For my main course I decided that since it was Friday I should have fish, and there was on the menu a lovely branzino con ruchetta. I got three nice sized filets of perch that had been pan-fried to a crusty brown and arrranged around a mound of arugula, tomatoes, and red onions in a lemony vinaigrette. The perch was firm and had an excellent texture and flavor.



Ryan began with the salsiccia e friarielli, some toasted crostone bread topped with grilled Italian sausage and sauteed broccoli rabe. I had a hard time trying to explain to him that "broccoli rabe" (also known as rapini) is not the same thing as "broccoli."



He also had the same fish dish for his main course as did I; like Robert, he also chose the white chocolate mousse for dessert. Now, when I saw white and dark chocolate mousses on the menu as the only two dessert choices, I had this vision in my mind of a little tiny bowl with a scoop of pudding-like substance. That vision couldn't have been more wrong. The mousse at Filomena's is essentially a very thick "cake" of mousse, with a thick layer of mousse topped by a layer of cake topped by another thick layer of mousse and then garnished with shavings of white chocolate. A little spot of raspberry coulis with a white chocolate sauce flower inside garnished the plate. The dessert was huge! I got to sample it and it was delightful.



With their meals, Robert had a glass of the house chianti riserva and Ryan had a glass of the house merlot.

After dinner, the restaurant provides every table with decanters of complimentary sambucca (a licorice-tasting liqueur) and amaretto (almond liqueur) with little mini-brandy snifters, It was quite a nice finishing touch to an excellent, lovely meal. Thanks, Robert!

Capital Grille, Washington, D.C.

It was time for an American break amidst all of our international food during D.C.'s Restaurant Week, and what better place to do it than at The Capital Grille. Yeah, it's a franchise (about two dozen places nationally), but they have a dry aging technique for their beef that makes this one of the best steakhouses in town, something that's confirmed both by their prices and by their popularity with the lobbyists and powerful of D.C. The dry aging is such a big deal that they have an aging chamber right in the front of the restaurant with windows affording views both from the street and the maitre d' stand of dozens of large roasts and sides of beef engaged in the aging process.

The D.C. restaurant is located on Pennsylvania Avenue in view of the Capitol down in the National Archives neighborhood. On our arrival we were cheerfully welcomed by the hostess and staff and led quickly to our table in one of the smaller dining rooms towards the back of the restaurant. The walls of our dining room were glass shelves holding hundreds of bottles of wine. The regular menu—a big thing about two feet tall—reflected their commitment to wine with the two internal pages being devoted, in small type, to their extensive wine list.

Edward chose their traditional New England clam chowder as his opening course. He has long considered himself a connoisseur of clam chowders, and found this version to be quite good.



Meanwhile, I tried their yellow tomato gazpacho, which I thought to be adequate, though not particularly spectacular; yellow tomatoes always have a lower acid level than do red ones, so a yellow tomato soup would require the addition of something for "zip" or acid like extra lemon juice; the Capital Grille version was not particularly "zippy."



We both chose beef for our main courses. Edward did the hangar steak with truffled chive mashed potatoes, and it seemed to please him.



I had a grilled sirloin steak salad. They brought me a big platter of mesclun greens on top of which was a very large piece of medium-rare grilled steak. The flavor and texture of the steak was remarkable; I found it quite tender, rich, and juicy, and it was an unusually high quality piece of meat for a salad. Some pieces of new potato were included in the mix as a bit of a surprise. There also were a couple of tomato wedges on the plate that I expected to be the usual throw-away hydroponic things, but these tomatoes were actually ripe and had flavor!



Desserts were not quite so spectacular. While Edward liked his cheesecake with fresh strawberries, I was less than impressed with both desserts, especially my key lime pie. All of the desserts were in little individual pastry shells which I thought tasted commercial. Now, I've lived in Miami, Fla., before, so I have a good deal of experience with key limes and key lime pies. Today's version, while pleasant for what it was, could have used more lime juice and I would have liked to have seen a taller filling. Capital Grille garnished their key lime pie with chopped pistachio nuts and on the side had a dollop of (real) whipped cream garnished with a twisted slice of fresh lime (though not a key lime).





The service was very efficient and professional. I was particularly impressed that when our soups and main courses were delivered by different staff members, they were given to the correct person without having to ask; yet, when our waiter himself brought our desserts, I was amused that he got them backwards. It's always nice, though, to go to a professionally run restaurant with service that is complete, speedy, and yet not rushed.

Some evening, if I can ever find someone with an expense account, I'd love to go back to the Capital Grille for a full dinner and a big steak. The wine list looks enticing as well, especially since we didn't have the opportunity to drink today during the middle of the work day. Now, I just have to go meet some lobbyists.

Primi Piatti, Washington, D.C.

This week is making me feel so international! This afternoon we sat on the patio watching the people and the cars go by while we had a wonderful luncheon at Primi Piatti, in downtown D.C.'s West End, and it felt just like sitting at an Italian street cafe. I can't believe it's taken me so long to go here. It's sort of in the neighborhood, and we've walked by the place many, many times.

As you might imagine, Primi Piatti is an Italian restaurant elegantly serving up some delicious country Italian cuisine. We arrived for a late lunch and were ushered immediately to our table. While we did have to specifically request the Restaurant Week menu (which only had three options per category) when they brought the regular menus, I found the service throughout the meal to be top-notch, with all members of the staff anticipating needs, remembering orders, and serving graciously. There are some significantly more expensive restaurants in town that could take note of Piatti's service!

I began with the agnolotti fatti in casa ripieni di ricotta e spinaci alla salsa di noce, which were little raviolis stuffed with spinach and ricotta cheese and served with a nice, not-sweet, walnut cream sauce.



Rather than moving on to a main course at this time, I asked if they would let me have a second appetizer (a salad) instead of the dessert course and they did. That was great, since I not only didn't need the dessert calories, but their choices were limited to just tiramisu and sorbets, and I've had more tiramisu this summer in D.C. than I've had in all my trips to Italy combined. What I got was quite pleasant: insalatina di arugula con parmigiano. They took arugula leaves and tossed them with a bright, lemony dressing, making a peppery/bitter/sour salad that was mellowed just the right amount with shavings of parmesan cheese. All of these came with Italian breads and a little dish of a black olive tapenade that was good and not as strong as many I've had.



The proprietor and chef, Savino Recine, came to the table for a chat and was quite pleasant. He told us about some of his special events at Primi Piatti as well as his other restaurant on the other side of downtown, Finemondo. He also happens to be a magician, and he has a special chef's table in the evenings where he cooks and does some magic tricks.

My main course was the maiale, or probably more correctly, a controfiletto di maiale. "Maiale" means pig, but what I got were a couple of slices of fork-tender rolls of pork tenderloin with sun-dried figs, gorgonzola cheese, and fennel baked with white wine, the cheese having melted into the wine to make a nice little sauce. The pork was accompanied by some picquant sauteed greens and mashed potatoes.



After the meal, the waiter came over to announce that the proprietor wanted to send over some complimentary limoncello. Limoncello is a traditional Italian "digestivo", a lemon liqueur served after dinner thought to improve the digestion. This particular limoncello was Signor Recine's personal recipe, and he said it was the best in town. It arrived in a chllled, cone-shaped glass. The bright yellow liquid was powerful stuff! It had a special intense lemon flavor that was the result of having been made with lemon peel marinated in vodka, rather than with lemon juice, and after drinking the libation, my tongue had a pleasant numbness. He was right—I haven't had better limoncello in D.C.



In these days when so much of what passes as "Italian" food is merely American creations in the Italian theme, it's great to know that there's a place in Washington where one can get some delicious, authentic food from il Belpaese. Primi Piatti definitely goes on the "regular rotation" list.

Bistrot Lepic, Georgetown, D.C.

It's been way too long since I last was in Paris, and days like today make me miss it even more. What prompted this little bit of nostalgia? Lunch.

We lunched today at Bistrot Lepic, an absolutely wonderful little bistrot in upper Georgetown named after another bistrot in the Montmartre area of Paris. Tucked into a narrow rowhouse building, the dining room is on the ground floor with a wine bar upstairs. It has a nice, comfortable feel much like neighborhood bistrot in Paris.

They went all out on their Restaurant Week menu. Some ten entrees (appetizers), nine plats (main courses), and the entire dessert tray (dessert) were available options, and they all sounded so delicious it was hard to pick just one from each category. The end result was a lovely luncheon worth far more than the $20.06 R.W. price. Where to start, where to start?

Drew started with a glass of Domaine Berthet-Rayne Chateauneuf-du-Pape 2004 that had been recommended by our waiter. It's summer, so I decided to go with a cool glass of Provence Colombo Rosé de Côte Bleue 2005, a nice little rosé (rosés are very vogue in Europe this summer). Ryan drank tap water.

The meals were fun, but, alas, of all times for my camera to run out of battery, it ran out as I was trying to photograph the third entree! I'l just have to be more descriptive about the rest of the dishes, I guess.

Drew made some delicious choices. He began with the pied du cochon désôssé et croustillant. This was a boneless pig's foot gently flattened then fried until it was crusty. The menu said it was being served with an onion sauce, but what came with the dish looked very much like mustard to me. He said the dish was very flavorful and rich with the gelatin and natural fat of the pig's foot. Next he had les rognons de veau à la moutarde that he thought were wonderful. His plate had three big rosettes of mashed Yukon gold potatoes arranged in a clover shape with small, braised veal kidneys in a Dijon sauce poured around the mounds of potatoes. He loved the delicate, smooth texture of the veal and their delicious, mild flavor. For dessert he chose the genoise du fondant chocolat, a little individual warm chocolate cake with melted chocolate fondant inside presented on a mirror of crème anglaise decorated with a squiggle of raspberry coulis. I think he liked it a lot.

Not everyone was so enthralled with lunch, as Ryan seemed pretty bored with his meal. He chose the gazpacho au sorbet au concombre, a soup I'd originally chosen but then switched to something else so we're be eating different things. This soup was an intriguing cold tomato soup with a scoop of cucumber sorbet floating in it garnished with some snipped parsley. I thought it looked and smelled pretty good, but he only ate half of it. Then, he moved on to the truite grillée avec sa julienne de legumes et sauce carotte, which was a grilled rainbow trout with carrot sauce and a mound of sautéed julienned vegetables. His dessert was a fresh blueberry tart, and again, he ate only half of it.

I was quite pleased with my meal, though, and found it both delicious and creative. I whetted my appetite with la terrine de betterave et fromage de chêvre, and I wish the camera hadn't run out of batteries at this point so you could see a clearer picture. They took slices of cold stewed beet and layered it into a tower alternating with soft chevre goat cheese. For presentation, they cut out a little wedge from the round and arranged it on the side, and the entire terrine rested on a big wad of mesclun greens in a balsalmic dressing. A piece of crunchy melba toast garnished the plate. After that auspicious begining, I next nibbled upon le foie de veau Provençale, some absolutely melt-in-the-mouth calf liver sauteed in butter and splashed with Jerez vinegar, topped with capers, black olives, and garlic. A big squiggle of mashed potatoes ran across the plate supporting a bouquet of little French haricots verts (very thin French green beans) and the liver rested on and around the potatoes and green beans. The haricots verts were, naturally, al dente, and I appreciated the fact that the mashed potatoes were plain and natural without a bunch of flavor additions that might have distracted from the wonderful liver. I did a little individual peach tart in a pâte sucrée crust; they microwaved the tart to warm it, which, of course always ruins fine pastry and the bottom crust ended up being soggy, but that was the only demerit I gave the meal.

Ryan ran off right after dessert, so Drew and I stuck around to chat as he lingered over coffee. He also gave us our Kody Pose for the day.



I can't wait until my next visit back to Bistrot Lepic. It's certainly cheaper than flying to Paris, and every bit as good!

Teatro Goldoni, Washington, D.C.

After many, many months of wanting to try Teatro Goldoni, Leo and I used Restaurant Week as an excuse to go there last night. We've long been curious about both the food and the facility, and it's always gotten pretty good reviews.

The "teatro" part of the name always confused me a little bit, since that's the Italian word for theater. When I first saw the name on the building, I thought the place was an actual theater, though later I walked by and saw menus. Then, I thought that perchance there was some type of stage show or wandering entertainment, but that is not the case. They are using Venetian theater as a theme for their decor to match their Venetian recipes in the kitchen. The fairly dark bar and dining rooms have a lot of panels with harlequin patterns and one wall in the front dining room is filled with Venetian theater masks.

They have a large menu filled with the culinary specialties of Venice. I was tempted to order off the regular menu until I saw the prices, which were quite high, even for Washington. They offered a rack of veal for $43.50, rockfish for $32.50, and even a truffled parmesan-mushroom risotto was going for $33.50—all more than the $30.06 cost of the three-course Restaurant Week prix fixe menu.

After ordering a glass of wine (I forgot which one, but it was an odd blend of viognier, sauvignon blanc, and pinot grigio), Leo started with the insalata di Ceasare con parmesano, a little Caesar salad garnished with crisp, thin, garlic flatbread and little cherry tomatoes.



Then he had the salmone con peperoni servito con la salsa di cipolle pomodoro vinegrette, a pan-seared piece of salmon on a bed of spinach and topped with caramelized onions and a tomato vinaigrette.



Then for dessert, he had the tiramisu con la salsa di cappuccino, an individual round of tiramisu with a cappuccino sauce.



I started with the zuppa di mais servita con la frittella di gamberi, a very nice and slightly sweet pureed fresh corn soup with several medium sized shrimp in the bowl. I also had the salmon entree, and I found it rather ordinary and slightly overcooked.



My dessert was the tortino di cioccolato servito con la salsa di vaniglia, one of those warm chocolate cakes with the "molten" centers presented with a little raspberry sauce. Mine could have used a bit more baking, since I tasted "raw" and grainy batter; the raspberry sauce was surprisingly bland.



The service was efficient but rather terse. I suspected our waiter was not a native English speaker, and I noticed he lumbered around the dining room more like a big football player than an agile, graceful waiter. Our food came out with surprisingly fast "lunchtime" speed, and we were in and out of the restaurant in 50 minutes.

On the whole, though, my experience was not as wonderful as I expected or would have liked. I thought my food to be rather amateur. The chef here has had good reviews, but, while not knowing whether or not he was present, I would suspect that the kitchen was being run by one of his less-experienced assistants last night. Nothing was truly bad, but it just wasn't impressive, and, while I realize the Restaurant Week menus are designed to fit into an economical price point, the foods I was served make me extremely reluctant now to try the very expensive items on the regular menu.

The Restaurant Week menu is the same this week for both lunch and dinner, so if one is inclined to try Teatro Goldoni, I would recommend going at lunch to save that extra $10.

Prince Cafe, Georgetown, D.C.

Saturday evening after a mini-concert and a riverside walk from the Kennedy Center to Washington Harbor, Ryan and I landed at Prince Cafe on lower Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown for dinner and to smoke the shisha.

Ryan had a chocolate milk shake, Pepsi, beef sharwarma sandwich, and onion rings; I had a mango lesi, Diet Pepsi, and falafel sandwich; both sandwiches arrived in plastic baskets wrapped like a sandwich from Subway. Ryan took too long to get around to tasting his onion rings to have an official opinion, but they looked to me on arrival to be cold and greasy.

Ryan picked "banana" as the flavor for our water pipe.

Service was slow, though they claimed to be "busy;" whilst the patio was full, the inside dining room had only a handful of tables. And one annoying event was when our waiter was in the middle of finally taking our order, the manager pulled him away from our table to take the order for a party of eight Arab-speaking Middle Easterners before we caught the waiter on his way back inside with their orders to make him take the rest of our order.