Meiwah Restaurant, Washington, D.C.

After Mass today, Laurent and I walked up to Meiwah for lunch, where the food is always very good. Laurent had a squid with spiced salt appetizer, then shredded beef with garlic sauce for his main course. I had a little plate of shrimp lo mein. He also got this enormous cocktail in a fancy ceramic cup called a scorpion.

Chevy's Fresh Mex, Arlington, Va. (Ballston)

Last night, Ian got a call from Game Stop at Ballston Common Mall: his "rain check" Wii was in, and they wanted him to come pick it up immediately, or they'd call the next person on the list. Ian, however, is up in Pennsylvania right now with the parental units. Naturally, he calls me and sends me on the desperate, urgent, immediate quest to retrive the arriven Wii.

Meanwhile, my friend Kevin is showing up at my place to pay me a call. He announced upon arrival that he'd made reservations to take me to a birthday dinner at the high dollar granola set's favorite place, Restaurant Nora, a "certified 100% organic" place (not only the the food, but even the waiters' clothing!) where dinner for an omnivore costs $70 and just $65 for a vegan (wine is extra). The poor boy's face fell a bit when I said, oh, let's not go there, let's go to Ballston Common to shop and then eat at a chain Mexican place in the mall (hey, I'm economical, what can I say?).

So, off we went to Ballston and the Game Stop. When we got to the store, Laurent (who works just a block from that mall) was in the store browsing, so he joined our little party. Once I presented my credentials to the cash register clerk and he consulted their magic computer system, he took a big plastic bag from the counter and went back to the backroom, soon to emerge with the coveted Wii covertly hidden inside. I guess he was afraid I'd be mugged or something if their customers saw me walking in their store with a real live Wii.

Then, off we went to our gourmet dinner at Chevy's Fresh Mex. Chevy's isn't bad for a chain Mexican place on the East Coast. It probably would never pass muster back in Oklahoma or Texas or out there in the Southwest where there are lots of real Mexicans (the Hispanics in the D.C. area seem mostly to be Salvadoreans and Guatemalans), but it's about the consistenly best I've been able to find around here.

Laurent had the chicken chimichanga grande with extra spice. Looked good, and it was grande, indeed.



Kevin had the enchilada trio, and had so much food it looked like things were going to fall off the platter.



I had the pork tamales. I'd been craving tamales since Christmas (tamales are a traditional Christmas Eve dish). My plate looks naked, but be assured that there was quite a lot of food there, and I was stuffed. I also got a small side of guacamole.



As the birthday boy, the waiter brought a complimentary (that he billed Kevin for anyway) enormous brownie sundae for me. Kevin and Laurent ate it all, though, and I didn't get even a taste.



All of the platters came with Mexican rice and black beans with a scattering of queso blanco crumbles and some of their delicious sweet corn "tomalito." Laurent also got a tiny guacamole salad on his platter. Thanks, Kevin!

And thus was our adventure, and we returned without being mugged for the Wii on the Metro.

Thai Place, Washington, D.C.

Before running off to the opera last Friday, my friend Richard and I started the evening with supper at Thai Place. That is kind of an odd place for us to pick for a pre-opera dinner, but there was some method to our madness. While a fine repast at Russia House would have been appropriate before a Tchaikovsky opera, it's way up on north Dupont Circle, and what with a 7:30 p.m. curtain, we would have had to rush rush rush to eat and then taxi down to the Kennedy Center. Thai Place is a block from the Foggy Bottom Metro station, so once we finished our meal, we just walked over to the station and got on the Kennedy Center's free shuttle bus. Thai food also has the advantage of being artistic and highly flavorful, yet not so heavy as to force us into somnolence during the course of a four hour long performance.

We started with cocktails (Richard an orange vodka tonic and me a Singha Thai beer) and appetizers. Richard got something called "blanket shrimp," which are large shrimp straightened out, rolled in a spring roll wrapper, and then deep fried.


I got the fried calimari, which turned out to be huge rings of squid reminiscent of onion rings.


For a main course, Richard got the salmon Thai-style. Chunks of salmon were breaded and then deep fried until crunchy, then plated with a thin, spicy sauce, and garnished with vegetables and a sprig of basil. Ironically, we'd just been talking about Southern fish cooking techniques, where everything is dredged in cornmeal and then fried.


I selected the talay curry, a mild, yellow curry with egg, onions, scallion, and mixed seafood.

Washington Renaissance Hotel, Washington, D.C.

It's Grand Lodge weekend. Friday night was the formal banquet, held in the big ballroom downstairs at the Washington Renaissance Hotel downtown, across from the Convention Center.

They served a salad of mesclun greens and vegetables with an Italian-style vinaigrette dished out by waiters for the first course.


The main course included a filet mignon, a piece of salmon sauced in cream and sweet fruits, a triangle of polenta, and steamed vegetables. While the salmon was a little nondescript, the filet was unusually good for a hotel banquet. Of course, fish is hard to hold for a service for several hundred at a time.


Each table also got a bottle of chardonnay and a bottle of shiraz. For dessert, we got pears poached in red wine with dulce de leche sauce and a strawberry garnish. It was a nice idea, but my pears, poached or not, still weren't at the desired degree of ripeness (and hence tenderness) for an optimum experience; in fact, several at the table ate their dessert and then asked what it was.


My main complaint with the evening was that they had set up several cash bars where the drinks were unexpectedly expensive and where they did not take credit cards.

The catering office at this hotel does a surprisingly excellent job. The food was better than expected for a hotel banquet in D.C. and I was very impressed with the service. They used a zone system where we had the same few waiters tending to our table the entire meal, and they were friendly and competent. Now, that is a rarity in hotel catering!

Trio Restaurant, Washington, D.C.

After our visit to the Belmont Mansion last night, Ryan and I, braving the fierce winds and sudden cold, took refuge in Trio Restaurant, a convenient place for a late dinner. Ryan had the guacamole burger (what he always orders there), which looked good, but which came, alas, with cold French fries.


I had their turkey blue plate special dinner with dressing, garlic mashed potatoes, gravy, and some very good cauliflower gratin. It was a perfect choice for a cold night. Just basic food.


We split a piece of carrot cake for dessert, but it wasn't a particularly memorable cake.....even with two of us eating it, I think we left some on the plate.

Georgetown Cafe, Georgetown, D.C.

After our real estate inspections Sunday and to give him a chance to think things over, Ian and I went to a late lunch at Georgetown Cafe. Ian got a Swiss cheese omelette with fried potatoes and toast.


I got the gyros platter, which was actually quite good and larger than I'd expected. It came with a warm piece of pita bread, so I could have made my own gyros sandwich, but, much like I do when confronted with a plate of fajitas, I ate everything separately. I also love their battered French fries.



Georgetown Cafe is always an interesting place. It's part greasy-spoon diner and part Middle Eastern deli.

Timberlake's Restaurant, Washington, D.C.

We were near Dupont Circle the other day well past the normal dinner hour and still hadn't eaten. Despite the plethora of decent, cheap Asian restaurants in the area, Ryan wanted basic American style food. I warned him of its mediocrity, but he wanted to try Timberlake's Restaurant anyway, so there we went. Now, I don't dislike the place, I just don't have high expectations, and as long as one keeps things in perspective, it's fine.

I actually enjoyed my food (again, keeping things in perspective). I started with a cup of crab soup and then had a reuben sandwich. Nothing gourmet, but no complaints.

Ryan and Robert started with a spinach artichoke dip I thought rather bland. Robert's main course was the chopped steak special with mashed potatoes, gravy, and broccoli. I guess it was okay; Robert always cleans his plate and he seldom comments about food unless it's really really good or really really bad.


Ryan got a Tex-Mex burger with onion rings. His requested side of ranch dressing for the rings never materialized, so he had to go find another waiter to bring him some.


I passed on dessert, but Robert had a rather unattractively presented piece of key lime pie buried in whipped cream and Ryan had a brownie and ice cream topped with chocolate sauce and drowned in a sea of whipped cream. Nothing to write home about there.

The bigger problem was the service, which was rather slow, forgetful, and untrained. The guy seemed nice, but a bit spacy, and I was inspired before he took the dessert orders to chat him up and say, "I haven't seen you here before. Are you new?" And he was, somewhat—he'd been there not quite a month.

Kennedy Center Honors Gala, Washington, D.C.

Politicians and performing artists rubbed elbows and more in the crowded Grand Foyer of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for the annual Kennedy Center Honors Gala last night. The elegant black tie crowd dined on a simple but delicious meat and potatoes meal after the awards show concluded in the Opera House. That show will be broadcast on December 26.

The Playwright Act II, New York, N.Y.

After we went to our 5 p.m. performance of the Rockettes Christmas Spectacular and pushed our way through the huge crowds gathered in the area for the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting ceremony (almost as crazy a place to be as Times Square on New Year's Eve!), Ian and I walked around Times Square and the Theater District in quest of a place to eat before going home to Washington. I'd heard that with the stagehands' strike going on, a lot of restaurateurs were having great specials to try to get some business in the doors to make up for the missing theater crowds. About all I saw were $25 per person prix fixe menus, though.

After talking Ian out of going to Red Lobster (seriously), we ended up at a local place with a lot of New York character, The Playwright Act II, an Irish tavern and restaurant west of the Theater District. It was fun.

The entire ground level floor is a long, narrow bar with dark woods and other Irish pub-type decor. It seemed quite popular, as the bar was packed. We were taken upstairs to their dining room, where they managed to squeeze in quite a lot of tables in a small space. A bank of windows allowed patrons to look out over Eighth Avenue. Posters and photographs of Irish playwrights and writers adorned the walls.

Despite having previously declared the intention to order something different for a change, Ian ordered the chicken finger appetizer and a basket of Cajun fries.


I ordered the traditional Irish breakfast. The Irish breakfast starts around a couple of over-easy fried eggs, a couple of pieces of bacon, a couple of bangers (Irish style link sausages), a healthy helping of French fries, some toasted wheat bread, and a grilled tomato half, and then adds the quintessential elements of an Irish breakfast: black pudding and white pudding. Now, let me clarify this a bit, as we aren't talking about chocolate and vanilla pudding. These are actually links of sausage, sliced and then fried. Black pudding is the Irish version of blood sausage, a pork sausage made with pork blood (it's the blood that makes it black). White pudding is similar, though without the blood.


My breakfast was quite hearty and very tasty. Things were very heavily fried, though, and the kitchen could have had a lighter hand with the grill. That made the black and white puddings a little too done, the bacon crunchy, and the eggs "lacy" and beyond over-easy. I thought the chicken fingers looked a little more than golden brown, too.

We started to have dessert (New York cheesecake, of course!), but Ian was getting antsy about catching the early bus back to D.C., and since I was quite full from the breakfast, I acquiesced and we departed sans sweets.

Tiro A Segno, New York Rifle Club, New York, N.Y.

Ian and I started our New York visit yesterday with a business luncheon. The Chamber of Commerce where Ian volunteers every week was hosting its annual "Safe Cities, Safe Communities" luncheon, giving out "Cop of the Year" awards to NY policemen (and women) from several precincts. They had it at the distinguished and exclusive New York Rifle Club, home of the oldest private Italian dining club in the country, Tiro A Segno. It was interesting being in such a clubby dining room, knowing there was a rifle shooting range in the basement below us!

There was no salad or antipasti course, so they started directly with penne rigate with marinara sauce as a first course. Bowls of grated cheese were on the tables for people to pass.


For the second course, they brought some tender and delicious veal piccata, with roasted new potatoes and some green beans in a garlic sauce. The things with the green beans that look like almond slices in the picture are actually slices of garlic.


Bottles of PoggioPiano Rosso di Beppe Chianti 2005 were on the tables. I thought it was a very pleasant chianti that was both light and full of flavor and complexity. I noticed a couple other tables had wine buckets with white white of some sort; I don't know if white wine was a general option or if those tables paid extra money for those bottles.

Dessert was an interesting adventure. Waiters brought large bowls of fresh fruit and platters of Italian cookies and confections that were there to be passed and shared by the table. The confections included biscotti, something like madeleines dipped in chocolate sprinkles, tri-color slices of cookies, thumbprints filled with apricot preserves, and some interesting puffy cookies coated in pine nuts. The fruit bowl included pears, apples, strawberries, grapes, and what the Sicilians call "Indian figs" but what we Americans know as the fruit of a prickly pear cactus. I had to have a prickly pear. They'd done a good job of getting ripe ones, and it was delicious.

Some nice coffee was served after the desserts. It smelled almost like an espresso.

The service at the club was excellent. There were plenty of waiters, they were all well-trained, friendly, and professional, and they were always patrolling their tables to keep water carafes filled and to replace silverware as required.

Hops Grill and Brewery, Alexandria, Va.

My friend Lloyd and I ventured down to Potomac Yards in northern Alexandria to do a little shopping this afternoon, and while we were there, we decided to grab dinner at Hops Grill and Brewery. Hops is a microbrewery chain with casual American restaurant food.

The dining room is dominated by a glass walled section filled with the large brewing vats used to make their local beers. The rest of the space is red brick and dark woods.

We started off with root beers. They make their root beer in-house; we had to wait a while, since they were just finishing up a fresh batch. It definitely tasted different than the standard stuff that comes out of a pop can.

Lloyd had the crispy chicken tenders with both French fries and their house made "pub chips" (instead of one potato and one side). He likes fried food.


I ordered the bottomless soup and salad. It came with a plate of their honey-drizzled croissants we shared that were surprisingly light, crisp, and very, very good.


For a salad, one gets a choice of the regular house salad (which I got), a Caesar salad, or an iceberg lettuce wedge. The salad I got had ripe tomato wedges (even in November!), cheese, bacon, and little thin slivvers of shoestring potatoes.


There were also three soups from which to choose: baked potato, clam chowder, and onion. The potato soup is a tasty and hearty mix with cheese and bacon in the soup and garnished with chives and more cheese and bacon. The clam chowder was pretty good for a non-seafood restaurant, with a good proportion of clams and not too many potatoes. I was disappointed, though, with the French onion soup, which seemed to have been made from a powdered mix that they got just a little too strong on this batch and with a cheese covered crouton that had a rather odd taste to me. Next time, I'll just stick to the potato and clam soups.


The menu had a lot of things I wanted to try, but after all the food of the holiday weekend, I thought the lighter salad approach was the best idea. I would like to come back again.

Restaurant Eve, Alexandria, Va.

Our friend Mike from Atlanta came to Washington for a whirlwind business trip Thursday to inspect his company's coal-burning pollution power plant in Alexandria. He was gracious enough to invite Robert, Ryan, and me to join him for lunch.

I made reservations for us all at Restaurant Eve, the place that opened about three years ago that launched the Old Town Alexandria fine dining phenomenon. Located in an old Federal-era building just off Old Town's main drag, King Street, Restaurant Eve is excitedly mentioned as the best place in Alexandria and one of the top ten places in the Washington metropolitan area. Eve is actually two restaurants in one, with an exquisite fine dining "tasting room" and a more casual "bistro." The cuisine is official American with French influences, but the chef-owner is Irish, and I think his Irishness influences his recipes much more than the French thoughts. While they have vegan menu options, with the full menu and all the ham and bacon in everything, it's not a place for those seeking kosher or halal foods.

Now, I would have liked to have tried the tasting room, but that is only open at dinner, and Mike had a train to catch at seven to take him to Philadelphia, thus, that was out. So, we lunched in the bistro by a window looking out onto an interior courtyard. Several of my friends have been, but I never had, so I was excited to try it and to let connoisseur Mike try Alexandria's finest.

We started with cocktails. Another of Eve's reputations is for excellent and creative cocktails. While Robert got his usual Dewar's on the rocks (or "rock," in this case, as a single large chunk chilled his glass) and Michael got a Scarlett O'Hara (Southern Comfort with hand-pressed cranberry juice), Ryan got an intriguing "Eve's Temptation," a frappé with freshly squeezed Granny Smith apple juice, green apple vodka, powdered sugar, and an apple-cinnamon Altoid mint. I tasted it, and, wow! it was sour! I wanted one of their bloody Marys made with "tomato water" instead of tomato juice, but they were out of tomato water; then I ordered their New Age Gibson made with saffron-infused vermouth and saffron-marinated cocktail onions, but their were out of saffron vermouth; I settled for a glass of sauvignon blanc.



For our first courses, Robert had the steak tartare. He got quite an ample serving, and the raw, chopped beef was mixed with various spices and herbs. Salad greens and pumpernickel bread accompanied the meat, with large dots of stone-ground mustard adorning the plate.



Mike got the bacon, egg, and cheese salad, an almost breakfasty salad with free-form poached egg and morsels of house-cured pork loin bacon, and liberally enriched with shavings of three-year-old white Wisconsin cheddar cheese, all on neatly arranged leaves of trimmed romaine hearts.



Ryan selected the soup of the day, a roasted squash cream soup enriched with green herb oil (I didn't taste it, so I'm not sure which one), toasted pumpkin seeds, and fresh thyme.



I had the oxtail ravioli with toasted pumpkin seeds in a beef reduction sauce with some matchsticks of butternut squash.



As lunch proceeded at a leisurely pace, we moved on to our main courses, all ordering from the standard luncheon menu items. Robert got the pork belly confit presented atop a bed of cranberry beans. It wasn't quite what I was expecting, but Robert seemed to like it. He also got a side order of mushroom risotto. It was covered with grated cheese (parmesan?) and served with a little demi-glace.




Mike got a croque monsieur-style sandwich made with ham and gruyere cheese. It came with some French cornichon pickles and hand-cut potato chips. He also ordered a side of roasted fingerling potatoes.




Ryan and I both got fish. Ryan got the Arctic char with braised lentils and ham hock. It looked nice, and I'd thought about getting it myself. I don't think he was wild about the lentils, though. He also got an order of the fingerling potatoes.



I had the Chatham Bay cod brandade with olives and dried tomatoes and some morsels of bacon. The cod was very nicely done, cooked through but still moist.



We moved on to dessert. Robert had a quince tart. It came with a little egg-shaped scoop of ice cream (was it crème fraîche?), but I forgot what flavor it was. Mike had the butterscotch crème brulée topped with a couple of little cookies and some vanilla ice cream. Ryan had their famous birthday cake, all frosted in pink buttercream and dusted with multicolored sprinkles (he loved it; I had a small bite and thought the cake was a bit dry), but, surprisingly, lacking ice cream. I had the apple-gingerbread upside down cake with a little scoop of caramel crème fraîche presented on some apple slices. The crème fraîche has a very different mouth feel from ice cream, since it's not as cold and it has a heavier "fat" feel on the tongue. Both the birthday cake and gingerbread came with a little crème anglaise on the plate.




Our waiter was personable and efficient, and we never were overburdened by too gratuitous staff. Other staff assisted him as needed, such as when a course was being served.

After dessert, Mike and I both had a cup of coffee. It was pretty good, the beans roasted in the French style, and the waiter brought it in a silver French press. A little anisette-scented biscotti accompanied each cup.

Now, I was a little bit disappointed with the Restaurant Eve experience. The food was delicious, the setting elegant and comfortable, and the service excellent, but I was expecting more.

The restaurant has such a high reputation, with very high prices to match, I wanted a greater level of perfection in the presentation and execution of the food. They can't blame assistants for the presentation, since I saw the chef-owner as we were entering the restaurant, so I know he was there in the kitchen.

The easiest way to illustrate these "picky" issues is by having you look at the pictures of the desserts. First, the crust on Robert's tart was broken. The decorative frosting (and decorative crème anglaise) on Ryan's birthday cake was marred. Certainly, neither of these minor flaws were any big deal, and I don't even know if Robert or Ryan noticed them. But I did. The restaurant is so attentive to detail in some areas—remember the single ice chunk in Robert's Scotch and how all the juices were made in-house), so these presentation errors troubled me.

Restaurant Eve is still an excellent restaurant and we had a lovely dining experience. I'm going to reserve final judgment, though, until I can dine in their tasting room. After all, it's the tasting room with the renowned reputation, so perhaps I'm expecting too much from the bistro. Nevertheless, while you'll definitely need an expense account budget, Restaurant Eve is well worth a special trip to Alexandria.


Thanks, Mike!