Busboys and Poets, Washington, D.C.

Last night was the annual "Dining Out for Life" dinner for Food and Friends, a charity that helps feed people with serious and terminal illnesses. They have dozens of restaurant partners that contribute 25% or more of their night's gross receipts to Food and Friends.

My friend Stephen, who has in the past been one of the Food and Friends ambassadors at different restaurants, and I went to the U Street area to dine at Busboys and Poets, a restaurant that opts to give 35% of its gross receipts. Busboys and Poets honors poet Langston Hughes with its name, since Hughes had at one time worked as a busboy in the neighborhood.

The restaurant was packed! We were even there rather early for D.C. dinner, arriving a little after 6 p.m., and still had a 35 minute wait for a table. Right by the entrance of the restaurant, though, they have a very interesting and ecclectic bookstore, so we were able to browse and chat while sipping wine (a nice VII Faustino Rioja) from the adjacent bar. When we were finally seated, we got a booth right next to the stage in their back dining room. The back dining room was mostly conventional tables and booths. The main dining room, though, had a lot of casual seating arrangements with sofas, overstuffed casual chairs, and coffee tables, as well as little tiny drum-top tables with bistro chairs. The crowd here is very young, most patrons being twenty- and young thirtysomethings.

The menu is varied and simple, focusing on appetizers, salads, sandwiches, pizza, and the like, but also with a small section of fun comfort food-type entrees.

We started with the hummus with pita bread triangles as our appetizer, it having been highly recommended by some of Steven's friends. The serving was large enough to share. It was good, without being too lemony or having too much tahini (a sesame seed paste with a strong flavor). A black olive garnished the center of the dip.



Next we moved on to soup and salad. Steven selected the apple, grape, and walnut salad with goat cheese dressing. It turned out to be large enough for a small entree salad. I had the soup of the day, a delicious crab and clam soup that was reminiscent of a thin clam chowder without the potatoes and this version was full of crab and clam.

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For his main course, Steven had the baked chicken breast in pepper cream sauce. It was served on a mound of mashed potatoes, covered in the sauce, then topped with fried zuccini and yellow squash. Apparently it was good, since it was all eaten. I had the homemade meatloaf. It was a little different than I had expected. They took two big slices of meatloaf and fried them, put them on top of mashed potatoes, covered it with brown gravy, and then topped the dish with sauteed rapini. Rapini was the vegetable that accompanied the day's pasta special that I heard mentioned in the "Daily Litany," so I asked that the usual spinach be replace with the rapini, which they did at no additional charge.

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There were a lot of mouthwatering-sounding desserts from which to choose. Steven enthusiastically picked the peanut butter mousse pie and quickly pronounced it "wonderful." I forgot to ask him what the two sauces were that they used to garnish the pie, one white and one deep red....I would guess raspberry for the one, but I've no clue about the white; a dollop of whipped cream also came with the pie. I chose (after great anguish over the carrot cake) the chocolate banana bread pudding. It was a square of warm bread pudding with banana slices, topped with chocolate sauce, topped with vanilla ice cream, and garnished with a strawberry and a sprig of mint. It was good, but next time I'm trying the carrot cake!

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