Saigon Saigon, Arlington, Va.

Last night, Leo rang me from Virginia and wanted me to come down immediately to help him shop for linens, so I wandered down to Pentagon Row to join him. After he completed his purchases, we went to Saigon Saigon for a quick dinner. It was a little chilly, so we chose comfort foods. We started with an appetizer assortment platter then we both had different kinds of pho (beef noodle soup). The food there is, as always, good. The pho photo is bepfore I added the bean sprouts, basil leaves, mint, etc. My version had lots of very thin slices of beef flank and eye of round; Leo's had little meatballs and something else.

El Pike, Falls Church, Va.

Well, the Nintendo Ian bought last night was defective, so we had to make another shopping excursion tonight to exchange it. We decided to go to Falls Church, Virginia, this time instead of Maryland. After completing the transaction, Ian decided that Mexican food sounded good for dinner. We had passed a place called El Pike on the way to the store, so we decided to try it.

Well, El Pike isn't a Mexican restaurant. It's Bolivian. And the food is very different.

They have a fairly large dining room filled with inexpensive restaurant tables and chairs. A dance floor with some musical instruments was on one side of the room. A bar was in the back of the other. Decor was simple, consisting of a few unusual masks hanging on the walls. Our waitress is a Spanish speaker; her English was quite a bit more limited than my meagre high school Spanish.

We started with an appetizer, selecting the corn con queso, thinking it would be a cheese dip for tortilla chips. We didn't get any tortilla chips. And it wasn't a dip. Instead, our choclo con queso was a round piece of white farmer-style cheese and some corn on the cob with the biggest, white corn kernels I think I've ever seen. I'm not quite sure what the proper etiquette is for eating this dish, so we just nibbled on the corn then took little bits of the cheese. I gather this is a popular food, since I later noticed some South American-looking people at the bar eating it.



Ian had the pollo saltado, a variation on the traditional Peruvian lomo saltado, for his main course. He liked it, saying the chicken had a very good flavor, and practically licking his plate clean. A "saltado" dish generally features strips of meat marinaded in wine or vinegar with spices, then cooked with lots of peppers, tomatoes, and onions and served with fried potatoes. The version at El Pike included both fried potatoes and parsley-sprinkled white rice.



I had a traditional Bolivian dish called silpancho. With a similar base of fried potatoes and white rice, the silpancho is basically a lightly flour-dredged piece of steak pounded thin and then pan fried. Chopped onions, hot peppers, tomatoes, and cilantro topped the steak and the entire dish was capped with a couple of fried eggs. The meat was very tasty, but it was initially hard to eat since it rested on the potatoes and rice on a plate that was full to the brim, restricting leverage for cutting without making a big mess.



For dessert, Ian ordered the rice pudding, but it turned out they were out of it, so we managed to get out without the additional calories. The tab was very inexpensive (by Washington standards), with the big serving entrees costing around $10 or $11. Then we left to return to the District, braving tonight's gale-force winds.

The Cheesecake Factory, Rockville, Md.

Well, so much for today being a fast day and my idea that I might give up meat for Lent. My friend Ian is such a bad influence! This evening, he decided that we had to go shopping in Maryland. Once we got there, he announced that he was ravenously hungry, so after inspecting all the restaurants and food court spots in the mall, he decided that we had to go to The Cheesecake Factory.

It was, as usual, crowded, and we had about a twenty minute wait for a table. The Rockville store is much like all the others in terms of decor, though this one seeemed to be rather longer and narrower than many.

The worst thing about this Cheesecake Factory—and this is common to all of them—is that they don't have any proper iced tea. All they offer is this nasty, disgusting "tropical iced tea," with a cloying mango-passionfruit taste. I really wish their corporate office would offer a normal, regular iced tea as an alternative.

We started by splitting a fried macaroni and cheese appetizer. They make balls of macaroni and cheese, bread them, and then deep fry them, and they are quite delicious! Four large balls make up the dish, and I daresay that a whole order of them plus a little green salad would make a tasty, filling, full dinner for someone. They were served on a pool of a rather medicinal-tasting marinara sauce that next time I will remember to have the kitchen hold. I didn't think the marinara added much to the mac and cheese balls, anyway.



For his main course, Ian ordered the Factory burrito grande, a long, oval plate-sized chicken, cheese, and rice burrito. He always orders his burritos bare, so he had them serve the guacamole, tomatoes, sour cream, and cilantro toppings on the side, which meant that I got a nice little "guacamole salad" to enjoy with my meal. The burrito came with Spanish rice and black beans.



I had the Hungarian goulash with buttered noodles. It was surprisingly good. The goulash consisted of a lot of chunks of tender, flavorful beef stewed with caramelized onions in a brown sauce spiced with Hungarian paprika. The whole plate was sprinkled with snipped parsley.



Even though I really wanted some chocolate cake or some carrot cake, I knew I couldn't eat a whole piece after all the food we'd already had, so I acquiesced to eating cheesecake, since Ian had never eaten at this chain before and hadn't ever had their cheesecake. We split a piece of their "original" cheesecake topped with glazed, fresh strawberries and garnished with two big dollops of whipped cream.

Kam Fong Chinese Seafood Restaurant, Washington, D.C.

As we walked through Chinatown tonight, we heard the din of drums and bells as a group of musicians accompanied a dragon that was making its way down the street. On the side walk, Chinese teen boys were setting off firecrackers and sparkling showers. Can you tell it's the Chinese New Year?

Having heard rumblings that it was soon to close, for dinner we headed to Kam Fong Chinese Seafood Restaurant. I've always liked Kam Fong, with its Asian bakery and a big tank of fish, lobster, and crab up front, and barbecued ducks, pork ribs, and roast pig hanging in the front window.

We had a lovely repast for our new year's dinner. We had a hot casserole of lamb, dried tofu, big shiitake mushrooms, and scallions in a brown sauce. Our cold dish was a beautiful plate of thinly sliced pieces of smoked pig's feet arranged around the outside of the platter with some picked spears of cucumber and carrot in the center, topped with a huge mound of long, long strips of vinegared jellyfish. We had Chinese water spinach sautéed with sliced garlic for our vegetable, and Chinese e mein for our "good luck" long noodles. Complimentary white rice and hot tea came with the meal.

We ate all the jellyfish, pig's feet, and lamb, so I brought home the leftover water spinach and Leo brought home the leftover noodles.

I hope Kam Fong isn't closing. Real estate prices have gotten so high in the Chinatown area that we really don't have a Chinatown anymore, it's more like a "China Block." Our favorite place for dim sum, Lei Garden, closed at the end of last year, even though it always seemed to have excellent business and great food. Lei Garden, is on the other side of the CVS Pharmacy from Kam Fong; I wonder if CVS is expanding or if the building is just going condo?

Anyway, we'll just have to see what happens. Meanwhlie, gung hay fat choy to everyone!