Maggiano's Little Italy, Washington, D.C.

This afternoon, Leo and I ventured up to Friendship Heights to do a little shopping for some new spring clothes. That whole neighborhood from Mazza Gallerie up to the Saks Fifth Avenue is a great outdoor shopping strip, and this afternoon's beautiful, sunny warm weather made shopping a lot of fun.

We ended up getting hungry, so we popped in to Maggiano's Little Italy for a very late lunch/very early dinner. There was a big table with a family with a lot of young children in the dining room, so Leo insisted that we sit in the bar so we didn't have to hear the kids. Of course, the problem for me with sitting in the bar is that the televisions were all turned to ESPN to basketball games, and then at the same time they were playing old Frank Sinatra music over the restaurant's sound system.

On to food. Leo's bar theme of the night was peaches. He started with a frozen peach bellini. I tasted it....I think they were using frozen peaches along with the champagne and peach schnapps. Tasted like a bellini to me, but Leo didn't like it cause it was too sweet and he couldn't taste the alcohol. So, after he finished that, he ordered a Georgia peach ice cream martini. I sampled it, too, and it was a typical sweet vodka-based martini, but I didn't detect a cream taste or feel.

Meanwhile, we nibbled on a half order of fried calimari for an appetizer. The calimari was okay, but a slight bit limp. I've had better before, but these weren't bad. They also included tentacles in addition to the rings.



For my main course, I chose the braised beef cannelloni. Four hand-made cannelloni were stuffed with a beef-flavored two cheese mixture, covered with a cream sauce, and topped with shredded beef. It was intensely flavorful and good. The only issue I had was that the dish was a little too salty.



Leo decided upon the zuppa di pesce—fish soup—that was actually an enormous bowl of linguine tossed in a tomato sauce with mussels, shrimp, squid, and fish and I don't know what else. A lemon half rested on the pasta for zesting and two toasted bread slices garnished the bowl, looking like rabbit ears. The picture below does not fully convey the size of this bowl of pasta; the dish was easily enough to serve four people! I think they must have started with a full pound of dried linguine, as much pasta as there was. Well, Leo ended up picking out all the seafood and then could only eat about half of the pasta.



After all that pasta, Leo couldn't do dessert. I didn't want any either, but I had a large cappuccino that came with a chocolate chip biscotto that took the place of my dessert.

Thai Kitchen, Washington, D.C.

Dinner tonight at Thai Kitchen in the West End. It was a pleasant walk with our warm spring weather.

Against my advice, Leo had a Guinness stout beer that he immediately regretted upon tasting; I had a Yeungling beer that was decent enough as far as beer goes. Then we split an Thai Kitchen sampler with chicken satay in peanut sauce, shrimp rolls, and deep fried vegetarian spring rolls.



For our main courses, Leo had the paeng paa, a spicy "jungle curry" with beef and vegetables. It looked pretty, but I didn't get the impression he was all that excited about it.



I asked our waiter—who looked exactly like an Asian —to pick and bring me dinner. He selected the crisp whole flounder, a delicious dish where the whole fish was deep fried and presented on a large platter accompanied by a bowl of spicy chili and garlic sauce and a little bowl of white rice. I thought my fish was really good.



We weren't going to do dessert, but Leo decided to order two or three entrees as take-away food, so we had time to kill and ended up ordering more food. Leo had mango sticky rice that was rather routine but very beautifully presented; I had coconut ice cream that was rather routinely presented but tasted great.

Bistro Français, Georgetown, D.C.

It's raining out. Actually, now and then, it's been raining pretty hard all night long. It was raining at 2 a.m., too, when my friend Ian insisted that I walk over to Georgetown to join him for supper at Bistro Français.

It was just a simple supper. Ian only had frites and then for dessert both a chocolate cake and an order of vanilla ice cream. He decided to be novel tonight and dip his fries in his Coke. Don't you just love the collegiate diet?




I'd gone over planning to have a little salad and an artichoke, but ended up ordering the minute steak maitre d' hôtel avec frites. It was tasty; I haven't had a steak in a while, and this was good, though it was a little thin thing.

600 Restaurant at the Watergate, Washington, D.C.

After last night's performance of Carnival! at the Kennedy Center, Robert, Kevin, and I walked across the street for a late night supper at 600 Restaurant at the Watergate. A popular post-performance watering hole for many of the K.C. casts, 600 was, as usual, fairly open in the dining room and packed at the bar, so we were immediately shown to a table.

We had a simple dinner, since we were a little pressed for time; both Robert and Kevin had Metroed down and both had to change trains to get home, so we had to get them out and to the station by 11. We also wanted to allow plenty of time for Robert to supervise Kevin and make sure he got on the right subway line; before the show, Kevin called us from Woodley Park, where, for some reason, he had ended up on the red line, and then had to taxi to the Kennedy Center. I've no idea how he did that. He lives by the green line in College Park, and that intersects directly with the blue line that takes him to the Kennedy Center. You know how some people are just too intelligent for their own good?

Anyway, Kevin chose the pasta of the day, a very nice looking handmade ravioli dish with the raviolis stuffed with artichokes and mushrooms, served in a red sauce. Robert had the veal marsala; he reported the veal as being okay, but he particularly raved about the scallopped potatoes.




I wanted something lighter, so I had a bowl of lobster bisque and a tomato-mozzarella salad. The bisque was actually much better than the last time I had it here. The salad probably wasn't the best choice I could have made; tomatoes just aren't in season right now.




With dinner, I drank a Firestone sauvignon blanc and Kevin an iced tea; poor Robert, who's given up alcohol for Lent, drank water.

After dinner, Robert opted for dessert, selecting a cheesecake topped with a strawberry and which a lot of raspberry coulis squirted all over his plate.

Aditi Indian Cuisine, Georgetown, D.C.

Last night, Ian insisted that I accompany him to dinner at 9:30 at Aditi Indian Cuisine, a little place in Georgetown on the corner of M Street about a block or two from where he lives (and a good mile-plus walk for me!).

Aditi is a pleasant restaurant with a very clean, very modern look to the dining room. It actually has a fairly small footprint, but they make up for it by using not only the ground floor for a dining room and bar area, but the upstairs for another dining room, and the downstairs for restroom facilities and other things (I didn't go down there to inspect). A stairway connecting the three levels is open and contemporary. Decorative arts are minimal and tasteful, with the one big "statement" piece being this elephant that hung in the upstairs stairwell. I let Ian select the menu for us to share, since his food preferences are considerably more restricted than are mine.

We had a very nice fruited chicken biryani (think the Indian version of Chinese chicken fried rice) that I found unusually good for a biryani. The chicken pieces were tender and flavorful, and not at all dried out as so often is the case with this dish. Our second entree was aloo chole, a tasty chickpea and potato spiced casserole. The main dishes came with white basmati rice with some fresh snipped herbs and spices, raita (yogurt with diced cucumber), pappadum (peppered lentil flour wafers); and lemon pickles, a very interesting hot condiment made of lemon peel turned red with spices.



We also got a couple of orders of puri, a traditional Indian bread that has been deep fried to make it puffy, rather resembling a big, round, Mexican sopapilla. The puri came with a bowl of "green sauce" made from puréed cilantro leaves, something that is very common at Indian restaurants, but this sauce was unusually good because it had been thickened with some yogurt.



A few weeks ago, Ian had been here and debated ordering the gulab jamun for dessert, but he and his companion were afraid to get it. Why? Well, the menu description here explains that it's a "deep-fried dry milk ball," and they were apprehensive. Well, I don't really like that description; the usual description on menus elsewhere is that they are deep-fried pastry balls, which, given the cake-like consistency of the food, is really a much better explanation. One large ball is a serving; it comes in a bowl with a hot honey sauce. I don't order this dessert often, but I like it well enough. Ian, though, was only willing to taste one bite. Good thing we only got one order.