Daily bread

This afternoon I was downtown by the Department of Justice and walked by a restaurant with tonight's bread stacked up in the window. I had to take a picture.

Stars Bistro and Bar, Washington, D.C.

After Mass at St. John's yesterday morning, our friend Max took us to Stars Bistro and Bar for brunch. Stars is actually a renaming and continuation of the restaurant formerly known as Mimi's An American Bistro, a place we used to go a lot until they changed ownership and the food and service quality majorly deteriorated. Yesterday I found the brunch menu options to be rather limited, but my food was excellent, and everyone at the table enjoyed their food (once it arrived). We also had a charming, friendly, and attentive waitress, but the restaurant was understaffed, there was no bartender, and there seemed to be issues back in the kitchen, much the same as the problems we had previously experienced.

We started with bloody Marys. I'm not thrilled with their recipe. They use a very bright, fruity tomato juice base, and I cringed as I watched our waitress back behind the bar pouring olive juice into the shakers. They created the "spice" with lots of Tabasco sauce instead of having spices in the mix, and the liquid was decidedly lacking in horseradish, an ingredient I've always considered essential. The glasses were rimmed with a rather bland paprika mix, and the glasses garnished with a lime wedge on the rim and two impaled olives on a stick laying across the top of the glass—no celery stalk! I had two bloodies (tall ones, too, served in pilsner glasses), and wasn't buzzed in the least, so they were pouring light on the vodka. Given the $8 per drink price, the bloodies were a bit disappointing.

Anyway, it being brunch, we went straight to the food. Max and Laurent both ordered the eggs Benedict. They both said they were good. What I noticed was that the dish was not garnished in any way and the English muffins looked either very thin or somewhat squashed. They also were rather dwarfed on the oversized plate. French fries came with each serving; the menu said they came with fruit or home fries (home fries are thicker cut than French fries).


Ryan opted for a bacon cheddar cheeseburger. It was presented as a thick stack surmounted by a cherry pepper. He chose the salad instead of French fries, but he did so after specifically asking if they had ranch dressing and getting a confirmation; when the expediter brought the plate, he said they didn't have ranch and they'd put a balsamic vinaigrette on the salad greens. That, of course, is a major restaurant faux pas, as they should have asked before bringing out the plate with already-dressed greens. So, Ryan left the salad on the plate and had the waitress bring him some French fries instead.


I chose the grilled steak and asparagus. I got two very tender strips of nicely seasoned flank steak served on a bed of salad greens with grilled asparagus, corn relish, chopped tomato, cucumbers, and crumbled feta cheese (the menu said crumbled gorgonzola, but that wasn't what I got).


Max abstained from dessert. Ryan had a bowl of chocolate ice cream garnished with whipped cream and Laurent had the most interesting selection, a banana white chocolate bread pudding with coconut ice cream. It looked quite good.




I got their pecan pie à la mode. I was expecting a wedge of pecan pie with ice cream, but there was no ice cream, just a large dollop of whipped cream. Now, to be very literal, "à la mode," despite many Americans' beliefs, does not mean "with ice cream," but merely "in the style" or "in the fashion"....perchance they took the position that the "fashion" for serving pecan pie is with just whipped cream, and that's why I didn't get the ice cream I anticipated. The pie itself was good, but quite different; it was barely sweet, not being the usual sugar- and syrup-filled dish we usually get, and the filling had a vaguely oily feel to it instead of butter; they used a lot of chopped pecans instead of a single layer of pecan halves. It was an intriguing recipe, and as soon as I can find some reasonably priced fresh pecans (right now, pecans are about $3/pound more than walnuts!), I may experiment with their idea and tweak it a bit.


One of the things that makes Stars/Mimi's fun is their singing waiters who do mostly show tunes and the occasional light opera aria. Unfortunately, in the ownership change last year, they did away with the singers at brunch, and they now appear only at dinner. At brunch, they have a couple of young boys who play the piano and a bass for a quasi-jazz feel (we had to ask a couple of times to have the bass volume turned down, because it was giving us headaches). So, Star's is still much like my last review of Mimi's: it's not an awful place, it's just not good enough or fun enough anymore to be on our regular rotation.

El Tamarindo, Washington, D.C.

Saturday evening, Ryan and I had been up in the Takoma neighborhood near Walter Reed Army Medical Center helping our friend Robert with a yard sale. Once the last box of unsold goodies was stored in the basement, we limped off to dinner at El Tamarindo Restaurant, Robert's favorite Salvadorean place in Tacoma.

El Tamarindo reminds me of a bustling family-owned restaurant that's clean, but not fancy or decorated at all. It's a sister restaurant of a place of the same name in Adams-Morgan. There was a mixed crowd Saturday night with many tables of Spanish speaking families, as well as other non-Hispanic patrons; a community dinner meeting conducted in Spanish was going on in the basement dining room.

We started with some Salvadorean appetizers. Ryan got a crab and shrimp quesadilla that was thick with white, traditional cheese and served with sour cream and yummy guacamole, and the piece I sampled was delicious.


Robert and I both had pupusas, traditional food made in Central American for thousands of years, that are rather like two thin cornmeal pancakes put together around a filling and then weighted and fried together. I had a simple pupusa de queso with the white cheese in between. Robert had two pupusas—cheese, I think—plus a little bowl of curtido, a sort of pickled cabbage and hot pepper slaw topped with tomato sauce that is a common pupusa accompaniment.


For main courses, Robert had the beef chimichanga. It looked like they had cooked a whole Sunday chuck roast, shredded it, and stuffed his tortilla with fragrant, juicy beef. It had been pan fried after rolling instead of deep fried, and that, of course, is a much healthier way to prepare chimis. It came with rice and a large salad on the plate.


Ryan had "trios enchiladas," a beef, a chicken, and a cheese enchilada platter. It had been scattered with even more white cheese and garnished with big dollops of sour cream and guacamole.



My dinner choice was the El Tamarindo Special, a house special starring a whole fried sea bass and accompanied with several large shrimp and some crab in a rich tomato cream sauce. It was delicious. It also came with rice and salad, the salad dressed in a lightly sweet dressing reminiscent of poppy seed dressing but without the poppy seeds.


After all this food, Robert and I were stuffed, but Ryan opted to have some flan for dessert.



El Tamarindo is a nice find. It has great, flavorful, authentic Salvadorean food at very, very reasonable prices. I'm going to have to make a point to try their Adams-Morgan location, as well.