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!

Thai Kingdom, Washington, D.C.

After Mass Sunday, Laurent and I had to go to Union Station to pick up his train ticket in anticipation of his holiday trip to his mother's house in Connecticut. We had lunch at Thai Kingdom.

We each started with chicken, mushroom, and onion soup, but Laurent had the tom yum gai version with a tomato and lemon grass broth and I had the tom ka gaiwith coconut milk broth. For our main courses, he had white pepper and garlic beef and I had the daily special, a fried fish in green curry sauce with steamed broccoli. My fish was excellent, though I think it was the hottest green curry I've had (usually the red curry is the hot). For dessert, I had the standard mango sticky rice. Laurent continued his multi-dessert trend, starting with the coconut custard and following it with the mango ice cream.

La Madeleine, Fairfax, Va.

Saturday afternoon, Kevin and I had to go to Fairfax to assist with a Masonic funeral for a late elderly brother of our lodge. After the ceremonies, we went to the La Madeleine near Tyson's Corner Galleria for a late lunch.

La Madeleine is a Dallas-based chain on the French theme with four or five dozen stores nationwide, sort of a step above fast food, but with a sort of cafeteria line means of ordering food.

Kevin ordered the beef pesto croissant, a huge sandwich served with a bow-tie pasta salad. I almost forgot to photograph it, so in the picture, he'd already eaten half the salad and half of the sandwich. He also got a potato galette (a big, fried potato cake) and a very pretty mixed fruit tart.




I had a very nice "turkey sampler" with a large slice of turkey breast covered in white mushroom cream sauce (delicious!) accompanied by some dressing and green beans "almondine" (of all the places to misspell amondine, it's in a "French" restaurant! LOL).



I like La Madeleine. I'd go to their stores a whole lot more often if I didn't have to order from a cafeteria line.

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

Friday night after the symphony, Laurent wanted dessert while Ryan and Robert were running off to Dupont Circle, so Laurent and I stopped on the walk home at 600 Restaurant at the Watergate. I usually don't like going to 600, since they cater to the Kennedy Center crowds, which means they have a lot of pre-prepared items that can be served quickly to their in-a-rush, pre-theater customers, all at a premium price. Laurent, though, is not particularly discriminating, so I acquiesced, and it turned out to be a pleasant surprise that it was an acceptable experience.

Our intention was just to have dessert. Laurent ordered their chocolate explosion cake and I got the pecan pie. The cake had the standard uniformity of the commercial dessert manufacturers, but Laurent liked it. The pecan pie was actually good. It was a generous serving of standard pecan pie without any "weirdness" about it, and I enjoyed it. My only criticism is that the server had popped it into the microwave to warm it (you'll recall my previous rants about microwaving pastries and breads), so it was my fault for not telling her to serve it room temperature.

Then, Laurent decided he was still hungry, so he ordered a French onion soup. And then a Caesar salad. And then another dessert—the crème brulée. The soup and salad both looked good. The crème brulée is definitely pre-made here (the top sugar crust is supposed to be hot, in contrast to the cold custard below) and 600's are cold through and through; Laurent didn't care. At his encouragement, I ordered an appetizer (though I refused a second dessert!).

Now, their appetizer mussels at 600 are a Provençale-style preparation, baked with tomato sauce. On their entrée list, though, they do mussels "meuniere, " or at least their version of meuniere, steamed in white wine then sauced with minced shallots and a cream sauce. I didn't want tomato sauce, so I had them do the appetizer mussels with the entree sauce, and the kitchen happily complied. It was very, very good.

While Laurent was eating his second dessert, I had a nice little glass of Sandeman port.

California Tortilla, Washington, D.C.

Ryan and I were in the Cleveland Park neighborhood Wednesday afternoon to go to PetsMart and stopped in first for lunch at California Tortilla. California Tortilla is a locally-owned chain of Mexican fast food restaurants (with no stores at all in California, to my knowledge) in the same vein as Chipotle, Baja Fresh, and so forth, featuring several Mexican-American items, but concentrating particularly on oversized burritos.

Ryan had the crunchy BBQ ranch burrito, a barbecued chicken thing, but I've no idea what made it "crunchy." It included the usual lettuce, rice, and beans, and he seemed to like it a lot.

I got a very unusual "gyros burrito." Yes, gyros. Those of you who've been to a Greek restaurant have seen and maybe eaten gyros sandwiches on pita bread before. This was a rather unique burrito made with all the standard Mexican stuff, but also with gyros meat (a lamb blend) and bits of feta cheese. I'm not quite sure of my opinion; the gyros meat works, but the feta has a zing to it that is inconsistent with the normal zang of Mexican items.

We both had our burritos made into "combos" for the drinks and the queso dip. I liked the cheese flavor, but it was definitely "processed cheese food," rather than real melted cheese. One of the unique things about the restaurant is an enormous display of hot pepper sauces from which patrons can choose, should they like a fieryer spice.

They gave each of us a free sample of their turkey chili. It was good! There was a nice balance of flavor and light spice, and the turkey could almost pass for beef. It is something I might actually buy as a free standing entree on a future visit.