The Playwright Act II, New York, N.Y.

After we went to our 5 p.m. performance of the Rockettes Christmas Spectacular and pushed our way through the huge crowds gathered in the area for the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting ceremony (almost as crazy a place to be as Times Square on New Year's Eve!), Ian and I walked around Times Square and the Theater District in quest of a place to eat before going home to Washington. I'd heard that with the stagehands' strike going on, a lot of restaurateurs were having great specials to try to get some business in the doors to make up for the missing theater crowds. About all I saw were $25 per person prix fixe menus, though.

After talking Ian out of going to Red Lobster (seriously), we ended up at a local place with a lot of New York character, The Playwright Act II, an Irish tavern and restaurant west of the Theater District. It was fun.

The entire ground level floor is a long, narrow bar with dark woods and other Irish pub-type decor. It seemed quite popular, as the bar was packed. We were taken upstairs to their dining room, where they managed to squeeze in quite a lot of tables in a small space. A bank of windows allowed patrons to look out over Eighth Avenue. Posters and photographs of Irish playwrights and writers adorned the walls.

Despite having previously declared the intention to order something different for a change, Ian ordered the chicken finger appetizer and a basket of Cajun fries.


I ordered the traditional Irish breakfast. The Irish breakfast starts around a couple of over-easy fried eggs, a couple of pieces of bacon, a couple of bangers (Irish style link sausages), a healthy helping of French fries, some toasted wheat bread, and a grilled tomato half, and then adds the quintessential elements of an Irish breakfast: black pudding and white pudding. Now, let me clarify this a bit, as we aren't talking about chocolate and vanilla pudding. These are actually links of sausage, sliced and then fried. Black pudding is the Irish version of blood sausage, a pork sausage made with pork blood (it's the blood that makes it black). White pudding is similar, though without the blood.


My breakfast was quite hearty and very tasty. Things were very heavily fried, though, and the kitchen could have had a lighter hand with the grill. That made the black and white puddings a little too done, the bacon crunchy, and the eggs "lacy" and beyond over-easy. I thought the chicken fingers looked a little more than golden brown, too.

We started to have dessert (New York cheesecake, of course!), but Ian was getting antsy about catching the early bus back to D.C., and since I was quite full from the breakfast, I acquiesced and we departed sans sweets.

Tiro A Segno, New York Rifle Club, New York, N.Y.

Ian and I started our New York visit yesterday with a business luncheon. The Chamber of Commerce where Ian volunteers every week was hosting its annual "Safe Cities, Safe Communities" luncheon, giving out "Cop of the Year" awards to NY policemen (and women) from several precincts. They had it at the distinguished and exclusive New York Rifle Club, home of the oldest private Italian dining club in the country, Tiro A Segno. It was interesting being in such a clubby dining room, knowing there was a rifle shooting range in the basement below us!

There was no salad or antipasti course, so they started directly with penne rigate with marinara sauce as a first course. Bowls of grated cheese were on the tables for people to pass.


For the second course, they brought some tender and delicious veal piccata, with roasted new potatoes and some green beans in a garlic sauce. The things with the green beans that look like almond slices in the picture are actually slices of garlic.


Bottles of PoggioPiano Rosso di Beppe Chianti 2005 were on the tables. I thought it was a very pleasant chianti that was both light and full of flavor and complexity. I noticed a couple other tables had wine buckets with white white of some sort; I don't know if white wine was a general option or if those tables paid extra money for those bottles.

Dessert was an interesting adventure. Waiters brought large bowls of fresh fruit and platters of Italian cookies and confections that were there to be passed and shared by the table. The confections included biscotti, something like madeleines dipped in chocolate sprinkles, tri-color slices of cookies, thumbprints filled with apricot preserves, and some interesting puffy cookies coated in pine nuts. The fruit bowl included pears, apples, strawberries, grapes, and what the Sicilians call "Indian figs" but what we Americans know as the fruit of a prickly pear cactus. I had to have a prickly pear. They'd done a good job of getting ripe ones, and it was delicious.

Some nice coffee was served after the desserts. It smelled almost like an espresso.

The service at the club was excellent. There were plenty of waiters, they were all well-trained, friendly, and professional, and they were always patrolling their tables to keep water carafes filled and to replace silverware as required.

Hops Grill and Brewery, Alexandria, Va.

My friend Lloyd and I ventured down to Potomac Yards in northern Alexandria to do a little shopping this afternoon, and while we were there, we decided to grab dinner at Hops Grill and Brewery. Hops is a microbrewery chain with casual American restaurant food.

The dining room is dominated by a glass walled section filled with the large brewing vats used to make their local beers. The rest of the space is red brick and dark woods.

We started off with root beers. They make their root beer in-house; we had to wait a while, since they were just finishing up a fresh batch. It definitely tasted different than the standard stuff that comes out of a pop can.

Lloyd had the crispy chicken tenders with both French fries and their house made "pub chips" (instead of one potato and one side). He likes fried food.


I ordered the bottomless soup and salad. It came with a plate of their honey-drizzled croissants we shared that were surprisingly light, crisp, and very, very good.


For a salad, one gets a choice of the regular house salad (which I got), a Caesar salad, or an iceberg lettuce wedge. The salad I got had ripe tomato wedges (even in November!), cheese, bacon, and little thin slivvers of shoestring potatoes.


There were also three soups from which to choose: baked potato, clam chowder, and onion. The potato soup is a tasty and hearty mix with cheese and bacon in the soup and garnished with chives and more cheese and bacon. The clam chowder was pretty good for a non-seafood restaurant, with a good proportion of clams and not too many potatoes. I was disappointed, though, with the French onion soup, which seemed to have been made from a powdered mix that they got just a little too strong on this batch and with a cheese covered crouton that had a rather odd taste to me. Next time, I'll just stick to the potato and clam soups.


The menu had a lot of things I wanted to try, but after all the food of the holiday weekend, I thought the lighter salad approach was the best idea. I would like to come back again.