Busboys and Poets, Washington, D.C.

Sunday we went to Busboys and Poets in the U Street neighborhood, where the kitchen stays open until 2 a.m., albeit with a reduced menu after midnight. It's an interesting place full of liberals and "cause" people, and they regularly feature liberal guest speakers. They've also got an attached bookstore in one corner of the restaurant. The menu is fun and there are several "comfort foods" on the list I enjoy eating, plus they have new and interesting daily specials that spice things up.

This visit is a good example of their interesting menu. I started with the soup of the day, a surprisingly delicious, cold yellow tomato gazpacho with a little scoop of raspberry sorbet in the middle. I would not have thought to combine these two fruits, but it worked well.


Then, for my main course, I had the steak and asparagus salad with two big pieces of grilled flank steak and gorgonzola cheese crumbles, and it was delicious and very satisfying.


Ian stuck to menu standards. He had a three cheese pizza (gorgonzola, ricotta, and fresh mozzarella) as his main course, then a warm white chocolate banana bread pudding with coconut ice cream for dessert. He also got a raspberry margarita, but he didn't like it because it wasn't frozen.



The food was good. The service was unusually bad Sunday night, though. Fortunately, food is delivered from the kitchen by expediters, but our official waiter was extremely inattentive, and I kept seeing him standing in the bar counting his money, chatting with other waiters/waitresses, or just zoning out. We had to request drink/water refills, and even then they were very slow in coming; it took forever to get his attention to place the dessert order; the restaurant was not busy, so there was no reason for the slowness.