Elephant and Castle Pub and Restaurant, Washington, D.C.

Had a late lunch yesterday whilst I was downtown at Elephant and Castle, the place Robert and I ate a couple of weeks ago after the Cherry Blossom Festival. I wasn't nearly as impressed with it this time, finding the food to be mediocre at best. We sat outside on the patio, but, alas, we we near a youngish smoker who chain-smoked throughout his meal (even after women at two different nearby tables asked him to stop blowing smoke in their direction). We had a fun waitress, though, so she made the dining experience amusing.

I got the "bangers and mash," a traditional pub fare item marked on the menu as one of their "favorites," which was a couple of fried English link sausages served on a bed of mashed potatoes with some nondescript gravy, garnished with a couple of sprigs of desiccating thyme and some greasy fried onions, and accompanied by a little bowl of bland brown beans and some slices of spiced apple they called chutney. My sausages were small, dry, and nearly cold, and I don't think they'd have been particularly flavorful anyway had they not been overcooked.

My lunching companion, who didn't want to be mentioned or photographed, chose to drink lunch, selecting the Sam Adams Summer Ale.

For dessert, my companion had the Bailey's Irish Cream cheesecake, without the drizzled chocolate sauce, and a bowl of vanilla ice cream. I thought the cheesecake looked rather bare and forlorn without the chocolate, and they did nothing for plate garnish in the alternative. I tasted a little bit of it and didn't like it.....it felt unpleasantly gummy in the mouth.


I had their daily special, something they called strawberry shortcake. I also requested my dessert without the drizzles of chocolate sauce (who ever heard of putting chocolate sauce on strawberry shortcake?). They took a piece of yellow cake, split it in half, put a few strawberry slices and some squirts of tasteless whipped cream on the bottom half of the cake, put the top half of the cake on top of the whipped cream, then added a light dusting of powdered sugar and a little dollop of whipped cream. They would have been better off marketing this dessert as a yellow cake with a strawberry and whipped cream garnish. I only ate maybe a quarter of it and then pushed it away.