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

There was a little gathering of supernumaries after tonight's Kirov Ballet performance at 600 Restaurant, which is across the street from the Kennedy Center. Not that many people went, but it was fun nonetheless.

I drank some Domaine Chandon champagne, but most of the other people were having cranberry drinks of various kinds and sorts. I thought cranberry was passé these days. Aren't we all supposed to be drinking pomegranate now?

Café Promenade, Washington, D.C.

Last week was Restaurant Week in D.C. For various reasons, I wasn't all that enthusiastic this year about doing the seven restaurants in seven days routine, but my friends Peter and Paul insisted in me going to dinner with them this past Saturday. After a great deal of discussion and trial and error on getting reservations to our more preferred places, we ended up with reservations at Café Promenade in the Renaissance Mayflower Hotel in the "Golden Triangle" area of downtown near Farragut Square.

The Mayflower is one of those old, splendid hotels that they just don't make anymore, and "ornate" just doesn't begin to describe the architecture. A long, white marble promenade runs the one-block length of hotel, and about half way down, the Café sits, surprisingly open to the central passageway. There's a large dome in the ceiling over the center of the restaurant from which hangs a spectacular and enormous crystal chandelier.

Now, the Café Promenade is one of those places listed in restaurant guides as "very expensive," where one should expect to pay over $51 per person for dinner, exclusive of tax, tip, and drinks. That makes the $30.08 per person Restaurant Week price especially attractive, though at the more expensive places, one should expect choices that are not typically on the regular menu. Such was the case here, as there were three choices each for first course, main course, and dessert, all of which were fairly simple compared to the usual menu.

Paul and Peter started with the caprese napoleon, a play on the traditional Italian caprese salad of sliced tomatoes, fresh mozzarella cheese, and fresh basil leaves and the current restaurant fad of making "napoleons" out of non-pastry, non-dessert foods. Here, the napoleon was sort of stacked in layers, though I didn't really feel the stacking effect when the plates arrived at the table. They both commented that tomatoes weren't in season.



I chose the New England-style clam chowder. It was pretty good as far as chowders go, with a balance of milk and cream in the soup and small pieces of clam midst the potatoes. While I've had better at several places, I didn't really have any complaints about the soup here. The fresh snipped chives and crumbles of flavorful bacon as garnish added a nice flavor touch.

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Peter got the petit filet for his main course. It was a very nice sized piece of meat, and not petit at all! He seemed pleased with the meat and the presentation. It came with a couple of steamed asparagus spears and some Peruvian purple potatoes, all atop a mirror of brown sauce.



Paul and I both got the broiled Arctic char. I wish I'd gotten the filet. The char was tasty enough, but more than a touch over cooked, and it arrived last at the table but still was merely lukewarm instead of piping hot. This was all quite a disappointment, since this restaurant is noted for its lavish Friday night seafood buffet. The slab of fish rested on a bed of some unpleasantly starchy and bland risotto that I didn't finish. The highlight of the dish was the accompanying steamed rapini vegetable.



Peter drank a Corona beer with dinner. Paul and I split a pleasant bottle of Brancott Sauvignon Blanc Reserve Marlborough 2003, a New Zealand wine.

I thought Paul and Peter's desserts looked rather like typical hotel restaurant quick-service food items. Paul had the ginger crème brulée that clearly had been made far in advance and thoroughly chilled, instead of being branded or broiled immediately prior to service. He reported an intense ginger flavor to the custard, but otherwise didn't find it noteworthy.



Peter had a square of chocolate mousse cake. It looked incredibly ordinary to me. A little pool of tropical fruit sauce garnished the plate, and several fresh berries sat in the pool.



On the other hand, I had a very enjoyable dessert. They took ricotta cheese, sweetened it, added a lot of cinnamon, whipped it, then piped it into a large bowled wine glass. The cheese was topped with lightly sweetened fresh blackberries and raspberries. It was a flavorful end to my meal that was light yet satisfying.

Surprisingly, we were not offered coffee during or after the dessert course.

The coffee issue highlights the major issue with the meal, though. The service was substandard. Now, at an ordinary national franchise place, the levels of service would have been adequate; at an elegant place with the pretentiousness and high prices of Café Promenade, the service was woefully disappointing. The food for the same course was not brought to the table at the same time. My fish was cold. There were no fish forks or fish knives. The plates didn't all match. We had to pour our own wine refills. The table was never crumbed. The three water glasses for the table had all been set on the opposite side of the table, and since I opted to sit in the chair instead of with Paul and Peter on the curved banquette, I never had a glass of water for the entire meal. When the wine bottle ran out, we weren't asked if we wanted more. And they never offered us any coffee.

Now, one of the great challenges of hotel restaurants is that often they are asked to do and be too many things. That's the case at Café Promenade, too, as they serve not only dinner, but breakfast, lunch, and even afternoon tea. I allow for these sorts of things in considering and evaluating hotel restaurants, but I have to say that Café Promenade falls short of expectations. While the setting is certainly beautiful, the food was fancy but uninspired and the service was disappointing. Had I been paying full price for the food instead of the great R.W. discount, I would have been much more disappointed. I would not object to another try at Café Promenade, since we had a very nice dining experience and the food was enjoyable over all, but as far as the fine, technical points of elegant fine dining, they miss the mark.


Paul's Kody Pose

Filomena Ristorante, Georgetown, D.C.

Now, for a week, I've been trying to get Ian to agree on a restaurant for his birthday dinner last night, making all kinds of suggestions for places to which he had not already been. Yet, he kept coming back to the same old place, which is not a bad place, mind you, but it's a place we've already been to multiple times. Well, it was his birthday, not mine, so I finally acquiesced to taking him to Filomena Ristorante in Georgetown.

It was a very pleasant evening at Filomena. The little pasta grandmother was up in the window making cavatini when we got there. It wasn't crowded, so even though we were early, we were immediately seated. And, unlike all of my previous visits when the restaurant was jam packed and the noise levels at the top of the decibel range, it was a calm, quiet night, and we could actually hear ourselves talk!

Ian started with the Italian chicken and pasta soup and opted to have his grown-up chicken noodle soup served in a bread bowl.



I looked at the side order offerings instead of appetizers and selected a trio of mushrooms mixed and sautéed together, and it ended up being a lovely first course size. With the first course, Ian got a glass of Vallarom Chardonnay 2004 and I got the Bottega Vinaia, "Trentino" Pinot Grigio 2006, though we ended up trading after Ian sampled both.



For his main course, Ian ordered the pasta special del giorno, pollo e pesto. This was a rigatoni dish in a pesto cream sauce with slices of chicken breast, garnished with cherry tomato halves and parmesano cheese freshly grated tableside. It was a very large serving, so Ian ended up taking half of it home in a doggy bag.



Continuing my non-traditionality, I ordered the appetizer arancini with a side order of rapini for my main course. Arancini are these wonderful golf ball-sized rice balls stuffed with mozzarella and bolognese meat sauce, then rolled in bread crumbs and deep fried, and accompanied by a marinara sauce. The rapini—"known" in the U.S. as "broccoli rabe"—was sautéed with garlic and olive oil and was delicious. Incidentally, it is not botanically related to broccoli at all, but is related to turnips. With our main courses, we each had glasses of Ruffino "Aziano" Chianti Classico 2005.



For dessert, Ian selected the strawberry cheesecake as his "birthday cake." Our waiter brought it with a sparkler in it (thankfully, this isn't a restaurant that drags over the entire wait staff to "sing" to the birthday boy). Ian took half of it home, too. Filomena's always serves complimentary Sambuca (anise liqueur) and amaretto (almond liqueur) at the end of the meal, so we didn't order a dessert wine. Ian tried the Sambuca with the traditional three coffee beans in his snifter, but, like me, he's not a fan of anise or licorice flavor. We then drifted to the amaretto and its nutty sweetness.



As always, the food was delicious and well prepared and the service was friendly and efficient. Filomena's is one of the top two or three Italian restaurants in D.C.

There was a table full of priests sitting next to us, and on our way out of the restaurant, they chatted with us a bit and gave Ian a birthday blessing.

Birthday bars

Yesterday was Ian's 21st birthday.

We celebrated last night, with a shopping excursion to Pentagon City. While we were in Arlington, we stopped in for his first legal happy hour at Sin é Irish Pub and Restaurant for some happy. He had a pint of Guinness while I drank a pint of Sin é Red Irish Ale, then the bartendress made him a "woo woo"—vodka and peach schnapps with cranberry juice. He also drank most of my Bushmill's Irish Whiskey on the rocks with a splash.

Guinness	Woo-Woo	Bushmill's

Next we went to dinner in Georgetown, after which Ian made his way to The Tombs to meet a friend at midnight to pass the birthday torch, as his friend's 21st birthday is today. They were drinking big mugs of beer there, from the looks of the photos.

Anyway, Ian's legal now, and he made good use of his newly acquired legal status.


Beer at The Tombs

Tai Shan Chinese Restaurant, Washington, D.C.

Saturday, we were back in Chinatown, and hit Tai Shan, a Chinese place that features $4.95 lunch specials. I had the Hunan chicken, with a huge amount of chicken plus brocolli and carrots in a spicy sauce. Ian had the chicken with mixed vegetables, but what he'd really wanted was chicken with snow peas and baby corn, so he wasn't that excited about his lunch special. He ate everything except the broccoli, bamboo shoots, and cabbage (those vegetables were most of the dish!), but it all looked quite good to me.

Burma Restaurant, Washington, D.C.

On our shopping trip to Chinatown Friday night, Laurent wanted dinner before we went to the store. Well, Chinatown has a wide variety of restaurants, though the number of national chains is fast outpacing the number of Chinese and even Asian restaurants in the now high-rent area surrounding the Verizon Center (the "sports" arena).

We walked down to the far end of "China Block" and around the corner, where there are some nice, non-touristy places. We chose Burma Restaurant.

Burma is one of the long-time neighborhood restaurants there, and, as one might guess from the name, it features Burmese food. Burma/Myanmar isn't a well-known country around here. It's sandwiched between India and Thailand, with substantial coastline on the Bay of Bengal.

The restaurant is on the second floor of a building, over a well-financed Thai restaurant that recently moved to Chinatown. Burma, though, has been around for a decade or two. The decor is spare, with closely spaced, simple tables and chairs in a fairly small main dining room (there appears to be a back room, too, but it wasn't in use). Photographs of Burma adorn the walls.

The menu is small by typical Asian restaurant standards, but there were still quite a few more interesting items on the list than we were able to try.

We started with Golden Triangles, made from seasoned potatoes wrapped in what seemed a bit like phyllo dough, and then deep fried. It came with a sweet sauce with an ample pour of red chile sauce in it.



For main courses, Ian had chicken curry with potatoes. It was a yellow curry with a lot of chicken still on the bone in the dish. It's the dish above in the foreground. I had the sautéed squid. It's the dish in the background. It was surprisingly good. The squid had been decoratively scored and cut, then tossed with scallions, ginger, and garlic and served with a little bit of brown broth; bits of tasty country ham added an unexpected rich note.



Dessert was intriguing. We split the Burmese coconut cream cake, and what we got was totally unexpected. The dish bore two triangles of cake made from, of all things, Cream of Wheat, with rice flour, palm sugar, and coconut milk. It had a denser, grainier texture than a normal cake, and reminded me somewhat of cornbread. A small dollop of whipped cream and a matching dollop of ice cream accompanied the cakes.

Along with my meal, I had a very pleasant Burmese hot tea. Ian had a Coke.

Sorry about the photo quality in this entry. I didn't know we were going to be eating out, so I didn't bring my camera, and we had to use Ian's cell phone.

Burma is a place I'll definitely visit again. Service was inobtrusive and adequate. The food was light and simple, yet bursting with complex flavors, and, best of all, the prices were cheap and the serving size large.