When to dine and when to just eat?

Eating out in Washington is expensive. There are a lot of places here that cater to the lobbyists and others on an unlimited expense account, and a lot of the so-called "mid-range" places shift their prices up to help fill in the void. My friends, knowing that I'm not a multi-millionaire, sometimes ask me how I manage to eat at so many nice places around town. Well, it's all just a matter of planning, budget, timing, and a sense of "appropriate need."

You'll recall that I usually try to hit the famous and expensive restaurants during the semi-annual Restaurant Weeks, and even then, I prefer to do the lunches rather than the dinners (the food is usually exactly the same, so why pay $30 instead of $20?). I try to take advantage of daily specials and prix fixe menus to maximize my dining dollar. I also note that some things are actually cheaper to order out than to fix at home, especially since our nasty little Safeway grocery store in the Watergate complex has such expensive, poor quality produce and meats. And, then, I know not to run up a big tab at places where the food is less than exquisite—sometimes I have to eat to live, not live to eat.

If I'm short of cash, I might actually go to a fast food restaurant. McDonald's has double cheeseburgers for $1 each, and for $2.20 (10% sales tax in D.C.), one can get full (we won't talk about calories or fat grams). But, fast food is not always a good choice for budget dining. Not long ago, we were at Arby's in Springfield Mall. A combo meal of a roast beef sandwich, curly fries (did you know they don't have potato cakes at Arby's any more? I was so sad!), and a soft drink was $7.69. Going back for dessert items ($2-something) put the meal's cost at over $10 per person. And that was at a fast food place with no waiters or table service. I would rather go to a sit down restaurant and order sensibly and economically than pay that kind of money for fast food.

Such was also the case the other night when Ian and I went for happy hour and dinner at McFadden's. McFadden's, just across the street from the GWU campus, is a big bar with food. Mediocre food. In fact, our friend Laurent, a GWU alumnus, went drinking there for four years and didn't know they even had food. So, I don't like to spend much money there.

It was half price burger night, so I had a basic Angus burger with onion rings. No added cheese or other things on the burger. I drank water. It was $4, plus 40¢ tax plus 60¢ tip, totaling $5. I asked for the burger to be cooked medium, and it arrived with char on the outside, but still dripped blood from the inside (that averages out to medium, doesn't it?). The onion rings were limp and barely warm. But, hey, it was a $5 dinner.

Ian, on the other hand, didn't like the happy hour $2 beers, so he got a Guinness ($7). He didn't want a hamburger, so he got the vodka marinara pasta ($8) and had them add some grilled chicken (and what a pittance of chicken it was!) for an additional $3.


And, he wanted a salad, so he got a Caesar salad with no dressing ($6). Then, instead of another beer, he had a Coke ($2). He spent $26 plus $2.60 tax plus $3.90 tip, or $32.50 for a very mediocre dinner.


A lot of times, restaurants don't have exactly what I want. If I'm in the mood for a manhattan and the bar doesn't stock rye, then I don't drink a manhattan. If I want blueberry syrup for my pancakes and they only have "regular" or strawberry, I either do without or I use the regular (and I certainly don't pay a $2 upcharge for "real" Maple syrup!). It's just not a big deal. But, some people insist on certain foods or condiments. The other day, Ian was over and feeling thrifty and hungry at the same time, so I made us cheese omelettes, baked French fries, and whole grain toast for a quick and inexpensive meal with what was on hand. I'm out of catsup, though. No catsup is not really a big deal for me, since I usually eat fries plain or with the Belgian/French tradition of mayonnaise, and I have mayonnaise, plus a lot of the Ranch dressing that Ryan liked to use on his food, in the refrigerator. It was a crisis for Ian, however. He wouldn't eat the fries without catsup. It was so important to him that he left and walked to the Seven-Eleven to get catsup. By the time he got back, his food was cold, but at least he had catsup for his cold fries. He got what he wanted, but there was a cost to fulfilling his want.

I always think that people should eat what they like. They need to remember, though, that a lot of the extras and special requests and eccentricities add up, and that refusing to eat certain "sale" foods bumps them up to higher and higher price ranges. I get what I want. But I adjust my "want" to be reasonable for the establishment and the circumstances. For the $27.50 cost difference in our McFadden's dinners, I can easily afford to eat out another time, and at a really nice place, too (think about those $20 Restaurant Week lunches at the top restaurants in town).

And thus is the art of dining out in Washington.

Redrock Canyon Grill, Silver Spring, Md.

Robert and I lunched yesterday at Redrock Canyon Grill in Silver Spring, braving the freezing rain and gusty winds.

Redrock Canyon Grill is part of a small, mid-Atlantic chain of restaurants with a large bar and typical mid-range franchise food, all with a "Texas" theme to the upscale menu. Aside from a welcoming, blazing fireplace by the entrance, the dining room was open and spacious, done in dark woods and with a big window wall, but had no Texas or southwestern kitsch laying around. The staff wore blue jeans and white Western shirts, and all were overly friendly and solicitous. I'm surprised they didn't have them in bandanas and cowboy hats, too.

Robert selected the pulled pork sandwich with French fries for his main course. It all looked very standard.


I had one of the daily specials, a Texas chopped salad. It was delicious. The meat was barbecued chicken, and in addition to the usual things, it contained little cubes of jicama and half a sliced avocado. The entire large salad was decorated with a few artistic squirts of barbecue sauce. I also got a wedge of their Texas skillet cornbread that included creamed corn and bits of jalapeño peppers.


For dessert, while I just drank some hot coffee with cream, Robert had the apple blossom pastry. Now, I wasn't really sure was an apple blossom pastry was, envisioning tiny, delicate flowers in apricot glaze on a small square of puff pastry and realizing that not only were apple blossoms not in season (yet), but they were not generally considered edible, so I asked the waitress to explain it to me. After she gave her corporate-established spiel, I said, "Ohhhh, it's an apple dumpling." You would have thought that I had stabbed her in the heart. While she confessed that it was "like" an apple dumpling, it wasn't one, because it's "different." Alas, the demands they place on the poor wait staff.

Once it arrived, there appeared to be two different sauces, one more transparent and honey-colored over the apple and a dark, caramel-looking sauce over the ice cream. I inspected it and it looked like a standard apple dumpling, though I must confess that when I make apple dumplings, I set the apple up on a square of pastry and fold the pastry up to join together on the top of the apple, while at Redrock, their apple is laid on its side and the pastry seam is underneath. So, it's "different."

Redrock Canyon Grill is a pleasant place with decent food and ample service. Next time you're in the downtown Silver Spring shopping district, give it a try.