Eclair

Thursday we ate at Vaccaro's Italian Pastries over in Union Station (this is a branch location of the famous Baltimore bakery), and, after having one of their traditional Sfinge di San Giuseppe—"St. Joseph cream puffs" that include ricotto cheese, pistachio nuts, and candied cherries and fruit peel in the filling, an Italian tradition on the Feast of St. Joseph on March 19—I had to get something to take home from their bakery case. It was already the day after St. Joseph's Day, and the feast officially had been transferred to last week, anyway, so I didn't get more cream puffs. I set my eye on something different.

An eclair.

But not just any eclair, the wonderful, huge, chocolate-frosted eclairs I've only been able to find at Vacarro's. These beautiful eclairs truly are big enough to feed three!

Georgia Brown's, Washington, D.C.

After our "lovely" experience at Mass last night, we decided to self-medicate a little bit and drown our sorrows in some good old down-home cooking at the South Carolina/Southern style restaurant Georgia Brown's on McPherson Square just around the corner from the church. Sometimes the place is packed and we were taking a chance without a reservation, but we were fortunate to be able to get right in and be escorted to a table.

It was the Connecticut Yankee Laurent's first time in a Southern restaurant. Naturally, there were a lot of foods he didn't know what were, and he got to see good old Southern sweet tea on the menu, just like the tea Ryan used to make us at home. I tried to provide him some menu guidance, but he kept trying to think in healthy Yankee terms and didn't really listen to me.

He started with a margarita, not realizing that that drink was a bit more southern than what we had in mind. Meanwhile, I just had tea, of course, and it came with a lemon wedge and a sprig of fresh mint.

We didn't really order in courses. Laurent's dinner all came from the nightly specials list. He got a bowl of shrimp bisque enriched with some crème fraîche that he scraped clean.



Then, he ate a petite salmon salad, a very, very interesting construction of hand sliced citrus and salt cured salmon lined up across the bottom of a rectangular plate and topped with a pile of arugula, onion, and halved cherry tomatoes; a pile of fresh mozzarella balls, and a pile of quartered artichoke hearts, all drizzled with a blackberry gastrique dressing. I thought it was an unusual presentation that looked quite appealingly delicious.



I had a simpler meal. I merely ordered the beef short ribs. The meat is amazing. It's fall-off-the bone tender, presented boneless after having been braised in a red wine and fig. It's presented on a bed of creamy grits infused with blue cheese that were just dreamy, and the plate is finished off with several baby carrots glazed in a dilled butter sauce arranged around the beef. Some frizzled leeks garnished the top.



For dessert, we opted to split a peach cobbler with vanilla ice cream. The peach cobbler here is always a little unusual, in that they use a crumble topping made from oats and crushed vanilla wafers cookies. The dish also has a darker color since they use brown sugar in both the topping and the fruit mixture. Our cobbler arrived garnished with a couple of fresh strawberries and some mint. Laurent, who'd claimed he didn't want dessert, ate most of it.



So, we had a nice dinner. Laurent particularly enjoyed the waiter, though I thought he was a bit long-winded in his spiel and descriptions of menu items. There were several families with small, small children in the restaurant last night, and I really just can't imagine where the common sense of the parents is to even think about bringing a small child to a restaurant of this caliber. The mothers at two tables clearly were not having a good time and not able to take advantage of their meals. I guess some people just have more money than sense. The only other excitement was a man getting sick in the men's room. The staff eventually loaded him up in a taxi; later, I noticed one of his table companions trying to figure out how to get home, since, apparently, the sick guy was their designated driver.

Bangkok Bistro of Georgetown, Georgetown, D.C.

Since we were in the neighborhood after having spent the evening shopping, we went to Bangkok Bistro of Georgetown for a bit of Thai food for dinner. As many times as I've walked up and down Prospect Street, this was the first time for me to visit the place, and it turned out to be surprisingly good. Sorry there are no pictures, but I didn't take a camera with me.

They have a large, pleasant dining room in two big areas. The wait staff is almost all Thai (the bartender looked more Hispanic to me than Asian), and they were all dressed in dark trousers with French blue shirts and greenish-beige ties that they all wore tucked into the shirts.

Ian started with a banana daquiri and I started with tom ka gai soup. The soup was very nice with the coconut soup slightly thickened and flavorful. My only problem was that they had a lot of exotic spices and vegetable materials in the soup still that were big flavor surprises when bitten, including one very hot pepper!

We were a bit surprised that our entrees came with little iceberg lettuce salads with a sweet, peanut dressing, and topped with crispy fried noodle strips.

For our main courses, Ian had the chicken pad pik khing, a red chile curry with green beans and chicken served over rice. I had the Thai bar-b-q chicken. Half a chicken was trimmed and stacked in pieces, accompanied by a hot spicy sweet sauce, a big mound of green papaya salad (good, but the green papaya was a little too green and didn't have much flavor itself), and a basket full of sticky rice.

We didn't have dessert, but I noticed they had taro custard on the menu, so I'll be looking forward to trying that on a future visit. And I do plan on going back. The service was attentive and the food flavorful. The prices are a little on the higher side for a Thai place, but they are in Georgetown, and they are not an expensive restaurant in the grand scheme of things in D.C.

Clyde's of Gallery Place, Washington, D.C.

The University of Kansas had a reception Tuesday night at Clyde's over in the Chinatown/Gallery Place neighborhood for local honors alumni to meet the KU undergraduates in town this week as a part of the University Scholars program. I just went for the free cocktails and food.

They had mild chicken wings with ranch and blue cheese dressing dipping sauces, some crudités, a fruit and cheese tray, and sliced breads on a buffet table; the wings were good, but just way, way too hard to eat gracefully standing up. During the course of the evening, waiters passed trays with hot hors d'oeuvres, including grilled steak on toast, miniature crab cakes, spiced shrimp, spanakopita, and spring rolls. The shrimp created a problem, since they still had the tails and end of the shell on; there was no place to deposit the tail after eating the shrimp, so we had to hold on to it until we could find a passing waiter with a tray collecting dirty glasses and plates. The cocktails, though, were just beer and wine. So I drank the Clyde's house brand white wine. Lots of it.

Hard Times Cafe, Arlington, Va.

Yesterday is believed to be the 1,515th anniversary of the death of Saint Patrick. We celebrated the feast of St. Patrick on Friday; since this is Holy Week and the church officially transferred the feast day, it would have been inappropriate to "celebrate" yesterday, so we went to dinner in solemn commemoration.

Ian (with a name like "Ian," do you think there's a chance he's of Irish ancestry?) wanted to have our commemoration at the quiet and solemn Hard Times Cafe in Clarendon across the street from the Georgetown branch campus building. There were so many solemn commemorators at Hard Times that it was difficult for us to hear one another's quiet devotional commentary during dinner.



We began our meal with the ritual consumption of sacramental beer, shared from the same pitcher. We then segued into whetting our appetites with jalapeño poppers, some jalapeño peppers stuffed with cheese, breaded, and deep-fried, then served with strawberry preserves as a dipping sauce. We were so distracted by our religious devotion that we forgot to photograph them until they were half eaten.

For our main courses, Ian had the breaded chicken tenders dinner, with the chicken accompanied by "roadhouse" fries (Ian had to eat potatoes as part of his Irish observance) and a little cup of cole slaw. Ian, who's big on tradition (he insisted on eating at Hard Times because that's where we had eaten last year), also had this dish the last (and only) time he was here.



I had a bowl of the terlingua chili, which they consider to be their "spicy" option amongst their four chili offerings (but not what I would consider to be spicy). It's okay, but it really does need some side dish offerings like a cole slaw or corn bread, since I don't find this to be as complex a blend of flavors as their Texas or Cincinnati chilis. I just ate crackers with mine, and while that was fine, it was a little boring.



Ian got the apple lava cake for dessert. This is very similar to the chocolate lava cakes that have been rather ubiquitous on local chain restaurant menus, except it uses a generic white cake batter and apple filling. It is served with whipped cream, and Ian also got a scoop of vanilla ice cream to go with it. I was going to have dessert, but as soon as the waitress took Ian's order, she ran off to the kitchen to place his order and never asked me what I wanted. Perhaps the waitress was just trying to turn her tables more quickly; we noticed that she was quick to remove plates, sometimes before we were completely done (like, she tried to take Ian's dessert plate when he'd momentarily laid down his fork but when there was still half the food there).

After dinner, Ian wanted something sweet to wash down all that nasty beer, so he ordered a Bailey's Irish Cream on the rocks. Once again, the waitress didn't ask me what I wanted to drink. Her pattern of service made this a very economical meal for me.

La Fourchette, Washington, D.C.

Several of us were in Columbia Heights this afternoon and some of the guys were hungry. We walked over to Adams-Morgan and decided to patronize La Fourchette for a quick French snack.

Kevin and I just had appetitzers. He ordered (after a couple of previous attempts that ended up being unavailable) the crab and spinach flan. It looked really good, and I didn't get a chance to query him much about it. The flan was presented on a rectangular plate on what looked like a mirror of nantua sauce, then lightly dusted with some finely minced parsley. The custard in the flan looked to have a good consistency.



I picked the artichoke vinaigrette. It was good, with the artichoke being a nice size, though I suspect from the texture that it had been made at least the day before. The accompanying dipping sauce was a piquant mustard-mayonnaise.



Michael was a bit more hungry, so he got an actual main course followed by a dessert. He reported his seafood crëpes to be quite good. They were enrobed in white sauce (bechamel? mornay?) and accompanied by a grilled tomato half topped with duxelles and a couple of little bundles of haricots verts wrapped in thin strips of carrot.



For his dessert, he got the oeufs à la neige, or "floating island," a pool of crème anglaise with meringue floating on top.



I always enjoy La Fourchette, and I think the other guys did, too. The only downside was that they charge for Coca-Cola refills, and Kevin had to send his iced tea back because they had brewed the tea with the coffee pot and it tasted of coffee.

Speaking of Coke, that's what Michael used for his Kody Pose. We shot over a half dozen poses, even using the red eye reduction feature on the camera, but we couldn't get him to leave his eyes open! This is the best we could do: