Champps Americana, Arlington, Va.

It's another of those annoying primary nights, and we're still awaiting the Indiana results. The race has 95% of the votes counted, but there's a less than 20,000 vote difference, and the votes from Gary are yet to come in. It also appears that the Clinton machine's prediction of an "upset" in North Carolina was unfounded, as Obama took that state quite handily.

Ian and I started off the evening at Champps Americana at Pentagon Row, though it proved to be nearly impossible to watch CNN in a sports bar on a four-way split big screen TV wall. So, we just grabbed a quick dinner and headed back to the District.

While there, Ian had an appetizer sampler plate with chicken strips, buffalo chicken tenders (instead of wings), mozzarella sticks, and potato skins (supposedly enough for two or three people).


I had a BBQ chicken chopped salad. It tasted good, though the iceberg lettuce wasn't crisp. We had a really fun waitress, though.

Tortilla Coast, Washington, D.C.

Most people don't know that back in 1912, Hellmann's Mayonnaise was manufactured in England. In fact, the Titanic was carrying 12,000 jars of the condiment, scheduled for delivery in Veracruz, Mexico, which was to be the next port of call for the great ship after its stop in New York. This would have been the largest single shipment of mayonnaise ever delivered to Mexico. But as we know, the great ship did not make it to New York....the ship hit an iceberg and sank on April 15, and the cargo was forever lost. The people of Mexico, who were crazy about mayonnaise and were eagerly awaiting its delivery, were disconsolate at the loss. Their anguish was so great, that they declared a National Day of Mourning that they still observe to this day. The National Day of Mourning occurs each year on May 5th and is known, of course, as Sinko de Mayo.

We observed Sinko de Mayo by going to Capitol Hill to Speaker Pelosi's formerly favorite Mexican restaurant, Tortilla Coast. It was a crazy thing to do on such a popular tequila-drinking holiday, and even stopping by ahead of time, we still waited about an hour for a table. Soon after our arrival, a big, black party bus pulled up, and out came a mariachi band.....just what we needed in an already too-loud restaurant! We'd gotten a prime window table with a view of the Capitol dome and the street—where that bus was parked—and we noticed all these young women in too-short, cut-off, blue jean shorts and little straw cowboy hats get off the bus at intervals one by one and come into the bar/restaurant, where they circulated, making some of the young men, shall we say, feel more festive. They'd drag the guys over by the band and dance with them...and, no doubt, encourage them to buy more tequila! LOL...straight boys can be so stupid and manipulable!

It was so noisy, we had a hard time ordering and hearing our waiter. We ended up, somehow, with a pitcher of lime-strawberry swirl frozen margaritas and a bowl of chile con queso dip. The cheese dip, for a Tex-Mex place, was pretty tame and definitely needed a few jalapeño peppers in it.


When it came time for food, we managed to order standard stuff, and we were particularly happy to note that it was "enchilada night," with enchilada entree dishes priced at only $5.99. Robert got the steak enchiladas and I got the beef Tex-Mex enchiladas. They look very similar in the photos; his came with ranchero sauce and mine came with "Tex-Mex beef gravy." Much like the queso, I thought mine tasted okay, but they lacked zip and Texican spice.



Ian wanted a chimichanga, but those aren't on the menu, so he picked a burrito, which is basically nothing but an unfried chimichanga. He got the "sunset burrito"—chicken, rice, and beans wrapped in a tortilla and covered with "spicy sunset sauce".....but we aren't really sure what the sunset sauce was.


For dessert, both Robert and Ian ordered the "Xango," a banana flavored cheesecake in a tortilla wrapping, deep fried, and served with cinnamon ice cream.....very, very similar to the fried cheesecake dessert Ian almost always orders at IHOP. Since I'm trying to get back into those 32x38 Wranglers in my closet, I declined dessert.


As mentioned, it was a very festive night. We got visited by a young lady with souvenir shot glasses promoting Sauza Tequila. Whatever was in them, Ian liked it. Had we ordered and paid for a margarita with the Sauza, we would have gotten big, fancy, souvenir margarita glasses. A lot of people had Mardi Gras bead necklaces with Dos Equis logos on them, but we didn't drink any beer, so we couldn't have any.

After leaving the restaurant, we wandered over to the Capitol grounds to look at the azaleas, one of the few places in town where the azaleas haven't already started turning brown. The place was teeming with tourists, even at that hour of night!

And that's how we celebrated Sinko de Mayo.

The Wonderland Ballroom, Washington, D.C.

We went to brunch after church Sunday. Robert was all excited about a place he'd heard about, The Wonderland Ballroom, a beer bar with food where they offer a "bottomless bacon basket" during their weekend brunches. He was really, really excited about the bacon thing. So, humoring him, we left the church in Takoma and Metroed to Columbia Heights, where we walked several blocks east to an, um, "transition" neighborhood, where we found a decrepit building housing the Wonderland Ballroom.

We entered the building. It was dark inside; it looked like a place that had seen many beer-drunken nights. We were greeted by a couple of people who later proved to be employees, though no one guided us to a seat; we found our own table with two bench style car seats and sat down. And waited. Eventually, someone came by and said "We don't have table service here." It turned out to be one of the owners. We said we'd come for brunch, and he said they didn't do brunch anymore (no eggs), just lunch foods. They did, however, still have the bacon baskets, so we put in our order. They also have about a dozen different beers on tap, so Robert got us a couple of those.....Anchor Steam, I think they were.

The menu was simple. We both wanted the same thing, so I let Robert order it—a sausage burger with fries— and I got a grilled vegetable wrap with chicken, so we'd have multiple foods to discuss. I'd expected the sausage burger to have, perhaps, slices of link sausage on the hamburger patty, but what he got was a patty with mixed ground beef and pork sausage, topped with a thick slice of cheddar cheese. My wrap was tasty, but very "vegetarian" (though it did have some chicken in it) with a preponderance of broccoli.



And, the beer and baskets of bacon kept coming.


This is an interesting place. It's certainly very friendly. I was pleasantly surprised that the men's room was not toxic. The food is adequate (if one remembers where one is). The prices are cheap. I think probably it's a very busy place on weekend evenings, though the "brunch" crowd is very limited.

What was particularly interesting at Wonderland Sunday, though, was a charitable fund raiser they were holding. It wasn't scheduled to start officially until four, but they were already getting ready. They were holding their Second Annual Sun Dress Fest to raise money for the Latin American Youth Center, and evening diners would be treated to a pig roast (charcoal was burning in barbecue grills on the patio). The gimmick, though, was how one became entitled to half-price drinks for the evening: one had to wear a sun dress. Even the guys. No dresses in your closet, guys? No problem! They had them for rent for a $10 contribution. No doubt this was the doing of Rose, the female half of the husband and wife owners of the bar. She even made her husband, Matthew, and the bartender and the waiter put on sun dresses. The band out on the patio got into the act, too.

James Hoban's Irish Restaurant and Bar, Washington, D.C.

After spending the whole day yesterday with the lodge, as soon as we were done, I went straight home. Kevin and Robert, however, had other ideas, and soon drove over to abduct me and make me go with them to join several others at James Hoban's Irish Restaurant and Bar. That's getting to be a regular post-event haunt of several lodge members, since namesake James Hoban, the architect of the White House, was the first master (president) of our lodge back in 1793.

We sat outside on the patio. A bunch of guys were already there; some had already come and gone. Kevin and Robert got glasses of Guinness; I got an Irish whiskey.

Kevin and I wanted "traditional" Irish food to get. He got "bangers and mash" (or, in Amurricun, that's pork sausages with mashed potatoes and onion gravy) that looked pretty good for that sort of thing.


I got fish and chips. I liked mine (I even used the malt vinegar on the fish), but one of the other guys at the table who got the same thing wasn't a big fan of his. They came with little tiny ramekins of "mushy peas," which were just smashed-up, American-style peas instead of the truly authentic, brownish, English-style, mushy peas.


Even with the other American-style food, they try to take the Irish theme through with Irish-inspired ingredients. For example, on these sandwiches, a burger and a chicken sandwich, they included a big slice of Irish bacon and some Irish cheeses.



This is the first time I've sat out on the patio at Hoban's. I thought the service was very, very slow out there.....usually inside the restaurant, service is "normal." At one point, Kevin ran into the restaurant to try to find and fetch a server. Alas. It was still early enough, too, that the Saturday night crowds weren't there yet.

Nobody had dessert. We thought it was more important to have a second round on drinks! LOL