Competing falafel

After our trip to Old City Cafe of Jerusalem the other day, my friend Jon at UPenn (who used to live in D.C.) told us about Amsterdam Falafelshop just down the street. I did a little research to try to find out exactly where it was (Adams-Morgan is packed with practically nothing but bars and restaurants) and discovered that the person who started Old City Cafe used to be the cook at Amsterdam Falafelshop. So, I had to go try the falafel so I could compare.

Of course, the other interesting thing I discovered is that the Amsterdam shop was started by white people, not Middle Easterners. Apparently, they were wanting to recreate the falafel shop atmosphere they found on a vacation trip to the Netherlands. And, indeed, on my trip for lunch today, there were two white people working the shop, including a woman with a heavy European accent.

The menu at Amsterdam is simple: falafel in pita bread and French fries (which they call "frites"). That's it. There's a large condiment bar of toppings, salads, and sauces to put on the falafel sandwiches, but that's all they cook. It's also a very casual restaurant with no plates or silverwear, and the sandwiches are served in merely paper wrappers.

Let me take just a moment to explain these foods, since I know many of my readers in the heartland of the country may never have seen or experienced Middle Eastern cooking. These are some things that are basic, everyday staples in the region, from Turkey to Israel to Saudi Arabia to Egypt, and they revolve around the chickpea, also called garbanzo beans. To make falafel, chickpeas are soaked in water to soften them (but not cook them), then they are ground up and mixed with a little onion, parsley, and spices; formed into small (perhaps 1" or so in diameter) balls, and then deep-fried. They can be served alone or in pita bread pockets. Interestingly, the word "falafel" is plural; my Arabic is non-existent, but I think the singular form is something like "filifil," but a serving is always plural balls, so one never need learn the singular form. Now, a related popular Middle Eastern food is hummus, also a chickpea product. To make hummus, the chickpeas are cooked, then puréed and mixed with tahini (sesame seed paste), garlic, olive oil, and lemon juice until the consistency of too-thin mashed potatoes. Hummus is usually served as a dip for an appetizer, and often accompanies falafel.

So, how was the food? I got my falafel-in-pita and loaded up several condiments into the pita, then added a little garlic cream sauce and some hummus. And the falafel were very good. I watched the man at the shop form the chickpea mixture into large gumdrop shapes and fry them to a golden brown. My sandwich falafel were hot, light, and fluffy with a pleasant taste, though I'm used to falafel balls that are a little more cooked.

One of the things I particularly appreciated at Amsterdam is a poster on the wall near the condiment bar that describes what the things are. When I was at Old City, they had much the same food, but I was baffled with the unfamiliar looking items. We also had a choice of either white pita bread or wheat pita bread, which they put in a special radiant heating device to order.

Now, let's think back to Wednesday night when we were at Old City Cafe of Jerusalem, where I had a falafel platter. There, the falafel were fried much more until they were a darker color and had some crunch to them....perhaps a little too much crunch. They weren't as light and fluffy, but I found the chickpea mixture to be more flavorful.

So, which was better? Well, based just on the one experience at each place, I'd have to say Amsterdam, because the Old City ones were overcooked. But, that cooking is a vagary of each individual batch in the kitchen, and had they fried them for a shorter period of time, I might have liked Old City's better (and Old City has the advantage of charging $1 less per sandwich). But, if their cooks regularly overcook them, then Amsterdam will continue to win. I will say that I like the hummus at Old City better, again, due to more "flavor," but some of the other condiments at Amsterdam looked fresher on the bar. I also like the full and varied menu at Old City, where they have all kinds of Middle Eastern foods, not just falafel, and there's actually a dining room where one may sit down and eat at leisure with actual plates and flatware.

Here are some pictures from last Wednesday of the other foods at Old City Cafe. First, you'll see our appetizers, a hummus on the left, and a baba ghanouj (eggplant purée) on the right. They were both served with wedges of pita bread. Then, you'll see the two different kinds of kifta, first a sandwich in pita bread, then a kifta platter. ( Kifta is ground, spiced meat (often a beef and lamb mix) typically formed on a stick or rod and then grilled, but sometimes fried like little hamburgers.)

Back for a photo

Several months ago, Robert and I discovered baby back ribs at IHOP (shortly after the IHOP-Applebee's merger), but I had no camera with me at the time. I happened to be at IHOP yesterday, so I ordered the ribs so I could take a picture. They're good, though small—I was still hungry! LOL

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.

Foie gras

Gastronomes will rejoice to hear that the Chicago City Council, by a nearly unanimous vote, lifted the ban on foie gras in Chicago restaurants. The ban was a liberal-supported effort intruding upon our culinary freedoms and supporting the civil rights of geese against being made into the traditional gourmet French dish. They were claiming it was an animal cruelty issue, but centuries of French food purveyors had long ago worked out those problems so that they achieved the "fatty liver" they so prized without harming the goose (at least until the goose was slaughtered for the table). The liberal Chicago intrusion didn't really help geese, it just made foie gras a public issue, leading restaurants that never before offered foie gras to sell it illegally either under-the-table or more blatantly on the menu for their "special" patrons, and convincing hundreds of restaurant patrons to request and order the often exorbitantly expensive item just to taste (and like!) it. Personally, I love foie gras......my mouth is watering right now at the memory of a nice slice of the special goose liver lightly sauteed in butter and cognac just until cooked medium......mmmmm......but I've not had any in years. I was saving my pennies so the next time I was in Chicago, I could eat it there. Now that the ban is lifted, I guess I'll just have to find some East Coast goose liver to eat. And I don't have to plan a trip to Chicago.

The Tombs, Georgetown, D.C.

Yesterday was a Georgetown day. This is one of those odd weeks when most of the students are gone, but the seniors are still hanging around in anticipation of commencement ceremonies on Saturday. The main lawn on campus is covered with folding chairs and they are building the dais for the platform party. Lots of students are running around the shops and the restaurants with that bittersweet, desperate, hungry look, trying to experience everything the Georgetown community has to offer before they leave town to start their new lives, wanting to remember the comfort of their fostering mother yet excited and anxious to spread their wings.

The Tombs is a popular restaurant on the edge of campus in that zone where university-owned and privately-owned properties mix side by side. It has a mixed clientele of students, university community, alumni, and neighborhood people, and usually it's a pretty busy, noisy place. So, since I was in the vicinity, I popped in for a snack.

The food is always fairly basic, though they do have a number of more upscale entrees these days. I got a cheeseburger with Swiss cheese and some fries. I'd seen a burger at a nearby table that was practically mooing, so I ordered mine medium-well; good thing I did, too, since my medium-well arrived well on the rarer side of medium; that's always a challenge with thick burgers, though. My companion got a chicken basket with breaded, fried, white meat and fries.



After eating, we walked down to M Street to the Haagen-Dazs store, where they were having "free ice cream day" and giving away free cones of their new flavor, vanilla honey bee. This summer, they'll be donating part of their profits from the sales of vanilla honey bee to research to solve the hive collapse disorder problem we've been seeing all over the country that's threatening our wild honey bees, impacting not only honey as food, but bees as a critically important pollinator for agricultural crops. They even had an apiarist in the store with literature to talk to people about honey bees.

Branch Market Seafood and Soul Food, Temple Hills, Md.

Friday evening I met Ian downtown by his office near the White House, thinking we were going to go to the mall to do a little shopping. He wasn't in the mood for shopping, though, so he led us on to one of the 30-series buses with the goal of riding it all the way to its southern terminus, and then wandering around there to explore. The south end of the bus route turned out to the be Naylor Road Metro Station.

We walked quite a distance from the station area to the nearest big road where we found several restaurants, a motel, and several liquor stores. Interestingly, all of the restaurants were "seafood and soul food" places. I was excited, thinking we could get some good soul food cooking for dinner, but then we started looking at the places with greater scrutiny. They were all owned and operated by Asians! I guess all the Asians have left Chinatown and moved to the suburbs to cook soul food. That wasn't quite the authenticity I was hoping to get. All of the restaurants seemed to feature foods put out on a buffet steam table, though the items were accessible only by restaurant staff. After walking back and forth between the various places, I eventually selected the one I thought looked cleanest and most hygenic and with food that looked fresh.

We landed at Branch Market Seafood and Soul Food. It's a clean, bright, and well-scrubbed place that has a soul food counter on one side of the restaurant and a large seafood counter on another side. A row of three folding tables and some folding chairs ran down the center of the space. Apparently, restaurants in this part of town specialize in carry-out business, and customers are not encouraged to dine in. I chose to order from the seafood counter, since all that food was cooked to order and hadn't been setting out on a buffet table. Then, it was just a matter of making up my mind.... crab.... croaker.... crab..... croaker..... and I ended up ordering the deep fried Atlantic croaker.

Croaker is a common fish from the Chesapeake Bay, and it's most often seen in ethnic communities around D.C. and Baltimore, rather than in the high end fish restaurants, and I really don't know why that is, since croaker is a nicely flavored white fish. It's also amazingly inexpensive, too, since I got two whole, big fish plus two big servings of side dishes (dressing and macaroni and cheese) for just $9. I also ordered a side of cole slaw and a big slab of sweet potato pie. The fish was expertly fried, staying moist and tender inside and being non-greasy, cooking technique notwithstanding. I loved the densely cheesy macaroni and cheese, too. The other side dishes weren't quite to my taste, though, since they were all very sweet with added sugar. I thought the cole slaw dressing tasted like what I'm used to for potato salad. Even the sweet potato pie was too sweet for me, though I could see the place was doing a booming business in these overly-sweet side items. Oh, well, the fish was great, so that made up for it.




We were rebels and sat at the "waiting tables" to eat our food. Patrons and staff looked at us, but nobody said anything, probably figuring we just didn't know any better.

Busboys and Poets, Washington, D.C.

Sunday we went to Busboys and Poets in the U Street neighborhood, where the kitchen stays open until 2 a.m., albeit with a reduced menu after midnight. It's an interesting place full of liberals and "cause" people, and they regularly feature liberal guest speakers. They've also got an attached bookstore in one corner of the restaurant. The menu is fun and there are several "comfort foods" on the list I enjoy eating, plus they have new and interesting daily specials that spice things up.

This visit is a good example of their interesting menu. I started with the soup of the day, a surprisingly delicious, cold yellow tomato gazpacho with a little scoop of raspberry sorbet in the middle. I would not have thought to combine these two fruits, but it worked well.


Then, for my main course, I had the steak and asparagus salad with two big pieces of grilled flank steak and gorgonzola cheese crumbles, and it was delicious and very satisfying.


Ian stuck to menu standards. He had a three cheese pizza (gorgonzola, ricotta, and fresh mozzarella) as his main course, then a warm white chocolate banana bread pudding with coconut ice cream for dessert. He also got a raspberry margarita, but he didn't like it because it wasn't frozen.



The food was good. The service was unusually bad Sunday night, though. Fortunately, food is delivered from the kitchen by expediters, but our official waiter was extremely inattentive, and I kept seeing him standing in the bar counting his money, chatting with other waiters/waitresses, or just zoning out. We had to request drink/water refills, and even then they were very slow in coming; it took forever to get his attention to place the dessert order; the restaurant was not busy, so there was no reason for the slowness.

The Diner, Washington, D.C.

Ian and I have a bad habit of going out to dinner late. It limits our options a bit, but, as you can see, neither of us are starving.

One night last week, we went to The Diner in Adams-Morgan, one of the very, very few places open 24/7 in D.C. I generally like their food, though they can be a little "creative" for a diner. Their establishment has the added plus of having a full bar. It can get very crowded and very noisy at times, though.

On this visit, Ian had a grilled gruyere cheese sandwich with French fries (Swiss cheese, Belgian potatoes....how all-American diner!). It looked good, and there was an ample quantity of cheese on the bread. He said he was still hungry, but he didn't order dessert or get anything else to eat.


I had the "holiday stuffer," a blue plate special-type dish with roast turkey, gravy, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, and slices of a pork-spiked dressing, plus some haricots verts on the side. It was, as expected, delicious. I thought perhaps the turkey was sliced from a commercially prepared turkey "breast" instead of being pieces from a recently roasted whole bird, but it was still tasty I actually liked the dressing, too—usually I find restaurant dressing to be either too bland or too sagey.