Friday, July 04, 2008

La Fourchette, Washington, D.C.

flags

This is the month for national holidays and independence days. Canada Day was this past Tuesday. Today is our independence day. Bastille Day for the French is in a week. But there are others. Algeria and Venezuela are tomorrow. Argentina is the 9th. The Bahamas is the 10th. Iceland is the 17th. Colombia is the 20th. Belgium is the 21st. Peru is the 28th. It's a busy month for celebrating by eating national foods of independent countries!

Robert and I started celebrating the month last night with some French food, what with Bastille Day coming up, the unusual blend of French and English up in Canada, and the fondness of our founding fathers (especially Thomas Jefferson of Declaration of Independence fame) for French food, by dining at La Fourchette over in Adams-Morgan. Naturally, I've been there several times, but this was Robert's first visit.

They had foie gras with honey sauce on their daily menu that I tried to get Robert to order.....he was tempted, but the $18.50 price tag (more than most main courses) gave him pause; ultimately, it didn't matter, as they were out of the foie gras by the time we got there. It did put him in the mood for liver, though, so he ordered the pork liver pâté maison. Alas, they were out of that, too!

He consoled himself with summer soup, though. One of the daily specials was chilled vichyssoise, so we both got bowls of that. It was quite good, though not what I was expecting. I thought the taste reminded me of sour cream and onion potato chips, because they opted to use crème fraîche instead of regular cream. I also deduced points on technical grounds because our soup bowls and spoons had not been chilled.

vichyssoise

Part of the fun of going to French restaurants is that the French eat foods we Americans normally don't think of as edible (at least for humans), like snails and fungus (truffles). Robert and I both got main courses likely to draw some "icks" and "yucks" from some of my readers.

Robert selected the ris de veau, a spectacular dish of veal sweetbreads (thymus gland) sauteed with mushrooms, shallots, and cream. A hand-carved potato, a duxelles-topped tomato half, and a couple of little bundles of haricots verts held together with a carrot band adorned the plate. It all looked very nice, and Robert liked the dish a lot, so much so that he used up all the bread to sop up all the remaining cream sauce.

sweetbreads

I got the langue de veau, an absolutely exquisite slice of braised veal tongue in a light sauce moutarde. The tongue was fork-tender and had a lovely delicate flavor. The same vegetables as Robert had came with my meal, too. With our meal, we shared a carafe of the house chardonnay.

tongue

Robert wasn't in a salad mood, so we forewent the salad course.

Our waiter brought over the dessert tray with way too many delicious and tempting options. I got the ile flottante "floating island," a meringue floating atop crème anglaise scented with almond. Robert was going to get the poached pear, but decided he wanted something that looked "different" from mine, and chose the crêpes. He got two crêpes, each folded in half, and filled with crème patisserie, then sautéed in butter and brandy.

ileflottantecrepes

Such a lovely dinner! I could eat French foods all the time, if only more of my friends liked French food.

SoHo Cafe and Market, Washington, D.C.

Had a little business lunch yesterday with my K Street lawyer friend Kurt. He's originally from Dallas, but I talk to him anyway. He knows a bunch of people from Oklahoma and Texas I've known for decades. We went to a place down the street from his office called SoHo Cafe and Market, a local family-owned chain of about a dozen upscale buffet-style cafeterias. This particular location in the West End has a nice ambiance with darker lighting in the dining room filled with medium woods on the walls and faux-granite tables with comfortable chairs.

They have a sushi bar with a sushi chef! They also have the standard sandwich bar, with fun daily specials. The most attractive thing here, though, is the extensive buffet they offer with an enormous range of hot and cold food items. The owner family is Asian, so they have a lot of Asian items on the buffet, but there are also lots of traditional American things, too. Everything is very attractively displayed and the food all looks fresh and enticing.

Kurt had chicken wings, rice, plantains, and an intriguing garbanzo bean salad. I had a yellow curry chicken with potato, orange peel chicken, chicken teriyaki, and plantains. Didn't realize I had so much chicken until I saw the photo! I never quite know what to do with these by-the-pound buffets. I hate to spend as much on a heavy spoonful of mashed potatoes as I would on a few light shrimp, knowing the difference in raw food costs. It wasn't that terribly expensive, though, as the two of us ate for $20, including beverages.

soho1
soho2

Thursday, July 03, 2008

New Five Guys, Columbia Heights, Washington, D.C.

new5guys


The new Five Guys Burgers and Fries store opened Tuesday in Columbia Heights. It's right by the west Metro station exit. Robert and I stopped by last night after we'd gone to the Target store across the street.

Robert ate the free peanuts. I got the French fries. I forgot to check their chalkboard to see from what town in Idaho last night's potato supply came.

peanutsfries

Monday, June 30, 2008

Jyoti Indian Cuisine, Washington, D.C.

It's been a long time since we've had Indian food. There really aren't that many places in the District, and not that many of them that I've tried have impressed me. We were in Adams-Morgan Friday night, and just happened upon Jyoti Indian Cuisine while en route to another place (it was French, wasn't it?), and decided to give it a try. It was a good decision.

Jyoti is a typical Adams-Morgan restaurant with a sidewalk patio and a narrow, two level dining room. The decor is clean and contemporary, with surprisingly little (as in, hardly any) Indian art around to create a "theme." They've apparently remodeled fairly recently, since I noticed that not only was the dining room crisp and new looking, the men's room was done in contemporary tile with a bowl on the counter for the lavatory, and, everything was very clean, including the floor grout.

While the liquor and creative cocktail menu was very extensive, I found the food menu to be rather small and filled with well-known Indian restaurant "standards." We managed to put together a very adequate menu, though, while sipping those big Taj Mahal Indian beers (I'm ordinarily not a beer person, but I find it's very useful to quench the "fire" from the food spices).

We started with the fish cutlets as an appetizer. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but they turned out to be good. Rather than being filets or fish steaks, the "cutlets" were more like a fish patty that included plenty of spice. The menu said the cutlets came with "a sauce," and that sauce was a thick, sweet, tomatoey curry that was a lovely balance to the fish. With the fish, the waiter also brought a tray with three additional condiments, the standard green-hot and red-sweet sauces in most Indian places, plus a very good mango chutney that we both liked a lot.

sauces
fishcutlets


Next, the main courses came out, which we planned to share. Both arrived in deep, silver and bronze chafing dishes with tea lights underneath to keep them warm. First was a lamb saag, a traditional Indian creamed spinach dish with chunks of tender lamb stewed in it. I really, really liked this dish; the spicing was elegant.

lambsaag

The second dish was chicken vindaloo, and it also was very well prepared, with the chicken juicy, the potatoes cooked just "done," and the sauce fiery, fiery hot. Fortunately, we had also ordered a little bowl of raita, a yogurt sauce with cucumbers, to help cool things down in the mouth.

chickenvindaloo


Along with the main dishes, we each got warm dinner plates with a large "timbale" of white and yellow basmati rice in the center, presented in an artful way. We also chose the puri bread, a whole wheat deep fried bread that arrived puffed up like a big, round Mexican sopapilla. The bread was excellent; in fact, we ended up ordering a second puri.

ricepuri


After all this food, we just didn't have room to order dessert.

Jyoti turned out to be an unexpected jewel. They have excellently prepared food and they actually pay attention to detail and to presentation. The staff was all well trained, attentive, and polite. This place ranks up with the best Indian places I've experienced in the District, and it is certainly one of the better and more elegant places in the Adams-Morgan neighborhood. My only suggestion would be that they should offer a few more menu choices—perhaps daily specials—that go beyond old war horse dishes, yet what they served us was all surprisingly good, so there's something to be said for staying with what they know they can do well. Nevertheless, Jyoti is definitely a place to which we plan to return.

Steak 'N Egg Kitchen, Washington, D.C.

This weekend we discovered the third restaurant in the District that is open all night, seven days a week (the other two being Georgetown Cafe and The Diner). It's in Tenleytown, and it's an old diner that's been around for seventy some years called Osman & Joe's Steak 'N Egg Kitchen. It's gone through a number of ownership shifts over the decades, having once been a part of the old Steak 'N Egg franchise that disappeared in the '80s. Very little has changed, though, and it's still a small place where customers sit on a spinning stool at a counter facing the cook and his grill. It's surprisingly small, too, with just a dozen or so stools in the main restaurant. They have, however, added an outdoor patio seating area, which allows people to come in and order "carryout" food and then sit outside to eat.

Not surprisingly, this isn't a place where the staff is attired in tuxedos. When we first arrived, we had a little bit of difficulty communicating our order to our friendly waitress, who appeared to be an immigrant with limited English. At 11 p.m., the staff changed though, and she was replaced by an American waitress in a thong bikini bottom that showed way above her low hip-hugger blue jeans. She was very efficient, though, and got our order correct the first time, and kept our drink glasses full.

Ian got a cheese omelette. It was huge. They used four eggs and quite a layer of provolone cheese, making it directly on the grill and then folding the eggs over and over to fit the plate. It came with hash browns and wheat toast.

omelette

For dessert, he got their Oreo cheesecake with ice cream; he ate it all, but said it didn't seem like cheesecake to him.

cheesecake

I got what they call a "Tennessee scramble." It was a very filling mix of scrambled eggs, cheese, ham, bacon, and country sausage, served with hash browns and two fabulous biscuits drowned in gravy. I also got a side of grits floating in butter (well, "spread"). Remind me next time I go not to order so much food, because I ate every bite and then had to waddle out the door to get home.

scramble
biscuitsgrits


I enjoyed Steak 'N Egg. No, it's not gourmet, and yes, it's rather a "greasy spoon" or what some might call a "dive," but it suits its purpose. The one thing that surprised me is that they are not cheap. We spent as much there as we usually do at IHOP and similar places. They also have sandwiches—mostly burgers—on the menu, though everyone there while we were present ordered breakfast foods. Breakfast, of course, was always the Steak 'N Egg chain's forte, so it's not surprising that is where the regular patrons turn. I presume we'll be back, though I'm not sure when, as getting to Tenleytown late at night is rather difficult and time consuming without a car. My commute took nearly an hour, and that was using the subways; after midnight, when our subway system inexplicably closes down, crosstown buses would add considerably to that travel time.

Sunday, June 29, 2008

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Washington, D.C.

After dinner last night, we walked down to the other side of Dupont Circle, and once Ian espied the Krispy Kreme store, he immediately wanted to go in for a hot doughnut. So much for no dessert.

So, in we went. But, it was a slow period, and they had a dozen or so doughnuts sitting on the conveyor belt that had been there for some unknown period of time, and Ian wanted hot doughnuts. So, he prevailed upon the staff to make a tiny batch of doughnuts so he could have two and I could have one hot, fresh doughnut.

freshdoughnuts

ThaiPhoon, Washington, D.C.

Last night, Ian wanted Thai food for dinner. I like Thai, but I wanted to go someplace different where we'd not been before. So, Ian decided we should go to ThaiPhoon in Dupont Circle.

Now, if this restaurant name is familiar to you readers, that's because there's a ThaiPhoon in Pentagon Row where we've dined multiple times over the years. This is actually a small chain, with the two ThaiPhoons plus two more Thai places called Mai Thai, one downtown and the other in Alexandria. I had never made it to the Dupont location, though, and I'm glad to finally make it there, since I think their food and execution is better at Dupont than at Pentagon Row.

tomkagaiI started with the tom ka gai, the traditional Thai soup of chicken in coconut milk with lemongrass and mushrooms. Their version was very tasty. Ian wanted the curry puffs, but they were not able to make them for him without the ground meat, so he passed on them.

We weren't very adventurous in picking our main courses. Ian got one of his usual dishes, the pad pik khing. It's an interesting stir-fry of long green beans and chicken in a red curry paste. It came with steamed white rice. He said it was good.

padpikkhing

I got the drunken noodles. I've never quite figured out why this dish is called "drunken" noodles, since there is no alcohol in it. I remember a waitress at another restaurant once told me it was because the cook was drunk once and threw everything into the pot. So much for apocryphal stories. Anyway, the dish is made with wide rice noodles in a red curry with chicken, garlic, onions, basil, and tomatoes, plus some red and green bell peppers and a whole lot of deceptively sliced jalapeño peppers. When the menu indicated this was a "three fire" dish, they weren't kidding!

drunkennoodles

We opted not to get dessert, since Ian said he didn't want any.

Jyoti Indian Cuisine, Washington, D.C.

It's been a long time since we've had Indian food. There really aren't that many places in the District, and not that many of them that I've tried have impressed me. We were in Adams-Morgan Friday night, and just happened upon Jyoti Indian Cuisine while en route to another place (it was French, wasn't it?), and decided to give it a try. It was a good decision.

Jyoti is a typical Adams-Morgan restaurant with a sidewalk patio and a narrow, two level dining room. The decor is clean and contemporary, with surprisingly little (as in, hardly any) Indian art around to create a "theme." They've apparently remodeled fairly recently, since I noticed that not only was the dining room crisp and new looking, the men's room was done in contemporary tile with a bowl on the counter for the lavatory, and, everything was very clean, including the floor grout.

While the liquor and creative cocktail menu was very extensive, I found the food menu to be rather small and filled with well-known Indian restaurant "standards." We managed to put together a very adequate menu, though, while sipping those big Taj Mahal Indian beers (I'm ordinarily not a beer person, but I find it's very useful to quench the "fire" from the food spices).

We started with the fish cutlets as an appetizer. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but they turned out to be good. Rather than being filets or fish steaks, the "cutlets" were more like a fish patty that included plenty of spice. The menu said the cutlets came with "a sauce," and that sauce was a thick, sweet, tomatoey curry that was a lovely balance to the fish. With the fish, the waiter also brought a tray with three additional condiments, the standard green-hot and red-sweet sauces in most Indian places, plus a very good mango chutney that we both liked a lot.

sauces
fishcutlets


Next, the main courses came out, which we planned to share. Both arrived in deep, silver and bronze chafing dishes with tea lights underneath to keep them warm. First was a lamb saag, a traditional Indian creamed spinach dish with chunks of tender lamb stewed in it. I really, really liked this dish; the spicing was elegant.

lambsaag

The second dish was chicken vindaloo, and it also was very well prepared, with the chicken juicy, the potatoes cooked just "done," and the sauce fiery, fiery hot. Fortunately, we had also ordered a little bowl of raita, a yogurt sauce with cucumbers, to help cool things down in the mouth.

chickenvindaloo


Along with the main dishes, we each got warm dinner plates with a large "timbale" of white and yellow basmati rice in the center, presented in an artful way. We also chose the puri bread, a whole wheat deep fried bread that arrived puffed up like a big, round Mexican sopapilla. The bread was excellent; in fact, we ended up ordering a second puri.

ricepuri


After all this food, we just didn't have room to order dessert.

Jyoti turned out to be an unexpected jewel. They have excellently prepared food and they actually pay attention to detail and to presentation. The staff was all well trained, attentive, and polite. This place ranks up with the best Indian places I've experienced in the District, and it is certainly one of the better and more elegant places in the Adams-Morgan neighborhood. My only suggestion would be that they should offer a few more menu choices—perhaps daily specials—that go beyond old war horse dishes, yet what they served us was all surprisingly good, so there's something to be said for staying with what they know they can do well. Nevertheless, Jyoti is definitely a place to which we plan to return.