Harry's Tap Room, Arlington (Pentagon City), Va.

Well, Laurent and I went to Harry's Tap Room in Pentagon City today for their Restaurant Week lunch, but they were only serving brunch today and said the lunch deal was just Monday through Friday. Just as well, since we both got plenty of food to eat and spent half the money we would have spent had we done the R.W. menus.

They started off by bringing us a big basket of scones and little miniature blueberry muffins. The muffins were so airy and delightful; we endulged in quickly eating all of them after dipping them in a strawberry preserve sauce.

Laurent ordered the steakhouse omelette. The omelette was filled with slices of filet mignon, plus onions, spinach, bacon, cheddar cheese, and fresh basil, and served with home fries and applesauce. It was a large and hearty brunch dish.

I got a Cuban sandwich, very artfully presented on the plate with a wedge of carved fresh pineapple and a mess of long, hand-cut french fries; the sandwich itself was cut on the diagonal and speared with frilled toothpicks holding cherry peppers, and arranged with one half standing on its end.

Neither one of us wanted dessert, so we bypassed the very large sweet samplings at Harry's. Thus was our Saturday culinary adventure.

The Palm, Washington, D.C.

Some of my out-of-town friends come to Washington and New York and just gush about a series of restaurants called The Palm, usually making reservations at Palms in cities around the country as they travel on business. I've never been to a Palm before, so I decided it was finally time to take advantage of the Restaurant Week opportunity.

The Palm likes to capitalize on its rich and famous clientele of politicians and power brokers, so the walls are covered with caricature drawings of former patrons. Furnishings in the dining room are in medium shades and typical of high end steakhouses, being contemporary without being "modern." Booths line the periphery of the dining room, and the interior space is tightly packed with free-standing tables. As the restaurant was crowded during our visit, this packing of people into a confined space had the conversational noise level at the point my friend Scott and I nearly had to yell across our small table to talk.

Restaurant Week menu offerings vary widely from restaurant to restaurant. Some establishments go all out, creating a number of options per course to show off their skills, some places use their regular full menu (occasionally with a few, more expensive, items having an "up-charge"), and some places hardly make an effort at all. The Palm almost fell into the latter category. I was disappointed that their appetizer choices were rather boring and mundane, and the two we had were incredibly ordinary. The options were a mixed green salad, a Caesar salad, or a bowl of tomato soup. Scott had the soup. It came with a little packet of commercial crackers in cellophane. I had the Caesar, and I've had them just as good from inexpensive little diners.

The dessert course was also a bit disappointing, since there was but one choice, key lime pie. Now, the pie was good, but I wasn't overwhelmed or begging for the recipe, and it paled in comparison to the dessert tray we saw occasionally making the rounds of the room with enormous slices of cakes and other impressive looking desserts.

What The Palm did do, however, was focus the limited dining dollars on the main courses. Keep in mind that this is a restaurant that has $42 lobsters and $54 steaks on the lunch menu—they aren't cheap. There were four main course options on the R.W. menu, and from what we saw, they were all nice entrees, including a nice big slab of seared ahi tuna au poivre we saw at a nearby table. Scott got the broiled crab cakes with mango salsa, and he was very impressed that the two cakes were large and full of crab meat, instead of the filler that one finds so often in restaurant crab cakes.

I had the grilled sirloin steak. It was a nice little piece of aged beef and cooked precisely to the medium-rare I requested. What did surprise me a bit, though, was getting a plate with nothing else on it but the little steak....no potatoes, no vegetables, no garnish, nothing. They have a number of side dishes on the menu, but everything is à la carte, and the sides start at $8.

I don't want to leave an unfavorable impression of The Palm. Keep in mind that I am reviewing a Restaurant Week lunch, not their normal menu. We were able to sample just a little of what a highly expensive, popular restaurant has been offering to packed dining rooms for decades. I think, though, that The Palm is fine for the expense account crowd, but even if I were inclined regularly to spend $30 to $50-plus on lunch every day, the place was a little too cramped and noisy for me, and the food didn't "wow" me, so it likely would not make the list for my regular restaurant rotation.

Adour at the St. Regis, Washington, D.C.

It's Restaurant Week in the District, and I opened this week's food fantasies today at Alain Ducasse's new local venture, Adour at the St. Regis Hotel. Our local establishment follows the ideas of Ducasse's eponymous restaurant at the St. Regis New York, serving contemporary French American food in a fresh, new environment in what used to be the Library in the hotel. The architects retained the ornate ceilings of the old dining room, but the lower portions are sleek, glass, chrome, and leather with a full glass wine wall on one side of the room. While the juxtaposition of old ornate and new contemporary sounds shocking, it was well done and came across comfortably.

Lunching with my friend Father Steven, we both enjoyed the food and the environment. The room was full, but the noise level was moderate and it was easy to carry on conversations. Service was generally efficient, but Fr. Steven's main complaint was that he had to ask twice for sweetener for his iced tea, and during the course of our meal, his empty $5 tea glass was never refilled.

Fr. Steven started with the sunchoke parmentier soup with bacon foam. A waiter brought a large, empty soup plate with bits of bacon and the bacon foam (a creamy looking, bubbly thing) on the bottom, then poured the sunchoke purée into the bowl. I chose the daurade tartare. Daurade is a French fish, and in this case, it was served raw like chopped sashimi, presented on a bed of guacamole and encircled by a spicy tomato essence. It actually was quite delicious.

For his main course, Fr. Steven ordered the grilled hanger steak. It came with potatoes boulangerie and some sauteed spinach. The steak was sauced with a red wine shallot butter. He ordered the meat rare and pronounced the dish very very good. I got the artisanal pasta with duck confit and chestnuts, a very unusual, yet good, combination.

There were two desserts on the menu, so we ordered one of each and split them both. One of the desserts was a coffee cremeux, in essence, a coffee-flavored mousse enrobed in dark chocolate and served with a little dish of sabayon sauce on the cocoa-dusted plate. Two "cigarettes" of meringue rested beside the cremeux. The second dessert was called a contemporary pina colada with coconut tapioca sauce. A base of tapioca was topped by a layer of finely diced tropical fruits, all supporting an egg-shaped bit of mango ice cream. It was sour and refreshing.

And thus was my first Restaurant Week adventure of 2009. For those so inclined to try it, Adour is extending Restaurant Week through next week, so you've plenty of time to try it out.

Pat Troy's Irish Pub and Restaurant, Alexandria, Va.

Had lunch in Old Town Alexandria at Pat Troy's Irish Pub and Restaurant. We even sat in "Reagan's Corner," right by the table where Ronald Reagan once had lunch in the pub.

Spencer had a steak and cheese sandwich. It came on a hoagie bun and was served with fries. Robert got the fish and chips and a Guinness.

I got the daily special, a smothered chicken, with the chicken covered in crab meat and little bits of ham in an anisette-scented cream sauce. It came with mashed potatoes and mixed vegetables. Sorry about the picture.....I took several, but they kept over exposing. The food tasted a lot better than it looks. The special seems to be a variation on a mushroom-topped "whiskey chicken" in cream sauce that's a regular feature on the dinner menu. Neither of them, however, are things I've ever eaten in Ireland.

Pat's seemed like a pleasant enough place, and we were late enough to lunch that the place was nearly empty and blessedly quiet for a pub. Of course, the down side was the wait staff was off doing cleaning tasks and seldom appeared, leading to spotty service. Everyone seemed happy with their food, though, so that was the important thing.

By the way, who in the world is Pat Troy?