Sala Thai, Washington, D.C.

Laurent and I were on U Street later in the week and popped in to Sala Thai just in time to avoid the thunderstorm cloud bursts. I've been to their Dupont location before, but this was my first time in the U Street store. We had a great window seat to allow us to watch all the people hustling by with their umbrellas.

We both started with tom yum soup, Laurent's with chicken and mine with shrimp. This soup is made with coconut milk seasoned with lemongrass and ginger.

For our main courses, Laurent got the ka prow, a beef dish with red bell pepper and fried basil leaves in a chili paste sauce, extra spicy. He ate it all, but I think it ended up bothering his stomach. However, he **did** order it "as hot as you can make it."

I was going to order the pottery shrimp, a baked shrimp and cellophane noodle dish, but the waitress suggested the peppery shrimp instead, so that's what I got. A lot of shrimp in a mild white pepper and garlic sauce came with artistically arranged slices of cucumber, tomatoes, and shredded carrot and purple cabbage. Both dishes came with white steamed rice.

For dessert, Laurent had a fruit punch and I had a Thai iced coffee.

Dukem Ethiopean Restaurant, Washington, D.C.

For some reason, I've ended up on U Street a bunch this past week.

Monday, John G from California was in town for a business conference on Africa, so when we went to dinner, I thought we should have African food, and we ended up at Dukem Ethiopian Restaurant. John had not had Ethiopian food before, so we got a combination tray, that being one of the easiest ways to try a variety of their foods.

Our sampler tray included beef tibs (cubes of beef sauteed with onion), lamb wot (lamb stew, spicy), and minchet abesh (ground beef in ginger and garlic sauce), plus collards, cabbage, yellow peas, lentils, and tomato salad, all served atop a large round of injera bread.

Along with dinner, since John's a big beer fan, we drank several Ethiopian beers, from a simple lager to a dark brown stout.

McCormick & Schmick Seafood Restaurant, Washington, D.C.

My friend Justin gave me a gift certificate to McCormick & Schmick Seafood Restaurants, so I used it the other day at the D.C. location near Farragut Square. McCormick & Schmick is a national chain of high-end, white tablecloth restaurants with menus that change daily according to what is fresh from the water and in season. I heard a waiter talking to a nearby table, and she said that this is halibut season. By that time, though, I had already ordered, and decided to stick to my original plan.

I started with a cup of the seafood and corn chowder, a cream-based soup with crab, shrimp, and who knows what else in the mix. It came with a cellophane packet of oyster crackers. They also brought me a quarter-loaf of a very good sourdough bread, which I used instead of the crackers.

For my main course, I had the seafood Cobb salad. Greens dressed in what tasted like a crab Louis sauce were topped with stripes of various ingredients common to Cobb salads, plus stripes of popcorn shrimp, crab meat, and tiny bay scallops. A sliced avocado quarter garnished the salad. I thought it was a good and substantial salad. My only complaint was that the bacon tasted a bit old to me and some of the crunchy bits were too crunchy.