The Prime Rib, Washington, D.C.

On the way to our afternoon meetings yesterday, my houseguest Tony took me to lunch at The Prime Rib on K Street. It turns out that The Prime Rib has extended their Restaurant Week prix fixe menu another week, so we were able to benefit from their $20.06 per person largess.

The Prime Rib is a very interesting place for many reasons, not least of which is the fact that they are one of the very few establishments in D.C. which actually requires gentlemen to wear a jacket and tie (others, such as 1789, require a jacket but not necessarily a tie). Now, most all men in D.C. dress for dinner and lunch in the higher end restaurants, probably because the law firms, lobbyists, and association offices haven't gone "business casual" here like they have in so many other parts of the country, but Prime Rib's rule is an interesting throw-back to an older era.

And an older era is exactly where we felt we were when we entered the Prime Rib—we were in a supper club from the early 1960s! The dining room has black lacquered walls with gilded architectural detailing for a French paneling and wainscoting look, and art prints featuring greyhounds and naked women with an Arts-Deco, Erté-esque feel; glass room dividers were etched with leaping greyhounds. A leopard print carpet covered the floor. Tightly spaced, white cloth-covered tables had black leather-upholstered banquettes along the exterior walls, high backed wing chairs along interior walls, and low club chairs in the center. A round console table in the center of the dining room held a very tall Chinese vase topped with a large ball of Spanish moss from which a huge display of long, silk, white cally lillies emanated. An elderly gentleman was playing a black baby grand piano with a clear lucite lid. Off to one side was a room with a large three-sided bar packed with drinkers. The maitre d' wore a tuxedo suit (not a tail coat) with a white bow tie, waiters were in tuxedos with black tie, and assistants were in black trousers and high necked black jackets ornamented with black braid. Not counting the staff, Tony was by far the youngest diner in the room and I think I was probably the second youngest (and I'm ancient).

We arrived ten minutes early for our 1:30 reservation, but were taken straightaway to our table. They gave us the regular luncheon menu and called our attention to the Restaurant Week menu on a table tent on the table. The R.W. menu had soup or salad, bread pudding or crême bruleé, and a choice of eight different entrees. We forgot to peruse the wine list since we were just drinking iced tea ($3). As we made our selections, we were given a basket of mixed breads with a large white loaf, slices of a tasty multi-grain bread, and a bunch of heart-shaped matzo crackers.

Tony started with the roasted tomato soup. It was presented in a cute white soup bowl featuring wolves' heads on each side as handles. The soup had a deep red color, and while Tony said it was good, I don't think he thought it was anything special (he tends to gush when he does). I had the house salad, a large serving of a chopped salad with romaine, cucumber, egg, pepperoncini, and grape tomatoes in a mayonnaise-based dressing scented with dijon mustard and a touch of cayenne, which I liked (the lettuce was crisp, so it had been freshly tossed).

Tony had the luncheon-sized prime rib for his main course. If that was a luncheon size, I'd hate to see what constitutes dinner size—the beef took up the entire oval plate! Rather than serving creamed grated horseradish as an accompaniment, there were thick shreds of horseradish mounded on the edge of the plate which could be used with each bite. For side dishes, he had mashed potatoes and long green beans in a tomato-green pepper espagnol sauce, both served in individual au gratin dishes. Tony said the prime rib had some unexpected bits of gristle, but was "excellent" and had a "very nice flavor."

I chose the grilled calves' liver and onions, which was absolutely delicious. They brought me a large, hot plate with a base of fully cooked onion slices and two long strips of liver which were grilled to just over medium rare. The liver was very tender and flavorful, lacking any unpleasant harshness. There's nothing better than good liver prepared at a good restaurant. For sides, I had the mashed potatoes, which were rich but rather over spiced with white pepper, I thought, and the broccoli rabe, which was oddly dry and topped with a grating of a white, semi-soft cheese.

We both had the bread pudding in bourbon sauce for dessert. It was a small serving with large bread chunks baked to crunchiness on the outside with a soft custardy inside; the bourbon sauce definitely had bourbon in it! I saw a crême bruleé at a nearby table and was happy not to have ordered that; another table had a big delicious-looking wine goblet full of fresh berries which looked wonderful, but that wasn't a Restaurant Week option.

On the whole, I liked the Prime Rib. Service was attentive and efficient and food was served in a timely manner. The only service faux pas I noticed was that our waiter refilled our tea glasses by pouring directly into the glasses on the table without picking them up and moving them to the side; he splashed a little bit of tea onto the tablecloth and on my knife. He regained points, though, for crumbing the table before the dessert course. I thought the food was good, though rather old-fashioned (that isn't necessarily a criticism, since old-fashioned can be good at times). For people wanting an old-style, elegant, steakhouse experience, I can recommend this place highly.

Penang, Washington, D.C.

Last night my Tulsa friend Tony and I went to dinner at Penang, a Malaysian restaurant on M Street in the West End. It turned out to be quite a nice place while still maintaining the affordability common to other Malaysian places in town. The restaurant is on the corner of the intersection in an interesting low building with a Mexican quasi-fast food place on the half-below ground floor and Penang half a flight up. One enters the restaurant through a dark but very contemporary feeling bar area. To the left is a small raised seating area where diners have a view of the kitchen through large windows. Straight ahead through the bar is the main dining room, where a wide variety of contemporary table and chair designs were scattered spaciously throughout the room. Pendant lights and other interesting fixtures provided soft lighting, and a window wall gave a view of the street half a floor below. We were seated at a banquette table along one wall, and I got the free-standing chair, finding it comfortable once I was in it, but it was really quite a bit too low for someone of my great height and advanced age.

Menus were several pages, featuring mostly Malaysian items, but also foods inspired by the cuisines of India, Thailand, and other Asian countries. Tony started with the seafood tomyam soup. It was a pretty red curry broth filled with interesting pieces of mushrooms and an assortment of shrimp, scallops, and squid, served in a deep square bowl. I had the Penang salad. This was a very large plate filled with an assortment of very interesting greens, including a lot of the "bitter" leaves, including raddicchio and frisee, tossed in an usual sweet-sour dressing. A few slices of tender, cooked octopus were tossed in with the greens.

For our main courses, Tony had a seafood chow fun, a large bowl of flat rice noodles with shrimp, scallops, squid, vegetables, and eggs in a whitish-clear sauce they called an "egg gravy."



My dish was fascinating: sarang burung. This was an intriguing dish where they had taken taro root, cooked it some, formed it into a sort of bowl or hat shape, and fried it so it would be able to hold other food items. Inside the taro bowl were scallops, squid, shrimp, baby corn, carrots, black mushrooms, purple onions, cashews, and red and green bell peppers and all of this sat on a scattering of crispy rice noodles with really long strands of carrot threads garnishing the whole dish. It was delicious. That fried taro root had the texture of potatoes and the lightly fried portions had a great crunch and flavor. If you've never had sarang burung, you've got to go to Penang.



It was just a quickie meal, but Penang turned out to be so nice and with such delicious food, there are several people I'm going to have to take there to experience their cuisine. Looking around the other tables, there were a lot of beautiful and unusual looking plates, so I've a lot to look forward to.

Circle Bistro, Washington, D.C.

We were supposed to do an early brunch on Sunday, so I punted morning Mass. As it turns out, we barely made it to a restaurant at two o'clock. Leo and I, joined by his friend Dale, wandered up to Washington Circle to the Circle Bistro with no reservations and managed to get seated right away. We've wanted to try Circle Bistro in the Washington Circle Hotel for some time, since it's one of the three hotel restaurants in the neighborhood owned by George Washington University, and the other two (Notti Bianche at the GWU Inn and Dish at the River Inn) are both quite enjoyable. Of course, what I'd forgotten is that while the other two share an executive chef, Circle Bistro is completely independent and different.

The Bistro has a separate street entrance from the hotel. It is simply decorated in a pleasant contemporary theme, and each table had a square glass vase with glass pebbles and a single flower head floating in the water. We were given menus which had both the Restaurant Week luncheon offerings and the regular weekend brunch menu.

Leo and Dale both started with the smoky cannellini soup with bits of duck confit garnished with a drizzle of chive oil. Cannellini are Italian white beans, and the beans had been cooked down and pressed through a food mill to produce a smooth, creamy-looking potage. Little chunks of duck confit were mixed in. Both of them enjoyed their soup quite a bit. A big basket of simple, sliced French-style bread came to the table and we all thought it was surprisingly good. Even though the first courses came quickly, there was quite a long wait for the next course.

For their main courses, Leo opted for the pan-fried trout and Dale ordered the roasted chicken breast. The trout looked very good. It was a whole trout, prepared meuniere and presented splayed open, with the body cavity filled with haricots verts (French style, long, skinny green beans) and the plate was strewn with chopped tomatoes and chopped almonds. The chicken was also well prepared, with the chicken served atop a mound of braised kale which in turn was on a bed of mashed sweet potatoes.

After my huge dinner the previous evening, I was still not ready for a big meal, so rather than doing the Restaurant Week menu, I opted to order a simple eggs Benedict from the brunch menu. My plate contained the usual two English muffin halves topped with Canadian bacon and some obviously hand-poached eggs, all covered with an unusually pale hollandaise sauce. There was also a serving of chopped fried potatoes and a huge serving of undressed salad. The eggs Benedict was good enough, though I noted the hollandaise and fried potatoes were almost cold; while I would not have used it, catsup for the fried potatoes was not offerred.

While I didn't get one, desserts came with the Restaurant Week lunches. Leo had a very pretty and unique apple tart with macademia ice cream and caramel sauce served on a cookie base.



Dale had the bittersweet chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream, marshmallow sauce, and a sprinkling of candied walnuts. While I liked the apple tart, I thought the cake was rather dry and a bit overcooked.



Incidentally, Leo's mimosa only cost $6 and my iced tea only $2.

The overall impression? Well, first keep in mind that the Circle Bistro doesn't charge anywhere near the prices of any of the other high end places we visited during Restaurant Week. Remembering that, the food was servicable, flavorful, and adequate, with the occasional unexpected gem. They had some kitchen issues which need to be resolved. On the whole, though, the price was right, we got full, and there's no reason we would avoid Circle Bistro in the future.

The Grille at the Ritz-Carleton, Washington, D.C.

It's always a bad sign when one has to wait at a restaurant's maitre d' stand for over five minutes before one is noticed by an employee.

My friends Robert from Arkansas, housemate Leo, and I walked in precisely on time for our brunch reservation at The Grille at the Ritz-Carleton today, and we stood there in plain view, occasionally popping in to the dining room to look around more in quest of a host/hostess. Finally after we'd been there seven minutes, a waiter noticed us. After fumbling with the reservations book to find our name, he led us into the main dining room to seat us in a cozy alcove (had it previously been a coat closet??) with a table for three overlooking the dining room and with a view out the plate glass window wall onto the street.

We'd only been there a minute or two when an older manager-type came up and said they were going to have to get the dining room ready for a private party, so he was going to have to move us to another room—all with appropriate apologies, of course, but still, we were having to move after having just gotten settled.

The manager seated us at a very interesting granite-topped, rectangular table with a love seat along the long side and two chairs at either end, then presented us with menus he'd grabbed as we followed him to the other dining room. Rather than being Restaurant Week menus, though, they were regular breakfast menus. When our (different) waiter arrived to fill our water glasses, we had to ask him for the correct menus. As he took away the breakfast menus, he noticed that our table setting did not have napkins, so he brought the correct menus, then made an extra trip to bring napkins; he only brought two napkins, however, so he had to make yet another trip to bring the third.

And thus the meal went.

After bringing our drinks (a mimosa for Leo and an iced tea for me; Robert stuck with water), the waiter announced he was ready to take our orders. Then, he discovered he'd not brought a pad on which to write the orders, so he had to go get one and come back. The Restaurant Week menus were very limited. First course was either soup du jour or Caesar salad, main course was salmon or chicken breast, and dessert was cheesecake or a charlotte. Good thing I hadn't brought my father here, cause if it doesn't moo or oink, he won't eat it.

So far, no one had announced the specials of the day or stated the contents of the soup du jour, so when Leo started to order, the first thing he asked was "what is the soup du jour." Well, the waiter didn't know, so he had to go ask. When he returned, he said it was "pepper.....red pepper soup." None of the usual flowery adjectives to describe the wonderous deliciousness of the restaurant's offering. So, that's what Leo ordered. Robert and I both opted for the Caesar salads.

While we waited, we were brought a very interesting bread basket with a huge assortment of breads, breadsticks, cornbread, and lavosh crackers. One particularly interesting piece was cut open, spread with a pesto-looking substance and topped with a tomato slice, black olive, and cheese and then broiled to melt the cheese. Another interesting piece was a small whole wheat olive roll with a whole black olive baked into the edge.

Our Caesar salads were okay, but terribly ordinary. They used commercial croutons and there were disgusting little anchovy filets on top of the romaine. Yes, I know that there is anchovy in a proper Caesar dressing, but that's all smushed up and there's not that much fish. Robert ate his dead fish, but I gave mine to Leo, since he likes that sort of thing. Leo's soup was served in a flat, double-handled soup cup on a service plate, and the first thing I noticed is that when it was put down in front of him, the handles were not parallel to his body but were askew. He ate it without much comment. Once he was done, there was a tiny bit left in the cup, so I asked to taste a little bit. I dipped the tip of my (clean) butter spreader into the soup and sampled it. There was very little red pepper taste to the cream soup. What I did taste, however, was shellfish—crab or lobster.

Leo is allergic to crab and lobster.

So, I asked the waiter on his next pass to check with the kitchen to see if there was shellfish in the soup, since Leo has an allergy. He took his time about it, but eventually a different, younger manager-type came out and explained that there was a little bit of lobster in the soup. Oh, my God. Well, Leo was okay, apparently not having ingested enough lobster to get his rash/hives, and he also said that alcohol (as in his mimosa) helped counteract the allergy. He's lucky. I have another friend who, had he eaten a cup of shellfish soup, would have been critically ill and in the emergency room on the literal verge of death. One would think that a restaurant in a major, high end restaurant chain like the Ritz-Carleton would know that there are people with serious allergies to shellfish, peanuts, and wheat, and would disclose those ingredients in menus and menu descriptions!

There was one bit of amusement. The nice young manager who discussed the soup problem was nattily attired in his three-piece navy blue suit, but he missed one little bit of sartorial detail: his fly was fully unzipped. After he left the table, we had a bit of discussion about it. Then, Leo announced he was going to tell him. Robert and I both chimed in simultaneously, "No!" and we tried to explain to him that in American culture (Leo is from Hong Kong, remember), we don't tell strangers such things in public. Our main courses arrived, and who should bring out the three plates but that manager! After he set the plates down, Leo said, "Sir, I need to tell you something," and Robert and I both said "No!" again as the poor manager turned to Leo, expecting to hear a comment about how the food was so wonderful or something. Leo said across the table, "You need to zip up," and after that was met with a look of confusion, he continued, "Your pants." Robert and I were mortified.

We all had the same main course: Cajun spiced grilled salmon. I thought my salmon was quite good, even though I've never beeen a big fan of the Cajun or "blackened" spice craze of the '80s. A couple of peeled, steamed asparagus spears decorated the plate. The fish rested on a thick smear of what I thought might be grainy, thin mashed potatoes, but which Robert insisted was grits. We still aren't sure what it was.

The waiter lost service points because our entrees arrived before he had given us appropriate flatware. And, when we were all three done eating and had placed our knives and forks in the traditional "four o'clock position," he interrupted our conversation to ask if we were done and could he take the plates.

Both of the desserts were a visual surprise and quite unexpected. Leo had the vanilla bean cheesecake with banana chocolate sauce. As you can see, a light, fluffy cheesecake mixture had been put in a rounded mold, then set on a circle of pressed, molded cake and dusted with cocoa. The banana chocolate sauce included nuts of some kind, and that strip laying across the top of the cheesecake was a very thin, unsweetened cracker of some sort. Leo reported the cheesecake to have a very pronounced vanilla flavor (I could see vanilla bean seeds in the mix), and, since he prefers the heavy, dense, cheesy, New York style, it wasn't his favorite, though he said it was good.



Robert and I both had the strawberry charlotte. Now, a traditional charlotte is made by lining a charlotte mold (this is a traditional charlotte mold) with either lady fingers or slices of genoise (a type of cake), then filling the mold with alternating layers of filling, fruit, and cake. A typical strawberry charlotte would include fresh strawberry slices as garnish and there would be a strawberry puree to add to the layers, with the primary filling being strawberry puree folded in with whipped cream and stabilized with a bit of gelatin. Well, here at the Ritz-Carleton, they took the banquet caterers' route out, filling a big sheet cake pan with a thin layer of cake and using what tasted to me like strawberry Jello whipped with whipped cream and a very gelatinized strawberry puree, then cut the dessert into squares. The garnish was a raspberry, not a strawberry. On the plate you'll also see a smear of what we think was minted sour applesauce (though I thought I tasted a bit of grape) and an egg-shaped dollop of what Robert called "the most artfully presented Cool Whip I've ever seen." This dessert was tasty enough for what it was, but it certainly was not what I think of as a strawberry charlotte.



Having entered the restaurant from their on-street door, we opted to walk through the hotel's lobby on the way out. It was, as expected, quite luxe. We noted in the main lobby a huge round console table fully covered with containers cram-filled with expensive white and cream flowers, including a lot of long-stemmed white tulips, white roses, and white symbidium orchids.

So, what was our over all impression of The Grille? Well, the food was fine for a $20.06 prix fixe menu, though nothing special. Our waiter was attentive and nice, but poorly trained. There are some definite management service issues here. And, they are unwarrantedly very expensive—Leo's average sized flute of mimosa was $12 and my iced tea was $4.75! We'd also noted during our long wait to be greeted several flyers advertising future dinners, such as a Valentine's Day dinner for $95 per person and a Scotch and cigar dinner later this month for $125 per person, so this is not an economical place to eat.

I'm afraid that The Grille at the Ritz-Carleton falls into the category of the typical, severely over-priced, faux-elegant hotel restaurant. If you're on somebody else's expense account, it's okay enough food, but one should never equate priciness with gourmet dining.

The Caucus Room, Washington, D.C.

How wonderfully convenient it has been this week to have to have business luncheons during Restaurant Week. Today I got to lunch with a friend who's in the midst of party politics here in D.C. working for a certain politician-not-to-be-named, so it was so appropriate that we got to go to that seat of lobbyist largess in Washington, The Caucus Room. The Caucus Room is conveniently located about half way between the White House and the Capitol, just north of Pennsylvania Avenue. Its owners include big name politicos intentionally from both parties, and when Congress is in session, the place is usually packed with lobbyists and politicians. It's long been on my list of restaurants to experience, but places that cater to lobbyists always have what we call "expense account prices," meaning us normal people usually can't afford to eat here outside of Restaurant Week.

We walked in a couple of minutes prior to our 2 p.m. reservation and were immediately whisked in to one of the main dining rooms, walking through passages lined floor to ceiling with rack after rack of wine. Demi-round banquette tables with high backs lined the walls and tables in various configurations filled the center of the room. The dining room was tastefully appointed with no real theme or decor concept; black and white photographs in black frames were hung all over the walls. The most striking design element in the dining room, though, was the table settings: at each place was a tall, slender water glass and an enormous wine glass nearly twice the height of the water glass! The menus were presented in large vinyl folders, with one menu for the host with prices and the other menus with no prices. The Restaurant Week menu was a separate card.

We both started with the open-faced wild mushroom ravioli for our first courses. The design was unexpected; they had taken a large sheet of pasta dough and fashioned a single, large, bowl-sized raviolo with large tender chunks of assorted chopped mushroom in a beefy broth, topped with long, thin pea pods and shavings of peccorino cheese. It had a wonderful flavor and I think it was probably my favorite dish of the meal.



Both of our main courses were simply prepared and basic, but very tasty. My friend had the medallions of beef, which had two pieces of tenderloin cooked medium rare and presented on a mound of mashed Yukon gold potatoes all on a mirror of red wine reduction sauce and with several stalks of steamed fresh asparagus on the side, which he reported was "excellent."



I had the seared sea bass presented on a bed of roasted fingerling potatoes and lightly sauteed broccoli rabe and with a tamarind-flavored thin brown sauce, which I also enjoyed alot, especially the slightly bitter, hot zestiness of the rabe.



With the first two courses we had a big wire basket of bread featuring slices of French loaf and of a nice multigrain sunflower loaf.

I was pretty full after the first two courses (you'll recall how skinny and dainty I am), but dessert was part of the prix fixe menu, so I forced myself to eat more. My friend had the coconut pannacotta with roasted pineapple sauce. He'd not had a pannacotta before, so he said the texture surprised him a bit (pannacotta is a sort of eggless custard, solidified with gelatin), and he liked the pineapple sauce because it wasn't too cloying.



I ate the individual pecan pie with vanilla ice cream and a rum caramel sauce dusted with little granules of caramelized sugar and garnished with a chocolate "twig." Now, being somewhat of a pecan pie afficianando myself and having made ennumerable pecan pies in the past, I was not overwhelmingly impressed with this offering. It was good, but not great. My biggest concern was that I only had a fork and the caramelized top of the pie made it very difficult to cut into the pie without a knife. I also noticed a honey taste to the filling; the ice cream was very, very soft, almost melted.



Service was attentive throughout the meal, and I was impressed that the waiter crumbed the table after the main course plates were removed. The waiter was rather chatty, though, and they also lost points for charging us for a coffee and a hot tea that we hadn't ordered (incidentally, the iced tea here costs $3). I also thought it interesting when the assistant removed the extra two place settings from our table, he did not remove our two imposingly tall wine glasses, even though we'd already said we weren't ordering alcohol.

All in all, I kind of liked this place. It was a comfortable place to dine. While the food was not exotic or overly fancy, they did a good job of preparation and presentation of simple, basic foods, and I imagine it does well with the target audience, being "down home" politicians and lobbyists. I forgot to look at their wine list, but judging from all the different labels I was seeing in the bins along the walls, it must be very nice. The Caucus Room is a good place to meet and eat.

Galileo, Washington, D.C.

After trying unsuccessfully for the past two Restaurant Weeks, at long last we were finally able to procure reservations for dinner at Galileo da Roberto Donna Ristorante Italiano, an establishment which seems to be on most everybody's list of the top five restaurants in the District. Chef Roberto Donna is one of the stars of the D.C. culinary scene. His Galileo provides diners with three venues: the main dining room, the laboratorio, and the kitchen. The laboratorio is for tasting menus and the kitchen is for small groups of connoisseurs for whom Donna personally selects menus and cooks. I noticed through the windows that there were lots of fresh ingredients (they use brown eggs) and cooking equipment in the laboratorio, so I guess they do some cooking demonstrations in there.

The thing which struck me most about this restaurant was the high standard of service; not only were the employees well-trained, efficient, and attentive, they were actually friendly, something we seldom see at high-end, expensive restaurants.

Galileo is located in the ground level of a West End downtown office building. They have their own canopy and valet parking. As we entered, a large bar on our right occupied most of the street window space, and coat check and the attendant were on the left. A hostess was in place at the maitre d' stand to confirm our reservation, and immediately we were greeted by name by the dining room manager and a waiter led us to our table. The dining room was teeming with male waiters, all dressed in dark navy blue suits with an assortment of shirts and ties. During the course of the evening, I found it interesting how cooperatively the waiters worked, with everyone helping everyone else, regardless of whose table it was. The restaurant's dress code is business casual, but I'm glad I had on a sports jacket and tie, because almost all of the men in the dining room were in jackets and ties.

For some reason, the three of us were all on an economy binge tonight, so we opted to have cocktails here at the condo before walking over to the restaurant for our 9:15 reservation. A couple of years ago, I was given a bottle of 2000 R. H. Phillips Toasted Head Chardonnay which I'd been saving for a special occasion, and it seemed appropriate to cork it for tonight. It was an excellent chardonnay. It was very full bodied, rich, and toasty-tasting with substantial oompf to it, yet it was wonderfully creamy, smooth and buttery going down. Leo claims an allergy to white wine (but not red), so he drank a glass of it, and then switched to Wild Turkey and water on the rocks, leaving that much more of the delicious wine for Dale and me. Of course, once we got to the restaurant, what was the first thing Leo ordered? A glass of house chardonnay—a white wine!

The menus at Galileo are lengthy. I got the impression that they were one of the handful of restaurants that put their entire menu on the Restaurant Week list, especially since there were a couple of meat entrees which indicated a supplemental charge. Now, a typical Italian meal would be four courses, but they arranged things in such a way as to accommodate the Restaurant Week concept of three courses. If you go to Galileo at a time outside of Restaurant Week, be brave of heart: this is a pricey place, warranting its designation as "very expensive" in several guide books. In fact, my first course alone cost more than the $30.06 special price, and had I paid full price for everything, my three mid-priced dishes plus bottled Italian spring water would retail at $83.50, exclusive of taxes and gratuities.

I started with the risotto alla pilota con costine di maiale al forno, a creamy rice risotto with tiny pieces of fresh salami and cabbage in it, scented with black truffle oil, and with a little crispy, roasted pork rib on top. The risotto was exquisite. The flavors were so nicely melded and the rice was perfectly done. Everyone at the table sampled it and liked it. Dale had I gamberoni saltati con sedano rapa e carote brasate con salsa all'aglio, which was one, great big, head-on shrimp sauteed and served with a nest of shredded, braised root vegetables; a garlic beurre blanc sauce was drizzled all over the plate around the shrimp and vegetables, which he said he liked. Were I paying individually for this first course, I'm not sure I would have felt that $27 was a good value for just one shrimp, but I guess that wasn't an issue tonight. Leo had il cotechino con lenticchie e salsa verde, an interesting homemade Cotechino sausage served on a a bed of lentils and drizzled with salsa verde. He didn't like the sausage at all, so Dale and I each got to taste it. I actually liked it, even though I'm usually not a fan of the anise seed taste that is so common in Italian sausages; it was juicy and exploding with flavor; because it was a freshly made sausage, it wasn't really firmly solid and it had a texture reminiscent of a not-yet-set terrine, so I think that was the aspect that Leo didn't like. It was surprising that he ordered this item in the first place, since he tends not to like the more exotic western European spicings and he usually orders seafood instead of pork.

Edit: Leo says: "The sausage wasn't bad at all, but.....the whole dish was a bit too 'home food' for me."

Our second courses were equally interesting. I had il branzino con cipolle brasate, pignoli e uvetta allo zafferano con spinaci saltati, the sautéed filet of Mediterranean sea bass, which came with braised onions, raisins, and pine nuts flavored with saffron and sautéed spinach. I thought the sea bass was nice, though perhaps the serving size was a bit on the tiny side. I don't know whether or not that was the usual size, or if there was a reduced size for Restaurant Week. Of course, we Americans do tend to eat way more food that we should; still, at these prices, I expected more than a square only two or two and a half inches wide. Leo had the spezzatino di cappone di mare con verdure al curry di madras, which seemed to be an interesting stew of monkfish, eggplant, potatoes, pears, zuccini, and sun-dried tomatoes flavored with Madras-style curry and lemon, garnished with a handful of flash-fried carrot shavings. Dale's second course was the star of the evening: costoletta di vitello alla griglia servita con patate, bietole brasate e salsa all'arancia. This was a large grilled veal chop with a dramatically frenched bone resting against a mound of mashed potatoes with an orange tomato sauce and some braised Swiss chard. A long sprig of fresh rosemary was stuck flag-like in the potatoes. We all got to taste a little bit of the veal, and it was quite tasty. My only criticism is that I thought I heard Dale order the chop medium rare, yet the taste I got was decidedly on the medium side; the menu indicated a $12 upcharge for the veal chop, and perhaps the slight overcooking is why they didn't assess the upcharge on our check.

Before our food began to arrive, we received a large, long board with three breads: slices of a large country loaf (my favorite), slices of a baguete, and pieces of plain foccacia. The waiter poured a good quality olive oil all over our bread and butter plates for us to use for dipping. Foot and a half long, pencil-thin breadsticks were also in a vase on the table for us to nibble on.

Desserts were fun. Dale had the tiramisú, rather interestingly presented in a large cocktail glass.



Leo opted for the stunningly presented torta di nocciole, a warm hazelnut cake served with hazelnut croccante ice cream and zabaglione sauce, with a tangle of spun sugar on top.



I had Le Mele, a warm apple tart in puff pastry with mascarpone ice cream and a little date and almond "barrel", with a light almond sauce all over the plate. My apple tart was very pretty (sorry the photo is overexposed) with the center of the puff pastry cut away and used as a cap over the finished tart. There were just a few apple slices in the tart, all "artfully" arranged; the mascarpone ice cream was particularly delicious.



All of the desserts normally retail for $11. I think next time I'll try their cheese sampler.

I wanted some after-dinner espresso, but neither of my companions were interested, and I hate to drink alone, so we skipped the demitasse course and paid our check. I thought it was sweet that so many of the staff thanked us for coming.

Galileo was quite a fun restaurant. The crowd was lively and diverse. I would love to come back, particularly to try the tasting menus, or, when I win the lottery to reserve the kitchen for a private dinner with the chef. Perhaps later in the year, eh? If you like high-end Italian food in a formal setting, this is the perfect place. Be sure to bring your banker.

Kinkead's Seafood and Oyster Bar, Washington, D.C.

There is a certain artistry required to do seafood well. One would think that mankind would be highly adept at preparing fish and other "fruits de mer," given our history of civilization along rivers and ocean coasts, but the simple fact of the matter is that many people are paralyzed at the thought of cooking seafood and most other people who think they can are, um, misguided.

So, it was quite a pleasant surprise to lunch today at Kinkead's Seafood and Oyster Bar and have not one but two excellently prepared seafood dishes.

My meal was a business luncheon, so Kinkead's was nearby, and it just so happened that Kinkead's is participating (for lunches only) in Restaurant Week this week. For those unfamiliar with Restaurant Week, twice a year, a goodly number of D.C. area restaurants offer special prix fixe menus at the established price of $20.06 for lunch and $30.06 for dinner. Now, Kinkead's is one of those D.C. restaurants in the "very expensive" category, meaning a person should expect to pay more than $50 per person for dinner, excluding wines and cocktails. From the looks of the regular menu, I think one would probably spend at least $40 on lunch, so the $20.06 three-course meal is a wonderful bargain.

My first course was the grilled squid with creamy polenta and tomato fondue. I received a very generous serving of large, wide rings of squid which had been grilled to just the perfect degree of doneness, with none of the chewiness of undercooked squid or rubberiness of overcooked squid. The squid pieces were carefully arranged on their sides in a straight row atop a mixture of the polenta and the tomato fondue; a generous layer of pesto topped the squid, and the food was garnished with the top leaves of a fresh basil plant. The tomato fondue was essentially a hot, chunky tomato sauce, but without the sweetness and extra spicing of a pasta sauce. The polenta surprised me a bit; I'm used to polenta being a rather solid and substantial Italian version of cornmeal mush, so I expected a slice or a scoop instead of the nearly sauce-like polenta mixture they'd squirted on the plate. So, while the polenta disappointed me, it was just a minor accompaniment to the delicious squid, so I'm not too worried. My colleague ordered the shrimp and crab pupusa with green tomatillo sauce and jalapeño cabbage slaw. We didn't discuss food, so I can only make external observations. The pupusa appeared to be two thin cornmeal masa "pancakes" maybe two inches in diameter put together like a sandwich with the shrimp and crab mixture in a thick creamy looking sauce in the middle and a little bit of flaked crabmeat on top as a garnish. The jalapeño cabbage slaw was underneath the pupusa, and I think the jalapeño hotness was too much for him, since after one bite, he drank some water and didn't finish the slaw.

We both had fish for our main courses. I ordered the brioche-crusted cod with artichoke puree and garlic mashed potatoes. My large plate was covered with a cream sauce (perhaps with a hint of artichoke flavor?) upon which was placed the fish, a ripe, peeled and seeded, cooked tomato, and a small dollop of garlic mashed potatoes with a grilled half of a miniature artichoke on top of the potatoes. The cod was divine. The piece of fish was probably a good inch and a half thick, yet every bit of it was perfectly cooked to the exact translucent doneness, whether in the middle of the fish or on the edges, and having struggled with cooking fish myself, that is a great accomplishment! The brioche crust was a dredging of the fish in tiny brioche crumbs that had an excellent, almost crunchy, texture and flavor. My colleague had the grilled mahi-mahi with a sweet potato tamale served on a bed of black beans. A darkly herbed butter was melting atop the fish. He ate it all, so it must have been good, and I was really wanting to ask him for a tiny bite of the very interesting looking sweet potato tamale, but obviously, that wasn't the appropriate venue.

With the first and second courses, we had a plate with a large square of butter and an aluminum bowl filled with hard rolls, foccacia, and a fruited (but not sweet) nut bread.

For dessert, my colleague had the sour cherry crème brulée served in a ramekin with a couple of wedges of thin cookie. It looked like there were a few dried cherries in the custard mixture, but there was no red color or any accompanying sour cherry sauce. I had the artisanal cheese plate with fruit, nuts, and walnut-raisin bread. There were three cheeses (identified in the menu but I wasn't able to write them down) that included a scoop of a very soft, mild goat cheese, a slice of a moderately soft, yellow-white cheese, and a slice of a blue cheese, which may have been from sheep's milk, but I wasn't sure. With the cheeses were two slices from a big, green apple, a whole dried apricot, a couple of cubes of an orange, densely gelatinous quince paste (it was actually very good), and several toasted pecans. It was a good sized serving for one (most cheese plates I get are two big for just one person), and my only complaint is that they provided only two small pieces of the walnut-raisin bread, and a third piece would have been very useful.

Service was adequate and I had no complaints, though I wasn't impressed, either. Lunches are always a rush, and we'd been put out on the indoor "patio" that is inside the shops where the restaurant is located, so by not being inside the main dining room, we might have been a bit too out of sight, out of mind.

It was nice not buying, though I did notice one shocking thing on the bill: my glass of iced tea was $2.75. Good thing I had a refill!

Anyway, Kinkead's has a reputation for being one of the best seafood restaurants in D.C., and they acquitted themselves well today. If you're on an expense account, I'd highly recommend it.

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The only downside of my luncheon is that while we were in the restaurant, it started to rain and I got to walk the three blocks home in the rain. My hair was wilted. :(

Chinatown Express, Washington, D.C.

After seeing The Producers last night (great show, by the way!), we wandered through Chinatown and landed at Chinatown Express for a delicious dinner. Before going in, we stood outside on the sidewalk to watch through the front window one of the cooks stretching and making fresh noodles—it was quite a spectacle! After seeing them made, I had to order a bowl of beef noodle soup, which turned out to be huge! The noodles were so good, though. We also had some delicious fresh steamed pork dumplings, Eric had an egg drop soup, and we shared two entrees, a shrimp, walnut, and pineapple in cream sauce dish served with broccoli and a spicy kung-pow scallop dish with lots of scallops, vegetables, and peanuts. Steamed rice and hot tea were complimentary. Chinatown Express is off the beaten path a bit, but I always think it's one of the true gems of Chinatown with delicious food and particularly cheap prices!

Tai Shan Chinese Restaurant, Washington, D.C.

Our celebration of Christmas continues, especially since St. Stephen's Day was a federal holiday. Last night after the movie, we had dinner at Tai Shan Chinese Restaurant, which is right by the Chinatown Metro stop on H Street. It looks very much like all the other low end Chinese restaurants in the area, although this one doesn't have a meat case or fish tank or anything fun like that out in the dining room area as do some of the others. Leo asked for the Chinese language menu and, as usual, did all the ordering.

Since I don't read Cantonese, I don't know the proper names of each of the dishes, so I'll just try to describe them and hope you get the drift. We started with a shared big bowl of seafood and tofu soup in a clear stock thickened with cornstarch. It was pretty standard. We had three entrees. One dish had strips of pork which had been dredged in flour and lots of salt and pepper and then deep fried, served on a bed of mixed sliced lettuce and chopped green onion. It was very tasty, which made up for the slight annoyance of the bone still being attached to each piece of pork. Our seafood dish was a melange of scored squid, two different kinds of mushroom, and assorted vegetables in a thin brown sauce. It was okay, but nothing really exciting. The third dish was a little odd. They took beef brisket, stewed (and hence gelatinous) bits of cartiledge, and big chunks of daikon and cooked them together in a brown sauce. The beef was flavorful, the cartiledge one of those acquired Chinese tastes, and the daikon odd. Daikon is a large, white radish which is probably most familar to those who frequent sushi bars and see shredded daikon on their plates as an edible garnish. They had somehow pickled the chunks of radish, leaving them with a bit of a sour-vinegar taste, and it wasn't really my favorite thing on the table.

Hot tea and steamed white rice were complimentary accompaniments.

I thought the food was ok here, but Leo didn't like it at all. He didn't think the beef and daikon dish was fresh and didn't think the seafood dish was exactly what he'd ordered. I don't know, since I don't speak any Cantonese. Service was okay, too, though I did notice that we got passed off to a different waiter twice, ending up with a Chinese person with heavily highlighted long hair and we couldn't decide if that person was male or female.

Cactus Cantina, Washington, D.C.

Merry Christmas!

We've just returned from the Cathedral Church of Saints Peter and Paul in the City of Washington (the National Cathedral), where my friend Joel and I went to Midnight Mass. Since the cathedral doors opened at 9 for the 10 p.m. service, we wanted to be nearby to be able to get a good seat, so we sought out a neighborhood restaurant for a leisurely pre-church dinner. The only thing we could find open was Cactus Cantina, but that worked out just fine, since Cactus Cantina gave us a chance to have tamales, a big Christmas Eve tradition in Mexico (not that either of us are Mexican, but you know how I like to have an excuse for eating something). The tamales were very interesting, as they had jalapeño peppers mixed in with the corn meal masa that surrounded the pork filling. In addition to our tamales, we had fresh guacamole, chips, and some interestingly smoky salsa. Joel had the camarones diablos (deviled shrimp), several Coronas, and a Grand Marnier, and I had a huge Brazilean salad with lots of different things including chunks of chicken breast and pieces of palm hearts washed down with sangria.

La Creperie, Arlington, VA

We were out yesterday at Pentagon Row and at the Fashion Center at Pentagon City stocking up on last minute goodies, watching the crowds, and doing a bit of Christmas and grocery shopping. It was a beautiful day and a great afternoon for the ice skaters at the outdoor rink at Pentagon Row, and I was tempted to join them if I wasn't so old and arthritic and if Leo had been more adventuresome.

We did have a lovely lunch, though, at La Crêperie, which you can just barely see in the picture above in the center of the shops, with the yellow border around the burgundy awning. La Crêperie, as one might guess, specializes in foods made with crêpes, those very thin French pancakes, and their menu is filled with items quite distinctive of the region of Brittany, on France's west coast.

I started with the soupe tomate, a thick, rich cream of tomato soup heavily herbed with basil, chervil, and a touch of marjoram. Then I had the salade Niçoise, a classic French salad with lettuce, egg, cucumber, tomato, black olives, potatoes, and long slivvers of carrot topped with tuna and anchovy filets in a thin, flavored mayonnaise dressing.

Leo was more traditional and actually ordered crêpes, starting with a crêpe au saumon. They made a huge round crêpe, covered it with smoked salmon, cream cheese, and lemon-dill sauce, then folded it in half for the presentation on the plate. He said the combination of ingredients was quite pleasant. He also sipped a mimosa whilst I ate my soup.

For dessert, we split a crêpe aux marrons, another big, folded crêpe which was filled with a luscious sweetened chestnut pureé, and had crushed almonds scattered over the top. The chestnut crepe just seemed like such a wonderfully seasonal and "christmasy" dessert, and I haven't seen a single roasted chestnut in the D.C. area this entire month. After dessert, I had un express, a very strong French-roast espresso.

It was quite a delicious and surprisingly inexpensive lunch (most of the entree crêpes are only $6-8 each) in a pleasant setting, and I always enjoy going here. Leo thinks this locally-owned restaurant should franchise. My only complaint yesterday was minor, and that was that my soup had just arrived when the waiter returned with both my salad and Leo's crêpe, and their huge service plates awkwardly completely crowded the table. Otherwise, though, the staff was inobtrusively attentive in the traditional French manner.

Time to get my day started. There's a lot to do before tonight!

Cafe Berlin, Washington, D.C.

Tonight we celebrated the ancient Germanic/Nordic holiday of Yule. The erudite and ever-entertaining Father Steven and I went to Cafe Berlin up on Capitol Hill to make our observance of the winter solstice.

They have an odd little entryway, with the obvious door being blocked off and the entrance under a nearby exterior staircase that takes guests into the cafe's bar. There appeared to be a private birthday party in the back dining room, and it struck me as odd when we were escorted to our table in the nearly full main dining room that there were no females seated at any of the tables (eventually two ladies came in with groups later in the evening). Our table was decorated with Yule-appropriate candles, evergreens, and a sprig of holly.

This was our first visit to Cafe Berlin, and I can tell you we're both looking forward to another visit. There were quite a few intriguing things on the menu, and I can't wait to try them. I also got a peek at their Christmas Day menu, starring roast goose and a chestnut and pheasant bisque, which just makes my mouth water!

Tonight, though, was a different holiday, so we concentrated on traditional Yule foods. Fr. Steven started with the pikante goulash suppe, a thick goulash soup seasoned with paprika which I got to taste and thought it was quite good. Then, in keeping with the Yule tradition of sacrificing a pig at the solstice (the source of our modern tradition of Christmas hams), he had the braised wild boar in creamy plum sauce, which was accompanied by red cabbage and a bread dumpling. My little taste of his boar was flavorful, though I thought it was a touch dry, possibly because we were eating fairly late in the evening.



I began with the cream of wild game soup, a huge bowl of game stock which had been thickened with a flour and butter roux and enriched with a little splash of cream; this is the old traditional way of making soups, though it always reminds me of thin gravy. My main course was the delicious medallions of elk with wild forest mushrooms in a lingonberry sauce, served with two potato pancakes and some steamed brocolli. The elk was wonderful; the waitress said it was Canadian, though, and not imported from Germany. I'd had a hard time deciding between the elk and the venison tips sauteed with dates and walnuts and I wish I could have tried both, but perhaps we'll do the venison on another trip.



Alas, when the dessert tray came around, they didn't have a Yule log. A Yule log, also known in France as a bûche de Noël, is a thin chocolate genoise (cake) covered with buttercream, rolled up like a jelly roll, and then frosted and decorated with chocolate icing to look like a tree log, commemorating the big trees called Yule logs with are traditionally burned this time of year. While the absence was disappointing, we still had plenty of rich, tasty dessert options. Fr. Steven chose the unusually tall pear and almond frangipane tarte and I had the egg nog torte, which had been artfully decorated with a bright yellow "yolk" in the center of the top whipped cream layer of the full torte.

If you like German foods, Cafe Berlin is a great place to try new things. They do an excellent job of keeping what can be very substantial German meat entrees from being too heavy or fattening, and the menu has a lot of options other than beef, pork, and veal, including chicken, pheasant, rabbit, fish, and even vegetarian offerings.

O'Hare Airport, Chicago, IL

Saturday afternoon, I had a three hour layover at O'Hare Airport, so I ate at a Chili's Too, an abbreviated version of the Dallas-based national chain, where they had mostly burgers, sandwiches, salads, and only a handful of other entrees. Wasn't really my preferred choice, but it had the advantage of being one of the few sit-down restaurants, rather than fast food. The waitress recommended against the fish and chips, so I let her pick, and she brought me a Carribbean chicken salad, which was the typical entree salad with sliced chicken breast meat on top, plus some canned pineapple chunks and canned mandarin orange segments. Tasty enough. I was still hungry, though, and still needing to kill time, so I ordered some French fries, which came amazingly quickly, and were actually hot and fresh.

Last night, back at O'Hare on my way home to D.C., I wasn't in the mood for Chili's Too again (different terminal, another restaurant), so I ended up at Quizno's for a decent but messy chicken carbonara sandwich and then a disappointing piece of chocolate chip cheesecake from one of the cart vendors outside the sandwich shop. O'Hare is not one of the better airports for the more discriminating travelling diners.

Saigon Saigon, Arlington, VA

Over the weekend, we were at Pentagon Row to hit the Harris Teeter store and World Market, so we ate dinner (during rush hour!) at Saigon Saigon, a Vietnamese restaurant which is way around to the side of the shops, well off the beaten path. Saigon Saigon is owned by a local Vietnamese family which also owns Saigon Asia in Virginia Square and Saigon Crystal in Crystal City; it's quite a good place to know about, since the establishment is in a nice, contemporarily decorated space and the prices are amazingly cheap for busy Arlington shopping districts.

We started with spring rolls, Leo's being the fried "crispy" variety, and mine the uncooked rice paper-wrapped variety. The crispy rolls came with a fish sauce for dipping and mine came with a peanut sauce; I thought the peanut sauce tasted thin and had no real flavor to it, though the roll itself was good. For our main courses, Leo had a big bowl of beef pho, the traditional Vietnamese noodle soup accompanied by a plateful of vegetables, sprouts, mint, and such to add to the broth as wanted, which he said was quite good. I had the bun cha gio—vermicelli with grilled pork. It was delicious. Vietnamese vermicelli is a rather unique dish, almost like a big salad what with all the lettuce, plus a good sized quantity of vermicelli noodles, and a very large serving of succulent strips of grilled pork on top all come in a big bowl to be mixed, and fish sauce can be added to serve as a salad "dressing." Since all they had that night for dessert was fried bananas, we opted not to have dessert.

Saigon Saigon is an excellent bargain, and I'm sure we'll be back again to try some of the other items on their menu.

News Cafe Cucina Italiana, Georgetown, D.C.

Last Thursday when I got home from a reception in Arlington, Leo was both hungry and wanting to Christmas shop, so we walked over to Georgetown to accomplish both missions. After the shopping was done, we were on M Street, so we decided to pop into a place called News Cafe Cucina Italiana, a/k/a News Cafe Italian Kitchen. The restaurant name is an interesting mystery; we've walked by the place multitudinous times, and I hadn't realized it was an Italian place; there's also no explanation as to what "news" has to do with the restaurant, since it's not near any publishers or broadcasters and there was no evidence of journalism in the decor; in fact, it looks pretty much like any other D.C. area restaurant with the exception of the tile mosaics leftover from the previous tenant, a Moroccan restaurant, and the bright ruby walls in the front dining area.

It was close to 10 p.m. when we wandered in and we were immediately seated at a small table along the banquette side of the dining room. They were still doing decent business at that hour and during our visit. Due to the late hour, we chose to have a light supper with just one main course (the Italian tradition is two).

Leo started with some kind of martini concoction which contained green apple vodka and some melon liqueur (Midori?); I took a tiny sip and thought it was nasty, but he likes sweet drinks. I contented myself with a couple of glasses of the house champagne (which was actually a dollar cheaper per glass than the house chianti). He asked for and got bruschetta (which was not on the menu) for his antipasto, and I had the zuppa del giorno: assorted wild mushrooms in vegetable and mushroom broth (tasty enough, but I would have preferred them to have added a splash of cream). For our main courses, he had the linguini frutti di mare, which was assorted shrimp, squid, scallops, and seafood in linguine with a mildly spicy red tomato sauce, and I had one of the evening's specials, a bed of linguini in a white Alfredo sauce with a whole lobster which had been cut in half resting on top. The lobster's claw meat had been removed, dipped in melted butter, and placed in the thoracic cavity for ease of eating, and I enjoyed my lobster and pasta quite a lot. For dessert, Leo had the tiramisu, which I tasted, and it seemed good; it included real ladyfingers (laid horizontally rather than vertically, though), mascarpone cheese, and tasted of both espresso and Kahlua.

While the food was tasty at News Cafe, I found the service to be rather dismal. We quickly ate our two little breadsticks, and those were never replaced during the meal. My champagne glass stood empty for quite some time before the host (not the waiter) asked if I wanted another. We only saw the waiter when our orders were taken and the food delivered, then he was gone until it was time for the check; even then, we had to wait an inordinately long time for him to pick up the cash and bring change.

The other problem was the ventilation system. We were in a designated non-smoking section, but there was a man at the bar smoking a cigar, and that dreadful smell permeated the entire restaurant. I mentioned it to the host on the way out, and his only comment was "I know." All I can say is His Honor the Mayor had better not veto that anti-smoking-in-restaurants bill, or I'm going to be quite cross with him.

The Sign of the Whale, Washington, D.C.

After going to the Advent Lessons and Carols service at St. Matthew's Cathedral last night, a small group of us walked down M Street to a pub called The Sign of the Whale for a pint of beer and half-priced burgers. Our table was right by the roaring fireplace in the bar area, where three television sets were each tuned to different sports channels. My hickory burger was tasty, though very messy to eat (nice touch of grilled onions, too); the hickory sauce was a touch sweeter than I prefer, but still good; I thought my French fries with mayonnaise for dipping were excellent. I drank a pint of Foggy Bottom Ale, a local microbrewery product, which tasted like beer (I'm not a beer person). Others liked it, though I thought it a touch fruity and possibly flat, but beers are not my area of expertise. I noticed the pub also had a separate dining room in the back, and there was another area upstairs, though it was closed last night.

La Plaza, Washington, D.C.

Russian concert pianist Svetlana Potanina was in town tonight to play a recital at the Library of Congress. After the show, we wandered down Pennsylvania Avenue looking for a place to grab dinner, but I guess all the stuff near the Capitol is lunch only, because we ended up walking nearly to the Eastern Market Metro station before we found a strip of restaurants which were still open. We landed at La Plaza, a Salvadoran place.

I started with an horchata, a non-alcoholic beverage often thought of as "rice milk" but which is actually made of rice, almonds, vanilla, and sugar, and given the Salvadoran touch of being seasoned with cinnamon and a little ground cocoa. The waiter brought a basket of tortilla chips and a bowl of salsa, and I think their salsa is by far the best fresh salsa I've had in the D.C. area. I had thought to have just a light snack and ordered a puppusa and a tamale, but the waiter brought me the "El Cuscatleco" plate, which was a full dinner with a puppusa, the traditional pickled cabbage and hot pepper salad, a large chicken tamale, sour cream, fried yucca root, slices of fried plantain, Mexican rice, and beans. It was actually a fun dinner and I ate most of it, so I didn't complain. The puppusa, tamale, and plantain were good, the rice was okay, but I thought the yucca had a funny taste to it (probably the grease they used to fry it) and the beans were quite bland.

While La Plaza won't be a "destination" restaurant for us, it was a pleasant place while we were in the neighborhood, and they do have great salsa!

El Chalán, Washington, D.C.

Had a quick dinner at El Chalán last night with my Guatemalan friend Gustavo. Why he wanted to eat at a Peruvian restaurant, I don't know, since Guatemala is in northern Central America, just below Mexico, Peru is way down in South America, and the culinary traditions are very different. But, I've been to El Chalán before and enjoyed the food, so I was okay with it. I was particularly glad to have him along last night, since our waiter spoke no English at all.

Anyway, he had the pollo al vino, a stewed chicken dish with carrot slices, peas, onions, and a light brownish sauce with white rice. I had one of the house specialities, the lomo saltado, a wonderfully tasty dish with tender, braised strips of beefsteak with potatoes (cut like short, thick fries), onion, tomatoes, peppers, peas, cilantro, all tossed together in a zesty brown sauce, and served with a large side of white rice (why does a dish with potatoes need rice?). That's all we had—like I said, it was a quick dinner. Gustavo had to run to Maryland, so it was more of a snack to tide him over til he got back to his family.

Sin é, Arlington, VA

Never have dinner in an Irish pub when Notre Dame is playing Stanford. We made that mistake last night, and couldn't even hear ourselves chew!

Leo and I were trying to goad Ryan into eating something "ethnic" for dinner last night, and he kept wanting boring, plain, American food from national franchises. He just wouldn't do any of the Thai, Chinese, Lebanese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Italian, or French places in the area around the mall at Pentagon City, or even Wolfgang Puck's California Fusion place, but I had an ace in the hole: Ryan isn't just Indian, he's also Irish and Scot (his family claims to be direct descendants of William Wallace of Braveheart fame), and there's an Irish restaurant and pub on Pentagon Row called Sin é.

Sin é (pronounced "shin-ay") is really more of a cross between a pub and a sports bar, but they do have a full menu with half a dozen Irish dinners, eight American dinners, and a full assortment of appetizers, burgers, sandwiches, and wraps. The host found us a booth with really high walls around it to shelter us a bit from the bar noise and the television-in-every-room-turned-to-the-Notre-Dame-game environment of the evening. Leo had some kind of Samuel Adams on tap and Ryan and I drank iced Earl Grey tea while we pondered the multi-page menu.

We opted to share a couple of appetizers, and chose a basket of spicy fried calamari, small squid rings breaded and deep fried then served with what they called a garlic aioli but which tasted to me more like honey mustard dressing, and a huge plate of Irish Nachos, made with thickly sliced potato chips instead of tortilla chips which I just loved!

For main courses, which arrived just after the appetizers were delivered (so much for "courses"), Ryan had a bacon cheeseburger with a house salad, Leo had fish and chips (the fish pieces were huge and looked excellent), and I had a chopped club salad. My salad was ok, but failed on a couple of fussy technical points for qualifying as a true "chopped salad," and was really more of a normal mixed-lettuces-from-the-bag with diced fried chicken fingers and some avocado cubes tossed in ranch dressing salad.

While we didn't endulge, the dessert menu had some fabulous looking things on it, from a bread pudding with Irish whiskey sauce to a Bailey's Irish Cream cheesecake to a chocolate hazelnut cake and others.

I plan to go back to Sin é. The food was good, the prices were quite reasonable, and the service was adequate. I'll just make a point to avoid Notre Dame football evenings!

Washing dishes

There must be a genetic difference between men and women when it come to washing dishes.

At family gatherings, just as soon as people leave the table, the womenfolk quickly sweep the dishes off the table and into the kitchen, where they all stand around to socialize and wash the dishes. It doesn't matter if a female guest is a non-family member or even a just-met acquaintance, her genetic conditioning will kick in and she will go into dishwashing mode. I think if a woman knew that dishes would be left out unwashed all night long, she would be positively apoplectic.

Men, on the other hand, are perfectly happy to leave the dishes on the table after a big meal, move into the living room, and promptly fall asleep. The idea of gravy drying on the china on the table doesn't bother them one little bit.

Last night after dinner, with great effort I made myself debone the turkey and put the leftovers in the refrigerator. This morning, all the dishes, pots, pans, bowls, and the turkey carcass were all waiting on the counter to greet us. Now, as I hear all my female readers gasping, let me explain my logic that by allowing all the pots and pans to soak over night, they were infinitely easier to clean this morning. We had to hand wash everything today, and it took over an hour! I suppose it's a record for all my dishes to be washed by noon on Friday, cause usually I would have run one dishwasher load a day, and it often takes three days to get everything washed. One of the challenges of tiny D.C. apartment kitchens is that we don't have a dishwasher!

Cooking in a miniature kitchen was a challenge, too. My little oven is just barely big enough to hold the turkey roasting pan. We also have very, very little counter space, so the great logistical challenge of the meal was just finding places to set things!

Ryan's simple "white trash" menu and recipe requests were surprisingly easy and quick to prepare. Other than having to pop the turkey in the oven for six hours, there was basically nothing else to do until about an hour before dinner time, when the hardest task was peeling a bag of potatoes. Ryan couldn't figure out what my boiled potatoes were when they were sitting on the counter before the boiling cream and butter were added; I rice my potatoes instead of using a hand mixer on them, so I suppose they did look "different" to a non-cook like him. Everything else was just opening and mixing cans and boxes. I miscalculated a few grocery purchases; usually I go through a quart of cream on Thanksgiving, so now I have half a quart left over; no cream soup and using "Cool Whip" for dessert will do that. And, alas, the sad news of the week was that the lady who invented Stovetop Stuffing just died.

So, now, we're off to the Kennedy Center for a National Symphony Pops concert of all-movie scores. Ciao for now!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

The turkey is in the oven and should be done in plenty of time for our target five o'clock feast time. Got up this morning to bake the pumpkin pie. It felt strange not to be baking pumpkin challah or other Thanksgiving breads, but Ryan wanted those store-bought brown 'n serve rolls, so that's what we're having. He wants everything to be very plain and simple; I hope my doctoring of the turkey (a basil and butter rub under the skin and all over the outside, plus wedges of onion and orange inside the cavity) won't violate his sense of "nothing exotic, nothing foreign" "white trash food" (his term). I indulge his wish for simple, country food cause the Ivy League and the East Coast really is quite a culture shock for western Indian kids. This is his third year at Dartmouth, and he's never been able to go home to his family in Oklahoma for Thanksgiving, so I hope this keeps him from getting too homesick.

After the turkey went in, I fixed myself my traditional Thanksgiving cook's breakfast of slowly scrambled eggs and the turkey liver sauteed in butter with a splash of brandy. College boy was still in bed, so he didn't get any.

Here's our projected menu, as chosen by Ryan:

A White Trash Thanksgiving
Washington, D.C.
November 24, 2005

Plain Deviled Eggs with Paprika Garnish
Bread and Butter Pickles

Salad of Iceberg Lettuce, Diced Ham, Onions, Egg Slices
Cheddar Cheese, and Sunflower Seeds
with ranch dressing

Plain Roasted Turkey with Pan Gravy
Stovetop Cornbread Stuffing with Neck Meat and Giblets
Plain Mashed White Potatoes with Butter
Roasted Sweet Potatoes
Green Bean Casserole
Homemade Creamed Corn
Canned Whole Cranberry Sauce
Brown 'n Serve Rolls
Southern-Style Iced Tea

Mrs. Smith's Pumpkin Custard Pie
with Cool Whip topping

Time to check on things again in the kitchen.

Capital Q Texas-Style Barbeque, Washington, D.C.

We went to the Indian museum at the Smithsonian, which blissfully was not crowded this afternoon. I kinda wanted to eat lunch at their Indian foods cafe, Mitsitam, which was featuring smoked turkey, roast venison, grilled buffalo, and planked salmon, but holiday houseguest Ryan thought it was too expensive at $12.95 per person, so we ate a late lunch when we got to Chinatown near the movie theater, where he spent $18 on a little plate of barbequed brisket, pulled pork, slaw, beans, and iced tea! He's starting to learn Washington prices.......

I've always been curious about Capital Q Texas-Style Barbeque when I've walked past it right by the busiest corner in Chinatown. I just couldn't imagine barbeque here being any better than the dismal attempts at Mexican food. So, when Ryan wanted to eat at a non-ethnic restaurant (in Chinatown!!!) and our only choices were Hooter's, Fuddrucker's, or Capital Q, I encouraged him to pick the "non-national chain." Once I got inside and tasted the food, I was quite pleasantly surprised.

Capital Q is a small restaurant with rustic, Texas-themed decor. In the back is a food counter where you pick your meats and the attendant cuts your ribs or chops your meat to order, and also helps you pick your side items. Everything else is self-service. With that in mind, I thought the prices were just a touch on the high side for a barbeque joint—a pound of beef ribs was going for $26! My half-pound of chopped beef at $7 was worth it, though, because the meat was wonderfully flavored and juicy. Ryan had a two-meat sampler plate with nice slices of beef brisket and a big spoonful of pulled pork, which he particularly liked. The baked beans looked pretty normal to me, as did the cabbage slaw, but he didn't like the slaw because it had celery seed in the recipe. Nevertheless, I liked the place, and I'll definitely be back.

On our way out of the movie theater last night, it was snowing! The snow only lasted a few minutes and didn't stick, but first snow is always such a magical moment.

Thai Kitchen, Washington, D.C.

Leo and I went to a late dinner at Thai Kitchen on M Street in West End. We discovered it the other night while we were walking home from Dupont Circle and thought it looked interesting. The restaurant takes up a lot of square footage in a half-below-ground floor at the bottom of an office building, and their position allows them to have an entry plaza with a fountain and koi pond outside. A lot of the decor is Chinese in nature, including ba-gua feng shui items over the doors. Inside, one of the first things one see is a huge picture of the management with actress Angelina Jolie, who recently used Thai Kitchen to cater a fund raising dinner for one of her refugee charities. Continuing on down the stairs into the restaurant, one first enters the bar area, where a long bar snakes along two walls and bears a boldly decorated top. Around the corner in the dining area (bar and dining room are all one great big space), banquette line the window wall, tables and chairs are in the middle, and booths sit along the interior walls. The exposed architectural support columns are on 30-degree angles from the vertical; all are wood paneled.

The menu is very traditionally Thai and the prices are quite reasonable, especially given their West End location. Since the night air was chilly on the walk over, I started with a lovely hot tea with a light jasmine fragrance and medium amber color that hit the spot. Leo got a cocktail called "Kiss Before Dying," which was some kind of vodka, tequilla, Galliano, and orange juice concoction. We both ended up starting with Yum Nua, a grilled beef salad. The thinly sliced beef was wonderfully flavorful with a hot spicy lime juice dressing and bits of green scallion throughout. It was mounded directly on the plate next to a small pile of lettuce, which included long, curled shreds of carrot and two endive leaves.

I planned on just the salad for my meal, but Leo had another item, having selected the southern style red curry dish, Panang. There was a considerable quantity of tender chicken chunks in the center garnished with a few deep-fried basil leaves on top; a row of crinkle-cut zuccini rounds lined the edge of about one-third of the bowl. White rice came in a separate small bowl. He declared that the food here was better than that at the Thai place we usually frequent downtown.

Dessert, though, was a bit of a disappointment. Leo had the mango sticky rice and I had just mango, but, while he reported the sticky rice itself to be good, both of our mangos were very much far from being ripe. Nevertheless, he grabbed a delivery menu on the way out, so I think there's a good chance we'll be eating Thai Kitchen's food again.

Chevy's Fresh Mex, Arlington, VA

There's a little shopping center across the street from the big mall at Pentagon City called "Pentagon Square," noted mostly for the Costco, plus BestBuy, Linens 'n Things, and Border's Books, and we were there to pick up some household necessities. We decided to try one of the cafes there, Chevy's Fresh Mex. Leo said that back when he was fresh out of college with his advertising and marketing degree, Chevy's was one of the accounts on which he worked. So, it seemed like a fun place to try.

Since we came in from the shopping center and not their main door from the outside, we had to walk through the main dining room, where there were a lot of empty tables. We waited at the host's stand for probably five minutes before he talked to us, then we stood there probably another ten minutes before we were seated. He was very slowly controlling the flow of new tables into the dining rooms, and we had to wait for him to seat about five tables ahead of us (most were in the bar), answer telephone calls, and wander around the restaurant. There seemed to me to be no reason why all the tables couldn't have been seated immediately. I think, though, the problem was that they were short staffed on full-fledged waiters. There were tons of waiter's assistants and bus boys in the place, but not that many waiters. Our waiter was quite unfortunately scarce after taking our order, with the food brought from the kitchen by expediters and the assistants pooring drinks, filling chip baskets, and so forth.

Leo, who is supposed to be on a no-carb diet, started with a frozen margarita and an appetizer serving of "Dos Tamales," a large plate with one pork tamale topped with red chile sauce and one chicken tamale topped with a very hot green chile and tomatillo sauce, and all sprinkled with crumbles of white Mexican cheese. I ordered a Santa Fe Chopped Salad for my meal, so I opted not to do appetizers. Meanwhile, though, I tasted the salsa and it was very good, with a roasted tomato taste and a much darker color than most salsas; it was a touch sweet and rather thin, but I liked it nonetheless. My salad was good, too, and too big to completely finish. For a main course, Leo ordered chicken fajitas; they brought him a huge tray with a raised platform in the middle holding the hot, sizzling skillet of chicken strips, onions, and green pepper slices, with a lower compartment on the left holding a big plate of black bean (there were three different types of beans available) and Spanish rice, and on the right a plate with guacamole, pico de gallo, and sour cream. Tortillas came in a little paper bag placed on the table, but we didn't open it. One of the most interesting things on the main plate was their roasted corn salsa, which appeared to be a puree of smoky, roasted, fresh corn kernals with a powerful corn flavor and just a touch of pepper fire that was quite good. After abiding by the "no-carb" rules for his main course, Leo ended dinner with a great big flan garnished with a sliced strawberry and a little tiny, cactus-shaped sopapilla.

I thought the food at Chevy's was quite good, but I don't know if I'll make an effort to go back, since I thought the service abominable. When we paid, Leo even had to ask for his change to be returned (how dare the waiter assume he was being left a 30% tip!).

Cafe Nema, Washington, D.C.

One of my bigger culinary adventures was last weekend when I'd been at a Red Cross charity fundraiser and ended up going to a too-early dinner with a chemical engineer and a Ph.D. physicist. We wandered around the P Street strip looking for a place that opened at 5, and were unsuccessful, so we walked up to U Street to check out some new places there, but they didn't open til 6, either. Then, we just happened to notice a lower level cafe behind a staircase full of people, and Cafe Nema was open!

Cafe Nema is a Somali restaurant. For you geographically impaired, Somalia is a country on the very eastern tip of Africa, immediately east of Ethiopia and south of the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian peninsula. Just a few days before, Somalia had been in the news because of Somali pirates who'd attacked a cruise ship off the coast! Unlike Ethiopia, which was never colonized by Europeans, Somalia was British until 1960 and early on some provinces had been Italian, so their food is much more accessible to Western tastes.

Since none of us had been to a Somali restaurant before, we asked our very personable waiter to pick our meal for us. I guess he wasn't that comfortable with just bringing us stuff, so he kept questioning, and based on my dinner companions' less adventurous palates, he made the "decision." Drink orders came first. Since Somalia is one of those strict Sunni Muslim countries, I was surprised that they served beer here. I was disappointed that they didn't have iced tea! How un-American! We each got mixed green salads to start with a lemony olive oil vinaigrette that was fine, but I don't think very traditional. We all ended up with the same basic entree, a delicious stewed chicken dish called kalankal. Mine was served in the center of a plateful of rice, whilst my companions (both of whom claim Italian ancestry) had their kalanal mixed in with fettucine noodles. The flavor of the kalankal was very good, and unlike Etiopean stews, not hot at all. For extra spice, we were given tiny containers of a green mint and other spice sauce that was hot but not overpowering.

Our waiter said there were no traditional Somali desserts. That was a little disappointing, since I know that Somalia is a major exporter of bananas, but I also have to remember that desserts are not at all common in non-western cultures.

Cafe Nema was a fun place I plan to visit again. And, one of the best things, the bill for the three of us was only $37!

Lebanese Taverna, Arlington, VA

While on a Friday night shopping expedition to the Fashion Centre at Pentagon City and the "large" Harris-Teter grocery store in that neighborhood, Leo and I stopped in for an early dinner (early being the operative word, since had we arrived 30 minutes later, the place would have been packed with a line) at the Lebanese Taverna in Pentagon Row, the multi-use shopping and high-dollar apartment area just outside the mall, overlooking the outdoor ice skating rink there.

Lebanese Taverna is a part of a small, family-owned, local chain of restaurants specializing in Lebanese and middle eastern foods. I was pleased to try it, because I've always found Lebanese food to be amongst the best of modern middle eastern cuisine, and I've some familiarity with it, since all of the decades-old steakhouses in Tulsa are owned by Lebanese families and they've included tabouli, cabbage rolls, barbequed bologna, garlic sauce, and their unique meat marinade to the Tulsa culinary scene.

The Abi-Najm family does a good job presenting some of the variety of traditional Lebanese cuisine. One of the things their menus emphasize is the "mezza," which is a collection of small dishes in much the same vein as Spanish tapas (the Spanish learned the habit from their Muslim occupiers in the first half of the previous millennium). They also have a variety of hummus dishes—which they spell "hommos"—and plain chickpeas as a side item, and lots of lamb items.

Leo started with a hommos special from the mezza list, which was their version of the chickpea paste topped with a mixture of sweetly spiced ground meat, almonds, and pine nuts, served with a basket of pita bread halves. I tasted some of the meat mixture, and it was very good without too much cinnamon. I had a malfouf salad, which is a traditional shredded cabbage dish marinated in lemon juice and olive oil with garlic.

For main courses, Leo had a shrimp kabab with white and yellow rice and I had a sliced roast lamb dish (I forget the Lebanese name....shawarma??) with tahini sauce that was smaller than I'd hoped, but it was from the mezza list, so I guess it wasn't totally unexpected. What little there was was quite flavorful, though. I forget what Leo had for dessert; I had a melted white Lebanese cheese dish topped with a ground pistacchio and bulgar wheat, then drenched with orange blossom water syrup and a cup of strong Lebanese coffee.

The food here was very good, though the service was rather spotty.....had we been there in the midst of the Friday night dinner rush, I could understand, but in the early part of our visit, the restaurant was not yet full. I hear the family is opening a new restaurant and market in Old Town Alexandria next month, which should be fun.

More nouveau wine talk

Tried a glass of the Georges Duboeuf beaujolais-villages nouveau last night to compare it with the beaujolais nouveau we had earlier in the week. As you know with French wines, the smaller the controlled geographic area of the source of a wine's grapes, the higher quality the wine; a beaujolais-villages, therefore, should be better than a mere beaujolais.

The beaujolais-villages is noticeably drier than the beaujolais, but otherwise the tastes are similar, and in this case, I don't think the extra dryness is an improvement. The beaujolais-villages is only a little over a dollar more per bottle than the beaujolais. Nevertheless, for general drinking (remembering that all the "nouveaus" need to be drunk by New Years), I think I'd stick with the plain beaujolais.

Interestingly, the two liquor stores in our neighborhood with wine selections both are stocking only the Georges Duboeuf nouveaus, so I've not tried this year's beaujolais nouveau from any of the other wineries.

I miss my parish back in Oklahoma City. They would, no doubt, be pouring beaujolais nouveau this morning as a communion wine.

David Greggory Restau-Lounge, Washington, D.C.

Last night we finally got around to dining at David Greggory Restau-Lounge, a popular "retro-forward" place in the West End we've walked past dozens of times on our way to and fro other destinations. It's also been on my radar screen since May, when the establishment was rented out for the exclusive 80th birthday party for gay rights leader Frank Kameny, and if 160 homosexuals party at a restaurant, you know it's good! (For those of you who don't recognize Kameny's name, he was Ph.D. Army astronomer and WWII hero who was the first person to challenge the Eisenhower Administration's policy that gay federal employees could be fired or denied employment for "sexual perversion" in 1957, eventually going to the Supreme Court in 1961; in 1971 he was the first openly gay person to run for public office; he led the local movement that succeeded in decriminalizing sodomy in the District of Columbia in 1993; he was one of the leaders of the movement to convince the American Psychiatric Association to vote homosexuality off the list of mental illnesses in 1973.)

Located in the ground floor corner of an office building at the corner of a busy three-street intersection, David Greggory takes up a surprisingly large amount of real estate, all of which has been decorated in a starkly contemporary, yet warm way. The luxe decor even carries over into the rest rooms, where floor to ceiling panes of frosted glass serve as partitions, floors and walls are polished red and brown marble, and bright copper bowls on glass countertops serve as lavatory basins. Different styles of contemporary art from eight different artists hang on the interior walls (the exterior walls are all windows) and are available for sale. This contemporary backdrop provides the canvas for the duo-restauranteurs' culinary concept, that of taking traditional comfort foods and "updating" them with world fusion ideas and 21st century foods and techniques. It's an interesting idea and rather fun, though I think I would tire of it rather quickly if I dined here often.

While we perused the menu, Leo sipped a DGtini, a vodka martini which looked and tasted very much like a margarita. His appetizer was the chicken empanadas, which were two small empanadas filled with smoked chicken and spices, then arranged in a small au gratin dish atop lettuce leaves, some very spicy guacamole, and something they called Salsa Mexicana. I had the deviled egg assortment; they brought me a plate with three egg halves, one filled with the egg yolk mixture with heavy herbs, one with minced smoked salmon, and one with lots of bacon crumbles; the eggs rested on a bed of watercress (at first I thought it was spinach, til I tasted the pepperiness of the watercress) with three grape-tomato halves, dressed in a drizzle of olive oil. We also were served a basket with tiny round wheat rolls, small wedges of foccacia, and small slices of what looked to be a wheat sourdough loaf.

This might be a good time to mention the restaurant's penchant for pork dishes. There were a lot of pork and bacon dishes on the menu, every Wednesday they have "Pork and Pinot" night, and they've been having monthly "Aphrodisiac Bacon Dinners," the next of which is Monday night. And, kosher and vegan diners should beware: many dishes and vegetables are seasoned or garnished with bacon.

They encourage compiling different assortments of small dishes to make up a dinner here, from appetizers to half-sized entrees to full-sized entrees. I like the possibilities here, since I prefer multiple courses at dinner and modern portion size is much too large for four or five course dinners. For our entrees, we both opted for half-sized entrees, and they were plenty big. Leo surprised me and didn't order the sea scallops on grilled spinach, but he got the seared jumbo lump crabcake (he's supposed to be allergic to crab). His crabcake arrived resting on two large, crossed, steamed asparagus spears, all floating on a mirror of mango shallot puree and accompanied by a red bell pepper relish. When I asked him how it was, he said, "It was good. It tastes like chicken." I opted for "Not Quite Mom’s Meatloaf," a surprising little dish which had an individual meatloaf stuffed with foie gras mousse that was then cooked and served rare in a pool of roasted tomato sauce and then garnished with diagonal stripes of whole-grain brown mustard and a very liberal sprinkling of crumbled bacon. The meatloaf normally comes with garlic mashed potatoes, but I asked for a non-carb substitute and got a large serving of braised greens. I liked the meatloaf, but if I get it again, I think I'll ask it be cooked a bit more than rare—it's not steak tartare!

For dessert, Leo had a Tres Leches cake with caramelized bananas. The "Tres Leches" that I'm used to from the Cubans in Miami was a yellow cake soaked with three milks—cream, coconut milk, and rum—and then frosted with whipped cream. David Greggory's version reminded me a bit of a banana upside down cake, with gooey banana slices militantly arranged on top, the cake being banana flavored, and, sadly, there was no rum involved. Don't know about the coconut milk, either, since Leo reported only banana taste. While he devoured the entire piece-of-cake-for-two, I drank a little espresso macciato.

One of the other little niceties of David Greggory was their free little boxes of matches—except they didn't contain matches, they are filled with little candy red hots.

On the whole, David Greggory is a nice restaurant (or "restau-lounge", as they call themselves) with a much higher standard and level of service than one would expect for their more modest West End prices. There were plenty of waiter's assistants running around tending to the tables, but our actual waiter was unfortunately scarce; in his defense, though, he and another waitress got pulled shortly after our arrival to tend to a party of 19 lawyers who came in without a reservation. So, next time you're on the M Street strip, consider this place for dinner and drinks.

The "official" beaujolais nouveau party

Tonight, the official beaujolais nouveau party was at the French Embassy here in D.C.. Unlike Bistrot du Coin's party last night, the Embassy party has a limited number of tickets, admission is $65 per person instead of being free, and they have actual food with the wines (the Bistrot only served bread and only had one wine).

I didn't want to go to the Embassy party alone, and I couldn't find anyone around interested in French food and wine, so I stayed home. Probably just as well, since I'd be wanting to eat and drink everything, and that's not on my diet. But, had I gone, this is what they were serving:

Menu

Salmon steak in a dill sauce
Beef Bourguignon
Ratatouille of fresh vegetables
Scalloped Potatoes
Assortment of Charcuteries, Saussisson, Ham, pates,
Mousses, Terrines, cornichon, and onions
Assortments of Cheese, fruits, breads, and crackers
Seven Grain Salad: Wild rice, green beans, garbanzo beans,
Kamut, Millet, Barley, and Tomatoes
Salade Landaise: eggs, smoked duck breast, croutons, and mesclun
with balsamic vinaigrette dressing
Desserts & Mini Pastries


Beaujolais Nouveau Wines to be Presented

Domaine Manoir du Carra
Maison Lamartine
Domaine du Perret
Georges Duboeuf
Joseph Drouhin
Bouchard Aine

Beaujolais Nouveau 2005 Report

Le beaujolais nouveau est arrivé!

Once again, it's the third Thursday of November, and the newest crop of beaujolais nouveau has been presented. I'm just in from the annual party at Bistrot du Coin, where a totally packed restaurant welcomed the new wine and uncorked the first bottles at 12:01 a.m.

The trendy bistro, up near Dupont Circle here in D.C., removed all of its tables and chairs from its floor to allow for the huge crowd, and bouncers at the door had to regulate the flow of people in and out with a line remaining outside in the cold even when I left a little before 1 a.m. A disco sound system blared Euro-Pop (or is it Euro-Trash? I forget) music for those who wanted to endulge the fantasy that there was actually enough room to dance. As one made his or her way through the crush of people to the bars, the bistrot was giving away free glasses of wine. It wasn't a terribly elegant thing—they used those large red plastic cups—but they quickly had the crowd to where they were feeling no pain.


(this was right before I left, when the crowd had thinned considerably)

They served the Georges Duboeuf wine. I do believe this is the best beaujolais nouveau I've tasted in nearly a decade. The wine is very smooth and fruity with good color and aftertaste. It's not a dry wine, and it doesn't have the feeling of being "thin" or "tannic" in the mouth as have some in the recent past. The fruitiness is a good blend of all the desirable wine notes, and there's a touch of spice in the nose. This should be an excellent vintage with broad appeal. I heartily recommend it for everyone's Thanksgiving dinner.

Menu planning for the holidays

Thanksgiving is just a little more than a week away, and along with the fun and excitement of the family gathering and meal. But, for many people, Thanksgiving is a day which has them trembling and shaking in enormous stress. Why? They are cooking the family Thanksgiving dinner.

The vast majority of my friends share one personality trait in common: Obsessive-compulsive perfectionism. That means that for them, everything has to be "just so," and when things aren't perfect, they'll fall apart to varying degrees. So, being a veteran of designing and cooking dozens of family holiday dinners, let me offer a few of tips for your holiday sanity and success to keep you from falling apart and having to overdose on your Buspar or Ativan.

First, your family isn't going to be that critical of your results. They are just glad they they don't have to do the cooking! And, if you know that the one Asshole family member will criticize your meal, just remember that if your meal is perfect, the Asshole will find something else to criticize, so just smile, relax, and ignore the Asshole.

Second, keep the menu simple, small, and manageable. They already know you have impeccable taste, so you don't need to try to impress them with some fancy-schmancy ultra-gourmet recreation of standard Thanksgiving fare. Further, if you are like me, your stove only has four burners on top and the oven will only hold one turkey and one thin, flat casserole dish. Count!

Third, avoid food poisoning your family. Use a meat thermometer (don't have one? go buy one today) to cook your turkey to the correct 180-degree inside-thigh temperature (don't rely on those worthless little pop-up thingies) and bake your stuffing or dressing in a separate pan, not inside your turkey. Don't pre-set food on the table as it gets done, cause you want to keep hot foods hot and cold foods cold until serving time.

Fourth, NEVER NEVER NEVER cook a brand new recipe for the family dinner that you've never cooked at least once before. If you are bound and determined to cook something on the 24th which you've never cooked before, be it a brand new recipe or an old family tradition, prepare it once this week for the practice and experience.

Fifth, children will be children, and the presence of multiple children in the same room increases exponentially the liklihood that something will get broken. Keep that in mind when deciding what china and stemware to use and whether or not you have objets d'art in your home which need to be put away for the day.

Sixth, stash a bottle of your favor wine/liquor somewhere where no one can find it. This is for you and your spouse/significant other Thanksgiving night after everyone has gone home.

Follow these Six Rules, and I'm sure your family Thanksgiving dinner will be a marvelous success!