Vidalia, Washington, D.C.

One seeking rain should never ask me for an Indian rain dance. That's just not one of my areas of expertise. My friend Robert, however, is the harbinger of hail, the prince of precipitation, and the ranger of rain. Every time I eat out with Robert it rains, from the very first time we dined in Friendship Heights when it rained so hard that the umbrella-less Robert ended up soaking his cochlear implant and being unable to hear and understand me that afternoon to tonight's expedition when www.weather.com assured me that there was no rain whatsoever in tonight's forecast. As I walked to the restaurant tonight and noticed the ever-so-slight occasional droplet of rain, I should have listened to my inner voice and gone back home to grab an umbrella, cause by the time we were done dining, those droplets were actual big raindrops; my hair was a wreck by the time I got home!

Regardless of the weather outside, though, things inside Vidalia were quite sunny and pleasant.

Vidalia, of course, is the ever-popular "Southern" cuisine restaurant that takes old Southern standbys and makes them into wonderfully gourmet dishes. It's a great place for a couple of Southern boys on Derby Weekend; Robert and I had been here last January when the weather was cold, the wind was brisk, and the rain was icy.

In honor of this weekend's Kentucky Derby, we started dinner with a round of mint juleps. Robert, who'd already had half a dozen of them yesterday at the Round Robin Bar at the Willard Hotel, declared that Vidalia's version was far superior, and he ended up drinking three of them tonight with his dinner! They were, I have to admit, rather tasty; I'm usually not a big fan of bourbon, usually only using the Wild Turkey with which they made the juleps not for drinking but for cooking when I make bourbon balls, pecan pie, or bread pudding whiskey sauce. Nonetheless, the juleps helped us relax a bit as we made the difficult decisions as to which of the delicious items on the menu to order.



After we ordered, our waiter brought us little espresso cups full of wild mushroom soup as an amuse bouche. I wish I'd known he was going to do that, since I'd have ordered a different appetizer instead of a soup. It was all good, though, so I didn't really mind.



Robert started his meal with a sweetbread appetizer he declared very good. Then he had a lovely plate of three Shenandoah lamb ribeyes lightly grilled and presented with some spicy lamb sausage, a garlic fritter, sunchoke purée and shoots, red pepper sauce, and a smoked paprika lamb jus which the waiter poured over the dish tableside. For dessert, to match his mint juleps he ordered the chocolate mint julep, an interesting combination of chocolate ganache and bourbon mint sorbet.







I had the sweet pea soup for my starter, which had a little mold of pea puree in the center with crème frâiche, bacon, and pea sprouts. A tasty shrimp and grits plate made up my main course and bits of spinach and sweet onion ragout rested in the center of the yellow corn grits. My complaint? For $29.75 with only four shrimp, they could have afforded to give me a few more of those delicious grits. I also had the chocolate mint julep for dessert. With my main course I drank a glass of Spanish white wine and with dessert I had grapy red muscadelle; the waiter selected my wines and I'd asked him to write down their names and vintages for me, but he never did that, so I can't tell you exactly what I drank. While Robert was ordering and drinking his third julep (two would have put me away for the night, cause those silver cups were big!), I had a coffee and cream.





Robert is always such a charming conversationalist that time just flies by. He's very astute and well-read, which totally belies the fact that he's from Arkansas. LOL The Arkansan in him does, though, give him his Southern charm. And, we also got to talk a little political business. I'll be looking forward to our next dinner party.

Firefly, Washington, D.C.

Leo had a festive birthday party last night when we went to Firefly for a simple repast. It was a buzzing place, too, with several other birthday dinners (including the table next to ours) and a big table with a bridal shower group. It was so noisy at times we had a hard time hearing normal conversation, largely because half of the room is the bar and lounge.




Once we were seated, we started with cocktails. Leo ordered a very summery "cucumber Collins," a Tom Collins with cucumber puree and garnished with a sprig of lemongrass and a slice of cucumber and I sipped a Sapphire martini.

The menu had a lot of interesting and unusual items, making it hard to decide on dinner. Leo started his meal with a duck rillette, which I think wasn't quite what he was expecting. Rillettes are sort of like a preserved potted meat and used as a spread on bread. Firefly's version was close to the tradition; the duck spread was flavorfully seasoned and sealed with a layer of duck fat and served with toasted bread slices and little cornichon pickles. For his main course he chose the grilled Icelandic salmon that came with lyonnaise potatoes and a leek puree. Dessert was the citrus-scented cheesecake with strawberry sauce which struck me as a sort of strawberry upside down cake; a large amount of fresh strawberries in sauce filled the bottom of the plate topped with a square of soft cheesecake with the bottom graham crust up on the top.







I started with a chilled asparagus soup with crème frâiche that was very flavorful and tasty. Next I had a mixed green salad with crumbles of Maytag blue cheese and toasted walnuts with a sherry vinaigrette. My main course was a very unusual portobello mushroom schnitzel served atop a dish of lentils; I'm not quite sure what I think of this dish, but it was certainly interesting. If one has had a German wiener schnitzel before, the mushroom cap was similarly breaded and fried. In lieu of dessert I did a cheese plate with three American cheeses: Fog Light, O'Banon, and Rogue River Blue.









With our meal, we drank a bottle of wine from Virginia, a Barboursville Cabernet Franc. It was drinkable, though nothing spectacular. After desserts, I had coffee and Leo had a snifter of Di Sarrono amaretto on the rocks.

Duplex Diner, Washington, D.C.

Last night, Ian and I made our way up to Adams-Morgan to have our Cinco de Mayo Mexican dinner at Lauriol Plaza, thinking that at 10:30 the Friday night dinner crowds would have thinned out. We were wrong. Lauriol Plaza was absolutely jam packed with people and there were huge crowds in the bar waiting for tables as well as lines out on the sidewalk still just trying to get in to the establishment. Thinking the noise and crowds (not to mention wait) were not for us, we continued walking up the street and came upon the Duplex Diner.

Duplex is always fun, though I've always thought that it was more of a "gayified" version of diner food. It has a bar and the menu is all rather too upscale to qualify it as a true diner.

To celebrate Cinco de Mayo, we shared an appetizer of grilled vegetable and pepper jack cheese quesadillas. The vegetables were actually quite tasty and had a nice grill flavor without being smoky or burnt. For our main courses, Ian had chicken fingers and fries and I had their classic meatloaf (I like the meatloaf itself but I could do without the big topping of tomatoes on top) with green beans and some wonderful, rich, garlic mashed potatoes. For dessert, we split an absolutely enormous brownie sundae with a cake-sized layer of brownie topped by four big scoops of vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce, whipped cream, and several cherries. Even half of it was more than we needed for a single serving!









We had a very personable waiter who had just finished taking a six hour constitutional law final over at Catholic and his brain was a little fried and ditzy. He was amusing, though.

Brasserie Les Halles, Washington, D.C.

This afternoon Ian and I were over at the passport office, and after we completed our business we walked across the street to have a late lunch at Brasserie Les Halles to begin our Cinco de Mayo celebration.

Cinco de Mayo is an interesting American holiday. American, you say? Cinco de Mayo is the observance of a Mexican military victory over the French army back in the 19th century. While it's technically a bank holiday in Mexico today, it isn't a holiday that Mexicans "celebrate." In Mexico, one doesn't find Cinco de Mayo parties; even in the highly Mexican parts of the U.S., the Mexican community doesn't celebrate. So why is it a big deal? Marketing. The tequila and cerveza companies "created"—quite successfully, mind you!—a holiday to sell liquor. Consequently, we media-driven Americans are the only people in the world who party and celebrate Cinco de Mayo.

Anyway, getting back to Brasserie Les Halles, we thought it would be fun to do French food on Thursday and then celebrate the Mexican victory with Mexican food on Friday. The food was absolutely delicious!

Les Halles is a Parisian style bistro nestled in between government office buildings on a plaza along Pennsylvania Avenue about half way between the White House and the Capitol. They have ample al fresco seating as well as a large interior space. We chose a quite table inside.

Ian chose the ravioles de Royan au fromage et à la crème. These were small demiluna shaped raviolis stuffed with cheese and presented in a rather French style cream sauce and garnished with a heavy layer of broiled parmesan cheese. He said it was very good.

I had the confit de canard avec pommes Salardaise, which was so good the explosion of flavors in my mouth had me craving more and more almost to the point of wanting the lick my emptied plate! I've always been a fan of duck confit—traditionally a roasted duck leg which is then fried in duck fat and sliced. Their presentation at Les Halles was quite interesting. They balanced a large crouton on its side then put a large mound of frisée (curly endive) salad in a vinegary dressing on the plate; the duck confit was then placed atop the salad with the Frenched bone resting on the crouton; the rest of the plate was then filled with wonderful, savory, hot pommes Salardaise. Pommes Salardaise are one of the great gifts of God to the French. They begin by dicing potatoes which are then seasoned, fried in duck fat, and truffled. Mmm. My mouth is watering even now.

We both had other obligations elsewhere later in the afternoon so we were unfortunately unable to stay for dessert.

Butterfield 9, Washington, D.C.

After staying late at the office tonight to get caught up, Leo called and wanted to go to dinner. We started to walk down to Old Ebbitt Grill, but as usual, there was a huge line of people (mostly cocktailers) trying to get in an we weren't in the mood to wait. So, we walked around the block and walked in to Butterfield 9, a place I'd been with Tony last January but Leo had never been. We got a nice banquette corner with both a view of the restaurant and the sidewalk outside. At the table next to us were a doting man and a bored looking woman we later heard were there celebrating their anniversary (poor guy), and a few tables over was a gaggle of young women who obviously needed no more wine.

I started with a celery root and potato chowder that included some tiny clams and vegetable greens. Then I had the grilled pork chops with tempura squash blossoms and flavorful bits of fried pancetta with a slightly sweet current-cumin sauce. The squash blossoms were a little on the large side and seemed a little flaccid. The pork chops were thick and juicy, cooked to just a little beyond medium rare—had we not been in a nice restaurant, I would have been tempted to gnaw the bone! For dessert I had the blackberry shortbread. It was a brief little thing with a lot of unmet potential. They'd taken a piece of shortbread, split it, topped the bottom half with a dollop of lemon-scented crème patisserie, then arranged four blackberries in a square on the crème and then one blackberry on either side of the shortbread to rest on the overflow and flank the shortbread, then topped it with the top half of the shortbread. Lovely idea, but where were the blackberries? Back in Oklahoma, six blackberries would barely make a garnish!

Leo started with an appetizer of diver scallops, grilled and crusted with coriander, and artfully arranged on the plate with flash-fried strips of various root vegetables and some pea sprouts. It was sauced with a red chili and lemon grass emulsion. Next he had the barbequed eel and halibut. Using a Japanese theme, there was a thick brown miso glaze on the eel, and the meats were accompanied by some rutabaga slices fried and then glazed with honey; a wild herb salad was also on his plate. He washed all this down with a couple of glasses of Domaine Bernier chardonnay. For dessert, he saw my little blackberry shortbread and decided to order himself a dessert sampler plate for two. I love his diet! The sampler included a little tiny version of the blackberry shortbread along with a miniature ramekin of crème brulee, a warm apple tart, some vanilla ice cream, a triangle of "chocolate cloud" (sort of a mousse cake), a fresh strawberry on an almond pineapple mousse, and a warm ginger snap.

The food Wednesday night was all delicious and very pretty. Too bad I didn't have my camera. The only problem with the evening was the service. Our waiter was dismal. What highlighted his lapses even more was the fact that the waiter at the next table was excellent, helpful, and solicitious to his tables. The waiter we were assigned seldom came by the table; he made no recommendations or suggestions for the meal; we had to ask twice for water refills; our table was never crumbed; our bread was never refilled; my dessert had been brought out shortly after the main courses only to be taken away by another waiter (I think they had the wrong table), then when my actual dessert arrived, I had to sit there looking at it for fifteen minutes before the waiter came to take Leo's dessert order; we had to wait inordinately long times both to receive our check and then to have the waiter come pick up the credit card and process it. I also noticed that the next table had two visits from the owner and one visit from the manager during the course of the evening; we had none.

I feel sorry for the chef. No matter how wonderful the food from the kitchen, patrons will soon tire of surly service and high prices in the very competitive D.C. restaurant market. We can only hope that this was a very off night for Butterfield 9.

Au Pied Bistro and Pizzaria Uno, Georgetown, D.C.

Last night, Ian and I made a late night visit to Au Pied Bistro on the east side of Georgetown. I think I've mentioned before that Au Pied Bistro is the remnant of the old Au Pied du Cochon, an old standby country French restaurant which used to be on Wisconsin Avenue where the Five Guys hamburger place is now. Way back in the Dark Ages when I was at Georgetown, we'd pop in to the Pig's Foot for late night, simple, inexpensive, French suppers. After Au Pied du Cochon sold out to Five Guys and closed down, the former staff moved down to the M Street/Pennsylvania merge area to Au Pied Bistro, a simplified version of the original.

Well, alas, it isn't Au Pied du Cochon anymore, and Au Pied Bistro has declined even since my last visit there last August with Leo. Now, we haven't been avoiding going to Au Pied, but they've just not been open every time we've attempted to eat there; they advertise that they stay open til 2 a.m. or so, but they close when the restaurant gets slow, which could be as early as 10 or 11. Even when Ian and I wandered in last night about 10:30, we were the only table in the restaurant and they seemed to be closing down.

It was a bad sign and a harbinger of things to come when our waiter brought our drinks and my iced tea had the distinct taste of coffee—they'd brewed the tea in their coffeemaker! I sent it back.

Ian wanted to compare the food at Au Pied Bistro to that at Bistro Français, where we usually get stuck dining on our late night soujourns, so he ordered the omelette aux fines herbs et fromage avec pommes frites, something he'd had last week at Français. Well, the differences were immediately obvious. The Pied version was a simple, flat omelette with herbs in the eggs and a little bit of Swiss cheese inside; Français' version not only gives diners a choice of cheese but includes a much more ample quanity and they also whip their eggs before cooking to give the omelette "lift" and a light fluffiness. The waiter brought no condiments with the food and Ian had to wait a long time for his ketchup. He said the Français omelette was much better.



My eggs Benedict experience was similar. The hollandaise sauce had the distinct taste and texture of a commercial quick sauce, the Canadian bacon tasted rather more like ham, and the whole dish was just rather ordinary.



We were going to order some dessert, but our waiter said the kitchen was closed. Well, several of the desserts require no preparation and he could have plated them himself if there was no one from the cook staff to dish it up.

Ian still wanted dessert after we left Au Pied Bistro, so after wandering the streets of Georgetown for a while, we landed at Pizzaria Uno, where Ian made me eat and split with him one of those enormous brownie/ice cream/whipped cream desserts that it seems everyone has these days. This is the first time I've been to an Uno in literally decades and the chain has changed quite a bit. When last I ate at one, it was a pizza place; today it's a typical full-menu franchise restaurant like a T.G.I.Friday or Applebee's or Bennigan's. We had a friendly waitress who's about to graduate from GU and she's moving to New York City for a job, so she and Ian chatted about NYC apartments and neighborhoods. At least we had a fun ending to the evening.

Alero Mexican Restaurant, Washington, D.C.

Tonight Kody and Ian took the GU Shuttle Bus from the campus and we all met up at Dupont Circle so we could wander up to Alero and have Mexican food. Mexican was Ian's idea, and we were all also curious as to whether or not there would be any employees there tonight or not, but it wasn't a problem and the food was just as good as ever. I didn't notice any impact at all from the immigration protests around the country.

While Kody drank his pitcher of margaritas, we ordered. Kody had spinach enchiladas, Ian had a chicken burrito, and I had a chicken chimichanga. Ian doesn't like guacamole, so he got it as a side instead of on his burrito, and I was the grateful recipient of another scoop of pureed avocado.







For dessert, the other two guys split a fried ice cream.



Alero, as always, is tolerable Mexican food. It's probably one of the best places in the District (we don't have that many Mexicans, but we have thousands of Salvadoreans!) for Mexican food, but it certainly doesn't compare to the food out in the Southwest. They make great margaritas, though, and they pour heavily!

Saigon Saigon, Arlington VA

Last night we went to Pentagon City so pick up a few things and while we were there, Leo showed me where the Saigon Saigon is that Kody and I wandered around looking for unsuccessfully one night (I think we ended up at a French place instead). We had a really good dinner at Saigon Saigon, and I always enjoy this place.

After a huge madberry martini, Leo had some fried spring rolls on a heavily garnished plate for an appetizer, then their Vietnamese version of the traditional Korean dish bi bim bap for his main course. It arrived in a little handled metal pot with the usual egg on top and a little side bowl of both kim chee (rotten cabbage) and barbecue sauce. Of course, since it wasn't the traditional version, Leo didn't like it, but I noticed he ate all of it. Must have been that big martini leading him astray.

I had a house salad, which I expected to be small, but it turned out to be a dinner plate of salad with actual non-lettuce vegetables in it—quite a pleasant surprise. My main course was a delicious yellow curry with large pieces of chicken breast and a side dish of actually fresh and tender white steamed rice.

No pictures this time. I didn't have my camera with me cause I thought we were just going to shop and not eat. I'm sure everybody's happy I'm not slowing down their dial-ups for a change.

Russia House, Washington, D.C.

At long last I finally got to dine tonight at Russia House Lounge and Restaurant in the restaurant strip north of Dupont Circle. I've been trying for months to get my Russian friend Svet to take me there, but he always refused and claimed the food was awful, forbidding me to go. Well, my friend Robert was bored tonight after his day of dealing with too many politicians at the office and decided that we should go, since he'd walked by the place many a time and was curious about the food. So, off we went, and what a great evening we had!

Russia House is located in a large, old, grey, stone building on the corner of Connecticut and Florida. Patrons have to go up a grand staircase to the main entrance, where a large lounge with heavily pillowed sofas everywhere offered dozens of vodka selections as well as normal bar fare. The dining room is downstairs, though, so diners had to walk up only to have to walk down again. The dining room was quite nice with a lovely dark burgundy and green patterned wallpaper on the walls between dark wood paneling and moldings and brass chandeliers everywhere. Tables were covered with white clothes and formally set.

We each were presented with three menus, a "large plate" menu, "small plate" menu, and a wine list. The wine list was mostly New World wines, and surprisingly lacking in Russian selections. We found the Russian wines in the by-the-glass section of the "small plate" menu. While we read and considered all of this, Robert had a Baltika Porter #6, which was a dark Russian beer, and I had a glass of mukuzani (I forgot to write down the vineyard), which is a red wine from Georgia (the former Soviet republic, not the U.S. state) that reminded me very much of a shiraz.

For an appetizer, we shared an order of perogis. Perogis are baked, filled dumplings or little miniature meat pies that usually are pretty heavy, but the dumplings here were artfully formed and the pastry was surprisingly flaky. They were filled with a delicious mixture of smoked duck, potatoes, and onions. A bowl of crème fraîche with scallions and the slightly sweet taste of ginger accompanied the perogis as a sauce.



We chose different dishes for our soup courses. Robert did a traditional borscht. This was a vegetable version with beets, onions, and potatoes and a side of sour cream; the soup was served in a little pottery soup pot.



I had the mushroom barley soup. It was wonderful! I'd feared a thick, heavy porridge, but this was a light vegetable stock with just a little bit of barley, and there were both morels and chanterelles in the mix with winter vegetables. A sliced quarter-loaf of pumpernickel bread arrived on our table hot from the oven along with the soups.



Robert selected the trout "Forshmack style" and it looked quite interesting. A whole trout had been skillfully fileted and roasted in its skin until flaky and accompanied by a potato puree (think thin mashed potatoes) and a sautée of green apples and red onions.



I thought it would be fun to try the chicken Kiev. I haven't had chicken Kiev in Washington since 1978 when I was at a private dinner in the Senate Cafeteria. It used to be a common menu item in many of the nicer restaurants in the country, but I've not seen it much of late. Anyway, it's a delicious dish where a chicken breast is pounded flat then rolled around a small stick of cold, herbed butter; the chicken breast is breaded and deep fried; when one cuts into the chicken, the melted butter spurts out. I really liked the Russia House version. My two chicken Kievs were served on a bed of potato puree with some steamed baby carrots, a baby zucchini, and slices of red onion serving as edible garnish.



Oh, I'd wanted some caviar, but it was $65 an ounce and up here, which I thought was a little extravagant.

We wanted to finish our meal with a Russian dessert, but while they had several standard nice desserts on the menu, none were Russian. So, we opted not to eat dessert and decided to do a vodka course instead.

This place had a whole page of vodkas from ultra-ultra-premiums "all the way down" to their cheapest vodka, Stolichnaya. After consulting with our waiter, we chose an Altay and a Mernaya Business Class. Both were excellent: crisp, clean, smooth. Robert thought maybe the Mernaya was a bit stronger, and both were very, very smooth.

The interesting thing about the vodka service, though, is that our little tiny chilled glasses were each accompanied by a cornichon (tiny dill pickle) on a skewer, and it is traditional to eat pickles while drinking vodka!



I thought it interesting that this Russian restaurant (which has been open about a decade) didn't have more Russian participation. Our excellent waiter was Polish and we saw other staff that looked eastern Asian. And, while it's no guarantee of nationality, the executive chef has a very English/American sounding name. The patrons in our dining room also all appeared to be Americans, since I heard no one talking in Russian.

Russian cuisine from the Russian Imperial Court has had a majorly important impact on modern American and western European food, even the traditions of haute cuisine in France that is often considered the standard for elegance in dining. Formerly, the French would bring out all of the dishes for a meal at one time, often in an elaborate procession, and this was called service à la française. The idea of multiple, separately served courses during a formal dinner—perhaps as many as fourteen—came from Russia in the early 19th century and is called "service à la russe.

As you can see, Robert had a great time with the vodka and pickles! I'm sure he'd have liked to have tried all 50+ vodkas, but we both have to work tomorrow!



Anyway, I actually liked this place a lot despite Svet's negative recommendations, and I'm looking forward to another visit to Russia House. There were quite a number of dishes I'd still like to try, especially including their grilled boar sausage, and many more vodkas to drink.

Chinatown Express, Washington, D.C.

Had a great dinner and stimulating conversation tonight with my friend John, who's been in town this week from southern California while he attends a convention for the National Association of Elder Law Attorneys. We dined at Chinatown Express in Chinatown. John walked all the way over there from his hotel in the rain, but he said he wanted the exercise. We picked Chinatown Express because he wanted noodles, and they have fabulous freshly made noodles there (this is the place with the noodle chef in the front window where passers-by can watch him work).

We started off with a plate of hand-made pork-stuffed dumplings. They always do a good job with their steamed dumplings and manage to make them in a way that doesn't make the wrappers gummy or sticky.

John ordered a little bowl of seafood and noodle soup. You can see what he got! There was a big selection of octopus, squid, shrimp, scallops, and fish balls along with Chinese vegetables and a large quantity of the handmade, fresh noodles.

I had the pan-fried noodles with similar seafood items (except no fish balls). It was as expected and arrived billowing steam from having been just dished up out of the wok. Their fried noodles have a bit of brown sauce, so the dish always reminds me a little of lo mein.

It was great to have the chance to meet John on this trip and I'll be looking forward to future dinners when he's back in D.C.

Tandoori Nights, Arlington, VA

The Market Common at Clarendon is the beneficiary of an exciting new restaurant that opened just a little over a week ago. Tandoori Nights is the second location for the Migliani family, which already established a successful Tandoori Nights in Gaithersburg, Maryland. If our experience this week is any indication, the Arlington location as well should prove to be highly successful.

Svet and I went to Tandoori Nights for lunch Thursday. It was a beautiful day and we took advantage of their large, second floor patio overlooking the Market. Inside, though, the decor is bright and exciting. Fabulous murals decorate the space, including some vibrant Indian-themed paintings on the ceiling. Bar furnished are streamlined and contemporary, and several tables in the dining room feature stylized canopies recalling Indian tradition.

The menu features items which I can best describe as popular and modern, designed for the young Washington urban professionals. Perhaps this is due to the popularization of Indian foods in American culture, but the kitchen does not forget its Indian roots. I'm not sure if they have separate lunch and dinner menus, since the menu we received featured a lot of dinner type items priced in the mid- to upper-teens. A table tent, though, listed a number of lunch meal specials priced at $7.95.

While Svet started with a fruit smoothie, we both ended up ordering the lamb kebob lunch special. The first course was an apple and shredded carrot salad dressed in a light and slightly sweet vinaigrette served in a white, boat-shaped bowl.



For the main course, they brought us clover-shaped plates with two sausage-shaped rolls of lamb barbecued in the tandoor, a bowl of thin yellow dal (lentil) soup, basmati rice studded with bits of saffron rice, and a delicious spinach dish I thought at first was going to be saag paneer, but which turned out to be pieces of miniature corn on the cob in the spinach mixture. Along with the meal came some nice naan bread from the tandoor; Svet wanted more bread, so we ordered an onion naan as well.



Service was excellent and attentive throughout the meal. We also had a visit from the restaurant manager to make sure everything was alright.

Next time you're on a shopping expedition to the Market Common (Apple, Williams-Sonoma, Crate and Barrel, etc.), stop in at Tandoori Nights for lunch or dinner. And, judging from the looks and size of the bar, it will, no doubt, soon be a popular happy hour destination for the young professionals crowd.

Georgetown Cafe, Georgetown, D.C.

There's something comforting about a diner. The food is always simple, plentiful, and cheap, and one can always count on getting full without emptying one's wallet. Diners are surprisingly hard to find in D.C., probably because their low prices don't generate the cash flow needed to support the high rents in most parts of town, which makes it all the more surprising that we would find a diner not only in Georgetown but on the tony Wisconsin Avenue.

Ian has been trying for weeks to get me to try one of his favorite diners, the Georgetown Cafe, so off there we went last night. It was an interesting irony since this is one of the few times we've been out before midnight when lots of restaurants are still open, yet the Georgetown Cafe is open twenty-four hours a day.

Georgetown Cafe isn't your stereotypical diner. In addition to burgers and breakfast items, they have a large selection of Middle Eastern foods. Located on the upper floor of a narrow, old building, decor is sparse around the cheap, utilitarian tables and chairs. A long bar in the back suggests that at one time the space may have been a restaurant with a liquor license, but it's now used as a service station for the wait staff.

Diners always make me crave chicken-fried steaks and gravy; alas, there were no such treats on the menu. Then I looked at the burgers, but Ian wanted breakfast—omelettes, specifically—and he's not much of a carnivore, so I acquiesced to breakfast as well, ordering a ham and cheddar cheese omelette. Ian chose a Swiss cheese omelette with home fries, potato slices lightly pan fried until soft. Both omelettes came with buttered white bread toast which was rather lighter than I would have preferred for "toast," and little pre-packaged servings of grape jelly. We also ordered a basket of French fries; the fries had been lightly battered and expertly deep-fried; they were just great, being the highlight of the meal.




For beverages, I had an iced tea, which was fine, and Ian had a Coke, which I noted came from a gun in the bar and looked, I thought, a little weak.

Even though we'd eaten breakfast foods for supper, we both opted for dessert, Ian the chocolate cake and me the carrot cake. Both of the cakes were "homemade" and fresh; they both arrived covered in commercial whipped cream; the chocolate cake also got squirts of chocolate syrup.




It was nice getting to try Georgetown Cafe finally, since most of my eating-out friends like Svet and Tony are food snobs who don't like diner food; in fact, when Tony was in D.C. last January, we walked in to Georgetown Cafe and he refused to eat there, making us land at the incredibly overpriced and mediocre Cafe Milano. Ian will no doubt drag me to the cafe again, so I'll have to try some of the grill sandwiches and the entrees, which are really the true test of a diner, especially one that doesn't have chicken-fried steak.

Kaz Sushi Bistro, Washington, D.C.

With the proliferation of the ubiquitous sushi bar in nearly every pan-Asian restaurant around the country, Japanese food has started to become common and mundane. A few places, though, maintain the tradition of food as art so highly prized in Japan, and it can be particularly exciting when Japanese chefs trained both in the cuisine of their homeland and the cuisine of the West fuse the styles into creative Japanese-American dishes; thus is our restaurant choice earlier tonight, Kaz Sushi Bistro in downtown D.C.'s West End.

Kaz is located on the upper level of a storefront near the Uruguayan Embassy. The decor is simple with classic Japanese lines and furnishings; Japanese-style watercolors of fish decorate the walls. As expected from a Japanese restaurant, service was speedy, quiet, and efficient.

My dinner companion started with a grilled baby octopus appetizer. I sampled one of the little octopi and it was tender, tasty, and had a spicy kick to it. The photo below is a little misleading, since the dish was served in a square bowl, not a plate, and there was more to the serving than it appears. In the bottom of the bowl was a fine julienne of pickled carrots and daikon (Japanese radish), and scallion sprouts garnished the top.



For her next course, she chose several different types of sushi, including clockwise from the top left, a spicy tuna roll, eel, salmon, and uni (sea urchin). I noticed that the gari (pickled ginger) looked very pale and fresh.



I selected the unadon bento box for my meal. This included two big pieces of barbecued unagi (eel) on a bed of Japanese rice, with a seaweed side dish, a clear vermicelli and mushroom dish, some light vegetable tempura, and an American-style tossed green salad in a creamy sesame dressing. The unagi was good, but I especially enjoyed the seaweed and the vermicelli.



Our desserts turned out to be wonderfully creative and memorable. My friend had the green tea tiramisu. A thin layer of cake was covered with a strongly green tea flavored mascarpone cheese mousse and garnished with a tiny dice of cherry jelly; a red bean paste was squirted decoratively on the plate.



I had the lychee panna cotta with mango sorbet, which was excellent. Both of the fruit flavors exploded in the mouth and complemented one another well.



We also had some very interesting Japanese wines with our meal. We each had one of the two sake tasting flights, each with three different cups of ice cold sake. We both thought that our favorite sake of the flight was our respective "light" wine; the other wines were good, too, and their flavors differed widely, including one of mine which had been aged in cedar casks and had a very peppery flavor.



With dessert, we both had a glass of choya, a very traditional Japanese plum port wine. Our waitress brought a tray to the table with a glass for each of us that contained a small, green, Japanese plum and a large plum-filled decanter with the choya, which she poured for us tableside. The wine was sweet and syrupy and had an intense but pleasant green plum flavor and also a flavor with reminded me somewhat of red hot candies without the "hot."



Kaz ranks highly on my sushi bar list in D.C., up with one of my favorites, Sushi Taro. I'm looking forward to a return trip to Kaz to try out some of their many larger tasting menus, including eight-course gourmet samplers of the cold and hot "small dishes" featured by Chef Kaz Okochi (who we saw in the dining room tonight visiting with one of the other large tables). These small dishes give the chef the opportunity to fuse Japanese cuisine with American tastes, and he does it with skill and aplomb.