Stonehorse Cafe, Tulsa, OK

Yesterday I drove to Tulsa to go shopping with Tony. We had lunch at the Stonehorse Cafe in Utica Square. I'd been at Stonehorse once before over a year ago, but the kitchen was closed and all we did was have a glass of wine. Tony had actually eaten there recently, so he was raving about their pistachio-encrusted halibut with leeks and shrimp. It's a popular socialite gathering spot on the corner across from Saks Fifth Avenue and Harold's, and it seemed appropriate for our lunch since it's neither as pretentious as The Wild Fork nor as expensive as the Polo Grill or Fleming's.

The location has been a succession of popular restaurants over the years, and I've eaten in that geographic location dozens of times. The current concept is much more "urban cafe" and about a third of the dining room is partitioned off with a sleek, contemporary, glass and brushed steel wall which masks the bar area. The dining room itself is filled to the gills with so many two-top tables that every time a waitress walked by, I instinctively pulled in my elbow and leaned away from them. Our table was right up against the window, so we got a good view of the al fresco tables.

Tony started his luncheon with a cup of the lobster-shrimp bisque, which he liked a lot, and reported little chunks of lobster and tiny shrimp. I had a tiny sampling, though, and thought I could taste a bit of "can," which led me to think either the shrimp or the seafood stock were canned instead of fresh; there was enough cayenne, though, I couldn't be certain. For his main course, he had a whole California pizza, which came with mozzarella, goat cheese, roasted garlic, and sun-dried tomatoes on a hand-tossed crust.

Taking a cue from the lady at the next table, I ordered the kosher chicken salad sandwich, but on a bed of lettuce instead of on bread. I got a surprisingly large serving of chicken salad that was flavorful, yet rather plain and unadventuresome. It had a tiny bit of minced celery and chopped parsley for color and texture, but I really thought it needed a little more character with perhaps some nuts or water chestnuts or something. The bed of lettuce was a melange of mixed greens in a heavily vinegared dressing.

We both had their "tropical iced tea," which was a fruit-flavored tea with strong hints of mango and raspberry. They also offered baskets of bread consisting of pieces of round country wheat loaves cut by hand by the waiters at a special bread table near the open kitchen counters.

It was a fun lunch spot, and the prices were very reasonable, I thought.

Outback Steakhouse, Tulsa, OK

Yesterday was my father's birthday, so I flew to Tulsa for a few days. My parents picked me up at the airport and wanted to eat dinner in Tulsa, so we had to pick a place. I suggested Fleming's in Utica Square. I know it's a national franchise, but the food is upscale and decent with excellent service. My mother thought it was too expensive, so we ended up going to Outback Steak House, another national franchise.... What can I say about Outback? Alas, we didn't even have a fun waiter. It was a nice evening, though, and we had the waitress bring my father a chocolate chocolate tower with raspberry puree and vanilla ice cream for a birthday cake, which he and my mother split (I'm still dieting).


The birthday cake arrives. There was a doggy bag.

Delhi Club, Arlington, VA

After church, we Metroed over to Clarendon in northern Virginia for brunch and some shopping, since Robert had never been to the shops there. We ate at the first place we came to, the Delhi Club, a British-style Indian restaurant with a $9.95 all you can eat buffet. The food was simple and basic, but decent, though, being British style, it lacked spicy kick. I can't remember everything on the buffet, but I recall lettuce and cucumber salad with yogurt dressing, herbed jasmine rice, tandoori chicken, a chicken and creamed spinach dish, a lamb in a brown cream sauce, chunks of paneer cheese in a masala sauce, dal (lentils), and a chickpea dish. There was something called coconut penny pudding for dessert, which was a creamy grated coconut and rice mix garnished with ground pistachio nuts, but I never did find a penny in my pudding.

News about Ris Lacoste

In other restaurant news, I learned today that Chef Ris Lacoste of 1789 Restaurant is leaving after the first of the year to start her own restaurant. That's going to be quite a blow to 1789, and it makes me wonder if their corporate owners, the Clyde's group, is wanting to cut costs and quality. We shall have to see who they hire to take over next year. Lacoste has been there so long and has such a reputation and devoted following I can only imagine that friction has come up with the owners.

600 Restaurant, Washington, D.C.

After tonight's National Symphony Orchestra concert at the Kennedy Center, my friend Steven and I stopped for a late-night supper at 600 Restaurant, next door in the Watergate complex.

600 Restaurant is, surprisingly, the only place in the Watergate complex that stays open late to accommodate post-concert and post-theater crowds. I've heard that a lot of the casts, opera chorus members, and others gather in the bar after concerts and dress rehearsals, so I was anxious to try it. Once there, I could see why they just gather at the bar, since the food was a little on the pricey side (but really not that bad for D.C.). Foggy Bottom has a decided shortage of affordable restaurants with full bars.

When we walked in, we weren't sure if the restaurant was open or not. We saw quite a number of waiters sitting around, looking bored, and no customers in either the dining room or the bar. So, even though we didn't have a reservation, we didn't have a bit of trouble getting a good table! Eventually the dining room began to fill up a bit, but it was more from the Chinese opera crowd rather than symphony goers.

There were a number of very interesting entrees on the menu, from an Australian rack of lamb ($32) to a filet mignon (also $32) to a sea bass ($28) to Maryland crab cakes ($26). They also have a dinner prix fixe option adding two more courses for an additional $10, but I didn't think that was that great of a deal. We also decided we really weren't that hungry tonight, so we opted for several lighter morsels.

Steven chose the lobster bisque and a cheese tray for two. I had lobster bisque, a spinach salad, and the artichoke and borsin fondue.

I found the lobster bisque rather ordinary. It was kind of thin and garnished with a very light sprinkling of chopped parsley, and no sour cream, creme fraiche, or anything else to enrich it. The spinach salad was tasty. Had all the traditional stuff in it, with a balsamic vinaigrette dressing served in a little glass on the side. The cheese tray had a big chunk of gouda with the red wax still on it, a brie, a mild blue, and a chevre, plus berries and grapes and a whole bunch of water crackers. I'm not sure what I was expecting for the artichoke and borsin fondue. It was good, but think artichoke dip with little rounds of grilled baguette slices.

For dessert, I had a dinky bowl of fresh strawberries and blueberries with a squirt of commercial whipped cream on top. Steven had a creme brulee that looked good, but he reported that it was thoroughly chilled, which means the brulees had been prepared in advance.

By staying away from the main entree items, we were successful in crafting a decent, fairly inexpensive dinner tonight. I don't know that our late night experience is representative of 600 Restaurant's usual performance. Their credentials, reviews, and press are all pretty good, but I found our food to be fairly mediocre for an expensive restaurant, and lots and lots of corners had been cut to speed preparation and serving times.

Julia's Empanadas, Washington, D.C.

During the lunch hour today, I was in the MacPherson Square area northeast of the White House and happened upon a little shop called Julia's Empanadas at the corner of Vermont and K. Practically every world culture has some kind of meat pie, and the Latin American cultures are no different with their empanadas. I was struck by the artistry and care taken with the empanadas at Julia's, though; the pastry seams were very artistically joined and even decorated. They had a big variety of empanadas, too, including turkey, chicken, beef, spinach and cheese, and "Jamaican" (goat??), all of which they sell for the very reasonable price of $3.18. I had a "Chilean" empanada, which was a traditional beef and raisin recipe.

They also had dessert empandas, and I tried the pear and almond one, which had the pastry drawn up into a little bag shape, tied with a string at the top. I noticed on their menus that they have miniature "cocktail sized" empanadas, too, which you can order in advance for parties. It's a good place, and I look forward to going by again to try some of the other meats and flavors.

Logan Tavern, Washington, D.C.

Tonight we had a great party at one of the P street bars, but after a couple of hours, we were all hungry, so quite a few of us meandered down the street to the Logan Tavern, where we grabbed dinner and more cocktails. Below is our waiter.



Things got exciting at the restaurant when a skillet caught fire, and instead of dealing with it in the vented open kitchen, someone carried the smoking skillet to the dishwashing area and put water on it, which created clouds of smoke and set off the smoke alarms! Strobe lights flashed and an obnoxious beep beep beep......beep beep beep......beep beep beep.....pummeled our ears for a good fifteen to twenty minutes before the Washington D.C. fire department showed up to turn off the noise. At least the beeping was in tempo with the thumping of the background music. Meanwhile, the restaurant could have been burning down, but none of the guests got up to evacuate.







The restaurant gave us all free desserts for putting up with the noise. The most popular dessert at the table seemed to be a mango-flavored key lime pie. I was hoping to get to see the firemen, but even though two trucks showed up, only three guys got out and walked around. Finally, though, all the excitement died down and we got to finish our dinners in relative peace.

Hard Times Cafe, Alexandria, VA

One of Leo's friends was starring in a play at the Lee Center for the Performing Arts in Alexandria last night, so we wandered down to Old Town to see him. After the play, Leo and I walked up to King Street, where we were in quest of an open restaurant at 11 p.m. We landed at a greasy-spoon looking place called the Hard Times Cafe, which, Leo tells me, is actually some kind of small chain with over a dozen cafes in the D.C. metropolitan area. Hard Times considers itself a chili parlor, and this particular cafe was decorated with old Oklahoma and Texas area photographs, flags, and memorabilia, with some Patsy Cline record playing incessantly on the jukebox. I heard the waitress tell another table they should go select something different from the jukebox if they didn't like that Cline song which was on perpetual repeat.

Since it was my first visit, the fun waitress brought me a little chili sampler—a special square, ceramic plate with four little wells to hold the different types of chili. And the chilis were interesting: a "Texas" chili made with ground beef and a little too much grease; a "Cincinnati" chili based on a rather sweet Greek recipe including cinnamon (my Tulsa readers will recall their trips to the originally-Greek-owned Coney Islander and the unique taste of their chili, which is a similar cinnamon-scented recipe); a "Terlingua Red" chili which was meatier and spicier than the "Texas"; and a "vegetarian" chili which was an abomination composed of mushrooms, onions, peppers, and peanuts.

I ended up with a Frito chili pie made with the Terlingua Red. It was a big bowl of Fritos (they forgot to crush them!) with a couple of ladles of chili, then handfuls of diced tomatoes, onions, and shredded cheddar cheese, with a big dollop of sour cream on top. Leo ordered an "authentic coney dog," which turned out to be a huge platter with two coneys and a mound of French fries, plus a pickle spear he gave to me to eat. Little squares of sweet, cakey, "northern-style" cornbread came with our entrees.

Many of you won't like Hard Times Cafe, but I like this kind of white trash food, so there's a good chance I'll be back. I want a big plate of chili mac (spaghetti and chili)! They also have racks of ribs. The food was good, the waitress was very friendly, and the kitchen was surprisingly fast.

Chadwick's, Washington, D.C.

I had a lovely lunch yesterday of some delicious fish and chips at Chadwick's in Friendship Heights, where I met up in the rain with my friend Robert for a shopping excursion at Mazza Gallerie and other area stores. The fish was fresh, flaky, and flavorful, and I was pleased that the waitress brought us a bottle of malt vinegar, which is the traditional British fish accompaniment, instead of high-calorie tartare sauce. Robert had the same. For first courses, I had a bowl of clam chowder and he had a big basket of fried calimari and jalapeño peppers (a combination I would never have thought of, and I noticed he didn't eat the peppers).

Cafe Paradiso, Washington, D.C.

After my expedition to the National Zoo this afternoon, I stopped for a late lunch at one of the sidewalk cafes along Connecticut Avenue in the Woodley Park neighborhood. It was hard to decide where to eat, since there were probably a dozen cafes. I ruled out the Lebanese, Asian, and Indian restaurants, and still I had to pick between a New Orleans Cajun place, a French cafe, and three Italian cafes. I read the menus posted outside and narrowed it down to the French cafe and two of the Italian places, and I ended up picking based on who had waiters outside.



The lunch crowd was mostly gone by 2:30 at Cafe Paradiso Ristorante Italiano. There was one businessman sitting at a sidewalk table reading his Wall Street Journal (and a very slow reader was he, since he was still there when I left!), so I picked a table on the side with a view of the street. The cute, young, Italian waiter brought me a glass of water and a basket of slices of a country loaf of white bread. The menu had the usual selections of Italilan-American items, plus a supplemental menu del giorno with half a dozen daily specials. I chose a grilled seafood salad from the supplemental menu (mostly fish and fresh pastas), with a glass of iced tea.

The salad arrived with one great big scallop and three extra large tail-on shrimp, all grilled and warm, resting on a bed of mixed, European-style salad greens and dressed in a lemon-basil-olive oil emulsification. There was quite a nice assortment of lettuces and chichories, obviously not from a stock mix, in a large white rimmed bowl with a fan of ripe tomato wedges on one side, a light scattering of capers, and quite a number of julienned strips of sweet, cold, roasted red and yellow peppers mixed in with the leaves.

The waiter recommend the tiramisu for dessert, but I wasn't in the mood for that, so I chose the tartufo. Tartufo—the Italian word for truffle—is an amaretto-flavored chocolate ice cream ball rolled in dark cocoa. Cafe Paradiso's version had a vanilla ice cream core. The large "truffle" was presented on a big, colorful, Italian country, pottery plate with three star-shaped dollops of sweetened whipped cream and two whole strawberries as garnish.

And after eating all that, the businessman still reading his same newspaper, I wandered home.

Beacon Bar and Grill, Washington, D.C.

After church at St. John's Lafayette Square, Robert and I walked up to the Scott Circle area, where we brunched at the Beacon Bar and Grill for their Sunday brunch buffet. It's certainly not gourmet, but it's a $19 per person all you can eat spread with all you can drink of bloody Marys, mimosas, or champagne, so even if the food is mediocre, we can get our money's worth just from the liquor. We had a cute, chatty, new waitress named Gabriella from Argentina, and she kept bringing the bloodies, one after another, without us even asking—I think we must have drunk half a dozen apiece!

Bistro Francais, Georgetown, D.C.

My feet hurt.

Last night, Leo got home late from work after a hard day with office politics and was too tired to go to the gym, so we decided to walk into Georgetown to find something "non-Asian" for dinner. Our explorations got us onto the wrong road, and we ended up walking down a mile-long expressway with no way to exit. As we walked back towards civilization, we began to see some restaurants along M Street. West of Wisconsin, though, the establishments seemed to be mostly Indian, Lebanese, Chinese, or those crowded, noisy, smoky bars with food, none of which were what we had in mind. Finally, we espyed the tried-and-true Bistro Français and headed straight there.

The restaurant was crowded, but I guess the maitre d' recognized me, because we were immediately escorted to a decent table in the back dining room with an antique wood banquette on one side and an interesting view of the service bar through the window partition on the other. A non-Anglophone female brought our bread, butter, and water, then we met our charming waiter, a tall guy from Ivory Coast. His English was perfect, with an ever-so-slight cute French accent.

What to eat? What to eat? While we were trying to make up our minds, we got a bottle of one of their cheaper house bordeaux-superieurs to sip while we perused the menu. I forgot what it was, but I remember it made the claim to be like a Saint-Emilion (but if it was, it was totally unlike any Saint-Emilion I've ever drunk!). Eh. House wine.

When the waiter came back the second time to take our order, we still hadn't made up our minds, so we just plunged in and made a quick guess. I ordered a bistro salad and a minute steak. Leo asked for the seafood soup and the cold poached salmon.

My salad was a big plate of leaf lettuce with a lot of julienned beets on top and a very ripe and flavorful tomato wedge on either side (where do they get ripe tomatoes this time of year?). Their house dressing is a tasty, thin mayonnaise flavored with a bit of dijon mustard. My minute steak maitre d' hôtel was yummy. It was a large, thin, nearly square piece of sirloin cooked medium rare and topped with two little round pats of parsley-herb butter. A big pile of thin pommes frites, accompanied by a small bowl of dipping mayonnaise, overflowed the rest of the dinner plate.

Leo's seafood soup was a bit of a surprise. It was prepared very much like a French onion soup, with a large crouton in the soup and an ample amount of cheese melted on top and down the sides of the soup crock. His cold poached salmon looked nice. It was served atop a sauce of some kind (mousseline??), but I didn't taste it and Leo doesn't know the names of the classic French sauces, so I couldn't ask. He had a vegetable on the plate, but I didn't think to identify it, since another waiter from previous visits (the French one who's the exotic dancer) came to the table to say hi and chat.

Our waiter brought the dessert tray, but I didn't see anything inspirational in the way of napoleans or fruit or nut tarts, so I opted for a little cheese plate. Leo had a crème brulee. The cheese plate was simple, with a wedge of brie, a slice of a goat milk chevre of some type, and a small slice of a not-very-aged blue, with green apple slices filling up the empty spots on the plate. He brought some thick slices of a nice, crusty, country-style bread for the cheese—much better than the hard rolls served with dinner. The brie was brie. I'm not a great fan of brie, and, thankfully, this one wasn't ripe (the French like brie which has aged so much that it turns brown and runny and smells worse than dirty, damp gym shoes left in the locker all summer). The blue was tasty. It was an edge piece, so it had a bit more character than the center would have had, but it certainly wasn't a premium French blue. My favorite was the chevre, which was light and rich and had a very nice, complex flavor to it.

Leo's crème brulee must have been good, since he ate it all and kept trying to scrape the au gratin dish with his spoon to extract every last morsel. I think, though, for expediencies' sake, the restaurant had pre-made the crème brulees, since Leo reported that the hard sugar crust on the top of the cold custard was not warm.

After coffee with cream, we limped back home, walking the whole way.

Starland Cafe, Washington, D.C.

Last Friday, my financial planner picked me up in his Z4 so we could continue our previously truncated business meeting. We went zooming off with the top down, the wind blowing my hair. It was a great chance to enjoy the beautiful sunshine and warm weather. We headed out to the Palisades area of D.C., way, way out in the far western corner of the district, northwest of Georgetown, and stopped at the Starland Cafe. He said the Starland is popular in the neighborhood because they feature a lot of live musical groups during dinner. It was an interesting crowd, though I'm not so sure the luncheon patrons are the live music set—most of the tables seemed filled with local matrons. We sat out on their covered terrace overlooking MacArthur Boulevard, and we had a very friendly, peppy waitress with wild hair.

I had the Cobb salad and he had a fried crabcake sandwich with French fries and mayonnaise. I also had a warm pot-au-chocolat à la mode for dessert. What they served me was not a pot-au-chocolat. A proper pot-au-chocolat is very much like a dense, rich, dark chocolate flan or creme brulee (without the caramel or broiled sugar); what they brought was crusty on the outside and more like a baked chocolate pudding or baked fudge. Now, it was good for what it was, but I don't like misnamed menu items.

Port of Piraeus, Washington, D.C.

A few days ago, I had lunch with a financial planner. He was buying, so I let him pick the place. He picked Port of Piraeus in the "Golden Triangle" area of downtown D.C. I've walked by the place before and knew it was Greek ("Piraeus" is a city in Greece), but I was expecting a fairly fancy restaurant, given the substantial square footage it assumes in a downtown office building; it turns out it's nothing more than a big deli serving mostly Greek themed sandwiches and salads. We both ended up ordering their salad special of the day, which was a Greek salad with tuna on top. Our cell phones kept ringing and due to the press of business, our meeting was somewhat truncated, so we agreed to get together again later in the week.

Yee Hwa, Washington, D.C.

Last week we finally got around to trying Yee Hwa, a place I've often walked by in the west end of downtown Washington. Located in the bottom of an office building, it has a large burgundy canopy going out to the curb and heavy curtains in the windows. The canopy and the windows are marked simply with the words "Yee Hwa" and the two Korean alphabet symbols for the same. Now, way over in Chinatown, there's a Texas-style barbecue joint, but I've always had the feeling that Yee Hwa ain't very Texan.

After going through a small entry hall and a second set of doors, one enters a sleekly contemporary dining room that turns out to be much larger inside than the establishment appears from the street. Along the left hand side of the dining room is a long cocktail bar that looks very much as though it used to be a sushi bar. Contemporary, wood-grained tables are separated by low glass dividers discreetly etched with the Korean "yee hwa" symbols. The menu indicates that Yee Hwa is a "Korean-Japanese" restaurant and that the Washington location is a branch of a restaurant in Seoul. They also have a separate menu with a lengthy list of sake and plum wines (some of which were very expensive!) and a handful of Korean and Japanese beers.

Even though the menu featured ribs and Korean barbecue, we decided to be less cowboy, and started with haemul pa jeon, a traditional Korean seafood and scallion pancake. The pancake started out as a very large oval on the grill, and once it was cooked to a slightly crispy, golden brown, it was fan-folded on to a large round plate and then cut into squares. It came with a dipping sauce with soy sauce, chives, and sesame seeds very similar to the sauce for Chinese dumplings. Since the rice flour used for the pancake has different cooking properties than wheat flour, the interior portions of the thin pancake had an interesting, almost "gooey" (yet cooked) consistency to it. We washed this down with a vase of hot "house" sake (the $8 kind, not the $100 kind).

For our main courses, we both opted for different forms of the popular Korean dish, bi bim bap (pronounced "bee-beem-bahp"). Bi bim bap, which means "mixed meal," is an artfully arranged bowl with a huge quantity of shredded vegetables. My bi bim bap was the plain, "simple," cold version with a large bowl of vegetables that included some unusual roots and fern sprouts all topped with a sunny-side up egg, and hot rice in a separate aluminum container. I had to add the special chile-based bi bim bap sauce to taste from a small bowl on the side, then mix up the vegetables, egg, rice, and sauce with a spoon and chopsticks.

My dinner companion had dolsot bi bim bap, which is the hot version that also includes beef. Its presentation is a little different. The bowl was a dark ceramic or stone dish made very hot on the stove. The rice was put directly into the bottom of dish, where the heat from the stone made the outer portions crunchy. With the addition of cooked beef, the rest of the entree was similar to mine with essentially the same vegetables and fried egg.

We were also given nine little bowls of complementary side dishes of various Korean vegetables. Most of these were in the kim-chee family (fermented cabbage with hot chiles...rotten cabbage is an acquired taste), but there were also some shredded white radishes, some preserved slices of what looked like candied jalapeño peppers, and some glossy red mung beans. The kim-chees included radishes and some pretty little slices of a thin cucumber. My friend tasted most of these things, especially the cabbage kim-chees, and thought they were good, but I'm allergic to something in kim-chee and I steer clear (as it was, I had indigestion and was queasy the whole next day, but this happens to me every time I go to a Korean place—I guess I just can't eat Korean food, which is a shame, since the food at Yee Hwa was tasty and elegantly presented).

At the end of the meal, our waitress brought us complimentary cups of Korean sweet rice punch. It's an interesting drink, which I think was non-alcoholic. It was amber in color with a water-like consistency and had a sweet taste scented with ginger. A few little pieces of what my friend said was chopped lotus root floated in the bottom.

Yee Hwa is a very nice restaurant with good food and a lot of amenities. I was surprised at how inexpensive our meal was (my bi bim bap was only $10), especially given the ambiance, quality of service, and complimentary food items. If you're a kim-chee fan, this is the place to go for Korean cuisine.

New Big Wong Chinese Restaurant, Washington, D.C.

We had a lovely early supper this evening in Chinatown at the New Big Wong Chinese Restaurant, just a few steps from the Gallery Place Metro stop. This is another one of those "hole in the wall" looking places that turns out to be a good place to eat. Big Wong is a Hong Kong-style restaurant, and they take pride in serving extremely fresh seafood. In fact, a kitchen employee was constantly running back and forth up to the front of the restaurant to procure various live lobsters (with a pair of tongs) and fish (in a big bucket) from an aquairium near the entrance.

Leo ordered, as usual, chatting up the waitress in Cantonese, so I have no clue what we had, so I'll attempt to describe it without the formal names. The first dish to come out was similar to a chow fun, wide noodles with roast pork, shrimp, mushrooms, and scallions with a little bit of brown sauce. After a bit of a wait, we got the other two dishes, one a seafood "hot pot" with shrimp, crab legs, scored blanched squid, scallops, white fish chunks, and a bunch of tofu triangles with some reconstituted dried exotic mushrooms, carrot slices, and scallions in a translucent cornstarch sauce, and the other a dish with beef slices and lots of white onion pieces in a brown sauce. Both of these latter dishes came with steamed white rice, and pots of hot tea were complimentary.

Tony Cheng's Mongolian Barbecue, Washington, D.C.

We finally went to Tony Cheng's in Chinatown. Tony Cheng is the renowned D.C. Chinese restauranteur made famous during the Carter Administration when Cheng's regular patron Hamilton Jordan succeeded in bringing President Carter to dinner at Cheng's "Szechuan" for the "new" Chinese concept of hot and spicy food. Today, Cheng operates two restaurants in the same building, Tony Cheng's Mongolian Restaurant on the first floor and Tony Cheng's Seafood Restaurant upstairs. Leo had never had Mongolian barbecue before, so we went there.

By tradition, Mongolian barbecue is based on the cooking technique of Mongolian soldiers—Ghengis Khan and the Mongol hordes, etc., etc. They supposedly used their metal shields for cooking, putting them over the fire and heating them up like a grill, then throwing the meat and limited vegetables directly on the metal to cook. Today, Mongolian restaurants all have a large, round, drum-like, stainless steel grill they use instead of shields. Diners go to a buffet-like area to select their meats and vegetables, add sauces and oils, and then give the bowl of food to a grill-chef to cook.

The grill at Cheng's is in the middle of the dining room, and it's large enough for four to six cooks to work around. They have three sets of raw food selections arranged in a circle around the grill area. Most Mongolian barbecues I've frequented in the past have had only beef, chicken, and pork, but this one had lamb as well, plus for a small additional fee, you could have shrimp. They also had a little wider selection of vegetables and mushrooms than others I've seen. I'm used to picking my own sauces and oils, but here, the chefs take things from you (rather abruptly, I thought) and add them themselves, which doesn't always give the diner the chance to create the precise flavor combination they want.

In addition to the barbecue option, diners also have the option of ordering the Mongolian hot pot, where an electric burner is brought to the table to boil a pan of broth and then the diner selects and cooks his own meat and vegetables at the table.

When we were seated, the waiters brought pots of hot tea, a plate of roasted peanuts, and a plate of some really delicious pickled cabbage interlayered with fiery-hot red Chinese chili peppers. The cabbage was slightly salty and very sour with rice vinegar, and I loved it!

The dining room is classically decorated with elaborately carved Chinese furniture and higher quality Chinese art. Our chairs were massive upright chairs, heavily carved, and upholstered with a luxurious red and gold brocade fabric. There were a lot of waiters running around, all dressed in black trousers and bow ties with white shirts.

Tony Cheng's was an enjoyable experience. It's a little bit more expensive than I'm used to for this kind of food ($15.95 per person, all you can eat), but if you're really hungry, the food is good and the service very attentive. I do want to try the upstairs restaurant some time, and the next time I'm at the Mongolian place, I plan to try the Mongolian hot pot.

Famous Luigi's, Washington, D.C.

Sunday evening, we somehow ended up going out to eat yet again, this time walking downtown to Famous Luigi's, near 19th and L. Luigi's is one of those old-style Italian-American restaurants that's been in business in D.C. for over sixty years. All of the tables were covered in red and white gingham cloths, but I was pleased that there were no chianti bottles covered in dripped wax. Our waiter was an older Italian man.

He started us off with wines, a chianti for me and a merlot for Leo, and a big basket of calamari fritti with a marinara dipping sauce. The fried calamari pieces had a layer of raw onion pieces covering them. I ordered a simple green salad and ended up being served (and charged for!) an insalata Luigi, or their more elaborate house salad with beets, hard boiled eggs, long thin slices of carrot, tomatoes, cucumbers, olives, and pepperoncini peppers on top of iceberg lettuce.

For our main courses, Leo had the rigatoni rustici and I had the lasagne alla Luigi. The rigatoni came in a big, flat pasta bowl, and the rigatonis themselves were surprisingly large. They were well coated with a sauce of ground Italian sausage, two cheeses, and herbs in a tomatoey sauce. He liked it, and I had a sample and it was tasty. My lasagne was ok. It was very old style American (there's a big difference between Italian food and Italian-American food), and had the expected meat, mozarella cheese, ricotta, and tomato sauce layered between the lasagna noodles. It was prepared and served in an individual au gratin dish.

For dessert, I abstained, but Leo chose the tiramisu. It looked very good. They used real, traditional ladyfingers dipped in espresso, but I noticed that the whole dessert was assembled with stiff whipped cream and it didn't appear that they used any mascarpone cheese. Nonetheless, Leo loved it, and complained all the way home how stuffed he was.

Mimi's, Washington, D.C.

After Mass yesterday morning, Leo was finally awake and dressed, so we walked up to Dupont Circle to Mimi's for brunch. I went there primarily for the bloody Marys, which are a bargain at Sunday brunch. They are served in tall pilsner glasses garnished with a thick round of cucumber placed on the rim and a couple of large green olives impaled on a plastic spear and laid across the top of the glass. The rims of the glasses are dipped in spicy red seasoning salt.

Oh, I had some food, too, a gorgonzola bacon burger with French fries. Leo had the eggs Benedict with country fries, and then for dessert, he had a warm banana bread pudding with coconut ice cream. As usual, he drank mimosas.

Magic Gourd, Washington, D.C.

Leo and I had an early dinner a couple of days ago at the Magic Gourd, which is in Columbia Plaza just a block south of where we live, and it's right by the Korean grocery store where Leo likes to buy Asian convenience foods and lottery tickets.

Anyway, Leo had some tasty-looking pan fried pork dumplings and the combination fried rice (which he pronounced "too dry"). I had the "velvet chicken corn chowder" ($1.75) and the Magic Gourd Duck with steamed white rice. The chowder reminded me a lot of a Chinese buffet egg drop soup, but with the addition of a few kernels of corn and a few pieces of chicken meat in the soup. And, much like a buffet, it was presented in a small white bowl on a little saucer.

The duck dish was a little disappointing. I'd really wanted the crispy duck, a half duck chopped into pieces and deep fried, but I thought that might not be the healthiest, lower calorie option. The "Magic Gourd Duck" was a typical Chinese entree of sliced, roast duck with snow peas, bamboo shoots, and lots of black mushrooms in a rather insipid, thin, brown, cornstarchy sauce. My rice, also, was rather dry, and hard to eat with chopsticks.

Overall, it was a rather mediocre meal, and somewhat surprising for the Magic Gourd, which is usually a decent restaurant.