Maggiano's Little Italy, Washington, D.C.

This afternoon, Leo and I ventured up to Friendship Heights to do a little shopping for some new spring clothes. That whole neighborhood from Mazza Gallerie up to the Saks Fifth Avenue is a great outdoor shopping strip, and this afternoon's beautiful, sunny warm weather made shopping a lot of fun.

We ended up getting hungry, so we popped in to Maggiano's Little Italy for a very late lunch/very early dinner. There was a big table with a family with a lot of young children in the dining room, so Leo insisted that we sit in the bar so we didn't have to hear the kids. Of course, the problem for me with sitting in the bar is that the televisions were all turned to ESPN to basketball games, and then at the same time they were playing old Frank Sinatra music over the restaurant's sound system.

On to food. Leo's bar theme of the night was peaches. He started with a frozen peach bellini. I tasted it....I think they were using frozen peaches along with the champagne and peach schnapps. Tasted like a bellini to me, but Leo didn't like it cause it was too sweet and he couldn't taste the alcohol. So, after he finished that, he ordered a Georgia peach ice cream martini. I sampled it, too, and it was a typical sweet vodka-based martini, but I didn't detect a cream taste or feel.

Meanwhile, we nibbled on a half order of fried calimari for an appetizer. The calimari was okay, but a slight bit limp. I've had better before, but these weren't bad. They also included tentacles in addition to the rings.



For my main course, I chose the braised beef cannelloni. Four hand-made cannelloni were stuffed with a beef-flavored two cheese mixture, covered with a cream sauce, and topped with shredded beef. It was intensely flavorful and good. The only issue I had was that the dish was a little too salty.



Leo decided upon the zuppa di pesce—fish soup—that was actually an enormous bowl of linguine tossed in a tomato sauce with mussels, shrimp, squid, and fish and I don't know what else. A lemon half rested on the pasta for zesting and two toasted bread slices garnished the bowl, looking like rabbit ears. The picture below does not fully convey the size of this bowl of pasta; the dish was easily enough to serve four people! I think they must have started with a full pound of dried linguine, as much pasta as there was. Well, Leo ended up picking out all the seafood and then could only eat about half of the pasta.



After all that pasta, Leo couldn't do dessert. I didn't want any either, but I had a large cappuccino that came with a chocolate chip biscotto that took the place of my dessert.

Thai Kitchen, Washington, D.C.

Dinner tonight at Thai Kitchen in the West End. It was a pleasant walk with our warm spring weather.

Against my advice, Leo had a Guinness stout beer that he immediately regretted upon tasting; I had a Yeungling beer that was decent enough as far as beer goes. Then we split an Thai Kitchen sampler with chicken satay in peanut sauce, shrimp rolls, and deep fried vegetarian spring rolls.



For our main courses, Leo had the paeng paa, a spicy "jungle curry" with beef and vegetables. It looked pretty, but I didn't get the impression he was all that excited about it.



I asked our waiter—who looked exactly like an Asian —to pick and bring me dinner. He selected the crisp whole flounder, a delicious dish where the whole fish was deep fried and presented on a large platter accompanied by a bowl of spicy chili and garlic sauce and a little bowl of white rice. I thought my fish was really good.



We weren't going to do dessert, but Leo decided to order two or three entrees as take-away food, so we had time to kill and ended up ordering more food. Leo had mango sticky rice that was rather routine but very beautifully presented; I had coconut ice cream that was rather routinely presented but tasted great.

Bistro Français, Georgetown, D.C.

It's raining out. Actually, now and then, it's been raining pretty hard all night long. It was raining at 2 a.m., too, when my friend Ian insisted that I walk over to Georgetown to join him for supper at Bistro Français.

It was just a simple supper. Ian only had frites and then for dessert both a chocolate cake and an order of vanilla ice cream. He decided to be novel tonight and dip his fries in his Coke. Don't you just love the collegiate diet?




I'd gone over planning to have a little salad and an artichoke, but ended up ordering the minute steak maitre d' hôtel avec frites. It was tasty; I haven't had a steak in a while, and this was good, though it was a little thin thing.

600 Restaurant at the Watergate, Washington, D.C.

After last night's performance of Carnival! at the Kennedy Center, Robert, Kevin, and I walked across the street for a late night supper at 600 Restaurant at the Watergate. A popular post-performance watering hole for many of the K.C. casts, 600 was, as usual, fairly open in the dining room and packed at the bar, so we were immediately shown to a table.

We had a simple dinner, since we were a little pressed for time; both Robert and Kevin had Metroed down and both had to change trains to get home, so we had to get them out and to the station by 11. We also wanted to allow plenty of time for Robert to supervise Kevin and make sure he got on the right subway line; before the show, Kevin called us from Woodley Park, where, for some reason, he had ended up on the red line, and then had to taxi to the Kennedy Center. I've no idea how he did that. He lives by the green line in College Park, and that intersects directly with the blue line that takes him to the Kennedy Center. You know how some people are just too intelligent for their own good?

Anyway, Kevin chose the pasta of the day, a very nice looking handmade ravioli dish with the raviolis stuffed with artichokes and mushrooms, served in a red sauce. Robert had the veal marsala; he reported the veal as being okay, but he particularly raved about the scallopped potatoes.




I wanted something lighter, so I had a bowl of lobster bisque and a tomato-mozzarella salad. The bisque was actually much better than the last time I had it here. The salad probably wasn't the best choice I could have made; tomatoes just aren't in season right now.




With dinner, I drank a Firestone sauvignon blanc and Kevin an iced tea; poor Robert, who's given up alcohol for Lent, drank water.

After dinner, Robert opted for dessert, selecting a cheesecake topped with a strawberry and which a lot of raspberry coulis squirted all over his plate.

Aditi Indian Cuisine, Georgetown, D.C.

Last night, Ian insisted that I accompany him to dinner at 9:30 at Aditi Indian Cuisine, a little place in Georgetown on the corner of M Street about a block or two from where he lives (and a good mile-plus walk for me!).

Aditi is a pleasant restaurant with a very clean, very modern look to the dining room. It actually has a fairly small footprint, but they make up for it by using not only the ground floor for a dining room and bar area, but the upstairs for another dining room, and the downstairs for restroom facilities and other things (I didn't go down there to inspect). A stairway connecting the three levels is open and contemporary. Decorative arts are minimal and tasteful, with the one big "statement" piece being this elephant that hung in the upstairs stairwell. I let Ian select the menu for us to share, since his food preferences are considerably more restricted than are mine.

We had a very nice fruited chicken biryani (think the Indian version of Chinese chicken fried rice) that I found unusually good for a biryani. The chicken pieces were tender and flavorful, and not at all dried out as so often is the case with this dish. Our second entree was aloo chole, a tasty chickpea and potato spiced casserole. The main dishes came with white basmati rice with some fresh snipped herbs and spices, raita (yogurt with diced cucumber), pappadum (peppered lentil flour wafers); and lemon pickles, a very interesting hot condiment made of lemon peel turned red with spices.



We also got a couple of orders of puri, a traditional Indian bread that has been deep fried to make it puffy, rather resembling a big, round, Mexican sopapilla. The puri came with a bowl of "green sauce" made from puréed cilantro leaves, something that is very common at Indian restaurants, but this sauce was unusually good because it had been thickened with some yogurt.



A few weeks ago, Ian had been here and debated ordering the gulab jamun for dessert, but he and his companion were afraid to get it. Why? Well, the menu description here explains that it's a "deep-fried dry milk ball," and they were apprehensive. Well, I don't really like that description; the usual description on menus elsewhere is that they are deep-fried pastry balls, which, given the cake-like consistency of the food, is really a much better explanation. One large ball is a serving; it comes in a bowl with a hot honey sauce. I don't order this dessert often, but I like it well enough. Ian, though, was only willing to taste one bite. Good thing we only got one order.

Saigon Saigon, Arlington, Va.

Last night, Leo rang me from Virginia and wanted me to come down immediately to help him shop for linens, so I wandered down to Pentagon Row to join him. After he completed his purchases, we went to Saigon Saigon for a quick dinner. It was a little chilly, so we chose comfort foods. We started with an appetizer assortment platter then we both had different kinds of pho (beef noodle soup). The food there is, as always, good. The pho photo is bepfore I added the bean sprouts, basil leaves, mint, etc. My version had lots of very thin slices of beef flank and eye of round; Leo's had little meatballs and something else.

El Pike, Falls Church, Va.

Well, the Nintendo Ian bought last night was defective, so we had to make another shopping excursion tonight to exchange it. We decided to go to Falls Church, Virginia, this time instead of Maryland. After completing the transaction, Ian decided that Mexican food sounded good for dinner. We had passed a place called El Pike on the way to the store, so we decided to try it.

Well, El Pike isn't a Mexican restaurant. It's Bolivian. And the food is very different.

They have a fairly large dining room filled with inexpensive restaurant tables and chairs. A dance floor with some musical instruments was on one side of the room. A bar was in the back of the other. Decor was simple, consisting of a few unusual masks hanging on the walls. Our waitress is a Spanish speaker; her English was quite a bit more limited than my meagre high school Spanish.

We started with an appetizer, selecting the corn con queso, thinking it would be a cheese dip for tortilla chips. We didn't get any tortilla chips. And it wasn't a dip. Instead, our choclo con queso was a round piece of white farmer-style cheese and some corn on the cob with the biggest, white corn kernels I think I've ever seen. I'm not quite sure what the proper etiquette is for eating this dish, so we just nibbled on the corn then took little bits of the cheese. I gather this is a popular food, since I later noticed some South American-looking people at the bar eating it.



Ian had the pollo saltado, a variation on the traditional Peruvian lomo saltado, for his main course. He liked it, saying the chicken had a very good flavor, and practically licking his plate clean. A "saltado" dish generally features strips of meat marinaded in wine or vinegar with spices, then cooked with lots of peppers, tomatoes, and onions and served with fried potatoes. The version at El Pike included both fried potatoes and parsley-sprinkled white rice.



I had a traditional Bolivian dish called silpancho. With a similar base of fried potatoes and white rice, the silpancho is basically a lightly flour-dredged piece of steak pounded thin and then pan fried. Chopped onions, hot peppers, tomatoes, and cilantro topped the steak and the entire dish was capped with a couple of fried eggs. The meat was very tasty, but it was initially hard to eat since it rested on the potatoes and rice on a plate that was full to the brim, restricting leverage for cutting without making a big mess.



For dessert, Ian ordered the rice pudding, but it turned out they were out of it, so we managed to get out without the additional calories. The tab was very inexpensive (by Washington standards), with the big serving entrees costing around $10 or $11. Then we left to return to the District, braving tonight's gale-force winds.

The Cheesecake Factory, Rockville, Md.

Well, so much for today being a fast day and my idea that I might give up meat for Lent. My friend Ian is such a bad influence! This evening, he decided that we had to go shopping in Maryland. Once we got there, he announced that he was ravenously hungry, so after inspecting all the restaurants and food court spots in the mall, he decided that we had to go to The Cheesecake Factory.

It was, as usual, crowded, and we had about a twenty minute wait for a table. The Rockville store is much like all the others in terms of decor, though this one seeemed to be rather longer and narrower than many.

The worst thing about this Cheesecake Factory—and this is common to all of them—is that they don't have any proper iced tea. All they offer is this nasty, disgusting "tropical iced tea," with a cloying mango-passionfruit taste. I really wish their corporate office would offer a normal, regular iced tea as an alternative.

We started by splitting a fried macaroni and cheese appetizer. They make balls of macaroni and cheese, bread them, and then deep fry them, and they are quite delicious! Four large balls make up the dish, and I daresay that a whole order of them plus a little green salad would make a tasty, filling, full dinner for someone. They were served on a pool of a rather medicinal-tasting marinara sauce that next time I will remember to have the kitchen hold. I didn't think the marinara added much to the mac and cheese balls, anyway.



For his main course, Ian ordered the Factory burrito grande, a long, oval plate-sized chicken, cheese, and rice burrito. He always orders his burritos bare, so he had them serve the guacamole, tomatoes, sour cream, and cilantro toppings on the side, which meant that I got a nice little "guacamole salad" to enjoy with my meal. The burrito came with Spanish rice and black beans.



I had the Hungarian goulash with buttered noodles. It was surprisingly good. The goulash consisted of a lot of chunks of tender, flavorful beef stewed with caramelized onions in a brown sauce spiced with Hungarian paprika. The whole plate was sprinkled with snipped parsley.



Even though I really wanted some chocolate cake or some carrot cake, I knew I couldn't eat a whole piece after all the food we'd already had, so I acquiesced to eating cheesecake, since Ian had never eaten at this chain before and hadn't ever had their cheesecake. We split a piece of their "original" cheesecake topped with glazed, fresh strawberries and garnished with two big dollops of whipped cream.

Kam Fong Chinese Seafood Restaurant, Washington, D.C.

As we walked through Chinatown tonight, we heard the din of drums and bells as a group of musicians accompanied a dragon that was making its way down the street. On the side walk, Chinese teen boys were setting off firecrackers and sparkling showers. Can you tell it's the Chinese New Year?

Having heard rumblings that it was soon to close, for dinner we headed to Kam Fong Chinese Seafood Restaurant. I've always liked Kam Fong, with its Asian bakery and a big tank of fish, lobster, and crab up front, and barbecued ducks, pork ribs, and roast pig hanging in the front window.

We had a lovely repast for our new year's dinner. We had a hot casserole of lamb, dried tofu, big shiitake mushrooms, and scallions in a brown sauce. Our cold dish was a beautiful plate of thinly sliced pieces of smoked pig's feet arranged around the outside of the platter with some picked spears of cucumber and carrot in the center, topped with a huge mound of long, long strips of vinegared jellyfish. We had Chinese water spinach sautéed with sliced garlic for our vegetable, and Chinese e mein for our "good luck" long noodles. Complimentary white rice and hot tea came with the meal.

We ate all the jellyfish, pig's feet, and lamb, so I brought home the leftover water spinach and Leo brought home the leftover noodles.

I hope Kam Fong isn't closing. Real estate prices have gotten so high in the Chinatown area that we really don't have a Chinatown anymore, it's more like a "China Block." Our favorite place for dim sum, Lei Garden, closed at the end of last year, even though it always seemed to have excellent business and great food. Lei Garden, is on the other side of the CVS Pharmacy from Kam Fong; I wonder if CVS is expanding or if the building is just going condo?

Anyway, we'll just have to see what happens. Meanwhlie, gung hay fat choy to everyone!

Cooking time

Nothing exciting to report or blog about today....I'm busy cooking dinner for forty people at the lodge tonight.

Filomena Ristorante, Georgetown, D.C.

After a long, long day of playing tourist and discovering "cold" weather, my Floridean friend Joe and his family joined Ryan and me last night for dinner in Georgetown at Filomena Ristorante. The place was jam-packed, and we had to wait sardine-like a good twenty minutes past our reservation time for a table in the waiting area between the bar, dessert cases, restrooms, and maitre d' stand.

Filomena has been around for a couple of decades or so and it quickly became one of the most popular Italian eateries, not only in Georgetown, but throughout the city. It's a comfortable place that teeters on the brink of being maudlin and kitschy as it attempts to make patrons "feel like you've come home to an Italian grandma" with its lace placemats and homey, folksy wall hangings and decor, but this is a sin I'm willing to forgive because the food is unpretentious, well prepared, and always delicious.



That comfortable feeling leads people into relaxing and letting their wine release their ebullence that, coupled with the size of the large dining room, creates a raucous hubbub of happy diners. In other words, this is a loud restaurant. And we managed to get a table in a particularly loud section, near a long, long table of young women holding a bachelorette party that, judging from some of the adult gifts I was seeing on their table and the obviously enormously large amount of alcohol they had drunk, probably should have been hosted in a private dining room or perhaps, even better (especially considering the rather "slutty"-looking wardrobe choices of most of these young women), in a private residence. I suppose, though, it was just part of the "love" ambiance in Filomena last night, as they were fully decorated for Wednesday's St. Valentine's Day.

With the noise level last night and because they put our party of eight at a long table instead of one of the round ones, it was hard for me to hear what everybody was ordering and get their opinions of their food, so I'll just have to do what I can here.

For our first courses, Joe and Evelyn shared a plate of arancini, racquetball-sized, golden brown spheres of rice stuffed with meat and cheese, accompanied by a red sauce. Susan took one and tried it, then told me about their Christmas Eve family tradition of making softball-sized arancini.



Ryan chose the mozzarella in carrozza, some interesting triangularly-shaped pieces of mozzarella cheese breaded and deep-fried, then served with a spicy marinara sauce.



Mary and I both had salads. She had the insalatina di stagione, a plate of mesclun greens tossed with gorgonzola cheese crumbles, toasted pecans, and a balsamic vinaigrette.



I did the insalata di lattuga, featuring Bibb lettuce and tender, juicy endive mixed with fennel, green and black olives, and shavings of parmesan cheese dressed with lemon juice and olive oil. It was nice, and made up for the disappointment of them being out of the tomato and bread soup of the day.



Meanwhile, since everyone wanted a different kind of wine, we all ended up doing by-the-glass selections instead of a couple of full bottles. I had a very nice chianti classico, but I don't recall what everybody else had (although I'm pretty sure Ryan had a merlot).


Joe's Kody Pose™

Soon, our main courses came. Joe and Evelyn both liked the idea of "pocket pastas." She had a lovely looking agnolotti alla panna, with the pasta stuffed with spinach and cheese and covered in a white cream sauce. He had a more traditional looking ravioli di pollo featuring chicken-stuffed ravioli in red sauce.





Mary chose the fish of the day, a grilled mahi-mahi topped with a tapenade of capers, tomatoes, and olives.



Her sister Susan ordered a manicotti, and seemed to have gotten the canelloni classico. Now, in Italy, I'm pretty sure that manicotti and cannelloni are essentially synonymous terms, meaning a rectangular sheet of pasta wrapped around a usually-cheese-based filling in the shape of a tube, then sauced and baked, though I often see dried pasta in pre-formed large tubes in grocery stores labelled "manicotti." Her cannelloni were topped with bolognese sauce and white cheese.



Ryan, extravagant as usual, ordered the most expensive entree at the table, a luscious-looking linguini cardinale—"linguini for the cardinal archbishops". Cardinals of the Church are known for their scarlet red vestments, so this dish was reddened with a lobster rosé cream sauce and large, bright red chunks of lobster tail.



My dish was equally exquisite, the vitello allo filomena, their version of a veal marsala. It was delicious! Three veal cutlets were pounded thin into scallopines, then stuffed with prosciutto ham, fontina cheese, and fresh sage, then sautéed before being topped and finished with a marsala wine reduction sauce scented with shiitake mushrooms.



Giving us a short respite before presenting the dessert menus, our waiter next took coffee and espressi orders and brought us decanters of complimentary Sambucca and amaretto. We all got little miniature brandy snifters and he gave us coffee beans for the Sambucca (it's a tradition to put three beans in the Sambucca glass). Now, I rather detest the taste of licorice, so I passed on the Sambucca most of the others were drinking, and Susan, Ryan, and I had amaretto.

Then came dessert. Filomena is well-known for its bakery and even offers whole cakes for shipment via an Internet Web site. The dessert menu is bigger than the dinner menu, since it includes large, mouth-watering photographs of each dessert item.

Evelyn had the tiramisu. Ryan and Susan each had a "cookies n' cream" white chocolate mousse cake. I had the strawberry cheese cake. None of us needed it, but we ate it anyway.







Finally, it was time to wake the kids and head out. We got them into their taxis (hailing taxis is cut-throat business on a Georgetown weekend night!), then Ryan and I walked on home. I don't know where they'll tour or eat today....Thursday night they were at Cafe Milano, yesterday they breakfasted with me at Old Ebbitt, then they lunched at Rosa Mexicana before our dinner at Filomena. I've given them the names of a number of good Asian restaurants for today, so we'll just have to see what they end up doing. One thing about Washington, though, there's never a shortage of restaurants!

Old Ebbitt Grill, Washington, D.C.

My friend Joe from south Florida is in town this weekend with his wife, his two daughters, and two of his granddaughters so they can show the girls around town. It's the first time the girls have seen snow or experienced "cold." In preparation for their visit, I arranged for them to get a tour of the White House. Since the Secret Service doesn't allow cameras in the White House, I wandered over there so I could snap some photos of them coming out of the house and down the drive—it's the only way you can prove you were there! LOL

After Joe's family came out, they invited me to join them for breakfast at Old Ebbitt Grill. His daughter Mary ordered a vegetable-cheese frittata; she liked it and commented on how the little miniature cast iron skillet kept the food warm while she ate it.



I had the strata, and I was quite surprised and pleased at how good it was. The custard-soaked brioche was scented with nutmeg and just a hint of cinnamon before it was baked in a miniature skillet. It came with some nicely done fried potatoes with onions and peppers and a little bowl of fresh fruit including blood orange, pineapple, cantaloupe, and grapes.



All of the rest of the group got the "All American breakfast, with two eggs, choice of breakfast meats, fried potatoes, and toast. That big white space in the picture was Joe's two fried eggs.

The coffee was very good, and it wasn't just the fact we were coming in from the cold. The others all had freshly-squeezed orange juice.

I thought the wait staff was very attentive, and they were particularly good with the young girls.

Afterwards, we had to show the kids the restaurant walrus, so I took a picture.