Kabob Bazaar, Arlington, Va.

Kabob Bazaar is a Persian (Iranian) restaurant. Here, you go up to the counter in back to place your order and pay, then the food is brought to you either at a table inside or on their sidewalk cafe area outside. They also have a luncheon special that changes daily. When I was there, it was baghali polo, and it was absolutely delicious! It's not on their regular lunch menu, so you can only get it on Tuesdays. I had a big lamb shank with meat that was so tender and juicy it was just falling from the bone. The lamb rested on rice mixed with some fava beans and dillweed, giving it a green color, and some saffron rice had been scattered on top almost as a garnish. With the meal came a basket of excellent hot, fresh pita bread with a little plastic container of yogurt dipping sauce and a big handful of parsley, cilantro, watercress, and the tops of green onions. I ordered a doogh, a traditional yogurt and mint drink, for my beverage. The doogh made me a little nervous at first, since my first experience with Persian food was back when I was an undergraduate and tried a a version of lassi at a Georgetown Persian restaurant; it was awful; it reminded me of sour, peppered Alka-Seltzer! The doogh at Kabob Bazaar was good though, with my only criticism being that they used dried mint instead of fresh, and I had a couple of little dried stems floating around in my drink. One thing I noticed about this restaurant is that it was bustling and full of people, but, other than the employees, all of the guests were male! Just as I was getting ready to leave, though, a party of six came in that included one lady. Anyway, I'm very much looking forward to coming back here.

Taste of Morocco, Arlington, Va.

Today while headed elsewhere, I happened upon Taste of Morocco, and I found it a fortuitous discovery. It's been years since I've had Moroccan food, and the last time was back when I was in France in a tiny cafe upstairs over shops across the street from the old Paris Opera House. A very personable man who I presume must be the owner or at least the manager of the place seated me and told me about the menu. We chatted a little bit about the food and my previous experience with Moroccan cuisine. I ordered the prix fixe lunch, which included soup, salad, and either a tagine (stewed meat on rice) or the kefta (meatballs with eggs). While I waited for my food, he brought a basket of a flat loaf of leavened bread and a dish of delicious spicy black olives in oil. My first course was harrira, a soup of rice, lentils, and chickpeas in a tomato broth. The second course was half cucumber and half carrot salad placed distinctly apart on the salad plate. In both cases, the vegetables were in medium dice and tossed in a lightly spicy vinaigrette; the carrots had been cooked; the cucumber salad included a little bit of diced tomato. My main course was the chicken with lemon and green olives tagine. It was quite nice. The chicken breast was stewed and topped with cooked wedges of lemon and scattered with a lot of flavorful green olives, all atop rice. The dish was presented in a traditional Moroccan ceramic dish with a large heavy ceramic lid that looks much like a volcano (I forget the name of this dish). Along with my meal, I sipped hot Moroccan tea with mint and honey. Another excellent meal.

Rien Tong Thai Cuisine, Arlington, Va.

Rien Tong Thai Cuisine has an inexpensive lunch special that includes an entree and a choice of soup. I tried the tom yum soup, a typical Thai broth with mushrooms and chicken flavored with lemongrass, lime, and hot pepper spice. It was nice without setting my mouth on fire. My main course was "drunken noodles," a rice noodle and pork combination with an assortment of vegetables and things thrown in for good measure. Despite the name, there is no alcohol in the dish; at another Thai restaurant, I was told the anecdotal story that there once was a cook in Thailand who created the dish when he was drunk and just threw a little of everything into the pot.

Annie's Paramount Steakhouse, Washington, D.C.

Afterward a meeting Saturday, Robert, Mark, Kevin, Greg, Lance, and I went to Annie's Paramount Steak House for a cocktail and a bite to eat.

I made a definite ordering mistake. I asked the waiter which was better, the steak salad or the Greek salad supreme (with steak), and he said the main difference was that one had marinated meat. Well, I thought the Greek salad would have more interesting things in it than just a plain steak salad, and I was definitely right on that count! For a while, I thought I was tasting things, or maybe still had salmon smell on my hands (from the bagels, cream cheese, and lox at lodge). But then I discovered the culprit! There in my Greek salad were two great big nasty anchovy fillets!

Lance and I shared desserts, he ordering chocolate cake, and I got the cheesecake.

Hunan Palace, Washington, D.C.

After the St. Patrick's Day parade Sunday, Robert, Michael, and I wandered off through downtown D.C. in quest of food. This task turned out to be much harder than expected. Of course, most of the downtown eateries are intended for the office worker crowd, and, thus, are closed on Sunday, but the places we had in mind weren't suitable; we'd forgotten that Michael is vegetarian. Vegetarian in downtown D.C. is a lot more challenging. We got to McPherson Square and found even the Corner Bakery and Cosí closed, so he decided we should go to this cheap little hole-in-the-wall place called Hunan Palace just north of the square. It's definitely on the "budget" side.

Things did not begin auspiciously. Robert and I both ordered iced tea. It wasn't brewed. It turned out to be one of those iced tea drinks that come from a soda fountain. Now, that stuff is typically "instant" and spiked with "lemon" flavor in the form of citric acid as a preservative, and has a bit of a tang to it, but this was particularly tangy.....I suspect it was old. I sent mine back in favor of hot tea; Robert sent his back in favor of Coca-Cola; we both got Coca-Cola.

Our next adventure was the appetizer course. Michael had an egg drop soup that was bright, bright yellow. Robert had some fried won-tons that were stuffed with meat; he had expected something more like crab rangoon with the cream cheese filling. I had a simple, greasy spring roll.

As is typical in Chinese restaurants, the entrees came out as they were finished by the kitchen, rather than all together. First to come out was my salt and pepper squid. Pieces of squid were scored, battered, seasoned, and deep-fried, then tossed with salt and pepper, chopped onion, and chopped jalapeño peppers and served with lightly stir-fried broccoli. It was okay; I've had worse before.



Next came Michael's vegetable fried rice. I guess it was okay....he didn't make any comments.



Last to arrive was Robert's crispy beef. He was still nibbling on his fried won-ton, so he wasn't starving while Michael and I ate. Robert said the beef was good, but he didn't even eat half of it, and he didn't take any of it home with him, either. It was a very large serving, though. I tasted a little piece and I thought it was really, really sweet, so I didn't like it.

Circle Bistro, Washington, D.C.

Last Friday evening after the all-Finnish concert with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center previously mentioned, Robert, Kevin, and I walked up to Washington Circle to have a post-concert supper at the French-themed Circle Bistro at the One Washington Circle Hotel.

This place has always been somewhat of an enigma to me. I've popped in several times over the years for a quick brunch or a quick meal, and it's never been much more than a bland hotel restaurant to me—never bad food, just not anything exciting (their $13 hamburger is always dry and mediocre, though). What confounds me, however, is the fact that Circle Bistro is often listed as one of the top restaurants in the District. In fact, just this past January, Washingtonian magazine placed Circle Bistro on its list of the 100 Best Restaurants in metropolitan area....and not at 98 or 99, but all the way up at number 31! What are they eating that I'm not? What am I missing? The only thing I can figure is that it gets its lofty rating because of the political and marketing power of the hotel's owner, the George Washington University. Yet, even that is a mystery, because GWU also owns the nearby GWU Inn and the River Inn, where in-house restaurants Notti Bianche (a much, much better place with Italian food) is only rated number 86, and Dish (a much better place with "creative" American food) isn't rated at all.

Robert and Kevin were needing to catch the Metro home, so we chose Circle Bistro because of its proximity to a Metro stop. I had no objection, since I'm still trying to figure out why it's number 31. I still don't know.

The main dining room was full, so we were seated at a long, narrow table in the bar with tall stools. Kevin had cranberry juice, Robert a huge bottle of sparkling water, and I tried the house cabernet sauvignon.



For dinner, Kevin selected the brook trout meunière with dauphine potatoes and green beans almondine. He said it was good, though nothing "memorable." I thought the head-on, gutted trout looked rather too "anatomical" to be appetizing.



Robert had the roast breast of Long Island duckling with a sweet potato-apple mousseline and chopped Brussels sprouts. It was rare and the bloody juices rather stained the plate, I thought, but the duck itself looked and smelled very good; Robert liked it.



I chose the route of two appetizers for my dinner, starting with goat cheese fritters on beet salad that was actually quite good with a nice mix of flavors and textures, and then having a duck confit on cassoulet that was a bit disappointing, but still edible and flavorful; I thought the confit a little limp and the beans in the cassoulet were undercooked.




For dessert, Kevin abstained, Robert had a deck-of-cards sized piece of pear tart with vanilla ice cream and I had a tiny "artistic" presentation of mediocre carrot cake and ice cream with an unpalatable smear of apple-cinnamon mixture. Now, I don't mind tiny little morsels of food (instead of, for example, the enormous slice of ten layer carrot cake large enough to feed four), but I'm looking for exquisite bites that leave me wishing for more; this particular dessert left me feeling, "Okay, I've tried it, what else do they have?"




Thus was our supper: filling, but still somewhat shy of the stellar #31 rating the bistro somehow gets.

Busboys and Poets, Washington, D.C.

Last night was the annual "Dining Out for Life" dinner for Food and Friends, a charity that helps feed people with serious and terminal illnesses. They have dozens of restaurant partners that contribute 25% or more of their night's gross receipts to Food and Friends.

My friend Stephen, who has in the past been one of the Food and Friends ambassadors at different restaurants, and I went to the U Street area to dine at Busboys and Poets, a restaurant that opts to give 35% of its gross receipts. Busboys and Poets honors poet Langston Hughes with its name, since Hughes had at one time worked as a busboy in the neighborhood.

The restaurant was packed! We were even there rather early for D.C. dinner, arriving a little after 6 p.m., and still had a 35 minute wait for a table. Right by the entrance of the restaurant, though, they have a very interesting and ecclectic bookstore, so we were able to browse and chat while sipping wine (a nice VII Faustino Rioja) from the adjacent bar. When we were finally seated, we got a booth right next to the stage in their back dining room. The back dining room was mostly conventional tables and booths. The main dining room, though, had a lot of casual seating arrangements with sofas, overstuffed casual chairs, and coffee tables, as well as little tiny drum-top tables with bistro chairs. The crowd here is very young, most patrons being twenty- and young thirtysomethings.

The menu is varied and simple, focusing on appetizers, salads, sandwiches, pizza, and the like, but also with a small section of fun comfort food-type entrees.

We started with the hummus with pita bread triangles as our appetizer, it having been highly recommended by some of Steven's friends. The serving was large enough to share. It was good, without being too lemony or having too much tahini (a sesame seed paste with a strong flavor). A black olive garnished the center of the dip.



Next we moved on to soup and salad. Steven selected the apple, grape, and walnut salad with goat cheese dressing. It turned out to be large enough for a small entree salad. I had the soup of the day, a delicious crab and clam soup that was reminiscent of a thin clam chowder without the potatoes and this version was full of crab and clam.

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For his main course, Steven had the baked chicken breast in pepper cream sauce. It was served on a mound of mashed potatoes, covered in the sauce, then topped with fried zuccini and yellow squash. Apparently it was good, since it was all eaten. I had the homemade meatloaf. It was a little different than I had expected. They took two big slices of meatloaf and fried them, put them on top of mashed potatoes, covered it with brown gravy, and then topped the dish with sauteed rapini. Rapini was the vegetable that accompanied the day's pasta special that I heard mentioned in the "Daily Litany," so I asked that the usual spinach be replace with the rapini, which they did at no additional charge.

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There were a lot of mouthwatering-sounding desserts from which to choose. Steven enthusiastically picked the peanut butter mousse pie and quickly pronounced it "wonderful." I forgot to ask him what the two sauces were that they used to garnish the pie, one white and one deep red....I would guess raspberry for the one, but I've no clue about the white; a dollop of whipped cream also came with the pie. I chose (after great anguish over the carrot cake) the chocolate banana bread pudding. It was a square of warm bread pudding with banana slices, topped with chocolate sauce, topped with vanilla ice cream, and garnished with a strawberry and a sprig of mint. It was good, but next time I'm trying the carrot cake!

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21P Restaurant, Washington, D.C.

On the way home from Dupont Circle last night, we noticed that 21P apparently hasn't been paying its taxes, because the District had suspended their license to operate and closed them down.

Japone Restaurant, Washington, D.C.

Having whetted his appetite at Krispy Kreme, Leo decided that we should find a place to eat dinner as we walked home last night. Now, we've passed this place for years, but we'd never eaten at Japone. It's a little confusing at first, since it turns out that they have two restaurants in the same location, and one includes a separate bar inside it. Upstairs is Café Japone, featuring a karaoke bar and a limited menu of mainly sushi. Downstairs is Japone Restaurant, a "Japanese-French fusion" place, that includes the coral reef-themed Atlantis bar in the back, in addition to the restaurant's bar in the front.

We landed at Japone Restaurant, and were seated in their middle room, where white netting hangs over demi-lunar, high-backed, white banquettes amidst mirrored walls and accented with lots of votive candles.

Leo started with a vase of sake from their long sake menu, and I had a cup of some very strong, hot, green tea. He ordered an interesting variety of food for his meal, eschewing the concept of courses. Ordering from the sushi menu, he selected a small sashimi (slices of raw fish), two uni (sea urchin) sushi nigiri, and a spicy tuna roll. From the menu, he selected a foie gras custard with roast Japanese pork. He wasn't pleased with the custard, thinking it had been overcooked during the steaming process.




Sorry about the photos....Leo took them with his cell phone, and the Razr phone doesn't come with a flash.

I was in a simpler mood. I started with the lobster miso, the traditional fermented soybean paste soup with a split lobster tail in it; it was okay, though the lobster was a touch overcooked, probably since it stayed in the hot soup after it came out of the kitchen.



Then I had the spicy tuna and seaweed salad. The salad was interesting. They'd taken sushi-grade raw tuna and cut it into tiny cubes, tossed it with a sort of spicy sesame oil aioli, then mounded it on a bed of seaweed; very thinly sliced tomatoes and some interesting "soybean skin" chips garnished the plate. While this salad wasn't at all what I was expecting, it was actually quite interesting and a very different melange of flavors.



I ordered some green tea ice cream for dessert, but they were out.

We wandered around the restaurant a bit to look it over. The Atlantis bar in the back had fiber optic threads hanging down from the ceiling, giving the room an interesting "coral reef" feel. The front dining room had two fireplaces built into the wall (and felt great as we walked past!), and the room was dominated by an enormous long table in the center of the room that seated about two dozen.

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Washington, D.C.

Last night Leo and I ventured up to Dupont Circle to try to win a free day of Zipcar rental, but, alas, we weren't successful. While we were in the area, I took Leo to Krispy Kreme Doughnuts for his very first fresh, hot, glazed doughnut! He liked it. Meanwhile, I had one of their "shamrock doughnuts" in preparation for St. Patrick's Day, and let's just say that's not a tribute that I shall repeat.

India Curry House, Arlington, Va.

Robert came over in the snow to go to lunch with me today. We walked around just a little bit since he wasn't familiar with the Clarendon neighborhood and landed at India Curry House, where they were advertising an $8.99 lunch buffet. The buffet was actually decent. The only thing I didn't like was the appetizer, a potato-vegetable fritter, that I thought was "eh." I was particularly impressed with the barbecued chicken from the tandoor that was tender and juicy, instead of the usually overcooked, dry stuff often found on buffets. There was a nice beef rogan josh and a chicken curry, several different types of dal (lentils), a nice mixed vegetable jalfrazie dish, and some type of paneer (traditional homemade cheese) in a tomato cream sauce. Instead of having bread out on the buffet line, our waitress brought us a basket of fresh, hot naan that was quite fluffy and good. For dessert, they had a kheer (rice pudding) that was thin and sweet and very, very bright, saffron yellow and a bunch of fresh orange quarters. Overall, I thought the food was very good for the money.

Champp's Americana, Arlington, Va.

While we were at Pentagon City and Pentagon Row this afternoon, we stopped in for a very early dinner at Champp's Americana, a sports bar and restaurant we usually avoid because of the crowds and the noise. It was blissfully quiet while we were there, though there were at least half a dozen big flat-panel TVs that we could see from our table each with a different sports channel playing.

The food was surprisingly decent. Sorry we've no photos.....I didn't take my camera. Leo started with some fried mozzarella sticks with marinara dipping sauce. They had a light crunchy breading on them. For his main course, he had the jambalaya pasta, a fettucine dish with chicken, shrimp and andouille sausage in a light red sauce. He ate it all, so I guess it was good. I had the Cypress Creek Salad, and, wow! it was really good! It had an interesting combination of turkey, chicken, ham, and bacon with both Swiss cheese gratings and feta cheese crumbles in a creamy tomato vinaigrette. Wonderful explosion of flavors. Of course, with all that meat and cheese, I'm sure the salad had more calories and fat than some of the steaks on the menu!

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.