El Pinto, Albuquerque, NM

Thursday night before I left Albuquerque, I went to a place highly recommended by the hotel concierge called El Pinto. El Pinto is a "destination" spot located way out on the far northwest outskirts of town in a building which was actually new restaurant construction from the 1970s, but which was built to resemble (perhaps too much!) an old, grand hacienda. It's a really big place, and kind of reminded me somewhat of Casa Bonita in Tulsa, but on a smaller, more elegant scale.

The food there, though, was rather ordinary, I thought. The best things were the guacamole and the white cheese dip, but I was totally stuffed before my enormous serving of chicken enchildas in blue corn tortillas, rice, and beans arrived. The enchildas were somewhat disappointing, especially since I paid extra for the blue corn tortillas, since they'd over baked them a bit and some of the enchilda was dried out. For dessert, I had a flan, which was good once I could undig it from out of the mountains of sweetened whipped cream.

Harvest Cafe, Albuquerque, NM

Tuesday morning, we woke up to a light dusting of dry snow all over the cars and ground that looked as though someone had taken a sifterful of confectioner's sugar to decorate everything. We had lunch that day at the Pueblo Cultural Center's Harvest Cafe, which serves all kinds of traditional foods. They started us with a huge bowl of really really good but hot guacamole and freshly fried blue and red corn tortilla chips. Had the nice but spicy chicken special for the main course, which was a chicken breast, pepper, and cheesy white sauce, and some bread pudding for dessert. That was the only interesting meal I had until Thursday night before I left, when I went to a place highly recommended by the hotel concierge.

Kettle, Albuquerque, NM

Albuquerque was interesting last week. I flew in late Monday night and our flight was delayed in Dallas, so it was about midnight New Mexico time (a/k/a 2 a.m. D.C. time!) before I got to my hotel room. Hadn't eaten since lunch, so I dropped by the Kettle Restaurant across the street from the hotel and had huevos rancheros, and began what would become my litany of poblano and serrano peppers on everything in Albuquerque.

Julia Child's Kitchen, Washington, D.C.

This afternoon, Ryan wanted to go to some museums, so we went to the Smithsonian's Museum of American History to see the presidential exhibits. While we were there, I was excited to see Julia Child's kitchen, which she contributed to the Smithsonian when she moved from Boston to California.

La Tomate, Washington, D.C.

This weekend I had my first houseguest in Washington! My friend Ryan flew down from New Hampshire for a quick weekend getaway from the two feet of snow they've had up there at Dartmouth.



We Metroed up to Dupont Circle and walked up Connecticut Avenue, where we found a charming little Italian restaurant called La Tomate ("the tomato").

La Tomate seems to be a very Italian Italian restaurant; I heard management speaking to the staff in Italian, so when the hostess greeted us, I requested our table for two in Italian, and we got a prime window seat. There were so many fabulous things on the menu, we had a hard time deciding what to order! While we perused the menu, we sipped on a simple, crisp prosecco.

I thought it was funny that Ryan wanted to eat at an Italian place. As it turns out, two food items he doesn't like are tomatoes and mushrooms, and he also doesn't like hot, spicy foods! He tends to have rather bland white trashy food preferences (LOL....he's gonna read this and be mad at me), and what he wanted for dinner was a fettuccine Alfredo with shrimp, but that wasn't on the menu (it's an American invention).

They had a dish with black fettuccine with shrimp, sundried tomatoes, and porcini mushrooms that I thought sounded wonderful, but when I explained to him that the way they make the fettuccine black is they use squid ink, that plus the tomatoes and mushrooms made him shy away. He ended up ordering the spaghetti arrabbiato with lobster, and when I explained to him that the "arrabbiato" means hot and spicy, he had the poor waiter tell the chef not to put peppers in it!

I had a really nice sea bass which was presented on a mound of mashed potatoes surrounded by sauteed spinach, and the fish was topped with a sautee of leeks bonne femme. A half lemon in cheesecloth was also on the plate, but I didn't use it. For starters, Ryan had a salata mista which was a "normal" house salad, but I did notice that his onions had been cooked, and I had the vegetable soup, which was a puree of zuccini, leek, and spinach. The bread basket had an onion foccacia, a slender loaf of soft French-style sourdough, and an interesting thin country loaf of wheat and rye flours, and it was accompanied by a tapenade of ripe black Italian olives. For dessert, Ryan had a very pretty chocolate torte in three thin layers with a white and dark chocolate fondant icing. I had the lemon cake, which was a lemon curd tart dusted with confectioner's sugar and sprinkled with pignoli (pine nuts).