Magic Gourd, Washington, D.C.

Laurent and I walked down to Columbia Plaza this evening to have Chinese New Year's dinner at the Magic Gourd. The restaurant wasn't really my first choice tonight, but he was tired and didn't want to do a lot of walking, so Columbia Plaza was close.

We had a plate of pan-fried noodles topped with a melange of vegetables, chicken, beef, and who knows what that we shared so that by eating long noodles, we would have long lives, according to Chinese tradition. The noodles were very well fried in some spots, even to the point that there were beyond lightly crunchy.



We also shared some sesame beef and some firecracker shrimp. Both came with steamed broccoli. The beef had an interesting vinegar bite to it. The shrimp had some small slices of jalapeño pepper in the sauce, but I didn't know jalapeños were native to China! The shrimp was my favorite of the dishes. We'd asked for "spicy" food, but I thought they both didn't rise above "mild."




The dining room was as full as I've ever seen it, so the limited staff did a lot of running around to try to keep up. The back dining room seemed to be filled with Greeks from GWU, mostly a bunch of Pikes and Phi Psis, many of whom were wearing their baseball caps inside at the tables. Oh, for the olden days.....when I was an undergraduate, had we done that (*especially* if we'd been wearing our letters), our housemother would never have let us hear the end of it.

I won $5 on a lottery scratch off. I look at that as an auspicious beginning to the Year of the Rat!