Pan Am Cafeteria, Fairfax, VA

While I was in Virginia yesterday, I had an interesting lunch at a place in Fairfax called Pan Am Cafeteria. I was kind of tired of all the Asian food we've been eating lately, so I thought that the Pan Am would probably be Mexican or South American or something. One look at the menu, though, with its roast lamb, spanikopita, and moussaka, and I knew I was in a Greek place.

I ordered the calf liver and onions special. The waitress brought me a great big green tossed salad with house bleu cheese dressing that was very tasty. Then the liver arrived, and I was very pleasantly surprised. The liver was not heavily breaded, had been gently sauteed on both sides, and was still tender and juicy when served. One ordinarily doesn't expect such cooking delicacy in a diner-type restaurant, but this was really good. There was an ample supply of cooked onions, and the rest of the plate was mounded with hot, fresh, hand-cut French fries.

I shouldn't have, but I endulged in a piece of coconut cream pie for dessert. The pie had a thick layer of whipped cream with commercial coconut sprinkled on top. It was ok, but I did notice that the pastry was the frozen commercial variety.

From the looks of other tables around the cafe, it looks like they do a lot of good blue plate specials here. If I'm ever in the neighborhood again, I might just have to pop in again.

Panda Cafe, Washington, D.C.

After I danced another show tonight, Leo dragged me out to dinner at the Panda Cafe near us at 22nd and Pennsylvania. I had a big bowl of seaweed salad and the salt pepper squid with white rice, washed down with a couple of Tsing Tao beers. My squid was very nice. The squid was decoratively scored, very lightly battered, and then flash deep fried, after which it was dry cooked in the wok with sea salt and lots of pepper (very spicy!) and some cooked pieces of white onion and green scallions. then presented on a large leaf-shaped plate. Even though the squid was twice cooked, it was still tender and didn't get that rubbery overcooked tooth to it.

Leo was drinking almond bubble teas and had a plateful of half a dozen huge chicken dumplings for an appetizer and for his main course had a sushi and sushi roll assortment platter that was served on a pretty celadon rectangular platter.

The restaurant was very comfortable. It was a deep, narrow space, with little two-top booths on one side of the room and on the other, a room long banquette in black vinyl with triple-level backrests accommodated a series of black laquered four top tables.

Time to go elevate and ice my foot.

Four Wines at Best Cellars, Washington, D.C.

What an unexpected surprise I had this afternoon whilst I was getting my hair cut when the wine shop next door to the barber shop, Best Cellars on Connecticut Avenue, was hosting a little wine tasting and invited me in to join them. Now, this was a surprise because I've never been in that particular shop before, and I don't know anyone on staff. Connecticut Avenue is a very busy shopping thoroughfare with a lot of street traffic, and they weren't inviting all the passers-by to come in and taste, either. I don't know if I look like a lush or if I just have about me the refined air of an established oenophile.

The theme for the tasting wasn't really apparent. I'm not at all sure they had one. They presented four wines, two whites and two reds, which were all mid-range priced bottles costing from $24 to $32. The two reds were both from Napa Valley, with one white from Burgundy and the other from Paso Robles on the central California coast.

The afternoon started off with a Domaine Gerebeaux Pouilly-Fuisse 2003, the only French offering of the day. It was a crisp, clean wine with a clear hay color, and was very classically "pouilly-fuisse-y" tasting. It would probably make a nice aperitif wine, though I daresay it didn't have the substance to stand up to more than a light, simple canape. The second white was a Tablas Creek Vineyard Cotes de Tablas Blanc 2003. This was a very interesting white with a complex array of scents and tastes (no doubt because it was a blend of several grapes--I tasted viognier, grenache blanc, and at least one or two other somethings), and had a good acid content that led me to believe it would be a good wine for stronger cheeses. I might actually choose this wine to serve for a cocktail party, and, surprisingly, it was the least expensive bottle of the afternoon.

The reds started off with great promise with a smooth, buttery Hendry Block 7 Zinfandel 2002. It had a nice level of tannin and wasn't too terribly fruity or floral, as some zinfandels are wont to do. It didn't seem to have much aftertaste or staying power to it, but it did seem to have a strongish alcohol afterburn. This was, interestingly, the most expensive wine of the day. The final wine was the Edge Cabernet Sauvignon 2003. It was a surprisingly soft wine, and I suspect that it wasn't 100% cabernet, but probably had a substantial blending of merlot mixed in with it. It's drinkable now and had very little tannic edge, so I suspect it would be a good choice for immediate consumption and not for cellaring. It seemed a little thin and didn't really have the umpff needed to stand up to a heavy meal, but I'm sure it would be fine for cocktail parties or such.

So, there were four interesting wines, with the two middle offerrings being the best, and the Tablas Creek being my favorite of the bunch.

Thai Place, Washington, D.C.

Leo got home from the gym tonight and announced that he was ravenous. So, he dragged me off to one of his favorite locales for his dates, Thai Place, just a short three block walk through the fireflies to the 22nd and Pennsylvania area. It was a little too humid to sit out on the sidewalk, so we went inside and got the window seat. Didn't make much difference. It was warm and muggy in the restaurant, too.

While I sipped my limed iced tea, Leo started with a Rain Forest, a cutesy cocktail in a mai tai glass made of rum, tequilla, lime juice, and raspberries. We split a Tiger's Tear, a Thai-inspired salad of green leaf lettuce with shreds of carrot, julienned red onion and red bell pepper, scallions, and thin slices of grilled steak in a lime, vinegar, and fiery spice dressing.

For our main courses, he had shrimp in red curry on rice (he liked it, but he said the green curry is better) and I had one of the daily specials, a Goong Pattaya, which was a very interesting square plate covered in a tomatoey sweet and sour sauce with a mound of ground chicken in the middle, eight large tiger shrimp artfully arranged around the sides, and then the entire dish was sprinkled with flaked crab meat and cilantro leaves.

While we waited for dessert, he had a Tango Mango Martini, made from orange and mango juices and some kind of premium vodka and garishly garnished with a huge orange slice and a sugared rim. His dessert was a big scoop of green tea ice cream with a speared maraschino cherry impaling the scoop—one of the "Ice Cream Dreams." I had the Thai coconut pudding, served on a big plate in three tiny bowls which had been steamed. Each bowl had a layer of dense, sweet coconut pudding on the bottom and an upper layer of congealed sweetened coconut milk.

It was a fun, tasty meal. The dining room, though, is very "ordinary," and lacks exotic ambiance. For the same price, I think I prefer some of the Thai places on K Street where there is a greater sense of Thai decor. Leo likes it a lot, though, and it does have the advantage of being a neighborhood place that delivers.

Dupont Italian Kitchen, Washington, D.C.

Had a lovely al fresco brunch with my friend Scott at the Dupont Italian Kitchen today. I know he looks like a teenager, but I swear he's in his thirties! I've seen his driver's license! He had the eggs florentine and I did the omelette au jambon et fromage. We both asked the waiter to bring us little side salads instead of the fruit and fried potatoes that came with our dishes, but I guess since we didn't say it in Italian, he brought the fruit and potatoes anyway. Alas. I hate to waste food.

Lalibela, Washington, D.C.

Last night, I had a good time meeting a guy from Tulsa who's here in D.C. for June and July to do an internship out at American University. He'd not had any "exotic" food before, so I took him to Lalibela, an Ethiopean place at 14th and P. I thought their food was pretty good. We got one of those variety sampler trays, and it had collard greens, a cabbage and carrot dish, lentils, a lamb dish, two beef dishes (one hot, the other mild with peas), a chicken drumstick, and a hard boiled egg. I also sampled some Ethiopean beer called Harrar, which was pretty good for beer (I'm not a beer person).

Aatish on the Hill, Washington, D.C.

Had an interesting dinner last night on Capitol Hill. We went to Aatish on the Hill, a Pakistani cafe featuring foods cooked in a tandoor. A tandoor is a special type of clay oven used for the equivalent of barbecuing for many types of Indian and Pakistani foods. I've always found tandoori cuisine amusing, since the meats are marinated in yogurt and spices before cooking, and they always come out of the tandoor with a characteristic bright red color.

As soon as we sat down, I was offered a masala chai, which was a black Indian tea (tasted a bit like assam) with an assortment of spices, including cardamom, cloves, pepper, nutmeg, ginger, and I think just a hint of saffron. An assistant brought us some papad (those thin, crisp, torilla-sized wafers made of dal or lentil flour and then deep fried) and a couple of sauces, one the usual mint chutney, and the other an unusual chutney that reminded me of beans and cooked tomatoes.

We decided to eat from the tandoori selections, so we started with a lamb botti kebab and a chicken tikki for appetizers, accompanied by a bowl of raita (yogurt with cucumber and mint), then for the main course, we had a big lamb sheekh kebab and a shrimp kebab tandoori, plus a large dish of spinach and homemade cheese called palak paneer. The palak paneer was good and very traditional for northern Indian cuisine (and Pakistan is in the northwest part of the Indian subcontinent), but I've always prefered the southern version called saag paneer, which is basically the same dish with cream and yogurt in it (I know, the spicings are different, but I'm trying to express a broad, general concept). I didn't much care for the tandoori shrimp. They had been rolled in a very thick layer of spices heavy with paprika to the point that it almost felt breaded in the mouth. On the other hand, the lamb was delicious. The chunks were tender and flavorful, and the tomato, peppers, and onion used on the skewers between the meat while it cooked were included on the serving plate. I love how the meaty pieces of onion were sweet and tender and had taken on a bit of the smokiness of the tandoor.

The main course dishes came with decoratively garnished saffron rice, but I told the waiter not to bring me any. I'm trying to reduce my carbohydrate intake and I'm avoiding rice, pasta, potatoes, bread, etc. That's also why I didn't order any naan or other breads. The waiter didn't help my cause, though, cause after we were totally stuffed from eating dinner, he brought us a big bowl of kheer (rice pudding) on the house. So, in order to be polite, I had to eat my half. It was very good kheer, too, since it was thick and full of spices (I don't like the runny kind or the kind made from vermicelli you see at some other restaurants).

One Fish, Two Fish, Washington, D.C.

Dinner tonight was at One Fish Two Fish, a West End Asian restaurant on Pennsylvania just before the bridge leading into Georgetown. I had one fish, and Leo had two fish. I had a crispy whole fish (deep fried sea bass, as it turned out) and he had the sashimi, which came with just tuna and salmon. After dinner, he had a "bubble tea," which was a rather unusual drink with mango juice in it, but most odd because of the large, black beads of tapioca in the bottom. The drink came with an extra large straw, and it was funny watching him drink the "bubbles" and seeing them travel up the straw, and then down again when he stopped sucking.

It was an okay restaurant which I've seen recommended in several publications, but it really is just a notch above Chinese fast food. We'll probably be back, though, since it's very close to the condo.

Cafe des Artistes, Washington, D.C.

Lunched today at the Corcoran Gallery, where the service was abysmally and abominably slow.

Jaleo, Washington, D.C.

Jaleo, a Spanish tapas bar up the street from the street festival on 7th, gave Leo, Guy Bill, and me a wonderful mid-afternoon luncheon respite from the heat and the crowds. I had a very very interesting "white gazpacho," which was presented by the server in a large square glass bowl with green grapes and olive oil in the corners and a mound of crab meat in the middle, and then a carafe of the soup was poured into the bowl tableside. It had a very unique taste and texture which I still can't place.....it was almost potatoey, rather than white tomato, and had a distinct vinegar edge to it. Cold soups are always wonderful in the summer.

I also had a little omelette (I forget the Spanish name) with an unusual slice of Spanish sausage in the middle with some Spanish white cheese. Everyone made me have dessert, so I had the arroz con leche (rice pudding), with lots of whipped cream, toasted almond slices on top, and the essence of orange in the thin, rich pudding.

Guy Bill had an interesting shredded apple and cheese salad and the same omelette as me (which he hated), and Leo had a huge bowl of mussels, a plateful of fried squid, a broiled salmon plank, and an enormous flan with an "espuma" of airy whipped cream and Valencia oranges, plus two big sangrias (Guy Bill and I were just doing iced tea, being the Southern boys we are). I don't see how Leo can eat the way he does and still stay so thin. Must be one of the great mysteries of the Orient.

Alero, Washington, D.C.

After the parade this afternoon, Leo, Guy Bill, and I wandered up Connecticut to Alero, Guy Bill's favorite Mexican restaurant in town, and had dinner. We started with chips and salsa (the salsa was good, but the chips were too thin and kept breaking!), some chorizo Mexicano (Mexican sausage covered in melted cheese), and a grilled shrimp thingie of some type. Leo had a seafood stew, Guy Bill some spinach, chicken, and cheese quesadillas, and I had a carne al paso (steak). This is a restaurant which gives black beans as its standard accompaniment with plain white rice. I also had some fried yuca on my plate. For dessert, Leo and Guy Bill each had their own cheesecake chimichanga, and I had a piece of a very good Tres Leches cake. Oh, did I mention the big pitcher of margueritas?



Did Leo drink too many margueritas?

The Melting Pot, Washington, D.C.

Tonight, my friend Scott and I went to the Melting Pot for what turned out to be a *very* long dinner! The Melting Pot is a small national franchise specialty restaurant chain serving up Americanized versions of traditional and not-so-traditional Swiss fondues. The D.C. location is just south of Dupont Circle on the lower level of a newish office building. Upon entering the building, one has to descend a flight of stairs to get to the Melting Pot, and I didn't see an elevator anywhere around, so handicapped people may be out of luck. The decor is modern and elegant, and a large bar sits right off the maitre d' stand. We were seated in the main dining room in a booth that featured a large hot plate and fondue pot in the middle. We were given cocktail menus, plus large dinner menus that had probably five pages of wine lists before the two pages of food options. They had several prix fixe as well as a la carte options, and since Scott had never had fondue before, we opted for one of the prix fixe menus so he could taste a little of everything.



Naturally, our first course was a traditional Swiss cheese fondue. Our waitress started by placing a quantity of chablis wine in our pot, then slowly adding some shredded Emmenthaler and Swiss cheeses. Once they started to melt, she added garlic, nutmeg, and a couple of stout shots of kirschwasser. While it melted, she brought us small cubes of French bread, cubes of Granny Smith apples, and an assortment of small crudites, all of which were to be speared on our long fondue forks, dipped in the melted cheese, and then eaten. It was a nice fondue, though I daresay that it could have used a couple more shots of kirschwasser (the fondues I've had in Switzerland have all had an almost overpowering alcohol bite).

The next course was a large pecan and dried cherry salad on an interesting bed of mixed baby spring greens that included some unusual greens like Swiss chard, all dressed in a cherry vinaigrette. I enjoyed the salad, but I daresay it could have used a little more chicory, endive, and raddicchio for more bitterness to help cut the richness of the first course.

Next was our "Potomac platter," a lovely large plate full of assorted raw tiger shrimp, ahi tuna cubes, chicken chunks, and a whole lobster tail cut into bite-sized pieces, plus a smaller plate with mushroom caps, broccoli, quartered new potatoes, and yellow summer squash demilune slices. All of these items were to be speared on the fondue forks, then immersed into the new fondue pot full of hot cooking oil. We had the option of cooking the meats and vegetables au natural, or dipping them first into a tempura batter or a sesame batter. Once the food was cooked, we had a plethora of dipping sauce options, including a three-welled dish with a chipotle sauce, an oriental barbecue sauce, and a curried yogurt sauce, and four small bowls of sauces such as a lemon butter, a hot spicy house-made cocktail sauce, a lovely gorgonzola cheese sauce, and a "green goddess" sauce of sour cream and herbs. Seems like I'm forgetting something, but you get the gist. Fondue cooking is such a great boon to conversation, since it takes a minute or two for each morsel to cook in the boiling oil, and you just had to talk in between bites!

The waitress then forced us to eat dessert. We had about eight options as to dessert fondues, and Scott selected for us the "yin-yang" fondue, a mix of dark chocolate and white chocolate in the same pot. The dippers that came with the chocolate on a big platter dusted with confectioner's sugar included a slice of cheesecake, cherries on stems, strawberry halves, banana pieces, pineapple chunks, cubes of angel food cake, and marshmallows rolled in dutched cocoa.



Scott likes sweet drinks, so we shared a bottle of asti spumante with the meal, and after dinner while I sipped my cappuccino, he had a yin-yang martini, which was an interesting white chocolate liqueur, Ketel One vodka, and cream concoction with half the top of the cocktail garnished with a heavy layer of grated dark chocolate.

The Melting Pot is a great place to eat, though, obviously, one will want to dine with friends to be able to share the wonderful fondues. And, be sure to allow plenty of time to eat! We were there tonight for about three and a half hours.

Bistro Francais, Georgetown, D.C.

I'm just back from Georgetown, where my friend Garrett took me to eat at Bistro Francais in his little tiny red convertible sports car. It was odd being back there—I was there decades ago when I was doing my internship here—and it was vaguely familiar and yet very strange. We had a simple dinner, since this bistro is known for its prix fixe menu selections.

I started with a very delicious cold cucumber soup with little shreds of julienned cucumber and a flavorful, herbed, thin cucumber liquid. My plat was from the poissons section of the menu, a very nice grilled halibut served on a mirror of lobster Nantua sauce and accompanied by two tiny pieces of carved white potato and a luscious crab and broccoli custard timbale. Also had a nice glass of the house sauvignon blanc. Garrett had the roasted-rare sliced duck breast in an apple-honey sauce on a bed of wild rice. For dessert, we chose from the dessert tray, with Garrett opting for the strawberry tart and me having the lemon tart, followed by an espresso.

We really should go to Bistro Francais more often. It's simple, French bistro food, but more importantly, the kitchen is open late every night, and I have the hardest time finding late-night places to dine in D.C.

Sushi Taro, Washington, D.C.

Last night, Leo took me back to Sushi Taro on 17th Street, which I think is becoming my favorite local sushi bar. He had the sushi and sashimi bento box, and I had a an ecclectic assortment of food starting with a big bowl of steamed, salted edamame (soybeans in the pod), followed by an interesting salad of five different types of seaweed in a sweet, creamy, "vinegar" dressing, followed by the Tori no Karaage, which is the Japanese version of fried chicken, and ending with the Chawanmushi, that Japanese seafood soup with a layer of egg custard on top, all washed down with many cups of hot, Japanese green tea. The chicken was quite good. They selected large, bite-sized morsels of skinned, boned chicken (both white and dark meat), dredged them very lightly in Japanese bread crumbs, then flash deep fried them until just done and still quite juicy and tender. They came to the table steaming hot. The seafood soup was a little different than it was the last time I had it, since there was very little actual soup broth this time, and the custard layer was thicker. It was still good, and came with shrimp, eel, chicken, fish cake, and some vegetables in it.

Sette, Washington, D.C.

After an afternoon at the Phillip Collection Galleries, my friend Joel and I wandered around the corner to Sette for a late lunch. We sat out on the patio underneath a big canvas canopy and watched the Connecticut Avenue pedestrians walking by. I've been wanting to make to Sette, since it's one of the few restaurants open late in the area, but the reviews I'd read were mixed, so we never prioritized the trip. It's a modern Italian-themed restaurant with a rather small menu, but the service was ample and well trained. We had a rather ecclectic meal that was much more of a nosh than a lunch.

We split a bottle of prosecco that turned out to be a pleasant afternoon sipping wine. The waiter (he said he was Tunisian, and not Italian) also brought us bottles of Italian sparking water. We started with a plate of five very large pieces of grilled squid served amid a mound of dressed mixed greens and quartered cherry tomatoes. Next we had the Italian meat and cheese board, which featured five exotic Italian meats in paper-thin slices and five Italian cheeses cut in different shapes, with four big slices of grilled Italian country bread. We were chatting and lingering so long during these two courses, we should have been at a tapas bar!

About this time, the wind came up and we thought we were going to get a big downpour, so the waiters moved us all inside before we could order a third appetizer. We ended up at the end of the bar, so instead of more food, we moved to espressos and Joel was drinking crema di limoncellos. Eventually, we had a ricotta cheesecake that was ok, but the barmaid had microwaved it before serving, which, of course, I always think devastates all breads and pastries, plus the ricotta was actually hot in places, which made it feel "thin" on the tongue. It improved once it cooled back to room temperature, but the crust naturally was ruined by the nuking.

I suppose I shall have to go back to Sette sometime to try out their pastas and meat courses, but at least the noshing was fun. Joel was such a charming conversationalist, I really didn't pay that much attention to the food, anyway.

Cafe des Artistes, Washington, D.C.

Went to lunch with a friend from the Solicitor's office. Good thing we were walking, because the streets were still gridlocked with traffic, as 18th Street was still closed off from this morning's transformer explosions at the World Bank. We strolled over to the Corcoran Gallery and lunched at the Cafe des Artistes. It's a lovely place in what amounts to a grand lobby of the museum, with marble tiled floors, Doric colonades, elaborate friezes, and an elegant atmosphere.

I had a very good Corcoran House Salad, which included grilled chicken, goat cheese, toasted pinon nuts, corn, dried dates, and other goodies, served with a crisp citrus vinaigrette. My friend ate the barbequed pork sandwich, which was totally unlike any BBQ sandwich I'd ever seen. It was a huge pile of what looked to be pulled pork in a surprisingly orangey colored sauce mounded on a portion of an artisanal bread loaf, accompanied by a side order of cole slaw. For dessert, we both ordered the warm chocolate cake, which was individual Bundt cakes glazed in chocolate and crowned with a big scoop of vanilla bean ice cream.

I was very impressed with the cafe and its friendly, attentive service. Should be a good place to entertain for business lunches.

Szcheuan House, Washington, D.C.

Did you know movie tickets cost $9.75 in D.C.? Afterward seeing a movie, we dined at Szcheuan House, since we were already in Chinatown. The restaurant was ok, but nothing spectacular. The highlight of the evening was eating jellyfish. They were crunchy. I was expecting them to be soft and squishy, but they were like eating crunchy cartilege or something. Tasted good, too, and didn't have a fishy taste. They came with a plate of little ham slices that you put the jellyfish on and then eat together, but I liked the jellyfish by itself better. I couldn't read the menus, since they were in Chinese.

Lei Garden, Washington, D.C.

Had a good lunch yesterday afternoon. Leo took me to Lei Garden, over in Chinatown, for dim sum. It was fun, although I must confess that I can do without eating the heads and shells of the tasty fried and spiced shrimp. I'm not sure if I'm disappointed or not, but after we were totally stuffed full of food, one of the carts came by with chicken feet. I've never had chicken feet before. Not sure I want to eat them. But, we were too full to get a dish and try them. Maybe next time.

Bambule, Washington, D.C.

Leo and I headed up to Friendship Heights on the Metro this afternoon for some shopping at the Mazza Gallerie, and other neighborhood stores. The Metro was packed like sardines this afternoon--what was going on? It made us so hungry, we had to wander in to Bambule, a Spanish tapas bar, for a late lunch.

We stood forever at the door waiting to be seated, but the staff seemed to be preoccupied with setting up the patio deck for a big wedding reception. Eventually, one of the waiters went back to the kitchen and yelled at one of the waitresses in Spanish, and she eventually breezed out and told us to sit anywhere we wanted. We found a table in the middle of the dining room, which was actually a nice looking place, with burgundy draperies and ceiling hangings on stucco colored walls with dark woodwork. We sat and sat with no menus, no water, and no wait staff coming over to greet us. Eventually, Leo got out his cell phone to see the clock and announced that if they weren't out by 2:55 (ten minutes from then), we were leaving.

About 2:52. a waitress wandered out to pour water, but I asked her to bring us fresh glasses that didn't still have lipstick on them. That, of course, delayed things even more. After the water arrived, she wandered off again before eventually bringing us menus. After yet another wait, a different, older waitress came out to take our orders. Once we ordered the food, we tried to order sherry, and she said they didn't have any! I can't imagine a tapas bar without sherry!

Anyway, we started with gazpacho, which was cold, crisp, flavorful, and really good. The vegetables had been coarsely ground, rather than diced. The soup had a nice lemon zest to it. We had six tapas plates, including a lovely cerviche, a cheese plate, sliced sausages in sauce, a couple of veal slices, a pork dish wrapped around a potato, some nice calimari, and some sausage roll like things. Leo had some kind of round puff pastry filled with apples for dessert and I had an interesting cheesecake like thing which was freshly baked in flaky pastry (and still warm!), kind of like a small burrito. It was a tasty meal.

Unfortunately, I doubt I go back to Bambule again, since the service was so inattentive and disinterested.

Sassi, Scottsdale, AZ

Way, way out in the far northeastern part of Scottsdale is a grand Italian villa nestled in the shadow of Pinnacle Peak which houses a Southern Italian restaurant recommended by the America West (soon to be U.S. Airways, they announced on the news this evening) in-flight magazine called Sassi. "Sassi" is an Italian word for rocks or stones. The building is fairly new, but it has a definite grandeur and molto lussuoso design. Three of us—a solicitor, a judge, e io—made the lengthy trek tonight for our last dinner in Phoenix, and what an experience it was!

We were seated at a large, round table in the corner of the west side veranda for our al fresco dining experience, with a glorious view of the Arizona sunset awaiting us. With the sun going down behind Pinnacle Peak, the dusk was prolonged, and gave us nice silhouettes of the numerous saguaro cacti in the landscape. Our waiter, who is actually Italian, was very professional and helpful.

As we started with various aperitifs, I chose the DeFaveri Prosecco, an Italian sparkling wine. For antipasti, we nibbled on fiori di zucca, fresh squash blossoms which had been stuffed with a goat cheese and herb mixture, battered in a tempura-like coating, then deep fried to delicate crispness.

My first course (remembering that Italians don't count any of the appetizers, soups, salads, or what have you served before this as "courses") was a very tasty bowl of gnocchi al funghi. They found some very exotic mushrooms for the "funghi" that went with the semolina and ricotta gnocchi dumplings, bathing them in a rich mushroom cream sauce, and garnishing the plate with large shavings of pecorino romano cheese.

Scottaditi di agnello made a wonderful second course, with three good-sized grilled lamb chops from the local Niman Ranch perched on a plateful of saffron artichoke hearts and green Italian olive ragu. The chops were perfectly cooked and had such a fine woodsy taste to them I was strongly tempted to gnaw the bones! One of the other guys also got the lamb chops, and the other the pesce al cartoccio, a halibut steamed in a paper bag with diced vegetables and white wine that looked and smelled absolutely divine. I also got a chance to sample some of the zucca con noci, or slices of butternut squash baked in a wood oven with walnuts and honey, plus some other taste in the dish I couldn't quite place.

In lieu of dessert, I opted for i formaggi. The waiter didn't say what the cheeses were, so I'll have to guess that I had a fresh ricotta, pecorino, and a taleggio (though I'm a bit uncertain about the taleggio). The cheese came with a sliced green apple and another basket of the restaurant's very good assortment of Italian breads, including my favorite, pane pianto, some very thin, crispy, flatbread wafers. Other desserts at the table included a chocolate gelato topped with a layer of toasted hazelnuts and a tartufo, which I can probably best describe as a chocolate ice cream snowball.

I really liked Sassi. The environment was calm and luxurious (I've seen restaurant bathrooms smaller than the toilet stalls in this place!), the staff was attentive without hovering, and there was no pressure at all for us to vacate our prime table once we had finished eating. If one asked for directions to the facilities, a staff member actually escorted one to the room, instead of giving oral directions. (I suppose this also helped keep diners from getting lost in the large villa!) Prices were typical of a restaurant of this high caliber, so they weren't really out of line at all, though a diner should factor in the Italian tradition of what amounts to two "main courses." There is also an extensive, reasonably priced (reasonable is a relative term....) wine list which is heavy on the Italian reds, all categorized by Italian wine region. I give Sassi four and a half stars.

The Willows, Phoenix, AZ

The three "Alaska girls" from the meeting dragged me out to the casinos, claiming they wanted my company and the chance to show me around. Of course, the real reason they wanted to hang out with me wasn't my charming company, but the fact that I had a rental car. Nevertheless, we went to the Pima Tribe's two "Casino Arizonas," starting at the newer casino, since they had the nicer restaurants there. This casino had a buffet, a fancy steakhouse, and a 24-hour moderate restaurant called The Willows, which was where we dined. The food was simple and good, particularly the shrimp martini I had as an appetizer. This "martini" had eight smoky, grilled shrimp hanging from the rim of a big martini glass that was filled with cocktail sauce, lime wedges, and frisee.

Zest, Phoenix, AZ

After a long, long day of non-stop meetings, three of the solicitors from the D.C. office and I ventured out to dinner at a place called Zest Spirited Dining, another of the highly recommended new restaurants from the Arizona Republic review. Our young environmental lawyer even dressed "up" for the occasion, throwing a long-sleeved dress shirt over his t-shirt and jeans, and wearing black dress shoes to replace his highly decrepit Birkenstocks.

Zest is a dark but very open restaurant with the kitchen fully open to the main dining room and a bar by the main entry. The walls were covered by a temporary display of striking neo-Dadaistic art by a local painter. The menu is surprisingly simple, with just one page of appetizers and one page of entrees, and that was it.

Two of us ended up ordering appetizers, but everyone shared. One of the dishes was the house specialty, an eggplant cheesecake, a tender, cheesy, custardy dish served on a pool of roasted garlic tomato sauce. The other dish was the grilled scallops, with the scallops dusted in Jamaican "jerk" seasonings before being seared on the grill. While I like seared seafood, those who prefer their food thoroughly cooked may wish to specify that to the kitchen ahead of time. The scallops came with a tomatillo chipotle tartar sauce (tasty!) and a cilantro cabbage slaw with red chili oil and avocado. We washed all of these down with some very interesting beers. Mine was an "orange blossom ale" with a distinct, but delicate, orange water taste that made the beer seem almost sweet, and it had a pleasant orangy aftertaste that wasn't cloying or overpowering at all.

While we waited for our entrees, a pleasant young woman was bright magenta hair surprised us when she rolled a cart up to the table an announced she was there to make our salads. Turns out the salad course came with the entrees. She started with a base of assorted young greens in a citrusy vinaigrette (a salute to the restaurant's name??), then asked if we wanted any gorgonzola crumbles, dried cranberries, pecans, or orange wedges. The combination of all made quite a nice salad.

There were so many intriging entrees it had been hard for us to choose just four. Our vegetarian almost got the eggplant ratatouille, but chose the angel hair pasta instead. He seemed to like it, but I noted that it came with a rather thin garlicky balsamic vinegar sauce in great quantity which I'm not so sure I personally would have liked. One guy got the panko-breaded pork chop, another of the house specialties. "Panko" is the word for a special kind of Japanese bread crumbs. That dish came with mashed potatoes and a cranberry-orange chutney, and when queried about the entree, his considered analysis of the dish was that it was "good." I love verbose attorneys. The other guy selected the ahi tuna, which was seared on the grill with fresh cilantro, then served on a bed of lime-scented pearl couscous and topped with quite a lot of the tomato-pineapple pico de gallo. He said the tuna itself was very good, but it was rather overpowered by the pico de gallo.

I had a harder time picking a main course. There was a filet mignon topped with gorgonzola cheese with roasted sweet potatoes that looked yummy at another table. Osso bucco--one of my favorites--was also on the menu. I finally decided upon the domestic lamb shank. After all, the Navajo Indian Reservation takes up a huge block of the northeastern corner of Arizona, and sheep is what the Navajos herd. It was a fabulous choice. An absolutely enormous lamb shank had been wrapped in grape leaves and braised in a Syrah wine and tomato sauce. The lamb was fork-tender, juicy, and full of flavor, and clearly it was lamb rather than the "young sheep" that so many places try to sneak in. The lamb rested on a plate full of fusilli (corkscrew) pasta cooked to a perfect al dente that had been tossed in a delicious cream sauce with goat cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, fennel (adding an interesting crunch and a faint anise taste), and artichoke hearts with a grape and feta cheese relish on top. I was totally stuffed, but the pasta was so good, I forced myself to eat every last piece.

Regretfully, none of us ordered dessert. I thought maybe we'd get one single dessert to split four ways, but everyone was too full to commit to the decision. I think all of us were still a bit jet-lagged, too (at this point, our bodies thought it was after midnight).

Everyone said Zest is a place they'll try again on future trips to Phoenix. I'll give Zest four stars.

Durant's, Phoenix, AZ

Durant's is one of those old steakhouses, much like old steakhouses all over the country, that has been a fixture in downtown Phoenix for decades, and that is where we headed for dinner tonight. It was a trip back in time, as we were greeted by a gaggle of tuxedoed waiters and a flock of bar waitresses with their hair up and with a frilly apron over their clothes. The mezzalunar banquettes were upholstered in a deep red vinyl that almost matched the red flocked wallpaper. We half expected to hear a Rat Packer start crooning.

Our meal started with "Durant's Debris," a dreadful name for a delicious starter of small tips and pieces of beef marinated and broiled on a skewer. They were quite tender and tasty, and several of them would have made a fine meal. After a salad course of iceberg wedges and cherry tomatoes topped with a very chunky Roquefort dressing, we got to our main courses. I had a thick ribeye steak with garlic mashed potatoes and my dinner companion had the chicken "Oscar" (quotation marks were the restaurant's), which was a grilled chicken breast topped with a layer of grilled asparagus spears, then a layer of melted provolone cheese, and then a layer of grilled shrimp. We also shared a side dish of mixed sauteed mushrooms.

With barely room for more food, we decided to split something and ordered a strawberry shortcake. It's a good thing we were splitting, cause as it was, we only ended up eating about two-thirds of it. It wasn't that we didn't like it, it was just unconscionably huge! This tower of dessert had three big rounds of shortbread in graduated sizes with full serving quantities of strawberries and whipped cream in between each layer and on top. I do believe that this tower must have stood nine to ten inches tall!

Mezcal, Phoenix, AZ

Mezcal is touted as one of the "Five new restaurants not to forget about" by The Arizona Republic, Phoenix's main daily newspaper. Mezcal is nestled on the edge of Kierland Commons, a shopping center filled with very expensive stores and other restaurants. The restaurant has a very modern look to it, with sleek lines and darker desert colors. Art on the walls is large, simple, abstract, and limited. Mini-halogen spotlights float around the room on exposed wire tracks. In the center of the room, a huge spiral staircase goes around a series of large, rough-hewn lodge poles to Cobalt, Mezcal's bar. Cobalt targets a younger demographic and features a pianist after restaurant hours. Meanwhile, I noticed that the background music being played on the sound system in the dining room was largely pop hits from the early 1980s.....not exactly targeting a "young" demographic!

Menu items place great emphasis on "eco-friendly" food items, from organic vegetables to line-caught fish to antibiotic-free beef. The waiter seemed a bit annoyed with me when, after his eco-friendly litany of how humanely they killed their animals, I remarked that if I wanted to be truly eco-friendly, I'd be vegan, wouldn't I? The wine list, which was heavy on the California vineyards, also included several lables using organic grapes.

Dinner looked like it was going to be a pricey undertaking (especially on a $47 per day per diem, and on our "travel day," we only get 3/4ths of that!). with most entrees falling in the mid-$20 range and everything a la carte, so I opted for the four course prix fixe "summer tasting menu" and a wine flight with three half-pours, which I let the waiter select.

For the starter, I opted for the Big Sky bruschetta instead of the chicken and brie quesadilla. The bruschetta's toast was surprisingly thick and thoroughly dried before being "rubbed" with a layer of Stilton cheese and topped with diced tomatoes, red onions, garlic, and capers in a balsamic vinegar reduction. The bruschetta was tasty, but very hard to eat due to the thickness of the toast and the quantity of topping made eating with fingers messy. The four bruschette were arranged on a large plate with a huge mound of dressed assorted field greens in the middle. This was curious, as the only available second courses were salads, rather than soups. Wine for this course was a 2003 Bonterra Viognier, from Mendocino County, California. It was a nice, full white with a lot of spiciness that stood up well to the tomatoes and Stilton, and it was probably my favorite wine of the three.

My second course was the salad of baby organic field greens and herbs with pico de gallo, queso fresco, and aged red wine vinaigrette, which I thought would be more interesting than the alternative Arizona version of a Caesar salad. The salad was huge (enough for two!) and was heavily sprinkled with little cubes of freshly made Mexican white cheese. The pico de gallo had quite a kick to it, and its jalapeño content really overpowered the accompanying wine. That wine was a 2002 Markham Merlot from Napa Valley, and it was a classic example of an insubstanial merlot that wasn't even exciting when drunk by itself but, sadly, probably very popular with the masses as a cocktail party beverage.

I was excited about my main course, the highly-talked about Mezcal paella. The alternative choice was a lime-marinated flank steak. The paella was accompanied by a 2003 Wild Horse Pinot Noir from the Central Coast of California. It was a very nice pinot noir, but this particular vintage was not sufficiently acid or tannic to compete with the full flavors and spiciness of the paella. The dish included Florida white shrimp (which were very spicy!), half a dozen Penn Cove blue mussels in the shell, Chinese scallops, Monterray Bay calamari, Maverick Ranch chorizo (also a bit spicy), roasted Maverick Ranch free range chicken, and an unusual quantity of French-style haricots verts, plus the usual herbs, onions, sweet peppers, and saffron with rice. The mound of paella was presented with a large sprig of fresh rosemary stuck in the center like a proud flag. This course was very very good, but I can't say that I was ecstatic about it.

Another thing I should probably mention is the complimentary bread provided with the meal. They served a lovely herbed foccacia that was delicious when warm, but totally nondescript when it got cold (so eat it warm—it's good). It came with an unusual sauce of tomatoes and sweet red peppers whipped into an aioli with just a touch of olive oil.

Dessert was an enormous, quadruple serving of bread pudding topped with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream and a slightly Jack Daniels-infused (I actually couldn't taste it) creme anglaise, then dusted with cinnamon. The pudding was mixed with chocolate chips that I couldn't quite tel if they were cooked in or added prior to serving, or both. It had a custardy texture with a few spots that seemed undercooked, and on the whole, I was not impressed with the dessert. I ate less than half of it, and possibly should have opted for the alternative menu dessert, a chocolate gelato.

On the whole, Mezcal is a nice restaurant with a lot of potential, but I have to say that I was just not wowwed by it. The paella was excellent, but the other courses seemed rather ordinary and the dessert was merely mediocre. Similarly, the wine list was interesting, but not terribly fabulous, or even particularly geared to the menu. Out of five stars, I would give Mezcal a 3.5.

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

Last night, I was going to meet a friend for dinner, but after two postponements she ultimately ended up having to cancel due to her work things, so I went ahead and went to the restaurant by myself. I was already in the neighborhood, so I'd been killing time browsing at Whole Foods. Annie's Paramount Steak House is on the 17th Street strip, and has been around over fifty years. It's in an old building, and I was seated in what is now an enclosed patio. My waiter was sort of an older, scary-looking, biker type guy with a shaved head, big moustache, tattoos, and black clothes, but once he opened his mouth to talk, he turned out to be a great big old queen who called all (male and female) his customers "Sweetie" and "Hon." All he needed was a beehive and a pink apron.

It was a steakhouse, so I stuck with the program and ordered a big ribeye with a salad and baked potato, and a big Sapphire martini to wash it down. The iceberg lettuce and tomato salad was large and basic, with the addition of a few yummy ripe black Greek olives and a pepperoncini pepper. The bleu cheese dressing was ok, but commercial. When my steak arrived on a hot hot platter, it was juicy and flavorful, but cooked a bit more than the medium rare I prefer. It was edible, nonetheless. Didn't do dessert, cause I was quite full and the stock dessert selection (cheesecake, chocolate cake, etc.) didn't inspire me.

Annie's is a good, basic place for a simple, unpretentious meal, so I'm sure I'll go back.

Fino Ristorante, Georgetown, D.C.

Yesterday was Leo's birthday, so we went out to Georgetown for a late night birthday supper at Fino Ristorante Italiano. I'd never heard of the place before, but it turned out to be quite a nice little place. It wasn't terribly busy, but it was nearly midnight when we got there, so I suppose the small crowd wasn't surprising. We were given the seat right by the front window, looking out over M Street. The ethnicity of the place was a bit confusing, though.....the man who looked to be the manager was Middle Eastern of some flavor or another, our waitress appeared to be Japanese, and the busboy appeared to be Central American of some type!

The manager and waitress suggested a nice Italian red wine, the name of which totally escapes me. I'm not that expert at Italian wines, anyway. We started with a calimari with marinara sauce, then a salad Caprese. The calimari was good, though the breading fell off the squid easily. I loved the Caprese salad. Fresh mozarella is always a favorite of course, and they balanced little balls of it on halves of nicely ripe red tomatoes. The fresh basil isn't in season yet, so they had basil preserved in olive oil that they drizzled around the plate under the tomatoes. They brought dishes of olive oil and balsalmic vinegar for our loaf of bread.

For our main courses, Leo had the evening's special, which was several large slices of salmon on a bed of fettucine tossed with sauteed vegetables, and I had a very tasty spaghetti alla carbonara made in the traditional style, instead of with prepared sauce poured over the pasta as I see so often these days. For dessert, we each had a piece of very good tiramisu with real masapone on espresso-soaked cake and all dusted with cocoa, We chatted a bunch with the waitress about this being a birthday dinner, but she didn't give him a candle or comp the dessert! Oh, well, it was a good dinner, nonetheless.

O'Hare Airport, Chicago, IL

I moved my flight home from 1 to 8, and changed my connections from Dallas to Chicago. Chicago was busy. Had a two hour layover there, so I got to have lunch in their food court, which was a Chicago-style deep dish pizza with "butter crust." It was ok, just not something I'd want to do every day.

La Hacienda, Albuquerque, NM

Continuing my nearly-unsuccessful quest for a Cinco de Mayo festival in Albuquerque, of all places, I headed into the Mexican restaurant on the plaza, La Hacienda, which is one of a local chain of restaurants around town and at the airport. They had all these ristras (strings of red chile peppers) hanging from the eaves by the doorways. I asked both the hostess and my waiter about Cinco de Mayo specials, and both of them gave me sort of blank stares and "huh?" reactions. They didn't even have a margarita special. I guess people in Albuquerque just don't care about Mexican holidays.

I wasn't terribly hungry, so I just got a tamale platter. They brought chips with a smokey, thin, red salsa that wasn't terribly exciting. I wasn't overwhelmingly impressed with the tamale platter, either. I thought the tamales were a bit dry and the pork flavor was obscured by very hot red peppers inside the masa. The rice and beans were ordinary, as was the little cup of guacamole. I did like their sopapillas and honey, though, since they were nice and airy instead of flat and dense.

The main problem with this restaurant was that the service was absolutely abyssmal. I had to ask twice for an iced tea refill, it took a long time to get my food, I had to ask for my guacamole when the food came, by the time the guac arrived, I was done with the meal, I waited forever for my plate to be cleared and had to ask for the check, and, since the sopapilla hadn't arrived yet (it came with the meal; otherwise, I'd have ignored it), I had to ask for it, and when the sopapilla did finally come, there was only one instead of the menu-advertised two. I got tired of waiting for the waiter to take my credit card to pay the check, so I went up to the cashier's cage myself and paid directly. And, it wasn't just my waiter who seemed derilect--the other tables with other waitresses seemed to be waiting a long time, too, and since the restaurant wasn't full, I didn't understand what was taking so long.

Navajo food

One of the judges at my meeting, who married a Navajo from Albuquerque, brought me a container of frozen Navajo mutton stew with Navajo corn (she called it something, but I didn't catch the word) that I stuck in the refrigerator in my room to microwave for breakfast Friday morning and eat it along with a fresh mango. Yummy breakfast. The Navajo stew was really good, and I particularly liked the corn, which the judge explained to me was steamed underground and then removed from the husks before being put into the stew. I really must get her recipe!

Harvest Cafe, Albuquerque, NM

We were wrapping up our last day of business discussions, and our group opted to go to lunch together at the Harvest Cafe at the Pueblo Indian Cultural Center. I do like that place—went there the time before last when I was in Albuquerque. We got the big corner table and all ordered our own things. I ordered things for "courses," but everything arrived all at once.

My intended "appetizer" was corn fries. These are French-fry looking things served with a green chile ranch dressing dipping sauce. They weren't potatoes, though.....they were made as though they had prepared a thick cornmeal mush, rolled it out, then cut French-fry sized pieces that were then deep fried. They were quite good, with an interesting flavor, even though it's not a "traditional" food.

Next, I had a cup of mutton stew. The mutton and vegetables were tasty and fork-tender, but I would have liked the rather thin broth to have been a bit more flavorful....this broth tasted as though it hadn't stewed long enough that morning.

My main course, though, was absolutely delicious. I had the "pueblo rellenos," an Indian version of the more familar chiles rellenos on many Mexican restaurant menus. Rather than the Mexican poblano pepper, they used a great big, traditional, New Mexico pepper called a "Big Jim," which was stuffed with cheese, then breaded in blue cornmeal and fried. Two of these big peppers were presented on a bed of red chiles which were redolent with a hearty, smoky taste and a bold but not unpleasant heat bite. Oh, my, the rellenos were so good!

Other people at the table had various things including the posole (spicy hominy and pork stew), big bowls of the mutton stew, chicken quesadilla-looking things, enchiladas in green chiles, and great big, plate-sized pieces of fry bread.

Orchid Thai, Albuquerque, NM

Another business trip. By the time I got my luggage and then rented a car at the airport, it was nearly 9 p.m. Albuquerque time, 11 p.m. Washington time. Nevertheless, one of my Albuquerque friends and I went to dinner at Orchid Thai Cuisine on Central Avenue east of the university. My friend is vegetarian, so that kind of limited our options, but Thai places are good eateries for vegetarian foods, since they understand the concepts. In fact, one of the things he ordered, the waitress warned him that it had egg in it, and that's not something the typical American restaurant would have done.

We started with fried tofu for our appetizer. They used firm tofu, cut into long strips, that was then deep fried to a light exterior crunchiness and served with a spicy peanut dipping sauce that was actually quite good. For our main course, we shared gaeng jued woon sen tofu, which was a soup with silver noodles, tofu, mushrooms, baby corn, water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, and green onion, and gaeng keow wan goong, a green curry with tofu, bamboo shoots, bell pepper, and sweet basil in coconut milk, served over white steamed rice. I loved the curry. It was fiery hot, but the flavor was addictive, and I kept eating more and more!

All of our dishes were presented very artistically and garnished with edible orchids. For dessert, we split a mango ice cream on sticky rice. I liked this restaurant. The food was good, it had just enough Thai art to get the theme across without being kitschy, and the wait staff was pleasant, helpful, and very attentive. If I can find it again, it might be a fun place to go again on a future Albuquerque trip.

Chopsticks, Washington, D.C.

After Leo called me like six times tonight, he succeeded in dragging me away from the office about sevenish and taking me to dinner in Chinatown. He said he was feeling bad for me after the less-than-fabulous experience Joseph and I had last night at Nirvana (and Leo's family is Buddhist, too, even though he went to a Catholic school). The bus that runs right by my office building also goes to Chinatown, so we took that. Chinatown is fun, and most all of the restaurants and businesses have their window signs written both in English and in Chinese, even places like Subway sandwiches.

He wanted to go to a place called Chopsticks Restaurant, a very unassuming place that looked much like a neighborhood cafe or diner, instead of the faux-elegance of so many D.C. area restaurants. As soon as we sat down, the staff immediately brought us menus, water, and a complimentary pot of hot tea. We had a charming Chinese waitress, and she and Leo chattered on endlessly in Cantonese.

I told Leo to order us some authentically Chinese food, so he consulted with the waitress and ordered an interesting combination of whole fish, a pork hot pot, a big plate of ong choy, and white rice. The first thing to arrive was the ong choy. Ong choy--"water spinach"--is a popular Chinese vegetable dish which is sauteed with garlic. The plant is much bigger than the American style spinach we know, and Leo only knew it by it's Chinese name, and kept calling it water vegetable. About the same time, the hot pot arrived. There were chunks and slices of rich, fatty pork in what I can best describe as a not-too-sweet barbecue sauce, with some onion-like vegetable and other things I couldn't quite identify. It was served over the white rice and was a pleasant enough dish. The starring dish for the meal, though, had to be the fish.

The kitchen took an entire whole flounder, which was over two feet long, and cut the bulk of the meat off the carcass and stir-fried it lightly in a wok with nice mushrooms and several different types of crunchy vegetables like celery, carrot slices, and snow peas. Meanwhile, they took the remaining carcass and deep fried it. The fried carcass was arranged on the serving plate, and the vegetables and fish pieces were artfully arranged on top of the bones. A woman who must have been a manager or an owner came out with the fish to present it to the table, and insisted on immediately serving it to us while it was still hot. So, she dished up big servings of the fish and vegetable combination, but she didn't stop there. She then began to cut out pieces of the deep fried bones, and served large pieces to us, placing them atop the stir-fried portion. She insisted we eat it now, before it got cold and "not crispy." Yeah, fried bones. Well, I tried it, and it was actually pretty tasty. Nice crunch to it.

So, we had a nice meal, and there was so much food, there was way too much for just two people. Re-enter the manager/owner lady......there was still fish left over on the platter, and she insisted on serving the last of the fish, cutting up the last of the bones, and serving those, too, and I do believe that she wouldn't have taken no for an answer! So, she mounded up our plates again, and we had to make a bit of an effort to eat more so she wouldn't be insulted. Leo tells me that in Chinese culture, it's very rude to waste food when one is a guest at someone's home.....of course, in China, they generally have smaller servings! He said she was just being a "Chinese mother." Nonetheless, I kinda liked this place, and I hope we go back again some day.

Nirvana, Washington, D.C.

Twas a little after 8 o'clock this evening when my good friend Joseph (a/k/a Joe-Bob) rang me on my cell to insist that I leave the office immediately and join him for dinner. So, realizing that my current project was going to take several more hours to complete, I acquiesced and shut down for the evening. We were going to meet north of the White House, since he works east of the White House and I work southwest, but it was after seven, so I had to walk the two blocks to the other end of the building and go out the C Street door, then walk up the two blocks again to get back to my end of the building, and we ended up meeting at 18th and H. We had no clue what to eat tonight and ended up walking down the K Street corridor ("downtown" is booming at lunch, but rather dead at night) until we found Nirvana, a vegetarian Indian restaurant. Neither of us previously had dined at Nirvana, but it is frequently mentioned in tour books, so we decided to try it out.

As soon as we were shown to our tables, the waiter wanted our drink orders before we were even seated. Nothing like eager service, eh? The restaurant decor was rather plain, with very little ethnic design. The tables had colorful designs under the glass tops, which might arguably have been madras designs, but that was about it. A bar was the centerpiece of the room, and it looked pretty much like any other restaurant.

I rather got a kick out of the menu. "Nirvana", of course, is the Buddhist religious philosophy wherein one attains "supreme enlightenment," and thus ends the anguish of the continuous cycle of death and rebirth. One reaches nirvana via the Eightfold Path: 1) Right Views; 2) Right Intention; 3) Right Speech; 4) Right Conduct; 5) Right Livelihood; 6) Right Effort; 7) Right Mindfulness; and 8) Right Contemplation (forgive the lecture--it's the humanities professor in me). Nirvana the restaurant's menu was divided into eight categories, all named Right Something, such as "Right Nectar" for the page of beverages and "Right Beginnings" for the appetizers. Okay, I know, kinda nerdy, but I thought it was funny nonetheless.

Anyway, before we could get through the rather lengthy all-vegetarian menu and before our drinks had arrived, another waiter was by rather insistently to take our orders, and seemed impatient that we had not yet read our menus. It was an unusual menu.....several things I'm used to eating at Indian restaurants either were not there or were named differently. Joe-Bob ended up ordering the vegetable biryani (rice with vegetables and nuts) and I ordered the palak paneer, a dish which seemed in the menu description to be very similar to the saag paneer I often order at Indian restaurants, which is a spinach dish with chunks of farmer cheese.

We ordered the mana mani for an appetizer, which turned out to be two very very long hot green peppers (the menu said banana peppers, but these were not banana peppers) which were stuffed with a legume and spice mixture, then battered and deep fried, and served with a sweet tamarind sauce. I actually liked mine, and it reminded me somewhat of Mexican chiles rellenos. We forgot to order a bread, and in retrospect, I was rather surprised the waiter didn't suggest a bread, since the traditional way of eating Indian food involves tearing off pieces of bread and using them to grasp food and convey the food to the mouth (no silverware).

The peppers were served on thin round aluminum plates. When they were cleared away, the waiter brought very large round aluminum plates for our dinner plates--no china or stoneware. The food had just arrived at the table, when the lights were turned up! Now, it was only 9 o'clock, and there were at least four other tables in the restaurant, some of which were getting food around the same time we were, so I thought the lights a rather rudely abrupt act of management, if that was the way they were encouraging people to eat faster so they could close up. Joe-Bob didn't tell me how his vegetable biryani was, but it looked a little gummy to me. My palak panner was okay, but I missed the creamy richness of my usual saag paneer. I attributed the "thinness" to the vegetarian spirit of the restaurant, though skimping on the cream seems a little odd with chunks of cheese in a dish if a place is trying to be vegan.

We ordered dessert, but the waiter came back to announce that the kitchen was closed. They didn't even offer kheer (rice pudding) which was no doubt sitting in their refrigerator or kulfi (ice cream) which was no doubt in their freezer, neither of which required any cooking or real preparation other than spooning it into a dish. At the same time we ordered dessert, Joe-Bob asked for a refill on his Sprite, but now that I think about it, it never came.

As soon as we paid the check, a waiter came and whisked it off the table instead of waiting for us to leave. I was also a bit annoyed that they charged me for a refill on my chai. Meanwhile, another waiter came by our table and two others to announce that they were closing (as if we couldn't tell). So, we left, and I noticed that one of the remaining tables with six people still had food on the table.

So much for peace and nirvana with all the rush. I also noticed a bit of discord between several of the waiters at various points in the evening, which is never good form when it breaks forth in the presence of customers. I suppose the food was okay at this restaurant, but the surly, rushed service certainly left a bad taste in my mouth, and I doubt I seek nirvana again at Nirvana.

Cafe Deluxe, Washington, D.C.

While we were in the neighborhood of the National Cathedral, three of us wandered over to a little cafe across the street where Laura Bush sometimes lunches called Cafe Deluxe, and it seems quite a few others from the service had the same idea.

Leo had the fire-roasted tomato bisque and the chicken and cheese quesadillas. Michael had a hamburger and fries. In honor of Passover, I had the lamb and goat cheese sandwich and fries. My sandwich was good, and would have been even tastier without the roasted red bell pepper on it, which was a bit overpowering until I pulled it off.

For dessert, Leo had a hot fudge and caramel chocolate brownie sundae, Michael the creme brulee (which he didn't like), and I ordered a blueberry cobbler. My cobbler was one of the most unusual presentations of cobbler I've seen in a long time, being served as an individual pie with very thick, almost cookie-like, sweet pate sucree pastry and the blueberries were such an interesting color and shape and taste I would have sworn that they were canned peaches.

It was a fun little cafe, though the service was very slow. Perhaps they were not anticipating a Sunday evening rush from the cathedral....but they've been there long enough, I can't believe it was a total surprise.

Gravy

Cultural geographers should pay more attention to gravy.

We have a love-hate relationship with gravy. There's nothing better than a steaming hot, fresh, chicken-fried steak drenched in gravy. And, where would Thanksgiving be without gallons of giblet gravy to drown the turkey, stuffing, and mashed potatoes? Thick or thin, brown or white, it's all good. Yet, if you go to a snooty cafe or bistro, they don't serve gravy. Just sauce. Breakfast of fried eggs, fried ham, and red eye gravy becomes eggs with ham au jus. The beef tenderloin comes with a red wine reduction. That rolled pork roast doesn't have gravy, it has a thin puree of root vegetables served as a sauce. Veal t-bone goes with demiglace. Chicken will have a veloute sauce, or some fancy-named variation thereof (in a French kitchen, the milk gravy on my mother's fried chicken would be a classic "Sauce Supreme").

When I was in high school, we used to order French fries with brown gravy at lunch. Yum. I'm old enough that our gravy was actually made fresh by the school cooks every morning—they didn't just open a can. There's also an old, classic diner in my hometown famous for its "hot hamburgers"—a wonderfully decadent concoction with a couple of slices of toast topped by an enormous hamburger steak topped with grilled onions topped with brown gravy topped with a mound of great big French fries. And even to the present day, when I go spend the weekend with my family at some Indian pow-wow, the main course for dinner one night is sure to be "meat gravy", a nice thick gravy with a few bits of crumbled up meat served with whatever starch is available that day, perhaps potatoes, perhaps rice, and usually also available will be big, plate-sized pieces of Indian fried bread. At home with my parents, my father will often ignore the steak on the table, butter a slice of bread, lay it flat on his plate, and cover it with steak gravy.

But we can't get gravy at a nice restaurant. And the dieticians admonish us to leave the gravy off the meat.

During one formal dinner my sophomore year of college, my wise fraternity "pledge grandfather," who was destined to be Outstanding Senior Man of the University, explained to me the geographic differences of gravy use. He said that when you go back to the northeast Yankee part of the country, meat is served with just a little dollop of gravy. In the midwest, they serve about a spoonful of gravy on the meat. But here in the South, we have a little meat with our gravy!

Where did gravy come from? Sometimes I think it's a rather uniquely American thing. They don't have gravy in Mexico--melted cheese doesn't count! Asians don't use gravy, no doubt because it would be too hard to eat with chopsticks. I don't remember ever being served gravy when I was in school in England, although it was used in casseroles such as shepherd's pie. Italians use vegetable sauces (think tomato). Never had "gravy" in Germany, though they do occasionally use a little sauce. And France--need we ask?

Now I'm hungry. Anybody wanna go out for steak and gravy?

Thai Kingdom, Washington, D.C.

Leo got in late last night from a harrowing bus ride back from New York. Their tire blew out on the interstate and the bus nearly lost control; they were delayed four hours waiting for repairs and a replacement bus. So, when he got in, we thought he'd relax better if we went out to dinner, rather than cooking at home.

We walked up to K Street and found a wonderful, very authentic, Thai place called Thai Kingdom. The chicken satay appetizer was marinated in coconut milk and served with a great peanut sauce with quite a bit of spicy heat. Dessert was a shared plate of sticky rice with mango--**so** much better than the one we had last week at Thai Coast. For entrees, we had two different types of Thai flat noodles, Leo a dry, spicy mixture, and I had a beef and broccoli version that the waitress explained was different from a similar dish because this one came with gravy. Now, the dish was excellent.....great flavors, tender meat, interesting cuts of the entire broccoli plant, but the gravy....it wasn't gravy. It was sweet.

Wine and cheese at Circle Liquors, Washington, D.C.

Last night I went to a wine tasting at this absolutely wonderful wine shop in Upper Northwest D.C. near Chevy Chase circle called Circle Liquors. It's a big shop on Connecticut Avenue, but it's not just big, it has a very nice and very well thought out selection of international wines from all price ranges. They apparently do a tasting about once every six weeks.

The theme of last night's tasting was French burgundies. They presented six wines, four white and two red.

The first white was Domaine Chavy Puligny-Montrachet 2001, which retails for $39.99. It was a very nice, light, crisp wine with a light straw color, no oakyness, and almost classically steely. It would be good as an aperitif, but it did not stand up all that well to the cheeses (more about cheeses later). Next was Domaine Matrot Meursault 2001, $33.99, which was a big, fruity, full-bodied wine with a bit of limestone, a hint of honey, and a good acidity. It did well with food, and I think it was probably my favorite white of the evening. The next two wines were both Domaine Bonneau du Martray Corton Charlemagne chardonnays. First, they presented the 1993 ($105.99). It was good. This was a bit of a surprise, since it's a twelve year old chardonnay, but French chardonnays do tend to hold their age better than do California chardonnays. The next Corton, though, the 2002 ($119.99) was amazing. It was a lovely wine, clear, mellow, woodsy, with good complexity and a honeyed finish, and it stood up to the food very well. The sommalier was saying it was still a bit tight and would only improve with a little bit of age.

Next, they presented the reds, both pinot noirs. First up was Domaine Tollot-Beaut Chorey Cote de Beaune 2000 ($27.99). This wine comes from the southern half of the burgundy region. It had a burgundy color with a slight tinge of brown, but drank very well. There was definitely a forward fruitiness to the wine and a lot of floral notes. It didn't stand up to the strong cheeses as well as the other red, but I still think I prefer this wine of the two. The second wine was Domaine Grivot Nuits St. Georges "Les Charmois" 2001 ($39.99), which comes from the northern half of burgundy. This wine definitely had more structure than the Cote de Beaune, and a touch of tanin which allowed it to do very well with the cheeses. It was a nice, medium-bodied wine with a hint of cherry. C'est bon.

The cheeses used to accompany the wines were worthy of their own tasting. There was the omnipresent brie, this one a very nice 70% butterfat cheese that was sufficiently aged so as to have a nice, soft, spreadability without the strong ripeness the French love but Americans hate. They had a lovely three year old gruyere I turned to often. The cheddar entry was a pleasant Red Leicester, but I noticed as the evening went on and the cheese warmed to room temperature, it got rather too soft for a leicester. The "smelly cheese" category was filled with the only slightly so smelly morbier, which had a very nice, soft texture and flavor. The morbier was probably chosen more for its talking points--this is a unique cheese made half from "morning" milk and half from "evening" milk, separated in the wheel by a thin layer of grape leaf ash. It has a nice appearance with a "stripe" running down the middle from the ash, and the more discriminating palates can detect a very faint difference in taste from the morning side versus the evening side of the cheese.....I always say the evening side has a bit more of a grassy taste, since the cows have been eating fresh grass all day long! The star cheeses from this tasting were both three year aged Grand Goudas, which were both hard and granular and so full of wonderful flavors. One of the goudas was plain and the other was applewood smoked. These were absolutely wonderful cheeses, and I think a 3 year old Grand Gouda probably retails for about $18-20 a pound.

I helped the sommalier carry his stuff out to his car after the tasting, and he gave me a bottle of the Puligny-Montrachet and a plastic baggy full of the leftover cheeses. Yum.

Thai Coast, Washington, D.C.

Today is the Thai New Year. In celebration, we went to a little restaurant between here and Georgetown called Thai Coast for the observance. It wasn't a bad place, but I doubt we make a special trip to go there again.

They have a dark, narrow dining room with a bar and several prep stations visible, plus a large sunroom-type porch on the street side of the building, which was where we were seated. L Street is one of the bridges into Georgetown, so there was a lot of foot traffic back and forth for us to watch. Neither the waiter nor the waitress spoke good enough English to understand us when we asked what traditional New Year foods were in Thailand, and the waitress kept talking about some custom of going to people's houses and throwing water around or something. So, we just ordered some things to share, not knowing if we were violating any traditional holiday mores or not.

We started with an appetizer platter, which had two kinds of dumplings, one pair steamed and one pair fried, a couple of fried spring rolls that looked like taquitos, some long conical fried things with whole, large shrimps inside, a couple of skewers of chicken satay, and something that looked a bit like an empañada stuffed with curried meat, accompanied by two sauces. a clear sweet and sour fish sauce and a variety of peanut sauce. My favorite was the steamed dumpling.

Our main courses were the basil seafood and the shrimp pad thai. The pad thai was a bit disappointing. I think perhaps it had been made some time in advance, because the noodles were stuck together and I found the flavors rather bland and uninspired. I did like the basil seafood, though. It included scallops, shrimp, mussels, and scored squid cooked with a huge quantity of large snow peas and sprigs of fresh basil leaves. The menu gave the dish a two pepper "hotness" warning, but I thought the heat rather mild. It was served with a small bowl of uninspired, not terribly fresh white rice.

We shared a single dessert, but it was more than ample for two. The mango sticky rice is a very traditional dish, and while I was impressed with the size of the mango half on the plate, the mound of accompanying rice topped with sweetened condensed milk and ground peanuts was so salty it was barely edible. Thai iced coffee rounded out the meal.

The prices at this restaurant were modest, but on the whole, the experience was rather disappointing, especially since the online reviews we saw before heading over there were all so positive, and since the restaurant seemed not to observe their own cultural holiday.

American Red Cross Cafeteria, Washington, D.C.

A friend from the solicitor's office and I walked over to the national headquarters of the American Red Cross to eat lunch in their very modern cafeteria. They had quite a variety of foods, and I ended up with a very nice and quite ample Greek salad topped with sauteed-at-the-station shrimp.

Cafe Mozart, Washington, D.C.

We ended up getting our cherries at last during D.C.'s cherry blossom season at Cafe Mozart, a lovely Austrian cafe hidden behind a kleine konditorei a couple of blocks east of the White House. After a couple of pints of Bitburger beer in very tall glasses, we started with an appetizer of cheese fondue made in the traditional fashion wherein the cheeses are melted in white wine and cherry brandy. Leo's main course was a beef roulade with spätzli and a cucumber salad. I had the hassenpfeffer with potato pancakes and red cabbage. My hassenpfeffer was very good, with the braised rabbit being fork-tender and served with a sweet-sour red wine sauce.

For dessert, I had the "cherry blossom special", which was a commemorative coupe (think fancy ice cream sundae) with whipped cream flavored with just a tiny, tiny touch of cherry brandy and compote of spiced cherries on the side. Leo ordered the Black Forest cake, but the waiter returned to report that they were out, so Leo had to make due with the Mozart Torte, a layered chocolate cake filled with a raspberry-flavored chocolate cream.

This restaurant features live music most every evening, and we were "blessed" with a middle-aged Georgian (think Russian, not redneck) bass-baritone accompanying himself on an electronified guitar singing pop oldies.

Mimi's, Washington, D.C.

After Easter Mass, I went back to the condo and Leo was awake and dressed, rearranging his bedroom, and hungry, so we walked up to Dupont for brunch at Mimi's. It was very simple. I just had the "Neptune special", which was a variation on eggs Benedict made with crabcakes, and it was **so** good! Leo had one, too, plus he had a chocolate mousse for dessert. I tasted his mousse, and it was very smooth and chocolately, but it had no flavoring or pizzazz to it.

Suburban diners

Breakfast was at the Silver Diner in Alexandria VA, and dinner was at the Tastee Diner in Bethesda MD. I love diner food. A Greek "gyros" omelette for breakfast and a country-fried steak for dinner. Yum. I don't know why there aren't any diners in D.C.

Le Gaulois, Alexandria, VA

Leo took me to dinner as a "pre-thank you" for helping him move tomorrow. We went to King Street in Old Town Alexandria (my first visit!) and landed at a place called Le Gaulois ("the Gaul," which, judging from the cafe's logo, refers to Roman era, wild, Gallic tribesmen). Leo started with a French Kiss (think kir royale with Chambord instead of creme de cassis) and I had a Dubonet Rouge with a splash of soda and a twist of lemon. Then, we ended up eating the same things.

We began the meal with an "entree" of the chef's charcuterie plate, an assortment of meats and pates which were wonderfully rich and varied. I particularly loved the duck liver pate. Next was a creme de moules, or cream of mussel, soup that was a lovely soup with shelled mussels and strips of julienned zuccini and carrot in a thin cream soup. The plat premier was a rich grilled pair of shad roe topped with bacon strips and served on a bed of sauteed fresh spinach and accompanied by two little parsleyed potatoes and a tiny bowl of steamed brocolli, julienne turnip, and julienne carrot.

Our second plat was a non-traditional but wonderful canard a l'orange presented as a series of thin slices of rare duck breast adorned with manicured orange wedges plated in a circle on a mirror of light red wine and natural juice reduction sauce, surrounding a small puff pastry "bowl" of wild rice. Our salade was a simple plate of mesclun greens in a light French style olive oil vinaigrette. Three cheeses, a chevre, a brie, and a hard cheese the name of which I didn't understand from the waiter, with slices of green apple and several red raspberries were the next course. The hard cheese was good, and I always like chevre; the brie was rather young, I thought, but edible.

For dessert, Leo selected for us a fruit crepe with strawberries, blueberries, and something I wasn't quite sure of (diced poached pear??) garnished with a nest of candied orange peel threads all floated on a lake of thin zabaglione sauce which was lightly broiled before presentation. We ended the meal with a very nice espresso.

Our wine with dinner was a surprisingly economical and pleasant bottle of 2002 L'Enclos de Saint Jacques Bordeaux Superieur recommended by the waiter.

Office cafeteria, Washington, D.C.

The office cafeteria had baked rockfish (which was good), rice (which was mediocre even by institutional food standards), steamed carrots (which were mushy), and blackberry cobbler (which was good) for lunch.

Bistrot du Coin, Washington, D.C.

Before Maundy Thursday Mass tonight we popped in to Bistrot du Coin for a bite to eat. The service was unusually late (8 p.m.!), so we thought we'd best eat beforehand. Anyway, I had a nice country pate and a little green salad of Bibb lettuce and sliced scallions with a glass of nice margeaux, and then later a slice of lemon tarte with a thin layer of piped meringue on top that was garnished with tiny slices of gumdrops. My dinner companion had a huge pot of steamed mussels in a garlic cream sauce which looked and smelled delicious, and a basket of French fries with a side of bearnaise as a dipping sauce.

Montmartre, Washington, D.C.

Yesterday, we didn't get started until after noon, and headed over to Eastern Market to see the market and the flea market. It was a lovely day to be out and about walking around. We opted to have brunch at a wonderful little French bistro called Montmartre. Tony had a country style pate, eggs Benedict (Les Oeufs Benedicte—it used pancetta instead of Canadian bacon), and a cheese plate in lieu of dessert, starting with a bloody Mary for his hair of the dog. I had the calf liver, which was absolutely fabulous. The liver had been very gently sauteed to about a "medium", then laid on a bed of piped mashed potatoes (there was something tasty in the potatoes which I've yet to identify), then sauced with a rich demiglace and balsamic vinegar reduction with caramelized onions and slices of roasted garlic. Oh, my! Yummy! I know some people think they hate liver, but this would be the perfect choice to reintroduce them to the delicious and complex tastes of a properly prepared liver dish.

For dessert, I ordered the Il Flotante, mostly out of curiosity, since I'm used to "floating islands" at French restaurants being Oeufs à la Neige......little puffs of meringue swimming in a thin custard sauce. The Flotante was a three inch diameter meringue sprinkled with shaved almonds and a tiny bit of honey before being broiled ever so briefly and presented on a mirror of custard sauce. While we were finishing dessert, Leo popped in to the restaurant and had a piece of the blueberry tarte. Here's a picture of Tony trying to figure out what to do with his eggs Benedict:

 

La Creperie, Arlington, VA

Last night after work Tony wanted to go shopping, so we headed to Pentagon City. Along the way, we decided to grab an early dinner, since he'd not lunched yet, and found La Creperie amidst all those restaurants and shops which are outside the main "Fashion Centre at Pentagon City" in an area called Pentagon Row.

I really enjoyed my dinner, which was a stew of chicken and mushrooms in a chicken broth enriched with cream followed by an enormous salad maison with freshly made mayonnaisse as the dressing. For dessert, I just had a tiny cup of French roast espresso. Tony started with a fine pate in aspic, then ate a salmon and cream cheese crepe for his plat, and an apple cinnamon crepe with vanilla ice cream for dessert. I liked this creperie, cause they used great big crepes instead of little tiny pancake sized ones. Tony's salmon crepe was folded over in half much like a quesadilla and the apple dessert crepe was wrapped into a sort of flat burrito shape.

All evening I kept trying to order my food in French from our obviously French waitress, but she kept quizzically repeating me in English like she wasn't able to understand me. Now, I'll be the first to admit that my French sucks, but I couldn't have been that far off on either vocabulary or accent, or Tony would have lectured me about my errors, as he always does. I guess she was just being like the waiters in Paris. Parisians can be so obnoxious. They generally always speak impeccible English, but they feign ignorance and make Americans struggle with their French, and then they still pretend the Americans are incomprehensible, even though they probably eavesdropped on the table ahead of time, hearing the Americans discussing their menu choices amongst the table.

Saint Patrick's Day in D.C.

Tony met me at the airport tonight, and after we dropped my luggage off at home we headed out for a St. Patrick's Day dinner. Even though it was after ten p.m., all of the Irish or Celtic related restaurants were absolutely jam-packed with drunken faux-Irishmen, so the only place we could find that was 1) halfway calm and 2) still open was the Afterwards Cafe.

After we were seated and got our Irish coffee orders in, what did we notice but the two business men at the adjacent table (adjacent at this cafe means the tables are barely a foot apart!) to ours were real live Irishmen! One was from Northern Ireland and one was from Ireland, and they were in town today with the McCartney sisters who were visiting the White House to discuss problems with the Irish Republican Army and Sinn Fein.

Albuquerque

What is it about this town and green chiles? Everywhere I go to eat, the food is full of green chiles. I just had a nice buffet dinner at the Sandia Casino (I only won $10.50 more than I started with tonight), and the food was all redolent with chiles. And this afternoon, I pulled through the McDonald's drivethrough, and my $1 double cheeseburger had a green chile on it! It was the same last month when I was here....the only place that didn't have green chiles in the food was Starbucks. Oh, well. I guess it's a tourist thing. I'd rather they did blue corn tortillas, though.

Sterling's, Bartlesville, OK

Today is my mother's 80th birthday, so I flew to Oklahoma and then drove up to my parents' house to surprise them.

We went to dinner tonight at Sterling's, which is one of the two or three only "nice" places in town, and it's where my parents usually end up for special occasions, since they don't like Copper at the Price Tower and I don't have a membership at the country club anymore. My parents both had ribeye steaks and I had the evening special, which was a rather large filet mignon pepper steak done up with a shallot wine reduction sauce. Salads and baked potatoes came with the meal, as is pretty much traditional around here. With dinner, we drank a bottle of Kendall Jackson Vintner's Reserve Merlot (I forgot the month), which was an innocuous little wine that paired satisfactorily enough with the steaks. Dessert was strawberry cheesecake with a candle stuck in it, and I ordered the apple cranberry pie, which was good, but which would have benefitted greatly from being warmed.

Namaste, Lakewood, CO

I had an interesting dining experience Tuesday during my Denver business trip at a place called Namaste in Lakewood. Namaste is an Indian and Nepali restaurant. I've never been to Nepal before, and for those of you who are geographically challenged, Nepal is that little tiny nation north of India up in the Himalayas where Mount Everest is located. My waiter was very nice! He is from Nepal, and has lived in the Denver area for three years. He was almost tall, had features that resembled Chinese, had a big beautiful smile, and the most unusual light brown eyes. We chatted a bit during the meal, and I discovered that he is single, he has a college degree in humanities from back in Nepal and he does volunteer work with the children's hospital in Denver helping out with wheelchair sports.

I had him pick a traditional Nepal dish from the menu, since I've had tons of Indian food before. He selected the chilli chicken, which was a stewed dish with bite-sized chunks of chicken, sliced rings of onion, horizontal slices of a meaty pepper of some sort (authentic?? I didn't recognize it as one of the standard Mexican peppers), and a little bit of diced potato-like root, all enriched with a bit of tomato paste, and served with a big mound of a basmati-type rice. He also selected a parantha bread, which is a large, round, leavened, pita-like, flat bread which had been quartered, and which he encouraged me to tear into pieces and use to eat the food, instead of using silverware. I really liked the chicken. I'd ordered it with "medium" spice, not knowing how hot their hot was, and I could easily have kicked the heat up another notch. The thing I liked about the dish, though, was that the spice combinations had far fewer ingredients than are used in India, and I didn't have the feeling of being overwhelmed with spices as I often do in Indian establishments. This was much simpler, much cleaner, if you will, while still being complex.

Even though the classic Indian dessert, kulfi, was invented in the Himalayas (kulfi is the original ice cream, first made with Himalayan snow and flavored with pistacchio nuts), the waiter informed me that it isn't eaten in Nepal unless one goes to an Indian restaurant, and that desserts are not common at all, especially since no fruits can be grown in the country. I drank a Nepalese version of chai with Nepalese tea, milk, and only a very light hint of spice, throughtout the meal.

Grand Marnier and Cigar Dinner, Washington, D.C.

Last night I had a lovely time at a "Grand Marnier and Cigar Dinner" at a restaurant downtown called McCormick and Schmick's, as the guest of a priest friend of mine who, as it turned out, was their guest expert on the history of Grand Marnier. Also at our table was Lee, the cigar expert; Carrie, the Grand Marnier sales representative; and Carrie's friend Kathryn, who turned out to be quite fascinating. She's a biological researcher working on the human genome project up in Rockville and she's also simultaneously doing another graduate degree at Johns Hopkins. She invited me out to Herndon this afternoon to watch her play field hockey, but it's in a place that requires a car, so I'm not going to go. Coincidentally, Fr. Declan and I were the only men at the dinner wearing bowties.

Since we were a little early, while we waited for the restaurant's guests, we had a couple of rounds of cocktails with the girls drinking wildly flavored martinis (I remember one was a strawberry lemonade something), Fr. Declan drinking his standard Tanqueray No. 10 martini, and I sipped on kir royales. We were also given little miniature snifters with tastes of a new Grand Marnier product called Navan, which is a premium vanilla flavored cognac that was actually pretty tasty.

At this point, the cigars began to arrive. I didn't actually sample them myself (everyone else at the table, including the girls, was puffing away), but I did bring them home. We got free cigar cutters that look kinda dangerous to me. Along with the first cigar, they also brought a small snifter of Grand Marnier--some people dipped the end of their cigar in the GM before putting it in their mouth. There were three cigars presented, in increasing order of heaviness and flavor. The first two were from the Ashton house in the Dominican Republic. The third was a Honduran cigar "La Aroma de Cuba" from the Marquis house. Lee talked about them all at length and gave better names and identifications, but not being a smoker, that all went in one ear and out the other. The one interesting thing that I remember, though, is that the very best tobacco leaves for cigar wrappers are not from Cuba, but from Connecticut!

When the hors d'oeuvres arrived from the kitchen, we were served GMTs—Grand Marniers and tonics, a remake of the classic gin and tonic. The hors d'oeuvres were yummy. My favorite were these great big sea scallops wrapped in bacon. They also did chicken firecrackers (think spicy chicken-stuffed egg roll, cut on the bias) which were tasty and some very nicely done Rhode Island calamari. There were three choices for salads, a house salad (mixed greens, blue cheese crumbles, balsamic vinaigrette), Caesar salad, or a wedge salad (iceberg wedge with tomato slice, cheese crumbles, and blue cheese dressing). The wine was a 2002 Green Point Yarra Valley Chardonnay, from Australia. The wine was okay, but a little too light for that stage of the evening after all the cocktailing and heavy appetizers.

There were several entree choices. I had the 18 oz ribeye with mashed potatoes and asparagus, but they also offered a New York strip, New Zealand rack of lamb, swordfish picatta, and a rock fish filet. My steak was huge and very tasty....I wanted to gnaw on the bone! With dinner, we had a 2001 Sterling Diamond Mountain Ranch Cabernet that was a very good choice for the steaks, and the bar manager also brought around tastes of a 1997 Beringer Cabernet. For dessert, I had the upside down apple pie with cinnamon ice cream, and there was also a choice of a chocolate bomb, and the wine was an Inniskillin Eiswein.

In between the entree and dessert, we began sampling the special Grand Marnier reserves. First was the Cuvee du Centenaire, which was bottled in honor of the 100th anniversary of the House of Grand Marnier. After dessert, we got the Cuvee du Cent Cinquantenaire, which had been bottled in honor of the 150th anniversary. The 150 came in a gorgeously hand painted bottle, but I really think I liked the 100 better....it had better balance and harmony, and the dried bitter orange peel taste was much crisper and more enjoyable. Not that the 150 was bad, mind you!

So, that was dinner. Now I just have to figure out what to do with these three expensive cigars! Two of them are in cute little tubes, too.

Malaysia Kopitiam, Washington, D.C.

My friend Leo wanted to go to dinner tonight, so he Metroed over and we ended up walking all up and down M Street looking for a fabulous place, and ended up at a highly rated Malaysian place called Malaysia Kopitiam. This was my first venture into Malaysian food, so I wasn't exactly sure what to expect. Leo's from Hong Kong, so he's had it before, but he's not expert on it, so we had the waitress just bring us dinner. The food reminded me a lot of Thai cuisine with some Chinese aspects, except the spicings are very different and almost remind me of Indian spices.

Our first courses were these interesting chicken and shrimp stuffed, fried, thin, burrito-looking things which had been cut into pieces, served on a bed of lettuce chiffonade, and accompanied by a hot, yellow tinged, watery looking sauce, and then another plate of what appeared to be a long roll of translucent white rice paper wrappers filled with chopped shrimp, scallop, and scallion cut into nine segments and arranged in a checkerboard pattern, accompanied by a peanut sauce. The second course included a lamb curry, with large tender chunks of lamb in a mild brown curry sauce, and a squid and shrimp dish, with large pieces of squid which had been scored and cross-hatched and were tossed with peppers, tomato, onion, okra pods, and some potato-like chunks, and all came with steamed white rice.

The last course included mango sticky rice liberally sprinkled with chopped peanut and a particularly interesting "Malaysian crepes" dish, which was made by taking two thin pancakes with a layer of sweetened, mashed green beans in between and pressing it on the grill to create sweet-crunchy areas on the crepe surfaces, and then the whole thing was cut into decorative shapes. It was very tasty.

Dish, Washington, D.C.

My friend Leo was in the neighborhood tonight and wanted to go eat, so we popped over the Dish in the River Inn on the street behind my block. It's cold out tonight, so we didn't want to have to walk far. We started off with a martini and a cosmopolitan which came in oversized glasses--no need for a second round. I wasn't terribly hungry tonight, so I just ordered a frisee salad and a duck confit off the appetizer side of the menu, and Leo had some potato gnocchi and the wild salmon entree. For dessert, we each had a pistacchio, dried fig, and white chocolate bread pudding, which was tres bon, then we sat and lingered over coffee. I like this friend; we talked a little "business" and he expensed the dinner. I need to find more friends with expense accounts!

Hooters, Phoenix, AZ

Last Thursday I had the most harrowing experience in Phoenix. We had a 5-7 p.m. meeting, after which several of my immediate superiors invited me to join them for dinner. Being new, that's the sort of invitation one really can't turn down. So, we left the office building where we'd been meeting and walked over to a nearby shopping and dining district, where they promptly headed for a Hooters.

It was awful.

The place was loud and boisterous, the televisions were blaring sports, the waitresses—who weren't even pretty—were running around in way-too-tight skimpy t-shirts and Daisy Dukes so tiny their pubic hair was longer than their shorts, and the place was filthy. I don't even want to describe the smell and condition of the men's room. Everyone at my table ordered chicken wings and beer. I had a salad and iced tea. And what's worse, when the chicken wings arrived at the table, the waitress kept forgetting to bring my salad. I wonder if she even put the order in at the same time. It was a good fifteen minutes later before my salad came.

Why do these waitresses think that they need to shake their chests when they bring food or drink to a table? I refused to look at the waitress when she came by to interrupt our conversations, which only made her shake at me all the harder.

When I got back to my hotel, I had to take a long shower, cause I felt so dirty, so used, so violated.

San Marcos Golf Resort, Chandler, AZ

Phoenix was an interesting experience— my first time to visit the State of Arizona. Our conference was at the legendary San Marcos Golf Resort and Conference Center in Chandler. The hotel provided some of the most interesting coffee breaks. Ordinarily, one gets cookies or muffins or doughnuts or some such thing, but the morning breaks always had hard boiled egg halves and slices of cheeses with fancy crackers (I loved the chevre they served), and the afternoon breaks were always slices of melons and pineapple, which I found rather too hard to eat in a crowded lobby.

Off time was kinda boring in Phoenix and I don't think I'd like to live here. For one, I couldn't find any place decent to eat. The town was full of national franchise places, but I didn't have a single meal the whole trip worthy of description.