Tandoori Nights, Arlington, VA

The Market Common at Clarendon is the beneficiary of an exciting new restaurant that opened just a little over a week ago. Tandoori Nights is the second location for the Migliani family, which already established a successful Tandoori Nights in Gaithersburg, Maryland. If our experience this week is any indication, the Arlington location as well should prove to be highly successful.

Svet and I went to Tandoori Nights for lunch Thursday. It was a beautiful day and we took advantage of their large, second floor patio overlooking the Market. Inside, though, the decor is bright and exciting. Fabulous murals decorate the space, including some vibrant Indian-themed paintings on the ceiling. Bar furnished are streamlined and contemporary, and several tables in the dining room feature stylized canopies recalling Indian tradition.

The menu features items which I can best describe as popular and modern, designed for the young Washington urban professionals. Perhaps this is due to the popularization of Indian foods in American culture, but the kitchen does not forget its Indian roots. I'm not sure if they have separate lunch and dinner menus, since the menu we received featured a lot of dinner type items priced in the mid- to upper-teens. A table tent, though, listed a number of lunch meal specials priced at $7.95.

While Svet started with a fruit smoothie, we both ended up ordering the lamb kebob lunch special. The first course was an apple and shredded carrot salad dressed in a light and slightly sweet vinaigrette served in a white, boat-shaped bowl.



For the main course, they brought us clover-shaped plates with two sausage-shaped rolls of lamb barbecued in the tandoor, a bowl of thin yellow dal (lentil) soup, basmati rice studded with bits of saffron rice, and a delicious spinach dish I thought at first was going to be saag paneer, but which turned out to be pieces of miniature corn on the cob in the spinach mixture. Along with the meal came some nice naan bread from the tandoor; Svet wanted more bread, so we ordered an onion naan as well.



Service was excellent and attentive throughout the meal. We also had a visit from the restaurant manager to make sure everything was alright.

Next time you're on a shopping expedition to the Market Common (Apple, Williams-Sonoma, Crate and Barrel, etc.), stop in at Tandoori Nights for lunch or dinner. And, judging from the looks and size of the bar, it will, no doubt, soon be a popular happy hour destination for the young professionals crowd.

Georgetown Cafe, Georgetown, D.C.

There's something comforting about a diner. The food is always simple, plentiful, and cheap, and one can always count on getting full without emptying one's wallet. Diners are surprisingly hard to find in D.C., probably because their low prices don't generate the cash flow needed to support the high rents in most parts of town, which makes it all the more surprising that we would find a diner not only in Georgetown but on the tony Wisconsin Avenue.

Ian has been trying for weeks to get me to try one of his favorite diners, the Georgetown Cafe, so off there we went last night. It was an interesting irony since this is one of the few times we've been out before midnight when lots of restaurants are still open, yet the Georgetown Cafe is open twenty-four hours a day.

Georgetown Cafe isn't your stereotypical diner. In addition to burgers and breakfast items, they have a large selection of Middle Eastern foods. Located on the upper floor of a narrow, old building, decor is sparse around the cheap, utilitarian tables and chairs. A long bar in the back suggests that at one time the space may have been a restaurant with a liquor license, but it's now used as a service station for the wait staff.

Diners always make me crave chicken-fried steaks and gravy; alas, there were no such treats on the menu. Then I looked at the burgers, but Ian wanted breakfast—omelettes, specifically—and he's not much of a carnivore, so I acquiesced to breakfast as well, ordering a ham and cheddar cheese omelette. Ian chose a Swiss cheese omelette with home fries, potato slices lightly pan fried until soft. Both omelettes came with buttered white bread toast which was rather lighter than I would have preferred for "toast," and little pre-packaged servings of grape jelly. We also ordered a basket of French fries; the fries had been lightly battered and expertly deep-fried; they were just great, being the highlight of the meal.




For beverages, I had an iced tea, which was fine, and Ian had a Coke, which I noted came from a gun in the bar and looked, I thought, a little weak.

Even though we'd eaten breakfast foods for supper, we both opted for dessert, Ian the chocolate cake and me the carrot cake. Both of the cakes were "homemade" and fresh; they both arrived covered in commercial whipped cream; the chocolate cake also got squirts of chocolate syrup.




It was nice getting to try Georgetown Cafe finally, since most of my eating-out friends like Svet and Tony are food snobs who don't like diner food; in fact, when Tony was in D.C. last January, we walked in to Georgetown Cafe and he refused to eat there, making us land at the incredibly overpriced and mediocre Cafe Milano. Ian will no doubt drag me to the cafe again, so I'll have to try some of the grill sandwiches and the entrees, which are really the true test of a diner, especially one that doesn't have chicken-fried steak.

Kaz Sushi Bistro, Washington, D.C.

With the proliferation of the ubiquitous sushi bar in nearly every pan-Asian restaurant around the country, Japanese food has started to become common and mundane. A few places, though, maintain the tradition of food as art so highly prized in Japan, and it can be particularly exciting when Japanese chefs trained both in the cuisine of their homeland and the cuisine of the West fuse the styles into creative Japanese-American dishes; thus is our restaurant choice earlier tonight, Kaz Sushi Bistro in downtown D.C.'s West End.

Kaz is located on the upper level of a storefront near the Uruguayan Embassy. The decor is simple with classic Japanese lines and furnishings; Japanese-style watercolors of fish decorate the walls. As expected from a Japanese restaurant, service was speedy, quiet, and efficient.

My dinner companion started with a grilled baby octopus appetizer. I sampled one of the little octopi and it was tender, tasty, and had a spicy kick to it. The photo below is a little misleading, since the dish was served in a square bowl, not a plate, and there was more to the serving than it appears. In the bottom of the bowl was a fine julienne of pickled carrots and daikon (Japanese radish), and scallion sprouts garnished the top.



For her next course, she chose several different types of sushi, including clockwise from the top left, a spicy tuna roll, eel, salmon, and uni (sea urchin). I noticed that the gari (pickled ginger) looked very pale and fresh.



I selected the unadon bento box for my meal. This included two big pieces of barbecued unagi (eel) on a bed of Japanese rice, with a seaweed side dish, a clear vermicelli and mushroom dish, some light vegetable tempura, and an American-style tossed green salad in a creamy sesame dressing. The unagi was good, but I especially enjoyed the seaweed and the vermicelli.



Our desserts turned out to be wonderfully creative and memorable. My friend had the green tea tiramisu. A thin layer of cake was covered with a strongly green tea flavored mascarpone cheese mousse and garnished with a tiny dice of cherry jelly; a red bean paste was squirted decoratively on the plate.



I had the lychee panna cotta with mango sorbet, which was excellent. Both of the fruit flavors exploded in the mouth and complemented one another well.



We also had some very interesting Japanese wines with our meal. We each had one of the two sake tasting flights, each with three different cups of ice cold sake. We both thought that our favorite sake of the flight was our respective "light" wine; the other wines were good, too, and their flavors differed widely, including one of mine which had been aged in cedar casks and had a very peppery flavor.



With dessert, we both had a glass of choya, a very traditional Japanese plum port wine. Our waitress brought a tray to the table with a glass for each of us that contained a small, green, Japanese plum and a large plum-filled decanter with the choya, which she poured for us tableside. The wine was sweet and syrupy and had an intense but pleasant green plum flavor and also a flavor with reminded me somewhat of red hot candies without the "hot."



Kaz ranks highly on my sushi bar list in D.C., up with one of my favorites, Sushi Taro. I'm looking forward to a return trip to Kaz to try out some of their many larger tasting menus, including eight-course gourmet samplers of the cold and hot "small dishes" featured by Chef Kaz Okochi (who we saw in the dining room tonight visiting with one of the other large tables). These small dishes give the chef the opportunity to fuse Japanese cuisine with American tastes, and he does it with skill and aplomb.

Bistrot du Coin, Washington, D.C.

Who speaks French around here? My French is awful—I only speak enough French that with my Okie accent I can convince the waiters in Paris that they really do know how to speak English. My question is, what is the difference between "bistro" and "bistrot"? I know that they both mean bar/café, or something of that sort, but when is something a "bistro" and when is it a "bistrot"? Is it a gender question? Socioeconomic question? Preference of the owner question?

Well, the source of this burning question was last night's late night supper with my friend Steven, who had me meet him at Dupont Circle at 11 p.m. and then graciously took me to Bistrot du Coin. The crowds had thinned out by that point and we were able to be led straight to a table.

Bistrot du Coin is a wild place. Part bar, part restaurant, it's always lively and noisy—very noisy. It attracts a very young, hip crowd and it's often full of young couples, especially drunk young women who paw all over their men in a way best reserved for the hotel room. The high ceilinged space rocks not only with loud, happy crowd noise, but with popular music played at a loud, deafening level. One can never say the place isn't festive!

As we perused the menu, staff brought us a basket of thick slices of French bread and water in a wine bottle. Where some restaurants have daily specials up on a chalkboard, the chalkboard specials at Bistrot du Coin were for various wines of the day, both by the glass and by the bottle. We ended up ordering a carafe of one of the house wines, a Lyonnais red Cotes du Rhone 2002, which was light and versatile.

Steven started with the tartiflette savoyarde, a tasty and hearty gratin made of potatoes, roblochon cheese, onions, and intensely flavorful bacon.



For his main course, he had the casserole de lapin aux spätzle a creamy rabbit, mushroom, and vegetable stew with Alsacian spätzle. He let me have a sample of his stew, and it was absolutely divine! In fact, it was so good that when one of Steven's friends called (this is what he gets for talking on a cell phone in the middle of a restaurant!), I sneaked my bread over to his casserole dish to sop up a bit more of that delicious cream sauce!



I finally got to try the salade de magret de canard fumé et seché, a salad with smoked duck and grilled scallions, which I've always wanted to try on previous visits, but thought it was too big to do along with a full meal. It was worth the wait. There was a perhaps too small amount of French-style bitter salad greens covered with slices of duck "proscuitto" and the grilled scallions. Then, around the edges of the plate was a dice of smoked duck meat with diced bits of roasted onions and carrot that offered an explosion of flavor. I found myself using my fork to track down every last morsel of the duck.



For dessert, we split a pyramide d'abricot de chocolat, an exquisite creation with chocolate mousse around an apricot jelly enrobed in chocolate ganache and garnished with chocolate shavings, dried apricots, and an apricot sauce. Along with the pyramid, Steven ordered us a couple of glasses of Clairette de Die et Muscat sparkling wine, a perfect choice since the wine was light, slightly sweet, and had essences of apricot, exactly matching the pyramid.



While the proprietors and regulars of Bistrot du Coin are not so happy about it, I rejoice at the newly-in-force smoking ban in restaurants here in D.C. Smoking is a huge, nasty tradition in France! Now that I don't have to worry about coughing from the smoke and leaving the place with my clothes smelling like an ashtray, though, I'm looking forward to a lot more visits to endulge in the delicious foods at Bistrot du Coin.

Bistro Français, Georgetown, D.C.

Why does everyone always call at midnight and want to go out to eat? I have always been a night owl and love late night dining, but D.C. just is not the city for this sort of thing. We end up going to the same handful of places over and over and over again, since no one else is open, public transportation has shut down, and we've no car for driving around all over the place. So, tonight when Kody called me tonight at midnight and wanted to go be social and have a little French food, what else could we do but walk in to downtown Georgetown and land at the old standby, Bistro Français?

Mind you, I like Bistro Francais, but I just wish we had more options for late night variety.




Anyway, I had a tasty Tropiques salad with avocado, hearts of palm, and artichoke hearts with a remoulade type dressing. Kody had an omelette with fine herbs, Swiss cheese, and smoked salmon accompanied by French fries, and a glass of the house sauvignon blanc. Lovely, crusty, French rolls and butter were served alongside.

And, what would dinner out with be without his traditional liquor glass picture?



I suppose I should go to bed. I hate going to bed when the sun is coming up.

Zorba's Cafe, Washington, D.C.

Happy Passover!

Today is the first day of Passover (seasonal felicitations to any of you Jewish readers!), which means the observance started last night at sundown. My friend Eugene has some Russian Jewish ancestors, so we decided it would be fun to have a meal with traditional Passover foods, but we didn't want to do a formal religious Seder meal (the original "Lord's Supper," for you Christian readers). Several of the nicer restaurants in town have special Passover menus this year, including Felix in Adams-Morgan, Gallileo in the West End, and Rosa Mexicana in Penn Quarter, but they were booked up with reservations (not to mention pretty expensive!). Nonplussed, we looked for a place with roast lamb on the menu.

And, we happened upon Zorba's Cafe, just across from the Q Street exit of the Dupont Circle Metro station. Zorba's is always a fun place for a quick and inexpensive meal. They are a rather casual place where diners go to a counter on the lower level to order, pay, and pick up their own food, then they can select their own table on the main level, upstairs, or out on the patio where we chose to eat. The best thing about Zorba's, though, is the "home cooked" food from old Greek family recipes.

This place has some of the best kotósoupa avgolémono I've tasted. This is a simple chicken, vegetable, and rice soup enriched with eggs and lemon juice—a very classic Greek dish—and theirs is always well balanced, hearty, and delicious. They didn't have any matzo ball soup (matzo is not a traditional Greek food!), but we brought our own box of matzo crackers to eat in lieu of the leavened rolls Zorba's serves.

For our main course we had a sort of "blue plate special," their arnáki sto foúrno. They roast a leg of lamb and pull the tender meat from the bone and allow it to mingle with its own natural juices. They serve it on top of a mound of lightly tomato-sauced Greek pasta called manéstra, which looks like large, oversized grains of rice. Along with the lamb and pasta is a large serving of Greek salad with crumbled feta cheese and black Greek olives. Along with our meal, we split a carafe of Greek red wine, since the Passover tradition is to drink four glasses of wine with dinner!

Oh, I'm really curious about the "Mexican Passover" food at Rosa Mexicana, so if anybody is feeling bold and adventuresome and wants to try it out, let me know.

Double dinners

Ended up going to Annie's Paramount Steak House with Kevin after lodge last night for a martini and fried mushrooms.

No sooner did I get home and online to check mail did I find Ian, who was in a social mood and after we IMmed for an hour, we decided to meet at Au Pied Bistro in Georgetown for an early early morning breakfast. Well, I walked all the way to Au Pied, whose web site says they are open til 3 a.m. on Monday nights, only to find them closed. So, we wandered over to the nearly-always-open Bistro Français, where I had a deliciously fluffy and tender omelette aux fines herbs with an order of thin, crispy pommes frites and some handmade mayonnaise for dipping. Ian was going to do a salade du marché avec chevre chaud but changed his mind at the last minute to order glacée de chocolat. After leaving the bistro, we loitered a bit on the streets of Georgetown watching the local constabulary turning doughnuts in the streets and racing off to their various coffee breaks with their lights flashing, before finally deciding to head our separate ways and go home to bed.

Little Viet Garden Crabhouse, Arlington, VA

Leo has been working a lot of late hours and weekends at the office lately, so when he was still at the office at 8 p.m. one night this past week, I made him take a dinner break and meet me in the Clarendon neighborhood of Arlington. He wanted something other than Chinese or Thai food for a change, so I was thinking the international variety in Clarendon, not to mention a Hard Times Cafe with great American chili, would give him some variety. He selected Little Viet Garden Crabhouse, a Vietnamese place. Well, at least it wasn't Chinese or Thai. LOL

Little Viet Garden is a fun cafe with both indoor seating and a very large outdoor covered patio. It was just a little too chilly that night for al fresco dining, so we stayed indoors. Leo started with an order of fried spring rolls. Then he had the seafood special, a double kebab of shrimp, salmon, and a single scallop which ended up on the floor. I had the bun cha gio, the traditional Vietnamese salad with vermicelli noodles and a chopped pork eggroll.




I want to go back to Little Viet Garden soon for their all-you-can-eat crab feast, featuring she-crabs for $25 and he-crabs for $30. Sounds delicious.

Circle Bistro, Washington, D.C.

After getting tired of the delivery pizza Leo had been ordering us every night this weekend, last night I decided that we should go out for a proper dinner after The West Wing was over. We walked up to Washington Circle where we went to the Circle Bistro in the One Washington Circle Hotel. It was still busy, even at that hour of the evening.

I was determined to have a proper dinner with four courses (an affectation drilled in to me during my Oxford days), so I opted to stick with multiple appetizers, since non-à la carte restaurants serve too much food with their main courses. Unfortunately, some of the things I wanted to order were no longer available last night, particularly a duck confit. Nonetheless, I started with a starkly green broccoli soup with an intense explosion of broccoli flavor. It was supposed to have been accompanied by a truffled custard, but they were out of that, and I chose to have the soup anyway; I noticed they charged me the full amount for the soup, though. My second course was the pan roasted wild mushroom salad, which was another intense explosion of flavors, this time from the mushrooms tossed with some delicious applewood smoked bacon served on a bed of frisee and topped with a poached egg. With these two courses, I drank a white Spanish Escencia Diviña Pontevedra 2004 albariño.

My third course was the crispy veal sweetbreads "General Tso," three sweetbreads which had been sauteed til crisp on the outside and still tender and moist inside dressed in a sweet Chinese "General Tso" sauce and served on a bed of salty, wilted, baby spinach. The combination of sweet, sour, salt, and bitter was classically Asian. For a fourth course, I selected a three-cheese sampler plate with a soft goat cheese, a rich triple-cream cow milk semi-soft cheese, and a lovely blue sheep milk cheese, served with a basket of thinly sliced French baguette bread. Our waiter selected a German 2003 Lingenfelder riesling for me to drink with these courses.

Meanwhile, Leo started with a braised leek and Vermont goat cheese tartlet accompanied by a mound of vinegared curly endive and a glass of white Touraine sauvignon blanc. His next course was a square piece of grilled rockfish resting on a bed of mashed potatoes and surrounded by a tomato sauce which he praised as tasting just like a dish his mother makes at home; he drank a classic dry Australian 2003 Hope chardonnay with that course. I thought the chardonnay was quite good. For dessert, he had a mediocre dark chocolate and chocolate mousse parfait (I'd encouraged him to do the lemon pound cake with lavender essence and wild honey sorbet, but he didn't listen) with a glass of a very unusual red Spanish Silvano Garcia Dulce Monastrell 2003. The monastrell had a powerful taste of grape skins in a silken eiswine-type viscosity; it had a sweetness to it without being cloying.

And thus was our dinner.

Bistro Français, Georgetown, D.C.

I had a wonderful evening at the L'Elisir d'Amore last night with my friend Ian, who wandered down from Georgetown U to join me. After the opera, we walked along the river towards Washington Harbor, then up to Wisconsin and M to do just a touch of shopping (he was looking for a birthday card), after which we ended up at Bistro Français for dessert. Ian had the glace à la vanille and I had a tasty gâteau d'abricot avec crème anglaise followed by coffee.

Penang, Washington, D.C.

Leo dragged me off to the downtown Penang for a late dinner tonight. I started with a seaweed and seafood soup and he started with roti telur, an Indian-style pancake folded around an egg and onion mix with a chicken curry dipping sauce.




For a main course, I once again had the sarang burung, the addictive taro root basket filled with seafood, vegetables, and cashews I've had on each of my previous visits. Leo had the Singapore char mee hoon, a rice noodle dish with spicy seafood and pork sausage.

For dessert, we each had a traditional folded pancake, he the peanut filling and me the coconut filling.

L & N Seafood Grill, Arlington, VA

A shopping excursion to Pentagon City led Leo and me to pop in to L & N Seafood Grill (way up on the top floor of the mall) for a quickie dinner. Leo had the shrimp fettucine and I had the fish and chips. Our waitress, a very personable woman who was really flirting with Leo, suggested that I order the fish and chips "well done," since she reported the batter was often way too doughy without that special request—it was a good call, and the battered fish turned out perfectly with her guidance.




We arrived ten minutes before "Happy Hour" was over and we ordered the $3 happy hour margaritas. Our waitress decided that we'd probably want a second cocktail, so she brought each of us two at the happy hour price. Often during happy hours, cheap cocktails are watered down, but that was definitely not the case here!

Red Sage, Washington, D.C.

After walking down to the Tidal Basin to look at the cherry blossoms, my friend Kody and I wandered downtown for an early dinner. I'd wanted to go to Butterfield 9, but when we arrived, they were closed for a private party. Alas. So, we looked across the street and decided to try Red Sage. Red Sage is an interesting establishment on the corner of a big office building. The street level floor is a large bar and dining area featuring Mexican food in their "Border Cafe," while the downstairs is a slightly more elegant version with multiple dining rooms in similar decor and with a much more expensive menu I'll call American with a Mexican flair for what they call "The Grill." We opted for the Mexican food upstairs.

The decor can best be described as a contemporary attempt to create a Southwest geographic feature feel. Tables were free form (ours looked almost like the shape of a grand piano) and there was a huge "cloud" or something hanging from the ceiling over the bar area which I thought looked more like an upside down mesa. They chose a palate of deep sunset colors for the tables and chairs. Designs are modern, but comfortable; our oddly shaped booth was quite private and quite cozy.

Red Sage has an interesting take on Mexican food. Lots of trendy ingredients such as mushrooms and goat cheese have been incorporated into traditional food forms. There were a lot of cross-cultural Hispanic items, and I saw a lot of seviches and Cuban sandwiches on the menu. They also have a significant tequila selection and all the accompanying varieties of margaritas.

We opted to actually order chips and salsa for an appetizer. No free chips here—they cost $4.95. I ordered the chorizo-stuffed masa empanadas, but the waitress said they'd been taken off the menu. Alas. We got a large basket of warm tortilla chips, half yellow corn and half blue corn, and a plate with three small ramekins of "Fiery Pueblo Salsas": a black bean, a green tomatillo, and a red tomato version. The green salsa had the most jalapeño kick to it, but none were "fiery." All three of the salsa I thought tasted sweet.

For our main courses, Kody had the mushroom and goat cheese enchiladas with spinach and grilled onions and with a side of green rice. I had the "Border Platter," a combination plate of a chicken enchilada, a mushroom enchilada, and a mushroom tamale with red chile mole. Tiny ramekins of beans accompanied each entree. I thought the food was good and flavorful, but I couldn't help but notice that back in Oklahoma, we would have gotten twice the food for half the price. Of course, we have real Mexicans back there, and we don't have to import chefs from New York to create "Mexican" dishes.





There were a lot of interesting desserts on the menu, but we opted to spend our dining dollars on additional margaritas. I'll probably regret it in the morning. But, what would a dinner out with Kody be without a gratuitous Kody-holding-a-liquor-glass pic?

Cafe Berlin, Washington, D.C.

Last night I got to have an impromptu dinner with one of my politico friends up on the Hill who always manages to have an unusual insight into the behind the scenes workings of the party before the press figures things out. We decided to do something there in the neighborhood; I suggested the always-competent Cafe Berlin and he acquiesced, saying he'd always wanted to try it. So, off we went, braving the light rain which started falling (a significant event, since it wasn't so long ago when this friend and I went to lunch on a rainy day in Friendship Heights and he showed up sans umbrella and looking ever so much like a poor, drenched cat!).

Cafe Berlin was busy enough (wow, a Tuesday night, too!) that we were seated in the back dining room. Along the way, a diner passes through the bar and then next to the wickedly decadent dessert table as they wind their way through the floral tablecloth-covered tables to the large back room.

My friend started with a 1/2 liter of a German Bitburger beer whilst I drank a very ungermanic iced tea. Dinner was simple. He ordered the Sauerbraten and I ordered the Ungarisches Goulash.

The Sauerbraten had a stunning presentation. Slices of the marinated beef roast in the braising liquid rested in the bottom of the plate while a large baseball-sized Knödel—a potato dumpling— spiked with carrot spears and flat-leafed Italian parsley sat amidst the meat. My friend reported that the Sauerbraten (beef roast marinated and braised in wine vinegar) was very good and that the Knödel was "interesting," having the texture of a stiff cream of wheat; that texture is expected, though, since the dumplings are usually made from a combination of mashed potatoes and grated raw potatoes before they are seasoned and poached.



My goulash was good, but oddly unsatisfying. Now, this German "Hungarian goulash" is very different from the thick, macaroni goulash of my childhood; rather, it is very tender, stewed meat served atop Spätzle, or free-form German noodles, in broth. While everything tasted fine, I found the serving size of the meat to be a little small and the stewing liquid surrounding the Spätzle was very much that: liquid. I think perhaps I would have preferred the liquid to be thickened into more of a gravy.



Both entrees were accompanied by little bowls of clove-redolent red cabbage.

Both of us showed remarkable self-discipline and restraint and declined dessert. It's always a sacrifice to do that here, but I'm already wearing my "fat clothes," so it's a necessity.

Cafe Berlin is one of the few places I enjoy in the Capitol Hill-Union Station area. They do a great job of showing how German food need not be "heavy" and bland. I'm also pleased to see that they are staying busy and getting lots of mid-week diners, as by the time we were getting ready to leave, our dining room had filled up to the point that ambient crowd noise made it difficult to hear (of course, that was mainly due to a new table with three young married couples where the young women were "trying too hard" with their forced laughter at their husbands' lame jokes).

Ich bin ein Berliner!

Boys' night out at Annie's Steakhouse

Kam Fong Seafood Restaurant, Washington, D.C.

An unlikely quartet of us gathered in Chinatown Friday night as roommate Leo and I joined Robert and Jon after they called to invite us to come see the new Bed Bath and Beyond store. We found a nice place for dinner where Leo and I had not yet dined, and it turned out to be really good.

Kam Fong Seafood Restaurant is on Seventh Street, just north of the CVS Pharmacy across from the Chinatown Metro stop. A bakery and live seafood display (mostly lobsters and eels) occupies the outer lobby before diners go in to the main restaurant. Hong Kong native Leo was able to order for us in Cantonese.

Jon is a boring, unadventurous Georgia country boy, so he refused to eat "good" foods with the rest of us. He opted for a very Georgia meal of fried egg rolls with orange duck sauce, a won ton soup, and a plate of pork fried rice (fried rice is actually a snack or "junk food" in China, not a proper entree).



The rest of us enjoyed a fabulous repast personally selected by Leo. We started with a delicious cold sliced jellyfish on thinly sliced smoked pork knuckles, served with a hot pepper-spiced vinegar as a condiment sauce. I thought both were quite good, and Leo thought that it was quite authentic.



Next, the main courses began to arrive, starting with a large shrimp, pineapple, and walnut dish in a sweetened cream sauce served atop lettuce leaves. There was a big plate of beef satay with strips of green peppers and onions, and another big plate of roasted duck. Steamed white rice and a pot of hot tea were complimentary with the meal. Robert and Leo both also drank Tsing Tao beers.

Zed's Ethiopean Cuisine, Georgetown, Washington, D.C.

After struggling with old office and cell numbers from another state and then an old cell number from my "early D.C. phase," my friend Isha finally tracked me down this evening to announce that she was in town and wanted to go to dinner "someplace different," courtesy of her office expense account. That can be a difficult assignment when dealing with an international businesswoman who has lived all over the place, but I know her tastes when she lived in Tulsa were not particularly adventurous, and I figured her London experiences were not much different, so, I picked an Ethiopean place. I was right; the Ethiopean cuisine was a new experience for her and she actually liked it.

Now, Washington has a plethora of good—and even excellent—Ethiopean restaurants, some of which have big followings. I wanted things to be "just so" for Isha, though, which meant we had to go to Georgetown to Zed's Ethiopean Cuisine. Zed's is one of the better known Ethiopean places in D.C., largely because of their fine food and excellent service, but also because they are alleged to be the only place the Ethiopean Embassy will use to cater their formal embassy events. What I particularly like about Zed's is their elegance; they seem to be the only "white tablecloth" Ethiopean restaurant in town.

We started with two appetizers we shared, kaisa and shrimp tibbs. The kaisa is a soft, traditional, cottage-type cheese enriched with butter and herbs; the shrimp tibbs are pieces of shrimp with sauteed onions, red pepper, and garlic in a tomatoey sauce; both of these appetizers are eaten with the fingers with pieces of Ethiopean injera bread.

Since this was Isha's first visit to an Ethiopean establishment, I thought the best thing to do would be to order sampler plates, giving her a broad variety of tastes and flavors. We ordered one beef and chicken sampler and one vegetarian sampler. They all came on one big injera-lined platter for the whole table to share. I'm not sure what everything was on the platter, but it appeared that we had a chicken and hard boiled egg doro watt, several beef stews including kaey watt, alicha, and segana gomen; chopped collard greens with garlic, a delicious cabbage and carrot tikile gomen, a stew of green beans, cauliflower, and carrots, a chickpea puree, and a few other things I can't recall. They also brought us a basket of rolled up pieces of injera which we could use to pick up and eat our food.

We washed down our food with big cans of Tusker Beer from Kenya, which was a pleasant lager.

Unusually for an Ethiopean restaurant, Zed's offers Italian style desserts. While Ethiopia was one of the few African countries that was not colonized by European powers in the 18th and 19th centuries, there was a brief period in the very late 19th centiry when Italy had a presence in Ethiopia in the area known as Eritrea. Isha had a cappuccino tartufo (ice cream ball) and I had a piece of grandmother cake, which was a lemon tart-like cake; they also had profiteroles and gelatos on the menu.

As expected, we had a very pleasant evening at Zed's. The food was excellent and the service was gracious, efficient, and professional. Zed's is a great place for Ethiopean "first-timers" as well as for those seeking a more elegant Ethiopean experience. Yes, it's a little more expensive than the places in Adams-Morgan or on U Street, but this is Georgetown and I think Zed's continues to be worth the money.

Potbelly Sandwich Works, Washington, D.C.

There's something uneasy about eating at a restaurant called Potbelly Sandwich Works when a person is a little overweight wearing some clothes that are just a little bit too tight, especially when lunching with colleagues who are young and svelte. Nevertheless, there are limited options in the downtown area near the White House for people not on expense accounts, and we've done Cosí and Breadline far too often, so this afforded us a welcome change.

Our first problem, though, was going to luncheon at 12:45; that's still in the midst of the lunch rush. We found ourselves standing in line out on the sidewalk just to get in to order. The staff at Potbelly, though, was unexpectedly organized and efficient, and they were taking orders quickly and preparing toasted sandwiches in amazingly short time.

Potbelly is a national franchise sandwich shop with stores concentrated primarily in the Great Lakes area, with others in Texas and the VA-DC-MD area. They serve mostly toasted sandwiches and hot soups in small, comfortable stores with folksy decor.

I had a toasted tuna salad and Swiss cheese sandwich on a little whole wheat sub roll with a big, crunchy, dill pickle and a bottle of Orangina. It was a decent lunch for the type and price point of this kind of restaurant. My colleagues had a roast beef and provolone sandwich and a meatball marinara sandwich, plus chocolate and strawberry milk shakes.

Now, it's back to work. It's warmish out with a touch of wind, but the skies are a bit grey and overcast. Perhaps spring will come soon.

La Creperie, Arlington VA

Had another lovely dinner tonight with Oklahoma friend Kody, who met me at the train station this evening when I got back in to D.C. from Baltimore. We metroed down to Pentagon City to do some wine shopping at World Market and then grab some dinner. We wandered and wandered around Pentagon Row looking for that little Vietnamese restaurant and couldn't find it, so we decided to pop in to La Creperie. La Creperie is, of course, French!

We started with glasses of Merlot Michel Picard while we purused the menu. Dinner began with us splitting an order of pâté et cornichons, which was a pleasant country-style pate spiked with pistachios and accompanied by several cornichon pickles and little cocktail onions with a basket of a sliced baguette.

For our plats, Kody had a crêpe Parisienne, which was a great big crepe filled with spinach and brie cheese with a basil sauce drizzled across the crepe, which he said he liked. I had the crêpe au Merguez, a crepe stuffed with bits of spicy French sausage. onions, and green peppers with a bit of cheese and a tomato sauce. I liked the sausage, but I would have liked it to be a little hotter and spicier; the French in France, however, do not.

For dessert we split a crêpe Suzette, the classic Grand Marnier-flavored dessert, this time served with a little scoop of vanilla ice cream. Kody drank a Siema Pinot Grigio and I had an Henri Marchant champagne. The picture below is of Kody with his pinot grigio and what's left of the devastated crêpe Suzette.

Belga Cafe, Washington, D.C.

Tuesday night, I metroed over to Eastern Market to meet my friend Kody for dinner. Kody is an Oklahoma boy I used to know before I moved to D.C. and he's here this semester at Georgetown University to take a couple of classes while he does an internship at an unspeakably unfortunate placement (but he volunteered for it and likes it). We'd originally planned to go to Montmartre (Kody loves all things French), but on the Metro ride over, I ran in to a friend who suggested Kody and I go instead to Belga Cafe. That was a wonderful idea!

So, once Kody arrived, he thought Belgian food would be fun, so off we went down Barracks Row to Belga Cafe.

Belga Cafe has been open a year now, so they were having a special four course prix fixe menu for $49, including some unusual Belgian beers and free souvenir beer glasses as an "anniversary special." It's this week only, though, so you Belgian beer fans should race right over. The special menu looked good, but we decided instead to order à la carte from the menu.

Kody opted for the le vrai steak Belge, a Belgian-style steak served with Belgian fries (the original pommes frites, for you French fries lovers) and mayonnaise for dipping, plus a green salad with a simple vinaigrette. On the waiter's strong recommendation, I had the waterzooi van vis, a waterzooi of fish. For those unfamiliar with Belgian cooking terms, a waterzooi is a stew with seasoned stock enriched with egg yolks and cream. In this case, the fish was accompanied by some mussels and julienned threads of winter vegetables; I also detected an anise flavor, so they probably used some celery root or fennel in the mix.




For dessert, I had wanted to try the asparagus ice cream with asparagus beignets, but, alas, they were out, and nothing else on the dessert list struck my fancy, so I abstained. Kody tried the three-way crème brulée with one chocolate pot de crème and two vanilla brulées differently scented.



Kody hadn't had Belgian beers before, so he decided to sample several.





He also decided to sample a poire William eau de vie....



......and an Osborne port.



I had a "Delirium Tremens" beer. It tasted like beer. I also had a port after dinner, and it was good; my only complaint was that the bartender served the ports in grappa glasses.

Anyway, it was a great evening and I'm looking forward to dining out with Kody again soon.

Ruby Tuesday's, Silver Spring MD

Monday night, Miroslav, Svet, and I wandered up to Silver Spring to a Ruby Tuesday's for a late snack. All I got was iced tea, since I was still full from dinner, but Miro ordered one of those enormous dessert thingies with a brownie, ice cream, whipped cream, and a cherry that was served in an oversized beer schooner and certainly would have been enough to serve two to four people; he's lucky he's 6'6" and big enough to eat all of that!

Darling Svet seemed to have confused Ruby Tuesday's with one of the gourmet restaurants he usually frequents, and kept complaining about his chips and cheese dip, somehow thinking that they would actually use real cheese instead of "cheese food" in the dip. Finally after him whining enough about the cheese and him thinking that it was too spicy (did they actually put spice in that??), the waitress offered to replace the queso with the spinach dip, which he accepted. I guess it was okay, since he ate it all. Some day I'm going to have to fix him a nice, properly spicy meal.

Salmon and strings

Last Monday evening we went to the Grand Master's homecoming at East Gate Lodge up in Takoma Park. A huge contingent of Grand Lodge officers showed up to join the members and guests. They started with dinner for everyone, featuring tasty slabs of baked salmon, wild and brown rice, roasted new potatoes, grilled asparagus, and a melange of sauteed squashes and onions, plus big tossed salads with diced marinated chicken breast and shredded parmesan cheese with a balsamic vinaigrette. Some kind of nice looking chicken dish was an alternative to the salmon, but Miroslav and I both had salmon, so I wasn't sure what the chicken was. They had cheese and water crackers before the meal. I'm not sure if the meal was provided by a caterer or by in-house cooks, since they were actually using the kitchen there.

The Casablanca String Quartet from "The President's Own" Marine Chamber Orchestra (the people who play for state dinners and such) provided classical background music during the meal, and played as the featured entertainers later in the evening during the formal program. These four Marine sergeants all have interesting training and experience, including degrees from places like the Juilliard School and the New England Conservatory. I've often wondered if military band and orchestra members get any kind of perks or salary supplements, since they all seem to have college degrees and would presumably be eligible for commissions as officers. Does anybody know?

During the formal program, the string quartet played all four movements of Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusick, which was kind of fun. Svet was about to go crazy because his boss was sitting a couple of chairs to our right and was singing along with the music, and Svet wanted to shush him but didn't dare say that to the boss!

We escaped at the end of the public portion of the program before the lodge had their formal business meeting, so we missed whatever dessert they were having after the session.