Bistro Français, Georgetown, D.C.

Any of you who've been in Bistro Français the past decade or two ever noticed this big poster up high on the wall in the window-side dining area? I finally took a picture of it last night.....does it look like Katie Couric to you?

Once Laurent and I had pushed our way through the Georgetown Hallowe'en crowds last night and made our way into the heart of the party district, we stopped into Bistro Français for a brief respite. I'm starting to think that Bistro Français is becoming my Hallowe'en night tradition! :-/

They do have this convenient 10:30 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. "early bird special" (they also have one from like 5-7 p.m.) offering a three course meal plus a glass of wine for just $20, so that seemed as good as anything.

"Superman" Laurent started off with the mousse de foie de volaille au sherry a pâté-like mousse of chicken liver served with French cornichons and potentially spreadable on the restaurant's baguette bread. It always amuses me when he orders pâtés and things like this mousse, since he professes to violently dislike fried liver and onions because of the taste.


I got the moules niçoise, about seven or eight mussels with butter, garlic, and black olives that had been baked just a hair too long, but were still flavorful.


We both ended up with fish for our main courses. Laurent chose the thon mariné au poivre vert, a grilled tuna steak served with a salad, and I got one of the daily specials, a grilled sea bass on a mirror of Nantua (lobster) sauce with mashed potatoes and this delicious little leek custard timbale.



While we were dining, a small party came in for dinner that included Tarzan, clad only in his breechcloth and a really, really bad wig. At least he was one of the few bare torsoed revelers last night who actually had the body for the costume. However, Tarzan wasn't willing to put on a shirt, so I think the manager asked them to leave.

The waiter brought around the pastry tray for our dessert selections. Laurent got a lemon tart and I got a surprisingly good apple tart.



We walked home after dinner and the streets were still full of people running around and being wild and crazy. Just another Hallowe'en in Georgetown.

Thai Kitchen, Washington, D.C.

Last night while Ryan was off to watch the infamous annual high heels race, Laurent and I stayed home to watch "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" on television, then we walked up to Thai Kitchen to take advantage of their late weeknight dinner specials.

Laurent started with the tom kha soup, mushrooms, chicken, and vegetables in a spicy hot and sweet coconut milk broth.


I did the Hallowe'en version of the same, the tom kha pumpkin, a vegetarian version with tofu and chunks of fresh pumpkin. It's a nice soup, though a little milder than usual, I thought.


For his main course, Laurent got the pad kra tiem prik Thai, a beef dish with roasted garlic and a brown sauce, artfully decorated with halves cherry tomatoes on carved cucumber slices.


I got the gaeng dang, a red curry (thinking red was the color of blood—very appropriate for Hallowe'en Eve!) with pork, bamboo, tomatoes, and fresh basil, and garnished with sauteed zucchini slices. Both dishes came with steamed white rice.



Laurent did his obligatory Kody Pose™ with his Thai iced tea, which also gave him the chance to model his Hallowe'en costume and his freshly painted orange fingernails!

The Wild Fork, Tulsa, Okla.

Tulsa was a mess Saturday. It was the time of the annual Tulsa Run, so the downtown and Brookside streets were all in various states of closure to accommodate the crowds of runners and spectators, much the same as D.C. is today with the Marine Corps Marathon (and why I stayed home from church this morning). That notwithstanding, amidst all the mess and uncertainty, my parents drove me to Tulsa yesterday morning and dropped me off at Tony's apartment so he and I could be social and go eat before I flew home to Washington. There were several places Tony and I wanted to go for brunch, but we couldn't get through the police lines and the runners. We did, eventually, make it to the Palace Cafe over on Cherry Street, one of my very favorite places in Tulsa, but they were closed for brunch, and not planning to open until 5 p.m. Alas. Then we tried to make it down to the plethora of restaurants (including several new ones) in Brookside, but the main street going through Brookside was part of the run route, so that precluded that idea.

So, we ended up in the once-exclusive shopping center Utica Square at The Wild Fork by default. Tony likes the place a lot (largely, I think, because his sister works there), my cousin goes there a bunch, and it was the site of important events in Ryan's life (I think the last time he and I went in early 2004 was the last time I ate there), but I've always been rather lukewarm to the place. I should probably be more tolerant of the establishment, since a women who went to elementary school with me, owns and runs the place in conjunction with the oil company that owns Utica Square and others, but my early experiences there always left something to be desired.

In fact, about a decade ago when I was writing professional restaurant reviews for a Tulsa newspaper, I expressed on the first anniversary of the restaurant my complete surprise that they were still open and in business. You see, when they first opened, it was at the height of that awful "world fusion" phase of culinary endeavor, and the young women running the place didn't have the flair to pull off fusion. I had meals there where wonderful ingredients had been well prepared, but then combined into hideous food abominations that I found very depressing. I always thought that they were trying too hard to be too creative. Somehow, though, they had the oil company's money behind them, and that got them through those difficult early years until we grew out of that fusion fad and the menus metamorphosized into something more appropriate for Tulsa tastes. They've continued to evolve to the point that I would now describe the food as upscale Oklahoman and contemporary American.

So, I acquiesced to the Wild Fork, not expecting much. The food was actually much better than I anticipated. The prices remain very expensive for Tulsa, though no longer shocking to me after my D.C. tenure. The service is still very, very slow—that much hasn't changed. They aren't as snooty as they used to be, though.

Even though the place was busy both inside and out, we immediately got a table, since they had a two-top in the middle dining room (the people standing in line were in larger groups). I was immediately struck by the art in this room. Now, for years when this place first opened, they were just as noted for their unusual art as they were for their unusual food. One dining room had an entire wall of identically shaped female torso molds that had each been differently and fantastically painted. Well, what was it that struck my eye on this visit? Paintings. Large, over-sized canvases, a series specially commissioned by the Wild Fork, each depicting.....semi-trailer trucks.



We started off ordering bloody Marys. Tony was very much in need of some hair-of-the-dog. It took forever for them to arrive, and the refills took even longer! The official excuse on the refills, though, was that they had to make more bloody mix. The drinks were okay. They didn't poor heavily and they forgot that bloodies are supposed to have celery sticks and no olives, but otherwise they were drinkable.

All the waiting time, though, gave us plenty of time to talk business. Tony is a production editor for an oil and gas industry publishing house, and one of my specialty areas when I do copy editing and proofreading is petroleum engineering textbooks and petroleum industry trade publications.

And, Tony, who was the one who introduced me to Kody years ago, did his own Kody Pose™ with his bloody Mary!



Finally, the food arrived. Tony had the Atlantic salmon frittata, a big, plate-sized item some of which he had to take home in a doggy bag. It appeared to include potatoes, tomatoes, green onions, and Italian cheese, and a biscuit and gravy came on the side. He obviously liked it, since he chose to take the leftovers home (though I suspect that he has ordered that before!).


I had two scrambled eggs with chicken-fried steak, cheese grits, and a biscuit and gravy, and this is where I was so unexpectedly, pleasantly surprised with the evolution of the food. The grits were dreamy—smooth, velvety, rich, redolent with cheese, and wonderfully good. The gravy was flavorful, creamy, and very well seasoned. And, the steak was fork-tender and covered in a very nice, well balanced and spiced, breading that was light yet perfect for the dish. They used the same gravy on the steak as for the biscuits.


After the meal, Tony had coffee.

So, I made it through my Wild Fork dining experience, but it went well enough that I won't mind having to eat there again in the future. And, if Tony can get recipes from his sister, I'll be especially happy.

Casa Tamales, Bartlesville, Okla.

Oh, I got to stop by Casa Tamales in Bartlesville for the first time in a couple of years. This is one of those tiny, family owned and operated, hole in the wall kind of places with amazingly good food. They make the most wonderful, real, Mexican tamales there! It's got to be the best in Oklahoma for tamales: big, long things with flavorful pork in the hand-formed masa, rolled up in corn husks, tied, and steamed. Yum! I picked up half a dozen Friday and took them home to the family for lunch. They have other things there, too, but it's the tamales I always go for. They also make their own salsas, a mild tomato with bright flavors, a hot tomato with more complexity to it, and a very hot green tomatillo sauce with a unique but exquisite flavor.

Good food from Oklahoma

Foot long coney and tater tots from Sonic Drive-In
headquartered in Oklahoma City

Outlaws Chophouse, Bartlesville, Okla.

Tonight we celebrated my father's 80th birthday. He adamantly did not want a party, just a small family gathering. So, I took my parents out to dinner, and gave my dad his choice of restaurants. I suggested places like The Inn at Jarrett Farms, Copper at the Price Tower (the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed building), Sterling's Grille, plus several nice places in Tulsa, but he picked Outlaws' Chophouse. This is the new place I visited on my last trip to Oklahoma over Labor Day weekend. Apparently, my parents have a circle of friends who know some of the owners of the place, and they all go there all too frequently. So, off we went to Outlaws.

Outlaw's is a fine every-day sort of place, but it continues to be in my view merely serviceable food and is totally not a "destination" restaurant (some diners in Oklahoma are). It's very casual and has Oklahoma style diner food, though just a tiny bit more upscale. Country-Western music (tonight it was Toby Keith, Garth Brooks, and Clint Black) plays in the background. The wait staff is casually attired in white t-shirts and blue jeans, and they are all very chatty with their tables.

My dad ordered the chicken-fried steak with French fries and gravy.


The nightly special was prime rib. My mother got that, with a baked sweet potato. I asked the waitress to pick between a ribeye and a K.C. strip steak for me (they were of equal price), but she chose to bring me the prime rib, which, being the special, was actually cheaper than the steaks. Eh. I got with it a tasty potato that had been baked in rock salt. While my mother loved her prime rib, I was less than impressed; it seemed to me to taste of meat tenderizing enzyme, had little beef flavor not in the marinade, and the bowl of au jus had a weird, almost seaweed taste. I asked for horseradish sauce and got a little cup of grated horseradish; that was fine, since it was strong enough to overpower the flavors of the meat. I suppose I shouldn't complain too much about the food—the bill for the three of us was about the same as it costs to feed one in D.C.


As is typical in Oklahoma, my dad got a free dessert for his birthday. The multi-layer brownie dessert they usually offer was unavailable, so they brought him an apple dumpling with vanilla ice cream.


I ordered their white-trashy but definitely tasty "Outlaw Pie," a layered thing with a sugar cookie crust, chocolate pudding, whipped cream, pecans, and more chocolate (I think the recipe originated with Jello Pudding and Cool Whip).


They seemed to have a good time at dinner, as did our waitress, a pretty high school girl who was telling us about playing basketball and showing us the brace she has to wear on her ankle.



And, as one might expect with long, octogenarian dinner parties, we were home by 6:30 p.m.! LOL

Thai Place, Washington, D.C.

After Mass Sunday, Laurent and I walked down Pennsylvania to Thai Place for a quick lunch. Laurent had the coconut chicken soup to start; I got a shredded papaya salad.




For main courses, Laurent got the beef pad thai. I got a dish called rama longsong, which is a yellow curry with chicken and peanut sauce served atop steamed spinach.

Café la Ruche, Georgetown, D.C.

Our friend Jon joined us for the symphony Friday night over at the Kennedy Center. After the performance, we walked along the river and made our way through the surprisingly-deserted Washington Harbor, then up the hills of Georgetown over to Café la Ruche for an aprés-concert supper.

Both of the boys ended up ordering croque monsieur sandwiches, fancy-sounding things that are really nothing more than the French version of a ham and cheese sandwich made with French toast and then the cheese on top instead of inside. They came with a large serving of mixed greens dressed with a hand-whipped mayonnaise-based French dressing.



I didn't order any food, deciding to save myself for the dessert course. The desserts at La Ruche are decadent and renowned, and they do the most evil thing and display them in this big refrigerated glass case in the back of the restaurant. When the appropriate time arrived, I selected a napoleon topped with fresh strawberries and blueberries and garnished with stiff crème chantilly.



Ryan got the mousse au chocolat, a beautiful presentation looking almost like a dark chocolate bombe arranged with strawberry quarters and lots of whipped cream. Jon sampled a little of both.

Daily bread

This afternoon I was downtown by the Department of Justice and walked by a restaurant with tonight's bread stacked up in the window. I had to take a picture.

Stars Bistro and Bar, Washington, D.C.

After Mass at St. John's yesterday morning, our friend Max took us to Stars Bistro and Bar for brunch. Stars is actually a renaming and continuation of the restaurant formerly known as Mimi's An American Bistro, a place we used to go a lot until they changed ownership and the food and service quality majorly deteriorated. Yesterday I found the brunch menu options to be rather limited, but my food was excellent, and everyone at the table enjoyed their food (once it arrived). We also had a charming, friendly, and attentive waitress, but the restaurant was understaffed, there was no bartender, and there seemed to be issues back in the kitchen, much the same as the problems we had previously experienced.

We started with bloody Marys. I'm not thrilled with their recipe. They use a very bright, fruity tomato juice base, and I cringed as I watched our waitress back behind the bar pouring olive juice into the shakers. They created the "spice" with lots of Tabasco sauce instead of having spices in the mix, and the liquid was decidedly lacking in horseradish, an ingredient I've always considered essential. The glasses were rimmed with a rather bland paprika mix, and the glasses garnished with a lime wedge on the rim and two impaled olives on a stick laying across the top of the glass—no celery stalk! I had two bloodies (tall ones, too, served in pilsner glasses), and wasn't buzzed in the least, so they were pouring light on the vodka. Given the $8 per drink price, the bloodies were a bit disappointing.

Anyway, it being brunch, we went straight to the food. Max and Laurent both ordered the eggs Benedict. They both said they were good. What I noticed was that the dish was not garnished in any way and the English muffins looked either very thin or somewhat squashed. They also were rather dwarfed on the oversized plate. French fries came with each serving; the menu said they came with fruit or home fries (home fries are thicker cut than French fries).


Ryan opted for a bacon cheddar cheeseburger. It was presented as a thick stack surmounted by a cherry pepper. He chose the salad instead of French fries, but he did so after specifically asking if they had ranch dressing and getting a confirmation; when the expediter brought the plate, he said they didn't have ranch and they'd put a balsamic vinaigrette on the salad greens. That, of course, is a major restaurant faux pas, as they should have asked before bringing out the plate with already-dressed greens. So, Ryan left the salad on the plate and had the waitress bring him some French fries instead.


I chose the grilled steak and asparagus. I got two very tender strips of nicely seasoned flank steak served on a bed of salad greens with grilled asparagus, corn relish, chopped tomato, cucumbers, and crumbled feta cheese (the menu said crumbled gorgonzola, but that wasn't what I got).


Max abstained from dessert. Ryan had a bowl of chocolate ice cream garnished with whipped cream and Laurent had the most interesting selection, a banana white chocolate bread pudding with coconut ice cream. It looked quite good.




I got their pecan pie à la mode. I was expecting a wedge of pecan pie with ice cream, but there was no ice cream, just a large dollop of whipped cream. Now, to be very literal, "à la mode," despite many Americans' beliefs, does not mean "with ice cream," but merely "in the style" or "in the fashion"....perchance they took the position that the "fashion" for serving pecan pie is with just whipped cream, and that's why I didn't get the ice cream I anticipated. The pie itself was good, but quite different; it was barely sweet, not being the usual sugar- and syrup-filled dish we usually get, and the filling had a vaguely oily feel to it instead of butter; they used a lot of chopped pecans instead of a single layer of pecan halves. It was an intriguing recipe, and as soon as I can find some reasonably priced fresh pecans (right now, pecans are about $3/pound more than walnuts!), I may experiment with their idea and tweak it a bit.


One of the things that makes Stars/Mimi's fun is their singing waiters who do mostly show tunes and the occasional light opera aria. Unfortunately, in the ownership change last year, they did away with the singers at brunch, and they now appear only at dinner. At brunch, they have a couple of young boys who play the piano and a bass for a quasi-jazz feel (we had to ask a couple of times to have the bass volume turned down, because it was giving us headaches). So, Star's is still much like my last review of Mimi's: it's not an awful place, it's just not good enough or fun enough anymore to be on our regular rotation.

El Tamarindo, Washington, D.C.

Saturday evening, Ryan and I had been up in the Takoma neighborhood near Walter Reed Army Medical Center helping our friend Robert with a yard sale. Once the last box of unsold goodies was stored in the basement, we limped off to dinner at El Tamarindo Restaurant, Robert's favorite Salvadorean place in Tacoma.

El Tamarindo reminds me of a bustling family-owned restaurant that's clean, but not fancy or decorated at all. It's a sister restaurant of a place of the same name in Adams-Morgan. There was a mixed crowd Saturday night with many tables of Spanish speaking families, as well as other non-Hispanic patrons; a community dinner meeting conducted in Spanish was going on in the basement dining room.

We started with some Salvadorean appetizers. Ryan got a crab and shrimp quesadilla that was thick with white, traditional cheese and served with sour cream and yummy guacamole, and the piece I sampled was delicious.


Robert and I both had pupusas, traditional food made in Central American for thousands of years, that are rather like two thin cornmeal pancakes put together around a filling and then weighted and fried together. I had a simple pupusa de queso with the white cheese in between. Robert had two pupusas—cheese, I think—plus a little bowl of curtido, a sort of pickled cabbage and hot pepper slaw topped with tomato sauce that is a common pupusa accompaniment.


For main courses, Robert had the beef chimichanga. It looked like they had cooked a whole Sunday chuck roast, shredded it, and stuffed his tortilla with fragrant, juicy beef. It had been pan fried after rolling instead of deep fried, and that, of course, is a much healthier way to prepare chimis. It came with rice and a large salad on the plate.


Ryan had "trios enchiladas," a beef, a chicken, and a cheese enchilada platter. It had been scattered with even more white cheese and garnished with big dollops of sour cream and guacamole.



My dinner choice was the El Tamarindo Special, a house special starring a whole fried sea bass and accompanied with several large shrimp and some crab in a rich tomato cream sauce. It was delicious. It also came with rice and salad, the salad dressed in a lightly sweet dressing reminiscent of poppy seed dressing but without the poppy seeds.


After all this food, Robert and I were stuffed, but Ryan opted to have some flan for dessert.



El Tamarindo is a nice find. It has great, flavorful, authentic Salvadorean food at very, very reasonable prices. I'm going to have to make a point to try their Adams-Morgan location, as well.

Luna Grill, Washington, D.C.

What better thing to do on Columbus Day than shop downtown? Laurent and I went to the shopping strip along Connecticut Avenue between Farragut Square and Dupont Circle. We visited the Godiva store and tried the new 85% cocoa butter demitasse squares (I love the "dark" 72% cocoa chocolate, but I daresay the 85% will be an aquired taste, since it's very much on the bittersweet side). We were looking at suits at another store when, lo and behold, up walked Caleb!

So, the three of us walked over to Brooks Brothers, where we met Caleb's friend from Dartmouth, Peter, then we all walked up to Luna Grill for a late lunch.

Laurent's been wanting a mojito for weeks, so we all ended up getting different types of mojitos; Peter a "regular," Caleb a raspberry, me a melon, and Laurent a "twisted mojito" (with vanilla vodka and some apple juice).

Lunch was basically sandwiches. Caleb had a "rachel," which is essentially just a reuben, but made with turkey instead of corned beef. Laurent had a bacon cheeseburger with a bowl of chili instead of fries.



I had a tuna salad sandwich (a little on the dry and bland side, I thought), and Peter had just the great big sweet potato fries with sour cream as dipping sauce.



Caleb wanted dessert, so Laurent agreed to split a pumpkin cheesecake with him.



We chatted for a long time, and then Peter went off to dine with his brother, Caleb went somewhere, and Laurent and I made our way to the downtown Macy's for another shopping spree. As it turned out, though, I didn't buy a thing, and Laurent only came home with a bag with two tiny cosmetics.

Here's Peter with his mojito and a Kody Pose:

Johnny Rocket's, Washington, D.C.

Saturday afternoon Caleb popped over for a visit and decided he was hungry. We walked over to the newish Johnny Rocket's in that 2000 Penn strip mini-mall that's located where The Gap used to be, so Caleb could have the onion rings he was craving.

What's interesting about his craving for onion rings is that he doesn't like cooked onions! He took the onions out of the onion rings, discarded the onions, and ate just the fried breading!

Meanwhile, Laurent drank an oreo cookie milk shake and I had a water while we watched Caleb eat his onion rings and a chili cheeseburger.

After Caleb finished his rings, he and Laurent had dessert. Caleb chose apple pie à la mode and Laurent (who'd just finished a milk shake, mind you!) got a hot fudge sundae.



I just don't see how those boys can eat like that and still stay so thin.

The newish Johnny Rocket's, by the way, is still nice and new. It seems bigger than many I've seen. I think it could get pretty noisy, though, when all the college students show up, judging from the exuberance of the small crowd present when we were.