Redrock Canyon Grill, Silver Spring, Md.

Robert and I lunched yesterday at Redrock Canyon Grill in Silver Spring, braving the freezing rain and gusty winds.

Redrock Canyon Grill is part of a small, mid-Atlantic chain of restaurants with a large bar and typical mid-range franchise food, all with a "Texas" theme to the upscale menu. Aside from a welcoming, blazing fireplace by the entrance, the dining room was open and spacious, done in dark woods and with a big window wall, but had no Texas or southwestern kitsch laying around. The staff wore blue jeans and white Western shirts, and all were overly friendly and solicitous. I'm surprised they didn't have them in bandanas and cowboy hats, too.

Robert selected the pulled pork sandwich with French fries for his main course. It all looked very standard.


I had one of the daily specials, a Texas chopped salad. It was delicious. The meat was barbecued chicken, and in addition to the usual things, it contained little cubes of jicama and half a sliced avocado. The entire large salad was decorated with a few artistic squirts of barbecue sauce. I also got a wedge of their Texas skillet cornbread that included creamed corn and bits of jalapeño peppers.


For dessert, while I just drank some hot coffee with cream, Robert had the apple blossom pastry. Now, I wasn't really sure was an apple blossom pastry was, envisioning tiny, delicate flowers in apricot glaze on a small square of puff pastry and realizing that not only were apple blossoms not in season (yet), but they were not generally considered edible, so I asked the waitress to explain it to me. After she gave her corporate-established spiel, I said, "Ohhhh, it's an apple dumpling." You would have thought that I had stabbed her in the heart. While she confessed that it was "like" an apple dumpling, it wasn't one, because it's "different." Alas, the demands they place on the poor wait staff.

Once it arrived, there appeared to be two different sauces, one more transparent and honey-colored over the apple and a dark, caramel-looking sauce over the ice cream. I inspected it and it looked like a standard apple dumpling, though I must confess that when I make apple dumplings, I set the apple up on a square of pastry and fold the pastry up to join together on the top of the apple, while at Redrock, their apple is laid on its side and the pastry seam is underneath. So, it's "different."

Redrock Canyon Grill is a pleasant place with decent food and ample service. Next time you're in the downtown Silver Spring shopping district, give it a try.

Magic Gourd, Washington, D.C.

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

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



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




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

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

Restaurant Vero, Arlington, Va.

We didn't go out for pancakes last night.

We did do our part to try to eat a lot of rich food, though, to help clear out the larders before Lent. My friend Jevon, who used to office two doors away from me at Georgetown, and I ventured out to far west Arlington for dinner at a place neither of us had previously experienced, Restaurant Vero. I had to juggle both subway trains and Metro buses to get there, but it was worth the trip.

Restaurant Vero is very suburban. It's located in a mostly residential neighborhood in the end of a long shopping strip building that probably once held some kind of retail store. Inside, the walls are painted a very fashionable dark taupe with a hint of color I couldn't quite discern in the fashionably dark dining room. The space is essentially an el-shape, with the bar area in the thick foot of the el. The menu is surprisingly large for a small, independent restaurant, and they have a lengthy wine list with over two and a half pages just of red wines.

It was Mardi Gras, though, so we celebrated with Mardi Gras Abita Bock beers. They were surprisingly tolerable for seasonal beer from Louisiana, sort of hoppy, amber lager with a crisp finish.

While there was a page in the menu with daily specials, we both stuck with the standard dinner menu. Jevon started with a grilled Caesar salad. They took the heart of a head of romaine lettuce, grilled it, then drizzled it with Caesar dressing and freshly grated parmesan cheese and garnished the plate with a couple of blistered tomatoes and a parmesan crisp.


I had their miniature Maryland-style crab cakes. Three little tiny crab cakes rested on a plate covered in corn-tomato relish and a chipotle remoulade dollop rested atop each cake. I found the crab cakes to be quite good, and I'll be interested to try the crab cakes on the entree menu to see how the full-sized version fares.


Jevon knew as soon as he opened the menu what he wanted for his main course: pan seared duck breast. The presentation for this dish was interesting, since the duck was practically hidden by the other items. Dominating the plate was a large serving of butternut squash bread pudding, a very intriguing savory interpretation of the dessert classic; some raw European bitter greens and some sautéed julienne of carrot took up the rest of the space, nearly covering the duck. The duck itself came with a fig and cherry compote.


I opted for the slow roasted pork shank served on a bed of creamy Virginia-style grits. Sautéed rainbow chard surrounded the dish, and a sprig of fresh rosemary garnished the top of the pork. The pork was falling-off-the-bone tender. I wasn't overly fond of the tomato sauce enrobing the pork, but the pork itself made up for it. The grits were a nice touch, and I would have liked more of them.


The dessert menu was rather disappointing, given the fact that the restaurant has a pastry chef. It was basically the same stuff one sees at restaurants all over town. I thought my pear-almond frangipane tart with caramel sauce was tasty, but as far as D.C. restaurants are concerned, it was rather ordinary and nothing special.


Jevon, on the other hand, ordered a milk chocolate mousse cake that unexpectedly displayed the artistry that one should get from a restaurant with a pastry chef. It was really more of a mousse capped by chocolate wafers, but the fresh strawberry sauce and fresh fruits provided balance and variety to the plate. Sprigs of mint garnished both desserts. We also had coffee with our dessert, and Jevon in particular thought the coffee helped to balance out the sweetness of the mousse.


Restaurant Vero is a fine place. There are a lot of things on the menu I'd like to try, and based on their performance with the duck and pork plus my crab cakes, I think they warrant another visit. The food was good and the service was well trained and inobtrusive. I also found the prices to be surprisingly moderate for the food quality.

Jevon was excited to have the opportunity to join the Kody Pose gallery, so here he is with his Mardi Gras beer.

Chadwick's, Georgetown, D.C.

We were shopping in Georgetown Saturday and decided to get Saturday brunch at Chadwick's. Ian had the eggs Idaho, and interesting combination of hollowed out potato skins filled with scrambled eggs and scallions (and ordinarily bacon, but Ian asked for them without) served with a large ramekin of sour cream, plus a side order of home fries.


I had the pulled pork sandwich with cabbage slaw and a square of macaroni and cheese that had an interesting hint of cayenne pepper in it. I thought the barbecue sauce was a bit too sweet, but I dealt with it, since sweet sauce seems to be the preference of most diners.



All very basic food, but tasty and filling.

We had a bit of a snafu when the order arrived. The waiter misheard Ian's request for no bacon, and thought Ian wanted more bacon. The egg dish had bacon scrambled into it and he brought him a side order of bacon. But, he took it all back and quickly corrected the problem.

Tapeo, Arlington, Va.

During a shopping expedition to Pentagon City last week, we felt a bit peckish and stopped in for a drink and a nibble at Tapeo, a Spanish tapas bar in Pentagon Row, the shopping area behind the mall and around that little ice skating rink.

We each split an order of mozzarella fritta (fried mozzarella sticks on a mirror of tomato sauce and garnished with pico de gallo) and then a chicken burrito. The burrito—cheaper than a burrito from Chipotle or Baja Fresh—came with rice, salad, and guacamole, but no tortilla chips.



There wasn't any Spanish beer on tap, so we had a Yeungling. Ian also had a frozen piña colada. The bar has an interesting blender with a mechanism on top that crushes the ice cubes before dropping them into the blender jar with the drink.

Martin's Tavern, Georgetown, D.C.

After our evening at the Kennedy Center for the Mahler, our little group headed up to Georgetown for an aprés-concert supper at Martin's Tavern. Even though it was 11 p.m., the place was busy and we had to wait a bit for them to empty and then clear a table for us.

Robert drank Dewars on the rocks, Laurent had some kind of cloudy beer, Ian did Coke and I had tea.

For starters, Laurent got the French onion soup. It smelled strongly of beef broth. Ian had a simple side salad.



For main courses, Ian got the penne with tomato vodka cream sauce and added grilled chicken. Robert had fish and chips with cabbage slaw (and it was a big slab of fish, too).


Laurent had the Martin's Delight, an open-face turkey sandwich topped with Welsh rarebit (cheese) sauce and slices of tomato and bacon served in a little iron skillet. I had a Cobb salad with long strips of grilled chicken breast and avocado.



After our meals, Ian and I got dessert. He got the bread pudding in bourbon butterscotch sauce (everyone loved the sauce but thought the bread pudding was "eh") and I got the carrot cake.



Laurent and Robert drank their dessert, each having an Irish coffee.


The food for the evening was generally okay. The problem? Service. Yes, I know it was a busy evening, but not only was our waitress seldom around, it was nearly impossible to get her attention when she was in the dining room. Drinks were not refilled. Inquiries about the satisfactory preparation of our food were not made. Plates were cleared only because there was a busboy running around, and many of our requests had to be relayed through the busboy. Other nearby tables with different waiters seemed to be getting much more satisfactory service, so it wasn't a universal issue.

When we left, we timed it perfectly, as the Circulator bus was just then coming down the street to take us home.

Martin's Tavern, Georgetown, D.C.

Last night we sat amongst American history.

About 11:30, Ian decided that he wanted a drink, it had to be Guinness beer, and it had to be draught, not bottled or canned. That made bar selection a challenge (not to mention the fact that a lot of places close at midnight). We ended up doing an Internet search and picking Martin's Tavern, one of those old, old institutions of Georgetown.

We took a seat in a booth by the window overlooking the corner of N and Wisconsin, and it turned out we were in booth number three—the "Kennedy Booth." Back in 1953, this was the very place where then-Senator John Kennedy proposed to Jacquelyn Bouvier, and she accepted! As a result, a lot of people call it the "proposal booth." Throughout the '50s, it was a favorite booth for Jack and Jackie, who lived in Georgetown just a few blocks away.

Right behind us was booth number two, the "Nixon booth," where Richard Nixon liked to sit during his days in Congress, and across the room was booth number six, where then-Senator Harry S. Truman used to sit with his daughter, Margaret (who died earlier this week, incidentally), so they could eat together while she was in college at George Washington. The tavern lays claim to having hosted every president since Truman.

In the hallway on the way upstairs to the restrooms, they have a framed copy of their original 1933 menu. They used to serve a filet mignon dinner for $1.00.

Well, they've had Guinness on tap since 1933, and Harp, too, so Ian got his Guinness and I got a Harp. Unfortunately, the kitchen closed at eleven, so we didn't get a chance to eat, but it looked like basic, hearty, traditional American food dominated the menu.

After three Guinnesses, a swig of my Harp, several sips of my Crown on the rocks, and two-thirds of my Crown and Coke, Ian decided he'd had enough to drink (well, actually, the bartender told us to leave cause they were locking up). He's so fun and giggly when he's tipsy! LOL I had to walk him home to his apartment to make sure he'd be okay and find it (he didn't wear his contacts last night).

Anyway, I'm looking forward to another visit to Martin's to try their food and soak up some more presidential ambiance.

600 Restaurant at the Watergate, Washington, D.C.

There was a little gathering of supernumaries after tonight's Kirov Ballet performance at 600 Restaurant, which is across the street from the Kennedy Center. Not that many people went, but it was fun nonetheless.

I drank some Domaine Chandon champagne, but most of the other people were having cranberry drinks of various kinds and sorts. I thought cranberry was passé these days. Aren't we all supposed to be drinking pomegranate now?

Café Promenade, Washington, D.C.

Last week was Restaurant Week in D.C. For various reasons, I wasn't all that enthusiastic this year about doing the seven restaurants in seven days routine, but my friends Peter and Paul insisted in me going to dinner with them this past Saturday. After a great deal of discussion and trial and error on getting reservations to our more preferred places, we ended up with reservations at Café Promenade in the Renaissance Mayflower Hotel in the "Golden Triangle" area of downtown near Farragut Square.

The Mayflower is one of those old, splendid hotels that they just don't make anymore, and "ornate" just doesn't begin to describe the architecture. A long, white marble promenade runs the one-block length of hotel, and about half way down, the Café sits, surprisingly open to the central passageway. There's a large dome in the ceiling over the center of the restaurant from which hangs a spectacular and enormous crystal chandelier.

Now, the Café Promenade is one of those places listed in restaurant guides as "very expensive," where one should expect to pay over $51 per person for dinner, exclusive of tax, tip, and drinks. That makes the $30.08 per person Restaurant Week price especially attractive, though at the more expensive places, one should expect choices that are not typically on the regular menu. Such was the case here, as there were three choices each for first course, main course, and dessert, all of which were fairly simple compared to the usual menu.

Paul and Peter started with the caprese napoleon, a play on the traditional Italian caprese salad of sliced tomatoes, fresh mozzarella cheese, and fresh basil leaves and the current restaurant fad of making "napoleons" out of non-pastry, non-dessert foods. Here, the napoleon was sort of stacked in layers, though I didn't really feel the stacking effect when the plates arrived at the table. They both commented that tomatoes weren't in season.



I chose the New England-style clam chowder. It was pretty good as far as chowders go, with a balance of milk and cream in the soup and small pieces of clam midst the potatoes. While I've had better at several places, I didn't really have any complaints about the soup here. The fresh snipped chives and crumbles of flavorful bacon as garnish added a nice flavor touch.

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Peter got the petit filet for his main course. It was a very nice sized piece of meat, and not petit at all! He seemed pleased with the meat and the presentation. It came with a couple of steamed asparagus spears and some Peruvian purple potatoes, all atop a mirror of brown sauce.



Paul and I both got the broiled Arctic char. I wish I'd gotten the filet. The char was tasty enough, but more than a touch over cooked, and it arrived last at the table but still was merely lukewarm instead of piping hot. This was all quite a disappointment, since this restaurant is noted for its lavish Friday night seafood buffet. The slab of fish rested on a bed of some unpleasantly starchy and bland risotto that I didn't finish. The highlight of the dish was the accompanying steamed rapini vegetable.



Peter drank a Corona beer with dinner. Paul and I split a pleasant bottle of Brancott Sauvignon Blanc Reserve Marlborough 2003, a New Zealand wine.

I thought Paul and Peter's desserts looked rather like typical hotel restaurant quick-service food items. Paul had the ginger crème brulée that clearly had been made far in advance and thoroughly chilled, instead of being branded or broiled immediately prior to service. He reported an intense ginger flavor to the custard, but otherwise didn't find it noteworthy.



Peter had a square of chocolate mousse cake. It looked incredibly ordinary to me. A little pool of tropical fruit sauce garnished the plate, and several fresh berries sat in the pool.



On the other hand, I had a very enjoyable dessert. They took ricotta cheese, sweetened it, added a lot of cinnamon, whipped it, then piped it into a large bowled wine glass. The cheese was topped with lightly sweetened fresh blackberries and raspberries. It was a flavorful end to my meal that was light yet satisfying.

Surprisingly, we were not offered coffee during or after the dessert course.

The coffee issue highlights the major issue with the meal, though. The service was substandard. Now, at an ordinary national franchise place, the levels of service would have been adequate; at an elegant place with the pretentiousness and high prices of Café Promenade, the service was woefully disappointing. The food for the same course was not brought to the table at the same time. My fish was cold. There were no fish forks or fish knives. The plates didn't all match. We had to pour our own wine refills. The table was never crumbed. The three water glasses for the table had all been set on the opposite side of the table, and since I opted to sit in the chair instead of with Paul and Peter on the curved banquette, I never had a glass of water for the entire meal. When the wine bottle ran out, we weren't asked if we wanted more. And they never offered us any coffee.

Now, one of the great challenges of hotel restaurants is that often they are asked to do and be too many things. That's the case at Café Promenade, too, as they serve not only dinner, but breakfast, lunch, and even afternoon tea. I allow for these sorts of things in considering and evaluating hotel restaurants, but I have to say that Café Promenade falls short of expectations. While the setting is certainly beautiful, the food was fancy but uninspired and the service was disappointing. Had I been paying full price for the food instead of the great R.W. discount, I would have been much more disappointed. I would not object to another try at Café Promenade, since we had a very nice dining experience and the food was enjoyable over all, but as far as the fine, technical points of elegant fine dining, they miss the mark.


Paul's Kody Pose

Filomena Ristorante, Georgetown, D.C.

Now, for a week, I've been trying to get Ian to agree on a restaurant for his birthday dinner last night, making all kinds of suggestions for places to which he had not already been. Yet, he kept coming back to the same old place, which is not a bad place, mind you, but it's a place we've already been to multiple times. Well, it was his birthday, not mine, so I finally acquiesced to taking him to Filomena Ristorante in Georgetown.

It was a very pleasant evening at Filomena. The little pasta grandmother was up in the window making cavatini when we got there. It wasn't crowded, so even though we were early, we were immediately seated. And, unlike all of my previous visits when the restaurant was jam packed and the noise levels at the top of the decibel range, it was a calm, quiet night, and we could actually hear ourselves talk!

Ian started with the Italian chicken and pasta soup and opted to have his grown-up chicken noodle soup served in a bread bowl.



I looked at the side order offerings instead of appetizers and selected a trio of mushrooms mixed and sautéed together, and it ended up being a lovely first course size. With the first course, Ian got a glass of Vallarom Chardonnay 2004 and I got the Bottega Vinaia, "Trentino" Pinot Grigio 2006, though we ended up trading after Ian sampled both.



For his main course, Ian ordered the pasta special del giorno, pollo e pesto. This was a rigatoni dish in a pesto cream sauce with slices of chicken breast, garnished with cherry tomato halves and parmesano cheese freshly grated tableside. It was a very large serving, so Ian ended up taking half of it home in a doggy bag.



Continuing my non-traditionality, I ordered the appetizer arancini with a side order of rapini for my main course. Arancini are these wonderful golf ball-sized rice balls stuffed with mozzarella and bolognese meat sauce, then rolled in bread crumbs and deep fried, and accompanied by a marinara sauce. The rapini—"known" in the U.S. as "broccoli rabe"—was sautéed with garlic and olive oil and was delicious. Incidentally, it is not botanically related to broccoli at all, but is related to turnips. With our main courses, we each had glasses of Ruffino "Aziano" Chianti Classico 2005.



For dessert, Ian selected the strawberry cheesecake as his "birthday cake." Our waiter brought it with a sparkler in it (thankfully, this isn't a restaurant that drags over the entire wait staff to "sing" to the birthday boy). Ian took half of it home, too. Filomena's always serves complimentary Sambuca (anise liqueur) and amaretto (almond liqueur) at the end of the meal, so we didn't order a dessert wine. Ian tried the Sambuca with the traditional three coffee beans in his snifter, but, like me, he's not a fan of anise or licorice flavor. We then drifted to the amaretto and its nutty sweetness.



As always, the food was delicious and well prepared and the service was friendly and efficient. Filomena's is one of the top two or three Italian restaurants in D.C.

There was a table full of priests sitting next to us, and on our way out of the restaurant, they chatted with us a bit and gave Ian a birthday blessing.

Birthday bars

Yesterday was Ian's 21st birthday.

We celebrated last night, with a shopping excursion to Pentagon City. While we were in Arlington, we stopped in for his first legal happy hour at Sin é Irish Pub and Restaurant for some happy. He had a pint of Guinness while I drank a pint of Sin é Red Irish Ale, then the bartendress made him a "woo woo"—vodka and peach schnapps with cranberry juice. He also drank most of my Bushmill's Irish Whiskey on the rocks with a splash.

Guinness	Woo-Woo	Bushmill's

Next we went to dinner in Georgetown, after which Ian made his way to The Tombs to meet a friend at midnight to pass the birthday torch, as his friend's 21st birthday is today. They were drinking big mugs of beer there, from the looks of the photos.

Anyway, Ian's legal now, and he made good use of his newly acquired legal status.


Beer at The Tombs

Tai Shan Chinese Restaurant, Washington, D.C.

Saturday, we were back in Chinatown, and hit Tai Shan, a Chinese place that features $4.95 lunch specials. I had the Hunan chicken, with a huge amount of chicken plus brocolli and carrots in a spicy sauce. Ian had the chicken with mixed vegetables, but what he'd really wanted was chicken with snow peas and baby corn, so he wasn't that excited about his lunch special. He ate everything except the broccoli, bamboo shoots, and cabbage (those vegetables were most of the dish!), but it all looked quite good to me.

Burma Restaurant, Washington, D.C.

On our shopping trip to Chinatown Friday night, Laurent wanted dinner before we went to the store. Well, Chinatown has a wide variety of restaurants, though the number of national chains is fast outpacing the number of Chinese and even Asian restaurants in the now high-rent area surrounding the Verizon Center (the "sports" arena).

We walked down to the far end of "China Block" and around the corner, where there are some nice, non-touristy places. We chose Burma Restaurant.

Burma is one of the long-time neighborhood restaurants there, and, as one might guess from the name, it features Burmese food. Burma/Myanmar isn't a well-known country around here. It's sandwiched between India and Thailand, with substantial coastline on the Bay of Bengal.

The restaurant is on the second floor of a building, over a well-financed Thai restaurant that recently moved to Chinatown. Burma, though, has been around for a decade or two. The decor is spare, with closely spaced, simple tables and chairs in a fairly small main dining room (there appears to be a back room, too, but it wasn't in use). Photographs of Burma adorn the walls.

The menu is small by typical Asian restaurant standards, but there were still quite a few more interesting items on the list than we were able to try.

We started with Golden Triangles, made from seasoned potatoes wrapped in what seemed a bit like phyllo dough, and then deep fried. It came with a sweet sauce with an ample pour of red chile sauce in it.



For main courses, Ian had chicken curry with potatoes. It was a yellow curry with a lot of chicken still on the bone in the dish. It's the dish above in the foreground. I had the sautéed squid. It's the dish in the background. It was surprisingly good. The squid had been decoratively scored and cut, then tossed with scallions, ginger, and garlic and served with a little bit of brown broth; bits of tasty country ham added an unexpected rich note.



Dessert was intriguing. We split the Burmese coconut cream cake, and what we got was totally unexpected. The dish bore two triangles of cake made from, of all things, Cream of Wheat, with rice flour, palm sugar, and coconut milk. It had a denser, grainier texture than a normal cake, and reminded me somewhat of cornbread. A small dollop of whipped cream and a matching dollop of ice cream accompanied the cakes.

Along with my meal, I had a very pleasant Burmese hot tea. Ian had a Coke.

Sorry about the photo quality in this entry. I didn't know we were going to be eating out, so I didn't bring my camera, and we had to use Ian's cell phone.

Burma is a place I'll definitely visit again. Service was inobtrusive and adequate. The food was light and simple, yet bursting with complex flavors, and, best of all, the prices were cheap and the serving size large.