Busboys and Poets, Washington, D.C.

Sunday we went to Busboys and Poets in the U Street neighborhood, where the kitchen stays open until 2 a.m., albeit with a reduced menu after midnight. It's an interesting place full of liberals and "cause" people, and they regularly feature liberal guest speakers. They've also got an attached bookstore in one corner of the restaurant. The menu is fun and there are several "comfort foods" on the list I enjoy eating, plus they have new and interesting daily specials that spice things up.

This visit is a good example of their interesting menu. I started with the soup of the day, a surprisingly delicious, cold yellow tomato gazpacho with a little scoop of raspberry sorbet in the middle. I would not have thought to combine these two fruits, but it worked well.


Then, for my main course, I had the steak and asparagus salad with two big pieces of grilled flank steak and gorgonzola cheese crumbles, and it was delicious and very satisfying.


Ian stuck to menu standards. He had a three cheese pizza (gorgonzola, ricotta, and fresh mozzarella) as his main course, then a warm white chocolate banana bread pudding with coconut ice cream for dessert. He also got a raspberry margarita, but he didn't like it because it wasn't frozen.



The food was good. The service was unusually bad Sunday night, though. Fortunately, food is delivered from the kitchen by expediters, but our official waiter was extremely inattentive, and I kept seeing him standing in the bar counting his money, chatting with other waiters/waitresses, or just zoning out. We had to request drink/water refills, and even then they were very slow in coming; it took forever to get his attention to place the dessert order; the restaurant was not busy, so there was no reason for the slowness.

The Diner, Washington, D.C.

Ian and I have a bad habit of going out to dinner late. It limits our options a bit, but, as you can see, neither of us are starving.

One night last week, we went to The Diner in Adams-Morgan, one of the very, very few places open 24/7 in D.C. I generally like their food, though they can be a little "creative" for a diner. Their establishment has the added plus of having a full bar. It can get very crowded and very noisy at times, though.

On this visit, Ian had a grilled gruyere cheese sandwich with French fries (Swiss cheese, Belgian potatoes....how all-American diner!). It looked good, and there was an ample quantity of cheese on the bread. He said he was still hungry, but he didn't order dessert or get anything else to eat.


I had the "holiday stuffer," a blue plate special-type dish with roast turkey, gravy, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, and slices of a pork-spiked dressing, plus some haricots verts on the side. It was, as expected, delicious. I thought perhaps the turkey was sliced from a commercially prepared turkey "breast" instead of being pieces from a recently roasted whole bird, but it was still tasty I actually liked the dressing, too—usually I find restaurant dressing to be either too bland or too sagey.

Champps Americana, Arlington, Va.

It's another of those annoying primary nights, and we're still awaiting the Indiana results. The race has 95% of the votes counted, but there's a less than 20,000 vote difference, and the votes from Gary are yet to come in. It also appears that the Clinton machine's prediction of an "upset" in North Carolina was unfounded, as Obama took that state quite handily.

Ian and I started off the evening at Champps Americana at Pentagon Row, though it proved to be nearly impossible to watch CNN in a sports bar on a four-way split big screen TV wall. So, we just grabbed a quick dinner and headed back to the District.

While there, Ian had an appetizer sampler plate with chicken strips, buffalo chicken tenders (instead of wings), mozzarella sticks, and potato skins (supposedly enough for two or three people).


I had a BBQ chicken chopped salad. It tasted good, though the iceberg lettuce wasn't crisp. We had a really fun waitress, though.

Tortilla Coast, Washington, D.C.

Most people don't know that back in 1912, Hellmann's Mayonnaise was manufactured in England. In fact, the Titanic was carrying 12,000 jars of the condiment, scheduled for delivery in Veracruz, Mexico, which was to be the next port of call for the great ship after its stop in New York. This would have been the largest single shipment of mayonnaise ever delivered to Mexico. But as we know, the great ship did not make it to New York....the ship hit an iceberg and sank on April 15, and the cargo was forever lost. The people of Mexico, who were crazy about mayonnaise and were eagerly awaiting its delivery, were disconsolate at the loss. Their anguish was so great, that they declared a National Day of Mourning that they still observe to this day. The National Day of Mourning occurs each year on May 5th and is known, of course, as Sinko de Mayo.

We observed Sinko de Mayo by going to Capitol Hill to Speaker Pelosi's formerly favorite Mexican restaurant, Tortilla Coast. It was a crazy thing to do on such a popular tequila-drinking holiday, and even stopping by ahead of time, we still waited about an hour for a table. Soon after our arrival, a big, black party bus pulled up, and out came a mariachi band.....just what we needed in an already too-loud restaurant! We'd gotten a prime window table with a view of the Capitol dome and the street—where that bus was parked—and we noticed all these young women in too-short, cut-off, blue jean shorts and little straw cowboy hats get off the bus at intervals one by one and come into the bar/restaurant, where they circulated, making some of the young men, shall we say, feel more festive. They'd drag the guys over by the band and dance with them...and, no doubt, encourage them to buy more tequila! LOL...straight boys can be so stupid and manipulable!

It was so noisy, we had a hard time ordering and hearing our waiter. We ended up, somehow, with a pitcher of lime-strawberry swirl frozen margaritas and a bowl of chile con queso dip. The cheese dip, for a Tex-Mex place, was pretty tame and definitely needed a few jalapeño peppers in it.


When it came time for food, we managed to order standard stuff, and we were particularly happy to note that it was "enchilada night," with enchilada entree dishes priced at only $5.99. Robert got the steak enchiladas and I got the beef Tex-Mex enchiladas. They look very similar in the photos; his came with ranchero sauce and mine came with "Tex-Mex beef gravy." Much like the queso, I thought mine tasted okay, but they lacked zip and Texican spice.



Ian wanted a chimichanga, but those aren't on the menu, so he picked a burrito, which is basically nothing but an unfried chimichanga. He got the "sunset burrito"—chicken, rice, and beans wrapped in a tortilla and covered with "spicy sunset sauce".....but we aren't really sure what the sunset sauce was.


For dessert, both Robert and Ian ordered the "Xango," a banana flavored cheesecake in a tortilla wrapping, deep fried, and served with cinnamon ice cream.....very, very similar to the fried cheesecake dessert Ian almost always orders at IHOP. Since I'm trying to get back into those 32x38 Wranglers in my closet, I declined dessert.


As mentioned, it was a very festive night. We got visited by a young lady with souvenir shot glasses promoting Sauza Tequila. Whatever was in them, Ian liked it. Had we ordered and paid for a margarita with the Sauza, we would have gotten big, fancy, souvenir margarita glasses. A lot of people had Mardi Gras bead necklaces with Dos Equis logos on them, but we didn't drink any beer, so we couldn't have any.

After leaving the restaurant, we wandered over to the Capitol grounds to look at the azaleas, one of the few places in town where the azaleas haven't already started turning brown. The place was teeming with tourists, even at that hour of night!

And that's how we celebrated Sinko de Mayo.

The Wonderland Ballroom, Washington, D.C.

We went to brunch after church Sunday. Robert was all excited about a place he'd heard about, The Wonderland Ballroom, a beer bar with food where they offer a "bottomless bacon basket" during their weekend brunches. He was really, really excited about the bacon thing. So, humoring him, we left the church in Takoma and Metroed to Columbia Heights, where we walked several blocks east to an, um, "transition" neighborhood, where we found a decrepit building housing the Wonderland Ballroom.

We entered the building. It was dark inside; it looked like a place that had seen many beer-drunken nights. We were greeted by a couple of people who later proved to be employees, though no one guided us to a seat; we found our own table with two bench style car seats and sat down. And waited. Eventually, someone came by and said "We don't have table service here." It turned out to be one of the owners. We said we'd come for brunch, and he said they didn't do brunch anymore (no eggs), just lunch foods. They did, however, still have the bacon baskets, so we put in our order. They also have about a dozen different beers on tap, so Robert got us a couple of those.....Anchor Steam, I think they were.

The menu was simple. We both wanted the same thing, so I let Robert order it—a sausage burger with fries— and I got a grilled vegetable wrap with chicken, so we'd have multiple foods to discuss. I'd expected the sausage burger to have, perhaps, slices of link sausage on the hamburger patty, but what he got was a patty with mixed ground beef and pork sausage, topped with a thick slice of cheddar cheese. My wrap was tasty, but very "vegetarian" (though it did have some chicken in it) with a preponderance of broccoli.



And, the beer and baskets of bacon kept coming.


This is an interesting place. It's certainly very friendly. I was pleasantly surprised that the men's room was not toxic. The food is adequate (if one remembers where one is). The prices are cheap. I think probably it's a very busy place on weekend evenings, though the "brunch" crowd is very limited.

What was particularly interesting at Wonderland Sunday, though, was a charitable fund raiser they were holding. It wasn't scheduled to start officially until four, but they were already getting ready. They were holding their Second Annual Sun Dress Fest to raise money for the Latin American Youth Center, and evening diners would be treated to a pig roast (charcoal was burning in barbecue grills on the patio). The gimmick, though, was how one became entitled to half-price drinks for the evening: one had to wear a sun dress. Even the guys. No dresses in your closet, guys? No problem! They had them for rent for a $10 contribution. No doubt this was the doing of Rose, the female half of the husband and wife owners of the bar. She even made her husband, Matthew, and the bartender and the waiter put on sun dresses. The band out on the patio got into the act, too.

James Hoban's Irish Restaurant and Bar, Washington, D.C.

After spending the whole day yesterday with the lodge, as soon as we were done, I went straight home. Kevin and Robert, however, had other ideas, and soon drove over to abduct me and make me go with them to join several others at James Hoban's Irish Restaurant and Bar. That's getting to be a regular post-event haunt of several lodge members, since namesake James Hoban, the architect of the White House, was the first master (president) of our lodge back in 1793.

We sat outside on the patio. A bunch of guys were already there; some had already come and gone. Kevin and Robert got glasses of Guinness; I got an Irish whiskey.

Kevin and I wanted "traditional" Irish food to get. He got "bangers and mash" (or, in Amurricun, that's pork sausages with mashed potatoes and onion gravy) that looked pretty good for that sort of thing.


I got fish and chips. I liked mine (I even used the malt vinegar on the fish), but one of the other guys at the table who got the same thing wasn't a big fan of his. They came with little tiny ramekins of "mushy peas," which were just smashed-up, American-style peas instead of the truly authentic, brownish, English-style, mushy peas.


Even with the other American-style food, they try to take the Irish theme through with Irish-inspired ingredients. For example, on these sandwiches, a burger and a chicken sandwich, they included a big slice of Irish bacon and some Irish cheeses.



This is the first time I've sat out on the patio at Hoban's. I thought the service was very, very slow out there.....usually inside the restaurant, service is "normal." At one point, Kevin ran into the restaurant to try to find and fetch a server. Alas. It was still early enough, too, that the Saturday night crowds weren't there yet.

Nobody had dessert. We thought it was more important to have a second round on drinks! LOL

Old City Cafe of Jerusalem, Washington, D.C.

That reminds me.....last Monday, while we were preparing dinner for the lodge, we grabbed a late lunch in nearby Adams-Morgan at a place called Old City Cafe of Jerusalem, since it was next door to the Safeway where we were picking up a couple of last-minute groceries. I wish I'd brought my camera, since they had a very interesting and colorful "toppings" bar filled with things to put on sandwiches and falafel. Most of the things were pickled vegetables of various sorts, plus they had various sauces, including house-made hummus and tahini. Robert just got a bowl of lentil soup that came with some pita and garnished with these interesting purple pickled turnips. I had a hummus sandwich and got to choose my own toppings from the bar. I enjoyed my sandwich, though next time, I will have to try the falafel—I only learned after-the-fact that this place is known for its falafel.

We were debating the ethnicity of the restaurant; clearly, the staff was Middle Eastern, but we decided that if they truly were from Jerusalem, they must have been Palestinians, since no one in the place had on a yarmulke and the art appeared to be rather more Islamic than Judaic (and having minarets in the backgrounds seemed to me a big clue). I also hear that the place is open until 4 a.m., so it's great for quick late-night meals.

Lebanese Taverna, Arlington, Va.

Another shopping outing to Pentagon City today gave us an opportunity to have dinner in Pentagon Row at the Lebanese Taverna while we were in the neighborhood.

Robert had the Taverna Platter. This was a combination plate with some beef and lamb shawarma, hommos, and tabouleh, plus two interesting dumpling-looking things called a fatayer b'sbanigh, a pastry stuffed with spinach, onions, pine nuts and sumac, and a kibbeh, a fried thing that was stuffed with lamb, beef, pine nuts and almonds, all very attractively presented in a divided rectangular tray.


I had a shawarma sandwich platter that included a regular green salad and French fries.


For dessert, we split something called a halawet jibne. They took a crepe made from semolina and filled it with a farmer-style goat cheese, and served it with a rose-scented sugar syrup and garnished it with a grating of pistachios and some orange zest. It was pleasant, and half a crepe was just the right amount. We also each had an Arab coffee with cardamom seeds floating in it.

Election Night at RFD and Five Guys, Washington, D.C.

Ian, being the political scholar that he is, and what with his recent affiliation with Obama-supporting politicians on the Hill, seems much more highly invested in the Democratic primaries and elections than am I. He's also from Pennsylvania. Last night I'd just gotten in, but he dragged me out to dine and watch the Pennsylvania returns. It seemed all anticlimactic to me, since we know Obama has always trailed Clinton there, and the most recent polls gave her a five to ten point lead. But, I acquiesced to joining him, only to find him in a frenzy to locate a bar or a restaurant where CNN was showing.

Now, finding CNN turned out to be an unusually difficult task. You see, we agreed to meet in Chinatown. And Chinatown happens to be next to the Verizon Center. And the Verizon Center happens to be where the Washington Capitals do professional hockey games. And the Washington Capitals happened to have been in the last match of a series to determine some really, really important hockey title last night. And every single bar and every single restaurant in the Chinatown area had their televisions tuned to the hockey performance as packed bars and dining rooms watched and cheered.

But as we circumnavigated the area, we happened to look in a window, and, lo and behold! we espied CNN on a television. We had to walk all the way around the block to get into the establishment, but Ian was determined, and so off we went to a place called Regional Food and Drink. It turned out to be a private watch party in a small back room far away from the rabid hockey crowd in the main restaurant.

Yes, indeed, it was a private watch party for a group called "Art for Obama." We paid our $5 cover charge to get into the party (fortunately the door guy spelled my name wrong on the sign-in sheet), and found a rather small and sedate group of people looking at the work of four or five local artists and sitting around eating cheap cheese cubes, broccoli florets, and slices of a still-frozen strawberry cream cake. My martini was rather unceremoniously served to me in a plastic beer cup—whatever happened to Democrats standing around sipping white wine and martinis in proper stemware as they nibble on baked brie en croute? Soon, they had an auction for three donated art works, but I think only three or four people were even bidding, and the highest sale price was only $35 (the minimum for that painting).

After the auction, though, they didn't turn the volume back up on the televisions for quite some time until several people complained to the bartender. Meanwhile, CNN promptly projected the race for Clinton, and Ian the Political Scientist was distressed that he couldn't hear their alleged rationale for their early projection. Then, about nine o'clock, they started wrapping up their watch party! Ian had been looking at the menu, thinking to order dinner, but he didn't want to stay after that.

Then we ended up walking all over Chinatown once again, braving the swarms of ticketless hockey fans out and around the Verizon Center, looking for a dining establishment that struck Ian's fancy and was consistent with his gustatorial eccentricities. Finally, just before the end of the hockey performance and the release of hundreds of hungry and disappointed hockey supporters, we landed at a Five Guys, getting our food and sitting down just seconds before the restaurant was swamped.

And thus was my evening. What did you do last night?

Franklin's Brewery, College Park, Md.

Sunday evening, Robert and I Metroed up to College Park to meet Kevin for dinner. Kevin ended up picking Franklin's Brewery for our meal.

Franklin's is a small microbrewery and restaurant with a casual, rustic feel. They were not terribly crowded when we arrived and I noticed they closed at 9 p.m. (we're out in the suburbs!). Wait staff looked to be high school and college students. The menu was quite interesting, and there were probably half a dozen entrees I would have liked to have tried, from a "PA. Mennonite style" duck to a bratwurst platter, so I'll have to make another trip.

Robert got the pulled pork platter with cole slaw and baked beans. I expected the pork to be in larger pieces with less sauce; what he got looked like what would be placed on a sandwich, rather than a free-standing entrée.


Kevin ordered the cowboy burger, a bacon cheddar cheese burger served with barbeque sauce and some thick-cut French fries. Neither of the guys offered any opinion as to their food, though they both cleaned their plates.


I had the sliced meatloaf on a bed of tasty garlic mashed potatoes and accompanied by a little side dish of a sweet corn pudding. The meatloaf slice had been grilled, giving it a smokey flavor and little crispy bits. Topping the meatloaf was a mound of heavily seasoned buttermilk-soaked fried onions reminiscent of thin onion rings. On one of his passes back by the table, the waiter noticed that my meatloaf was not covered in gravy (apparently it was supposed to have been), so he came back with a little bowl of mushroom gravy.


For dessert, we all split a single slice of the Vesuvius cake. I think the other guys were expecting something more along the line of a chocolate lava cake (warm, molten chocolate on the inside), but this was more of a stylized cheesecake combination. There was a thin cake layer on the bottom, topped by a light white chocolate mousse on the inner two-thirds, and a chocolate ganache on the outer third; caramel and chocolate sauce drizzles and chopped peanuts garnished the slice, with a couple of squirts of whipped cream on the plate. Oddly, the three of us didn't finish the entire slice.

Etete Ethiopean Cuisine, Washington, D.C.

Saturday, Robert wanted to get together for a late dinner, so we wandered over to U Street, originally thinking we'd go to Ben's Chili Bowl, but there was a huge crowd there, so we walked on down the street and selected a new-to-us place, Etete Ethiopean Cuisine. Etete has been listed on several top restaurant lists, so we thought it would be a safe choice.

They have an attractive restaurant that seats only about three dozen in a long, very narrow dining room painted in warm gold tones. It looks like pretty much any contemporary restaurant in D.C., down to the big bar in the back end. On one wall, there was a little bit of small, framed, Ethiopean art, but the rest of that wall and all of the other wall was lined with all kinds of reviews and awards. There is a club room upstairs (we didn't go up) that featured live music; we saw a lot of very well-dressed Ethiopean-Americans coming and going up there.

As is typical for Ethiopean restaurants, both of our food was served on the same injera bread-lined platter. Injera is like a very large, round, spongey, sourdough tortilla made from teff flour (an African grain). I ordered the Special Etete kitfo, a dish of minced beef with hot pepper spices and herbed Ethiopean butter. It's often eaten raw, but I asked for it to be cooked; it was, but it was definitely very rare. The "special" meant that the dish was accompanied by three different types of fresh-made cheese. Robert, not being terribly adventurous that night, ordered just the regular kitfo, so that's why we have two piles of the same thing on the platter. The kitfo had a nice, fresh flavor, though I would have preferred less oiliness from all the butter poured over the meat. The meal also came with a little green salad, some nicely flavored chopped, stewed collard greens, and some yellow lentils (all served on the platter), plus a basketful of rolled up injera that is used in place of flatware to grasp and eat the food.

We inquired about dessert (many Ethiopean places serve Italian-style desserts, since Italy once occupied neighboring Eritrea), but they don't have desserts at Etete.

Etete offered us a pleasant dining experience with lots of attending staff and decent food at reasonable prices. Our evening was marred only by a table of four drunk women—business colleagues—who were having some kind of party and being very, very loud. Unfortunately, the waitresses continued to serve the women cocktails, and they were still there when Robert and I left.

The Diner, Washington, D.C.

Ian called at midnight Friday, wanting to "do something." We agreed to meet in Adams-Morgan, since that was about halfway between where we both were at the time, at The Diner, one of the very few places in D.C. open 24 hours a day.

Ian had an egg sandwich made on an English muffin with flat scrambled egg and gruyère cheese, and home fries, all washed down with a strawberry-banana colada. Then for dessert, he had what looked like really tasty cherry pie à la mode.




I opted to drink dinner, having a couple of gin martinis, up, olives.

Chevy's Fresh Mex, Arlington, Va. (Pentagon City)

My second mall meal this week was last night, when Robert and I went to Pentagon City, stopping off first to eat at Chevy's Fresh Mex.

Robert got the "Chevy's Super Cinco," an enormous platter of food that included a beef enchilada, chicken enchilada, pork tamale, beef taco, and cheese chile relleno. It's so much food, the chile relleno has to come on the side on its own plate. He also ordered (by accident) a small side of guacamole.



I had the Santa Fe chopped salad with chicken for dinner, and tried the waiter's recommended dressing, a vinaigrette made out of Chevy's salsa.



While I drank bunches and bunches of iced tea (I warned the waiter to bring a pitcher, but he didn't listen), Robert had dessert. He got the coconut cajeta. It was enormous! Using an oversized, heavy, margarita glass as a serving dish, they took vanilla ice cream balls and rolled them in toasted coconut, then drenched the ice cream in chocolate and caramel sauces and smothered in all in clouds of whipped cream. Then, they took little cinnamon cookies cut in the shape of saguaro cacti and inserted them in the top of the glass. It all looked very cute!

The Cheesecake Factory, McLean, Va.

We have lots and lots of shopping malls around here. It's not enough, though, for them to have just stores, they have to have things to entertain the shoppers, especially nice places to eat. I went to a couple of malls this past week.

Ian and I went to Tyson's Corner Galleria and Tyson's Corner Center in McLean, Va., Thursday. While we were at the Galleria, we ate at The Cheesecake Factory.

Ian started with a strawberry-banana daquiri and an order of their fried macaroni and cheese balls (which, Ian noted, were not made with macaroni, but with penne). For his main course, he had the spicy chicken chipotle pasta.




I had a sandwich they call "The Navajo." I ordered it not so much because I wanted it, but because I was curious. They were playing off the idea of some modern pow-wow food called a Navajo taco or an Indian taco, where a large, flat round of "fry bread" is covered with beans or chili and lettuce. Cheesecake Factory has made a large but very thin round of fry bread, then used it like pita to enclose a chicken breast, avocado, tomato, and lettuce. It was okay, though not the "authentic" Indian taste I was hoping for. It came with French fries.



Cheesecake Factory always serves enormous portions of food. Because of that, neither Ian nor I were hungry enough to order any dessert. Alas.

Eli's Restaurant, Washington, D.C.

In honor of Passover starting this weekend, for lunch today, I had a hot pastrami on rye sandwich at Eli's Restaurant, a place that is, to my knowledge, the only certified kosher restaurant in D.C. I started to have a big bowl of matzo ball soup, too, but I just wasn't that hungry....the sandwich and plate are somewhat bigger than they appear in the photo.