American City Diner, Washington, D.C.

At six o'clock last night, Kevin came by in his car and picked me up so we could go to dinner. We drove around town looking for someplace different where neither of us had ever been and also which was affordable (a challenging thing in the District!).

Somehow we ended way, way up on Connecticut almost to Maryland in the Chevy Chase area of town where we found the American City Diner. Well, I'm always excited about finding diners; Kevin somewhat less so, but that's where we went. I noticed on their door that they are a 24-hour a day place which is great, although the all-night thing doesn't do me any good because that neighborhood is very far from a Metro stop and negotiating the bus system to get there requires a two-hour journey.

American City Diner is an older place that looks very much like a classic diner with a counter and bar stools, vinyl-upholstered booths, and a '50s decor. They offer breakfast all the time and a big list of dinner items and blue plate specials.

Kevin ordered the western omelette sans cheese. It turned out to be a twice-folded omelette served on an oval platter with a huge portion of diced fried potatoes and onions and two pieces of toast cut into triangles.

I had the chicken-fried steak, which was surprisingly good. It wasn't particularly huge, but it was well-fried and crispy and definitely wasn't one of those frozen, commercially made things. It came with a bunch of whole, long green beans and a scoop of mashed potatoes, all of which were good. The only thing I didn't like was the gravy, which was a yellow chicken-flavored sauce made from a mix, instead of the traditional homemade cream gravy.

For dessert, Kevin insisted on having a piece of apple pie, so I acquiesced to having one, too. I had mine à la mode. The pie wasn't bad, and I was pleased that the apple filling didn't have that preservative taste so common in many restaurant pies.

So, American City Diner was a great experience, and I'd recommend it to anyone who appreciates simple diner food.

Cosí, Washington, D.C.

Yesterday was a grey, cloudy day with occasional light sprinkles of rain—those rains where you don't quite need an umbrella; I think today is going to follow suit.

Rather than stay in where it was safe and dry, I lunched with my friend Eugene, who offices just across McPherson Square from me. We met up at the Cosí (which despite popular habit should not be pronounced "CO-see," but rather "co-ZEE") on yet another corner of the square. Cosí is Cosí—another ubiquitous national franchise. I don't know what it is about my Russian friends but Svet loves lunching at a different Cosí several times per week.

Actually, Eugene and I went to this Cosí because I had two $2 off coupons; what's funny is that Eugene only ordered the minnestrone soup, so he didn't get to use his coupon—it was just for salads and sandwiches. I had the Cobb salad, and, of course, we both got some of their warm flatbread.

Mourayo, Washington, D.C.

Fr. Stephen in his "Kody pose"

Yesterday evening, my friend Fr. Stephen dragged me off to north Dupont Circle on banking errands, after which we decided to find a place for dinner. We just happened to be on Connecticut across from several restaurants when we espied Mourayo, a Greek place at which neither of us had previously eaten, so that's where we headed.

Mourayo is a pretty little restaurant with white walls divided by natural wood moldings on the walls and decorative items with a seafaring theme. The wait staff, male and female, was all attired in tight black trousers, starched and ironed white Greek sailor shirts, and black Greek fishermen's hats. We were given a table right in front by the windows that were open to the sidewalk beyond.

The menu is long, featuring a lot of Greek items with which I was not familiar, and it appeared that there was a lot of "creativity" going on in some of the combinations and presentations. While we perused the menu, Fr. Stephen sipped a Santo Santorini white wine and I had a Mercouri Foloi white. I particularly liked mine, since it was dry and very sippable.

Fr. Stephen started with the Symposium Edesmata, an appetizer sampler plate with tyrokafteri, tzatziki, taramosalata, skordelia, fava, hoummus, and patzaria, all a series of pureed items intended as a pita bread spread that include things like fava beans, chickpeas, potatoes, cheeses, a fish roe, thickened yogurt, and some little chunks of red beets. I tasted a couple of them (plus I got to eat the beets and the wonderfully fruity Greek olives, none of which he likes to eat) and thought they were really good.



For his main course, he chose the Pythagorus Theorema, a very nouveau concoction featuring three medallions of pork loin grilled medium rare and crowned with a dollop of Greek manouri cheese and a candied fig half, then all sauced in a honey and walnut glaze. I sampled a little bite and it was quite nice with unusual but interesting flavors. Grilled asparagus and thickened yogurt sauce came with the pork.



My food was equally interesting, begining with poughi a "beggar's pouch" of manouri cheese with almonds and roasted Florina peppers encased in a phyllo dough "bag" and served with sliced green onions and a little bit of tomato coulis. The cheese mixture was quite rich.



My main course was a better-than-expected bowl of gida vrasti "Sparta", a traditional Peloponnesian goat stew. Rice and yogurt were placed in the middle of the large soup plate then covered with an enormous serving of stewed goat, then the bowl was filled with the goat broth. Much of the goat meat was still on the bone; it was tender and very flavorful--more like kid than goat.



Desserts sounded wonderful and intriguing, but we were both too stuffed to try them.

Mourayo is a place that is definitely on my list of restaurants to visit again. I'm looking forward to the next adventure there!

The Diner, Washington, D.C.

My friend Kevin was going to drive me home after lodge Monday night, but we hadn't talked in several weeks and he wanted to chat, so we went to Adams-Morgan to have dessert at The Diner, one of the very few 24-hour restaurants in D.C.

Our dessert turned out to be dinner. Kevin had a couple of sangrias and a Spanish omelette to match and I had the meatloaf with mashed potatoes and gravy and some of those pre-prepared carrots from the grocery store bags that had been steamed. The meatloaf was really good, but the dish could have used a lot more gravy, since there were a lot of potatoes.

Then, we had our dessert: apple pie for Kevin and cherry pie for me.

Au Pied Bistro, Georgetown, D.C.

This past weekend, Leo once again decided he wanted French food for dinner (how he expects to lose weight and get skinny when he goes to the gym for two hours and then promptly wants to go out to dinner is beyond me), and talked me in to going with promises of buying me dinner a La Chaumière in Georgetown. So, we walked over, but once we got there, the place he actually wanted to go was Au Pied Bistro, quite a difference from Chaumière! I was his guest for the evening, though, so I was gracious and went to Au Pied with him.

He started off with a pink diamond martini. I'm not sure what made it a "pink" diamond, since it was decidedly yellow and he reported a pineapple taste.



For food, he began with the ceviche. Now, ceviche is a traditional Spanish dish where the fish or seafood is "cooked" by marinating it in spiced lime juice, and typically it's served as an appetizer in a small bowl, much like a "cooked" sashimi. Leo was surprised, then, when the ceviche arrived as a large salad. He ate what he could (I got to eat the delicious French olives), but he'd only intended it as a first course, so he left most of the salad.



His main course was a shrimp fettucine with a light cream sauce. It looked okay to me, but later he complained about not feeling well; apparently, there's some Chinese folk wisdom about not mixing vodka with cream sauce (and, we all know how vodka is the National Drink of China and an old, traditional beverage).



I wasn't really that hungry, so I ordered a croque madame, which was quite disappointing. The sandwich is pretty basic, being a sliced croissant topped by shaved turkey and drenched in bechamel sauce—usually something pretty hard to mess up. Well, they managed to mess it up anyway, and this is a French bistro! I suspect that they microwaved the croissant to heat it up, but it only made the croissant tough and difficult to cut with a table knife.



To make matters worse, the waitress brought the plate without any condiments and without asking if I wanted any. If I hadn't asked the for a refill on my water, she likely would have disappeared into the kitched, never to be seen again. She came back with the water pitcher, but still no condiments; I asked for some mayonnaise for my pommes frites. What she brought me was something I don't think any self-respecting restaurant in France would recognize as mayonnaise: two packets of commercial "mayonnaise."



So, dinner wasn't quite as successful as we would have liked.

Meskerem, Washington, D.C.

There were so many things on my To Do list for today. Did any of them get done? Nope. My friend Jim was going to drive up from Virginia so we could go have a late lunch. I'd forgotten that this is commencement weekend at GWU across the street, so he had to drive around for over half an hour looking for a parking place.

We drove up to Adams-Morgan and found a parking place right outside of Meskerem. Jim, even though a two-year-long D.C. area resident, had never had Ethiopean food before, and Meskerem is one of those places I'd long heard about—after all, it was one of the very first Ethiopean restaurants in D.C.—but at which I'd never dined, so that's where we decided to eat.

We happened to get the window table where we were fully exposed to all of the passers-by on the sidewalk. We had a traditional basket table—a messob—and a little end table to hold drink glasses and other things. The walls were decorated with Ethiopean textile art and paintings of textile designs.

Now, the restaurant strip in Adams-Morgan is a vibrant section of the transition neighborhood, so most all of the places are in storefronts in not particularly restored or fancy old buildings. One of the window panes by our table was broken and covered with a board; the whole place had the look of an older, cheaper building that hadn't been decorated in years. Meskerem has both basement and mezzanine level dining rooms in addition to the main floor, and a bit later on Saturday nights, all of those would be full, but at 5:30, the restaurant was still slow and all of the patrons were seated on the main level.

Since it was Jim's first visit to an Ethiopean place, we opted for a sampler platter for two. It had a couple of beef dishes, a lamb dish, two chicken dishes, an interesting vinegared potato salad, lentils, and greens. The food was okay, but it didn't meet up to my expectations after all the recommendations and hype. I'd really much prefer the food at Zed's in Georgetown or Dukem on U Street. I also thought the service was rather slow, especially since there were three or four waitresses handling a dining room with only a handful of tables.

So, now I've had my Meskerem experience. Next time I'm in Adams-Morgan, I'll now feel free to try some of the dozens of other restaurants in the neighborhood.

Notti Bianche, Washington, D.C.

New Yorker Zack is in town tonight in anticipation of a big book sellers' conference tomorrow, so we took the opportunity go out to dinner after his train got in to Union Station tonight. Now, as we know, there are no Italian restaurants in New York City, so we chose an Italian-themed place right around the corner from my condo, Notti Bianche, instead of doing the usual take the tourist to an Ethiopean place routine.

It was an interestingly eclectic meal, tasty, but not terribly authentically Italian. Here are some of the courses we had:

Appetizers were a grilled duck terrine with a tomato compote they called a "mustarda" and a roasted garlic compote they called a "corstini" that were both sweet and also a mixed greens and sprouts salad and a garganelli pasta with little sausage meatballs and broccoli rabe and a spicy, slightly hot sauce.




For an early salad and soup course, there were two items. There was a hearts of romaine salad that includes some nice parmesan cheese wafers and an unusual little "cup" made of white anchovy fillets and filled with an olive tapenade.



There was also a creamed potato soup that was served in the tiny hollow of a big, broad soup plate that was essentially garnished with two in-shell little neck clams and pieces of soppresata salami. It was tasty but needed more soup.



For pasta courses, there was a rather simple spaghetti pomodoro with just a basic tomato sauce and a linguine with head- and tail-on shrimp. This head-on trend in D.C. lately is a fad that really needs to stop.




Desserts were rather interesting. The chocolate-hazelnut torte with caramel ice cream came with a little rolled Florentine cookie. The torte itself was a little dry, but once the ice cream melted, things were okay.



The waitress highly recommended the panna cotta. The eggless custard mixture was enriched with some crème frâiche and topped with a strawberry-citrus layer, then the whole thing was put on a rhubarb sauce mirror and garnished with homemade sugar and pistachio nut stir sticks.



Wines started with a Bisol prosecco crede N.V. from Veneto, Italy, then a 2003 Castelvero cortese from the Italian Piedmont, then a 2004 Pecchenino San Luigi Vineyard dolcetto that was surprisingly nice, and then a sangiovese selected by the waitress, so I didn't catch the winery or vintage.

Now it's time for bed. G'night!

Cafe La Ruche, Georgetown, D.C.

Leo decided last night that after a hard day at the office he wanted to go to dinner and he wanted French food (what? Leo wanted something that wasn't Asian??) and insisted on dragging me along. We walked to Georgetown and popped in at Café La Ruche.

The food was, as always, good. Leo started with the in-house smoked salmon with capers and thin slivvers of onion rings, then he had the salade du jour, which last night happened to be a chopped salad of endive, bleu cheese, and tomatoes, all washed down with two large glasses of a lovely white wine the name of which escapes me right now. Then for dessert, he selected from the dessert case an enormous baked apple dumpling en croute topped with melted chocolate and which was noticeably larger than a softball, and ate it all all by himself.

I had a glass of water and the three salad plate, choosing the salade de dinde (large chunks of turkey on spinach), salade printaniere (salad with hearts of palm, feta cheese, eggs, and tomato), and the new potato vinaigrette (sort of a French version of potato salad).

Bangkok One, Washington, D.C.

Yesterday I lunched at Bangkok One, just off McPherson Square near my office. I just happened to run into Bangkok One by accident, and I'm glad I did.

It's a rather non-descript place from the outside with what looks like a homemade hand-painted sign on the window. Inside, though, the decor features mirrors all along one wall and in the other wall there are deep display cases recessed in the wall behind locked glass doors which held all kinds of beautiful Thai works of art including fabrics, dolls, statues, and precious metals. The large dining room staff was all clad in black trousers with colorful Asian print silk shirts.

I started with their summer rolls with peanut sauce, expecting the usual two rice paper-wrapped egg roll with a thick peanut dipping sauce, but their version was a bit different. They sliced the rolls in the kitchen and presented them on a leaf-shaped plate like a sushi roll. The sauce was a sweet, clear sauce with chopped peanuts. I was also favorably impressed with how quickly the summer rolls came from the kitchen.

For my main course, I had the Bangkok green fried rice. This was a very nice green curry stir-fry of rice and chicken with all kinds of green vegetables, sprouts, and basil leaves garnished with cucumber slices. The curry was good, having enough spice to keep my mouth tingling but without being too hot to eat and enjoy.

Many of the other entrees I saw going to the tables looked quite interesting, so I'll be looking forward to eating here again.

Miss Saigon, Georgetown, D.C.

It's always nice to finally dine at a place which has been on one's regular walking path for months. Last night Leo was in the mood for Vietnamese food, so after an hour of cajoling I acquiesced to him dragging me out to Georgetown to Miss Saigon. Miss Saigon is east of Wisconsin amidst that big strip of restaurants along M Street.

When one walks into the restaurant, it is immediately apparent that this space was not originally created to be a Vietnamese, or even Asian, establishment. It's a typical Georgetown eatery with the only Asian touch being a series of lacquered Vietnamese conical hats hanging in a row all along the walls. They also seemed a little different in that very few of the staff—mostly management—seemed to be Asian; our waiter happened to be from Tunesia.

The food, though, was pretty good. Their cuisine is a little more elegant and a notch above the standard inexpensive Vietnamese fare, which is good since I thought the menu prices to be a bit higher than most Vietnamese places in the District.

For appetizers, we got an order of spring rolls with crispy fried exteriors and a fish sauce for dipping and an order of garden rolls with shrimp and pork wrapped in rice paper with a peanut sauce for dipping. We shared a very interesting "traditional papaya salad" made from a very large pile of long, very fine julienne of green papaya topped with long, thin strips of Asian-style beef jerky, all in a hot, spicy, rice wine vinaigrette.

For our main courses, Leo had the Saigon noodle special, soft egg noodles with sauteed seafood and vegetables. I had the cari ga, a very nice and flavorful yellow curry with chicken, potatoes, and carrots. It seemed as though the cari ga had actually been cooked as cari ga; the chicken was thoroughly infused with the flavor of the sauce, so it had obviously been stewed for a while and the dish was not just a curry sauce with chicken added at the last minute.

For dessert, Leo chose crème caramel topped with Kahlua and I had their banane flambé au rhum à la mode. My dessert was interestingly similar to the "crispy banana" I'd had Thursday night at Asian Bistro, but this was very different because they put honey and rum on the bottom of the plate, then one of the waiters lit the rum and as it burned, he rolled and turned the fried banana pieces in the flaming honey-rum mixture until it had a nice, crunchy, caramelized outside; it also came with a scoop of coconut ice cream.

So, we enjoyed the food at Miss Saigon, and perhaps we shall return.

Bistro Francais, Georgetown, D.C.

Last night Ian and I went out for a farewell dinner at Bistro Français in Georgetown, even though I'd already been to an early dinner at Asia Bistro. We were supposed to have gone someplace else at 10, but the baseball game the baseball addict was watching was interrupted by rain and it wasn't until 10:45 that they gave up and went home. By that time, our open-til-11 places weren't options anymore, and that's why we got stuck at Français again.

He had an omelette aux fines herbes et fromage avec pommes frites as usual, plus a chocolate mousse cake with vanilla ice cream. I started with a little bowl of cold gazpacho and then had a chef salad. I don't know why I keep ordering their gazpacho, since I don't really care for their version—-I like my vegetables to be finely diced instead of run through the food mill.

Today he's packing up and leaving the university for the summer and will be off to England, so now there won't be anybody around to drag me out to eat in the middle of the night.

Asia Bistro, Arlington, VA

Tonight Leo and I went to Pentagon City in the torrential rains to do some shopping. Then he was hungry, so we dashed across the square to Asia Bistro for dinner. It was surprisingly crowded in there, and the bar was jam packed with young professionals getting drunk.

Leo started with a calimari-type appetizer that was quite interesting; the squid rings were huge, looking more like small onion rings, and they were lightly and delicately breaded before they were deep fried and they were very tender; it also came with a very good, spicy, different dipping sauce than the usual Italian marinara. His main course was a bento box of shrimp and vegetable tempura with a huge, disgusting pile of kim-chee (LOL...can you tell I'm not a fan?), some steamed white rice, and a green salad he didn't eat. He washed it all down with a "Bistro mojito."

My first course was a very tasty takko salad with a bed of greens topped with sliced, cold, marinated baby octopus and then shreds of daikon and carrot, and some thinly sliced rings of onion that was very tasty. My main course was their generic sushi dinner, since I wasn't in the mood to make decisions. It was actually pretty good, with about eight "chef's choice" sushi nigiri (their tuna was especially fresh, bright red, and good) and then a California roll. Dessert was a "crispy banana," a banana cut in half, tempura-battered and fried, then presented on the plate with a drizzle of honey.

Georgetown Cafe, Georgetown, D.C.

Just moments ago I walked back in from having been to "breakfast" at Georgetown Cafe with Ian, who not only dragged me out for a 4 a.m. breakfast but made me walk the 1.5 miles each way since there's no public transportation at that hour of the day. We both had omelettes with home fries, and then igarvey ordered an extra basket of their battered French fries. I was disappointed that after one glass of iced tea, they ran out of tea, and had to bring me a nasty sweet raspberry tea as a less-than-satisfactory substitute.

There were about a dozen policemen at a big table next to us....in fact, as I walked up to the cafe and saw all the constabulary vehicles I thought perhaps there'd been some kind of criminal incident. Ian said the cops made him feel safe and secure, but I, being ethnic, was a little uneasy.

The nice thing about that 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. window in Georgetown is that in contrast to the traffic and congestion of the daytime, the streets are deserted and it's a very quiet, peaceful place.

Now, the question is whether to nap for an hour or two or just stay up. Too bad nobody else is awake.

Elegant dining

What wonderful culinary repasts we've had on this rainy, dreary day.

For breakfast, I had a can of Diet Rockstar.

For lunch, I had two $1 McChickens and a $1 small fries at McDonald's.

For dinner, I had a cold leftover pizza from this past weekend.

I really must stop eating all this gourmet food!

Vidalia, Washington, D.C.

One seeking rain should never ask me for an Indian rain dance. That's just not one of my areas of expertise. My friend Robert, however, is the harbinger of hail, the prince of precipitation, and the ranger of rain. Every time I eat out with Robert it rains, from the very first time we dined in Friendship Heights when it rained so hard that the umbrella-less Robert ended up soaking his cochlear implant and being unable to hear and understand me that afternoon to tonight's expedition when www.weather.com assured me that there was no rain whatsoever in tonight's forecast. As I walked to the restaurant tonight and noticed the ever-so-slight occasional droplet of rain, I should have listened to my inner voice and gone back home to grab an umbrella, cause by the time we were done dining, those droplets were actual big raindrops; my hair was a wreck by the time I got home!

Regardless of the weather outside, though, things inside Vidalia were quite sunny and pleasant.

Vidalia, of course, is the ever-popular "Southern" cuisine restaurant that takes old Southern standbys and makes them into wonderfully gourmet dishes. It's a great place for a couple of Southern boys on Derby Weekend; Robert and I had been here last January when the weather was cold, the wind was brisk, and the rain was icy.

In honor of this weekend's Kentucky Derby, we started dinner with a round of mint juleps. Robert, who'd already had half a dozen of them yesterday at the Round Robin Bar at the Willard Hotel, declared that Vidalia's version was far superior, and he ended up drinking three of them tonight with his dinner! They were, I have to admit, rather tasty; I'm usually not a big fan of bourbon, usually only using the Wild Turkey with which they made the juleps not for drinking but for cooking when I make bourbon balls, pecan pie, or bread pudding whiskey sauce. Nonetheless, the juleps helped us relax a bit as we made the difficult decisions as to which of the delicious items on the menu to order.



After we ordered, our waiter brought us little espresso cups full of wild mushroom soup as an amuse bouche. I wish I'd known he was going to do that, since I'd have ordered a different appetizer instead of a soup. It was all good, though, so I didn't really mind.



Robert started his meal with a sweetbread appetizer he declared very good. Then he had a lovely plate of three Shenandoah lamb ribeyes lightly grilled and presented with some spicy lamb sausage, a garlic fritter, sunchoke purée and shoots, red pepper sauce, and a smoked paprika lamb jus which the waiter poured over the dish tableside. For dessert, to match his mint juleps he ordered the chocolate mint julep, an interesting combination of chocolate ganache and bourbon mint sorbet.







I had the sweet pea soup for my starter, which had a little mold of pea puree in the center with crème frâiche, bacon, and pea sprouts. A tasty shrimp and grits plate made up my main course and bits of spinach and sweet onion ragout rested in the center of the yellow corn grits. My complaint? For $29.75 with only four shrimp, they could have afforded to give me a few more of those delicious grits. I also had the chocolate mint julep for dessert. With my main course I drank a glass of Spanish white wine and with dessert I had grapy red muscadelle; the waiter selected my wines and I'd asked him to write down their names and vintages for me, but he never did that, so I can't tell you exactly what I drank. While Robert was ordering and drinking his third julep (two would have put me away for the night, cause those silver cups were big!), I had a coffee and cream.





Robert is always such a charming conversationalist that time just flies by. He's very astute and well-read, which totally belies the fact that he's from Arkansas. LOL The Arkansan in him does, though, give him his Southern charm. And, we also got to talk a little political business. I'll be looking forward to our next dinner party.

Firefly, Washington, D.C.

Leo had a festive birthday party last night when we went to Firefly for a simple repast. It was a buzzing place, too, with several other birthday dinners (including the table next to ours) and a big table with a bridal shower group. It was so noisy at times we had a hard time hearing normal conversation, largely because half of the room is the bar and lounge.




Once we were seated, we started with cocktails. Leo ordered a very summery "cucumber Collins," a Tom Collins with cucumber puree and garnished with a sprig of lemongrass and a slice of cucumber and I sipped a Sapphire martini.

The menu had a lot of interesting and unusual items, making it hard to decide on dinner. Leo started his meal with a duck rillette, which I think wasn't quite what he was expecting. Rillettes are sort of like a preserved potted meat and used as a spread on bread. Firefly's version was close to the tradition; the duck spread was flavorfully seasoned and sealed with a layer of duck fat and served with toasted bread slices and little cornichon pickles. For his main course he chose the grilled Icelandic salmon that came with lyonnaise potatoes and a leek puree. Dessert was the citrus-scented cheesecake with strawberry sauce which struck me as a sort of strawberry upside down cake; a large amount of fresh strawberries in sauce filled the bottom of the plate topped with a square of soft cheesecake with the bottom graham crust up on the top.







I started with a chilled asparagus soup with crème frâiche that was very flavorful and tasty. Next I had a mixed green salad with crumbles of Maytag blue cheese and toasted walnuts with a sherry vinaigrette. My main course was a very unusual portobello mushroom schnitzel served atop a dish of lentils; I'm not quite sure what I think of this dish, but it was certainly interesting. If one has had a German wiener schnitzel before, the mushroom cap was similarly breaded and fried. In lieu of dessert I did a cheese plate with three American cheeses: Fog Light, O'Banon, and Rogue River Blue.









With our meal, we drank a bottle of wine from Virginia, a Barboursville Cabernet Franc. It was drinkable, though nothing spectacular. After desserts, I had coffee and Leo had a snifter of Di Sarrono amaretto on the rocks.

Duplex Diner, Washington, D.C.

Last night, Ian and I made our way up to Adams-Morgan to have our Cinco de Mayo Mexican dinner at Lauriol Plaza, thinking that at 10:30 the Friday night dinner crowds would have thinned out. We were wrong. Lauriol Plaza was absolutely jam packed with people and there were huge crowds in the bar waiting for tables as well as lines out on the sidewalk still just trying to get in to the establishment. Thinking the noise and crowds (not to mention wait) were not for us, we continued walking up the street and came upon the Duplex Diner.

Duplex is always fun, though I've always thought that it was more of a "gayified" version of diner food. It has a bar and the menu is all rather too upscale to qualify it as a true diner.

To celebrate Cinco de Mayo, we shared an appetizer of grilled vegetable and pepper jack cheese quesadillas. The vegetables were actually quite tasty and had a nice grill flavor without being smoky or burnt. For our main courses, Ian had chicken fingers and fries and I had their classic meatloaf (I like the meatloaf itself but I could do without the big topping of tomatoes on top) with green beans and some wonderful, rich, garlic mashed potatoes. For dessert, we split an absolutely enormous brownie sundae with a cake-sized layer of brownie topped by four big scoops of vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce, whipped cream, and several cherries. Even half of it was more than we needed for a single serving!









We had a very personable waiter who had just finished taking a six hour constitutional law final over at Catholic and his brain was a little fried and ditzy. He was amusing, though.

Brasserie Les Halles, Washington, D.C.

This afternoon Ian and I were over at the passport office, and after we completed our business we walked across the street to have a late lunch at Brasserie Les Halles to begin our Cinco de Mayo celebration.

Cinco de Mayo is an interesting American holiday. American, you say? Cinco de Mayo is the observance of a Mexican military victory over the French army back in the 19th century. While it's technically a bank holiday in Mexico today, it isn't a holiday that Mexicans "celebrate." In Mexico, one doesn't find Cinco de Mayo parties; even in the highly Mexican parts of the U.S., the Mexican community doesn't celebrate. So why is it a big deal? Marketing. The tequila and cerveza companies "created"—quite successfully, mind you!—a holiday to sell liquor. Consequently, we media-driven Americans are the only people in the world who party and celebrate Cinco de Mayo.

Anyway, getting back to Brasserie Les Halles, we thought it would be fun to do French food on Thursday and then celebrate the Mexican victory with Mexican food on Friday. The food was absolutely delicious!

Les Halles is a Parisian style bistro nestled in between government office buildings on a plaza along Pennsylvania Avenue about half way between the White House and the Capitol. They have ample al fresco seating as well as a large interior space. We chose a quite table inside.

Ian chose the ravioles de Royan au fromage et à la crème. These were small demiluna shaped raviolis stuffed with cheese and presented in a rather French style cream sauce and garnished with a heavy layer of broiled parmesan cheese. He said it was very good.

I had the confit de canard avec pommes Salardaise, which was so good the explosion of flavors in my mouth had me craving more and more almost to the point of wanting the lick my emptied plate! I've always been a fan of duck confit—traditionally a roasted duck leg which is then fried in duck fat and sliced. Their presentation at Les Halles was quite interesting. They balanced a large crouton on its side then put a large mound of frisée (curly endive) salad in a vinegary dressing on the plate; the duck confit was then placed atop the salad with the Frenched bone resting on the crouton; the rest of the plate was then filled with wonderful, savory, hot pommes Salardaise. Pommes Salardaise are one of the great gifts of God to the French. They begin by dicing potatoes which are then seasoned, fried in duck fat, and truffled. Mmm. My mouth is watering even now.

We both had other obligations elsewhere later in the afternoon so we were unfortunately unable to stay for dessert.

Butterfield 9, Washington, D.C.

After staying late at the office tonight to get caught up, Leo called and wanted to go to dinner. We started to walk down to Old Ebbitt Grill, but as usual, there was a huge line of people (mostly cocktailers) trying to get in an we weren't in the mood to wait. So, we walked around the block and walked in to Butterfield 9, a place I'd been with Tony last January but Leo had never been. We got a nice banquette corner with both a view of the restaurant and the sidewalk outside. At the table next to us were a doting man and a bored looking woman we later heard were there celebrating their anniversary (poor guy), and a few tables over was a gaggle of young women who obviously needed no more wine.

I started with a celery root and potato chowder that included some tiny clams and vegetable greens. Then I had the grilled pork chops with tempura squash blossoms and flavorful bits of fried pancetta with a slightly sweet current-cumin sauce. The squash blossoms were a little on the large side and seemed a little flaccid. The pork chops were thick and juicy, cooked to just a little beyond medium rare—had we not been in a nice restaurant, I would have been tempted to gnaw the bone! For dessert I had the blackberry shortbread. It was a brief little thing with a lot of unmet potential. They'd taken a piece of shortbread, split it, topped the bottom half with a dollop of lemon-scented crème patisserie, then arranged four blackberries in a square on the crème and then one blackberry on either side of the shortbread to rest on the overflow and flank the shortbread, then topped it with the top half of the shortbread. Lovely idea, but where were the blackberries? Back in Oklahoma, six blackberries would barely make a garnish!

Leo started with an appetizer of diver scallops, grilled and crusted with coriander, and artfully arranged on the plate with flash-fried strips of various root vegetables and some pea sprouts. It was sauced with a red chili and lemon grass emulsion. Next he had the barbequed eel and halibut. Using a Japanese theme, there was a thick brown miso glaze on the eel, and the meats were accompanied by some rutabaga slices fried and then glazed with honey; a wild herb salad was also on his plate. He washed all this down with a couple of glasses of Domaine Bernier chardonnay. For dessert, he saw my little blackberry shortbread and decided to order himself a dessert sampler plate for two. I love his diet! The sampler included a little tiny version of the blackberry shortbread along with a miniature ramekin of crème brulee, a warm apple tart, some vanilla ice cream, a triangle of "chocolate cloud" (sort of a mousse cake), a fresh strawberry on an almond pineapple mousse, and a warm ginger snap.

The food Wednesday night was all delicious and very pretty. Too bad I didn't have my camera. The only problem with the evening was the service. Our waiter was dismal. What highlighted his lapses even more was the fact that the waiter at the next table was excellent, helpful, and solicitious to his tables. The waiter we were assigned seldom came by the table; he made no recommendations or suggestions for the meal; we had to ask twice for water refills; our table was never crumbed; our bread was never refilled; my dessert had been brought out shortly after the main courses only to be taken away by another waiter (I think they had the wrong table), then when my actual dessert arrived, I had to sit there looking at it for fifteen minutes before the waiter came to take Leo's dessert order; we had to wait inordinately long times both to receive our check and then to have the waiter come pick up the credit card and process it. I also noticed that the next table had two visits from the owner and one visit from the manager during the course of the evening; we had none.

I feel sorry for the chef. No matter how wonderful the food from the kitchen, patrons will soon tire of surly service and high prices in the very competitive D.C. restaurant market. We can only hope that this was a very off night for Butterfield 9.

Au Pied Bistro and Pizzaria Uno, Georgetown, D.C.

Last night, Ian and I made a late night visit to Au Pied Bistro on the east side of Georgetown. I think I've mentioned before that Au Pied Bistro is the remnant of the old Au Pied du Cochon, an old standby country French restaurant which used to be on Wisconsin Avenue where the Five Guys hamburger place is now. Way back in the Dark Ages when I was at Georgetown, we'd pop in to the Pig's Foot for late night, simple, inexpensive, French suppers. After Au Pied du Cochon sold out to Five Guys and closed down, the former staff moved down to the M Street/Pennsylvania merge area to Au Pied Bistro, a simplified version of the original.

Well, alas, it isn't Au Pied du Cochon anymore, and Au Pied Bistro has declined even since my last visit there last August with Leo. Now, we haven't been avoiding going to Au Pied, but they've just not been open every time we've attempted to eat there; they advertise that they stay open til 2 a.m. or so, but they close when the restaurant gets slow, which could be as early as 10 or 11. Even when Ian and I wandered in last night about 10:30, we were the only table in the restaurant and they seemed to be closing down.

It was a bad sign and a harbinger of things to come when our waiter brought our drinks and my iced tea had the distinct taste of coffee—they'd brewed the tea in their coffeemaker! I sent it back.

Ian wanted to compare the food at Au Pied Bistro to that at Bistro Français, where we usually get stuck dining on our late night soujourns, so he ordered the omelette aux fines herbs et fromage avec pommes frites, something he'd had last week at Français. Well, the differences were immediately obvious. The Pied version was a simple, flat omelette with herbs in the eggs and a little bit of Swiss cheese inside; Français' version not only gives diners a choice of cheese but includes a much more ample quanity and they also whip their eggs before cooking to give the omelette "lift" and a light fluffiness. The waiter brought no condiments with the food and Ian had to wait a long time for his ketchup. He said the Français omelette was much better.



My eggs Benedict experience was similar. The hollandaise sauce had the distinct taste and texture of a commercial quick sauce, the Canadian bacon tasted rather more like ham, and the whole dish was just rather ordinary.



We were going to order some dessert, but our waiter said the kitchen was closed. Well, several of the desserts require no preparation and he could have plated them himself if there was no one from the cook staff to dish it up.

Ian still wanted dessert after we left Au Pied Bistro, so after wandering the streets of Georgetown for a while, we landed at Pizzaria Uno, where Ian made me eat and split with him one of those enormous brownie/ice cream/whipped cream desserts that it seems everyone has these days. This is the first time I've been to an Uno in literally decades and the chain has changed quite a bit. When last I ate at one, it was a pizza place; today it's a typical full-menu franchise restaurant like a T.G.I.Friday or Applebee's or Bennigan's. We had a friendly waitress who's about to graduate from GU and she's moving to New York City for a job, so she and Ian chatted about NYC apartments and neighborhoods. At least we had a fun ending to the evening.