Cafe Mozart, Washington, D.C.

We ended up getting our cherries at last during D.C.'s cherry blossom season at Cafe Mozart, a lovely Austrian cafe hidden behind a kleine konditorei a couple of blocks east of the White House. After a couple of pints of Bitburger beer in very tall glasses, we started with an appetizer of cheese fondue made in the traditional fashion wherein the cheeses are melted in white wine and cherry brandy. Leo's main course was a beef roulade with spätzli and a cucumber salad. I had the hassenpfeffer with potato pancakes and red cabbage. My hassenpfeffer was very good, with the braised rabbit being fork-tender and served with a sweet-sour red wine sauce.

For dessert, I had the "cherry blossom special", which was a commemorative coupe (think fancy ice cream sundae) with whipped cream flavored with just a tiny, tiny touch of cherry brandy and compote of spiced cherries on the side. Leo ordered the Black Forest cake, but the waiter returned to report that they were out, so Leo had to make due with the Mozart Torte, a layered chocolate cake filled with a raspberry-flavored chocolate cream.

This restaurant features live music most every evening, and we were "blessed" with a middle-aged Georgian (think Russian, not redneck) bass-baritone accompanying himself on an electronified guitar singing pop oldies.

Mimi's, Washington, D.C.

After Easter Mass, I went back to the condo and Leo was awake and dressed, rearranging his bedroom, and hungry, so we walked up to Dupont for brunch at Mimi's. It was very simple. I just had the "Neptune special", which was a variation on eggs Benedict made with crabcakes, and it was **so** good! Leo had one, too, plus he had a chocolate mousse for dessert. I tasted his mousse, and it was very smooth and chocolately, but it had no flavoring or pizzazz to it.

Suburban diners

Breakfast was at the Silver Diner in Alexandria VA, and dinner was at the Tastee Diner in Bethesda MD. I love diner food. A Greek "gyros" omelette for breakfast and a country-fried steak for dinner. Yum. I don't know why there aren't any diners in D.C.

Le Gaulois, Alexandria, VA

Leo took me to dinner as a "pre-thank you" for helping him move tomorrow. We went to King Street in Old Town Alexandria (my first visit!) and landed at a place called Le Gaulois ("the Gaul," which, judging from the cafe's logo, refers to Roman era, wild, Gallic tribesmen). Leo started with a French Kiss (think kir royale with Chambord instead of creme de cassis) and I had a Dubonet Rouge with a splash of soda and a twist of lemon. Then, we ended up eating the same things.

We began the meal with an "entree" of the chef's charcuterie plate, an assortment of meats and pates which were wonderfully rich and varied. I particularly loved the duck liver pate. Next was a creme de moules, or cream of mussel, soup that was a lovely soup with shelled mussels and strips of julienned zuccini and carrot in a thin cream soup. The plat premier was a rich grilled pair of shad roe topped with bacon strips and served on a bed of sauteed fresh spinach and accompanied by two little parsleyed potatoes and a tiny bowl of steamed brocolli, julienne turnip, and julienne carrot.

Our second plat was a non-traditional but wonderful canard a l'orange presented as a series of thin slices of rare duck breast adorned with manicured orange wedges plated in a circle on a mirror of light red wine and natural juice reduction sauce, surrounding a small puff pastry "bowl" of wild rice. Our salade was a simple plate of mesclun greens in a light French style olive oil vinaigrette. Three cheeses, a chevre, a brie, and a hard cheese the name of which I didn't understand from the waiter, with slices of green apple and several red raspberries were the next course. The hard cheese was good, and I always like chevre; the brie was rather young, I thought, but edible.

For dessert, Leo selected for us a fruit crepe with strawberries, blueberries, and something I wasn't quite sure of (diced poached pear??) garnished with a nest of candied orange peel threads all floated on a lake of thin zabaglione sauce which was lightly broiled before presentation. We ended the meal with a very nice espresso.

Our wine with dinner was a surprisingly economical and pleasant bottle of 2002 L'Enclos de Saint Jacques Bordeaux Superieur recommended by the waiter.

Office cafeteria, Washington, D.C.

The office cafeteria had baked rockfish (which was good), rice (which was mediocre even by institutional food standards), steamed carrots (which were mushy), and blackberry cobbler (which was good) for lunch.

Bistrot du Coin, Washington, D.C.

Before Maundy Thursday Mass tonight we popped in to Bistrot du Coin for a bite to eat. The service was unusually late (8 p.m.!), so we thought we'd best eat beforehand. Anyway, I had a nice country pate and a little green salad of Bibb lettuce and sliced scallions with a glass of nice margeaux, and then later a slice of lemon tarte with a thin layer of piped meringue on top that was garnished with tiny slices of gumdrops. My dinner companion had a huge pot of steamed mussels in a garlic cream sauce which looked and smelled delicious, and a basket of French fries with a side of bearnaise as a dipping sauce.

Montmartre, Washington, D.C.

Yesterday, we didn't get started until after noon, and headed over to Eastern Market to see the market and the flea market. It was a lovely day to be out and about walking around. We opted to have brunch at a wonderful little French bistro called Montmartre. Tony had a country style pate, eggs Benedict (Les Oeufs Benedicte—it used pancetta instead of Canadian bacon), and a cheese plate in lieu of dessert, starting with a bloody Mary for his hair of the dog. I had the calf liver, which was absolutely fabulous. The liver had been very gently sauteed to about a "medium", then laid on a bed of piped mashed potatoes (there was something tasty in the potatoes which I've yet to identify), then sauced with a rich demiglace and balsamic vinegar reduction with caramelized onions and slices of roasted garlic. Oh, my! Yummy! I know some people think they hate liver, but this would be the perfect choice to reintroduce them to the delicious and complex tastes of a properly prepared liver dish.

For dessert, I ordered the Il Flotante, mostly out of curiosity, since I'm used to "floating islands" at French restaurants being Oeufs à la Neige......little puffs of meringue swimming in a thin custard sauce. The Flotante was a three inch diameter meringue sprinkled with shaved almonds and a tiny bit of honey before being broiled ever so briefly and presented on a mirror of custard sauce. While we were finishing dessert, Leo popped in to the restaurant and had a piece of the blueberry tarte. Here's a picture of Tony trying to figure out what to do with his eggs Benedict:

 

La Creperie, Arlington, VA

Last night after work Tony wanted to go shopping, so we headed to Pentagon City. Along the way, we decided to grab an early dinner, since he'd not lunched yet, and found La Creperie amidst all those restaurants and shops which are outside the main "Fashion Centre at Pentagon City" in an area called Pentagon Row.

I really enjoyed my dinner, which was a stew of chicken and mushrooms in a chicken broth enriched with cream followed by an enormous salad maison with freshly made mayonnaisse as the dressing. For dessert, I just had a tiny cup of French roast espresso. Tony started with a fine pate in aspic, then ate a salmon and cream cheese crepe for his plat, and an apple cinnamon crepe with vanilla ice cream for dessert. I liked this creperie, cause they used great big crepes instead of little tiny pancake sized ones. Tony's salmon crepe was folded over in half much like a quesadilla and the apple dessert crepe was wrapped into a sort of flat burrito shape.

All evening I kept trying to order my food in French from our obviously French waitress, but she kept quizzically repeating me in English like she wasn't able to understand me. Now, I'll be the first to admit that my French sucks, but I couldn't have been that far off on either vocabulary or accent, or Tony would have lectured me about my errors, as he always does. I guess she was just being like the waiters in Paris. Parisians can be so obnoxious. They generally always speak impeccible English, but they feign ignorance and make Americans struggle with their French, and then they still pretend the Americans are incomprehensible, even though they probably eavesdropped on the table ahead of time, hearing the Americans discussing their menu choices amongst the table.

Saint Patrick's Day in D.C.

Tony met me at the airport tonight, and after we dropped my luggage off at home we headed out for a St. Patrick's Day dinner. Even though it was after ten p.m., all of the Irish or Celtic related restaurants were absolutely jam-packed with drunken faux-Irishmen, so the only place we could find that was 1) halfway calm and 2) still open was the Afterwards Cafe.

After we were seated and got our Irish coffee orders in, what did we notice but the two business men at the adjacent table (adjacent at this cafe means the tables are barely a foot apart!) to ours were real live Irishmen! One was from Northern Ireland and one was from Ireland, and they were in town today with the McCartney sisters who were visiting the White House to discuss problems with the Irish Republican Army and Sinn Fein.

Albuquerque

What is it about this town and green chiles? Everywhere I go to eat, the food is full of green chiles. I just had a nice buffet dinner at the Sandia Casino (I only won $10.50 more than I started with tonight), and the food was all redolent with chiles. And this afternoon, I pulled through the McDonald's drivethrough, and my $1 double cheeseburger had a green chile on it! It was the same last month when I was here....the only place that didn't have green chiles in the food was Starbucks. Oh, well. I guess it's a tourist thing. I'd rather they did blue corn tortillas, though.

Sterling's, Bartlesville, OK

Today is my mother's 80th birthday, so I flew to Oklahoma and then drove up to my parents' house to surprise them.

We went to dinner tonight at Sterling's, which is one of the two or three only "nice" places in town, and it's where my parents usually end up for special occasions, since they don't like Copper at the Price Tower and I don't have a membership at the country club anymore. My parents both had ribeye steaks and I had the evening special, which was a rather large filet mignon pepper steak done up with a shallot wine reduction sauce. Salads and baked potatoes came with the meal, as is pretty much traditional around here. With dinner, we drank a bottle of Kendall Jackson Vintner's Reserve Merlot (I forgot the month), which was an innocuous little wine that paired satisfactorily enough with the steaks. Dessert was strawberry cheesecake with a candle stuck in it, and I ordered the apple cranberry pie, which was good, but which would have benefitted greatly from being warmed.

Namaste, Lakewood, CO

I had an interesting dining experience Tuesday during my Denver business trip at a place called Namaste in Lakewood. Namaste is an Indian and Nepali restaurant. I've never been to Nepal before, and for those of you who are geographically challenged, Nepal is that little tiny nation north of India up in the Himalayas where Mount Everest is located. My waiter was very nice! He is from Nepal, and has lived in the Denver area for three years. He was almost tall, had features that resembled Chinese, had a big beautiful smile, and the most unusual light brown eyes. We chatted a bit during the meal, and I discovered that he is single, he has a college degree in humanities from back in Nepal and he does volunteer work with the children's hospital in Denver helping out with wheelchair sports.

I had him pick a traditional Nepal dish from the menu, since I've had tons of Indian food before. He selected the chilli chicken, which was a stewed dish with bite-sized chunks of chicken, sliced rings of onion, horizontal slices of a meaty pepper of some sort (authentic?? I didn't recognize it as one of the standard Mexican peppers), and a little bit of diced potato-like root, all enriched with a bit of tomato paste, and served with a big mound of a basmati-type rice. He also selected a parantha bread, which is a large, round, leavened, pita-like, flat bread which had been quartered, and which he encouraged me to tear into pieces and use to eat the food, instead of using silverware. I really liked the chicken. I'd ordered it with "medium" spice, not knowing how hot their hot was, and I could easily have kicked the heat up another notch. The thing I liked about the dish, though, was that the spice combinations had far fewer ingredients than are used in India, and I didn't have the feeling of being overwhelmed with spices as I often do in Indian establishments. This was much simpler, much cleaner, if you will, while still being complex.

Even though the classic Indian dessert, kulfi, was invented in the Himalayas (kulfi is the original ice cream, first made with Himalayan snow and flavored with pistacchio nuts), the waiter informed me that it isn't eaten in Nepal unless one goes to an Indian restaurant, and that desserts are not common at all, especially since no fruits can be grown in the country. I drank a Nepalese version of chai with Nepalese tea, milk, and only a very light hint of spice, throughtout the meal.

Grand Marnier and Cigar Dinner, Washington, D.C.

Last night I had a lovely time at a "Grand Marnier and Cigar Dinner" at a restaurant downtown called McCormick and Schmick's, as the guest of a priest friend of mine who, as it turned out, was their guest expert on the history of Grand Marnier. Also at our table was Lee, the cigar expert; Carrie, the Grand Marnier sales representative; and Carrie's friend Kathryn, who turned out to be quite fascinating. She's a biological researcher working on the human genome project up in Rockville and she's also simultaneously doing another graduate degree at Johns Hopkins. She invited me out to Herndon this afternoon to watch her play field hockey, but it's in a place that requires a car, so I'm not going to go. Coincidentally, Fr. Declan and I were the only men at the dinner wearing bowties.

Since we were a little early, while we waited for the restaurant's guests, we had a couple of rounds of cocktails with the girls drinking wildly flavored martinis (I remember one was a strawberry lemonade something), Fr. Declan drinking his standard Tanqueray No. 10 martini, and I sipped on kir royales. We were also given little miniature snifters with tastes of a new Grand Marnier product called Navan, which is a premium vanilla flavored cognac that was actually pretty tasty.

At this point, the cigars began to arrive. I didn't actually sample them myself (everyone else at the table, including the girls, was puffing away), but I did bring them home. We got free cigar cutters that look kinda dangerous to me. Along with the first cigar, they also brought a small snifter of Grand Marnier--some people dipped the end of their cigar in the GM before putting it in their mouth. There were three cigars presented, in increasing order of heaviness and flavor. The first two were from the Ashton house in the Dominican Republic. The third was a Honduran cigar "La Aroma de Cuba" from the Marquis house. Lee talked about them all at length and gave better names and identifications, but not being a smoker, that all went in one ear and out the other. The one interesting thing that I remember, though, is that the very best tobacco leaves for cigar wrappers are not from Cuba, but from Connecticut!

When the hors d'oeuvres arrived from the kitchen, we were served GMTs—Grand Marniers and tonics, a remake of the classic gin and tonic. The hors d'oeuvres were yummy. My favorite were these great big sea scallops wrapped in bacon. They also did chicken firecrackers (think spicy chicken-stuffed egg roll, cut on the bias) which were tasty and some very nicely done Rhode Island calamari. There were three choices for salads, a house salad (mixed greens, blue cheese crumbles, balsamic vinaigrette), Caesar salad, or a wedge salad (iceberg wedge with tomato slice, cheese crumbles, and blue cheese dressing). The wine was a 2002 Green Point Yarra Valley Chardonnay, from Australia. The wine was okay, but a little too light for that stage of the evening after all the cocktailing and heavy appetizers.

There were several entree choices. I had the 18 oz ribeye with mashed potatoes and asparagus, but they also offered a New York strip, New Zealand rack of lamb, swordfish picatta, and a rock fish filet. My steak was huge and very tasty....I wanted to gnaw on the bone! With dinner, we had a 2001 Sterling Diamond Mountain Ranch Cabernet that was a very good choice for the steaks, and the bar manager also brought around tastes of a 1997 Beringer Cabernet. For dessert, I had the upside down apple pie with cinnamon ice cream, and there was also a choice of a chocolate bomb, and the wine was an Inniskillin Eiswein.

In between the entree and dessert, we began sampling the special Grand Marnier reserves. First was the Cuvee du Centenaire, which was bottled in honor of the 100th anniversary of the House of Grand Marnier. After dessert, we got the Cuvee du Cent Cinquantenaire, which had been bottled in honor of the 150th anniversary. The 150 came in a gorgeously hand painted bottle, but I really think I liked the 100 better....it had better balance and harmony, and the dried bitter orange peel taste was much crisper and more enjoyable. Not that the 150 was bad, mind you!

So, that was dinner. Now I just have to figure out what to do with these three expensive cigars! Two of them are in cute little tubes, too.

Malaysia Kopitiam, Washington, D.C.

My friend Leo wanted to go to dinner tonight, so he Metroed over and we ended up walking all up and down M Street looking for a fabulous place, and ended up at a highly rated Malaysian place called Malaysia Kopitiam. This was my first venture into Malaysian food, so I wasn't exactly sure what to expect. Leo's from Hong Kong, so he's had it before, but he's not expert on it, so we had the waitress just bring us dinner. The food reminded me a lot of Thai cuisine with some Chinese aspects, except the spicings are very different and almost remind me of Indian spices.

Our first courses were these interesting chicken and shrimp stuffed, fried, thin, burrito-looking things which had been cut into pieces, served on a bed of lettuce chiffonade, and accompanied by a hot, yellow tinged, watery looking sauce, and then another plate of what appeared to be a long roll of translucent white rice paper wrappers filled with chopped shrimp, scallop, and scallion cut into nine segments and arranged in a checkerboard pattern, accompanied by a peanut sauce. The second course included a lamb curry, with large tender chunks of lamb in a mild brown curry sauce, and a squid and shrimp dish, with large pieces of squid which had been scored and cross-hatched and were tossed with peppers, tomato, onion, okra pods, and some potato-like chunks, and all came with steamed white rice.

The last course included mango sticky rice liberally sprinkled with chopped peanut and a particularly interesting "Malaysian crepes" dish, which was made by taking two thin pancakes with a layer of sweetened, mashed green beans in between and pressing it on the grill to create sweet-crunchy areas on the crepe surfaces, and then the whole thing was cut into decorative shapes. It was very tasty.

Dish, Washington, D.C.

My friend Leo was in the neighborhood tonight and wanted to go eat, so we popped over the Dish in the River Inn on the street behind my block. It's cold out tonight, so we didn't want to have to walk far. We started off with a martini and a cosmopolitan which came in oversized glasses--no need for a second round. I wasn't terribly hungry tonight, so I just ordered a frisee salad and a duck confit off the appetizer side of the menu, and Leo had some potato gnocchi and the wild salmon entree. For dessert, we each had a pistacchio, dried fig, and white chocolate bread pudding, which was tres bon, then we sat and lingered over coffee. I like this friend; we talked a little "business" and he expensed the dinner. I need to find more friends with expense accounts!

Hooters, Phoenix, AZ

Last Thursday I had the most harrowing experience in Phoenix. We had a 5-7 p.m. meeting, after which several of my immediate superiors invited me to join them for dinner. Being new, that's the sort of invitation one really can't turn down. So, we left the office building where we'd been meeting and walked over to a nearby shopping and dining district, where they promptly headed for a Hooters.

It was awful.

The place was loud and boisterous, the televisions were blaring sports, the waitresses—who weren't even pretty—were running around in way-too-tight skimpy t-shirts and Daisy Dukes so tiny their pubic hair was longer than their shorts, and the place was filthy. I don't even want to describe the smell and condition of the men's room. Everyone at my table ordered chicken wings and beer. I had a salad and iced tea. And what's worse, when the chicken wings arrived at the table, the waitress kept forgetting to bring my salad. I wonder if she even put the order in at the same time. It was a good fifteen minutes later before my salad came.

Why do these waitresses think that they need to shake their chests when they bring food or drink to a table? I refused to look at the waitress when she came by to interrupt our conversations, which only made her shake at me all the harder.

When I got back to my hotel, I had to take a long shower, cause I felt so dirty, so used, so violated.

San Marcos Golf Resort, Chandler, AZ

Phoenix was an interesting experience— my first time to visit the State of Arizona. Our conference was at the legendary San Marcos Golf Resort and Conference Center in Chandler. The hotel provided some of the most interesting coffee breaks. Ordinarily, one gets cookies or muffins or doughnuts or some such thing, but the morning breaks always had hard boiled egg halves and slices of cheeses with fancy crackers (I loved the chevre they served), and the afternoon breaks were always slices of melons and pineapple, which I found rather too hard to eat in a crowded lobby.

Off time was kinda boring in Phoenix and I don't think I'd like to live here. For one, I couldn't find any place decent to eat. The town was full of national franchise places, but I didn't have a single meal the whole trip worthy of description.

Bombay Palace, Washington, D.C.

Had Indian food for dinner tonight at Bombay Palace. It was a "nice" restaurant on the K Street restaurant row, but I wasn't overly impressed with the dishes. It wasn't bad or anything, just not "special," and since they were rather pricey for an Indian restaurant, I think it needs to be special.

Lei Garden, Washington, D.C.

Gung-Hay-Fat-Choy. That means "happy new year" in Chinese. The Chinese New Year started last night, and continues for a week. This is the first time I've lived in a city with a Chinatown and been here for the new year, so I went with a friend to Chinatown last night for dinner at Lei Garden. My friend is from Hong Kong, so I didn't have to do any of the ordering. There was this rapid exchange of conversation with the waiters in rather animated Chinese, and soon dishes began to appear.

Of course, I have no idea what some of the things were we ate, but they were all good. I particularly remember a scallop dish with snow peas and water chestnuts and a beef dish with hot peppers and bits of garlic and scallion mince with virtually no sauce. Another thing was a skewerful of salted, savory shrimp that was pretty tasty. The nice thing about ordering in Chinese, though, is our food was much more authentic, the sauces weren't sweet, and there wasn't much sauce either.

Starbuck's, Albuquerque, NM

I gained a new addiction in Albuquerque. Our first morning there, one of my colleagues picked me up (we were staying at adjacent hotels) and drove us to the meeting site, but along the way we stopped at a Starbucks for a brief meeting with some other people. She's not a coffee person, so I was surprised that she scheduled a meeting at a Starbucks, but once we were there and ordering, she requested something new I'd never heard of before. A Chantico.

Chanticos are new. Chanticos are wonderful. Chanticos are amazing.

It's chocolate. No, not cocoa, but drinking chocolate, steamed to a precise 140 degrees Fahrenheit. Then it's served in a special cup, tinier than the standard Starbuck's espresso single shot cup. One probably wouldn't want much more than this small sample—it's 390 calories as it is—and I'd venture to say that one would most likely die (blissfully, of course) if one were to special order a venti.

Now, I'm not a Starbucks fan. Aside from not really liking their coffees, they are an evil, expansionist, capitalistic empire. But now I have to tolerate them, because they are the only place where I can get my chocolate fix.