Alero, Washington, D.C.

After the parade this afternoon, Leo, Guy Bill, and I wandered up Connecticut to Alero, Guy Bill's favorite Mexican restaurant in town, and had dinner. We started with chips and salsa (the salsa was good, but the chips were too thin and kept breaking!), some chorizo Mexicano (Mexican sausage covered in melted cheese), and a grilled shrimp thingie of some type. Leo had a seafood stew, Guy Bill some spinach, chicken, and cheese quesadillas, and I had a carne al paso (steak). This is a restaurant which gives black beans as its standard accompaniment with plain white rice. I also had some fried yuca on my plate. For dessert, Leo and Guy Bill each had their own cheesecake chimichanga, and I had a piece of a very good Tres Leches cake. Oh, did I mention the big pitcher of margueritas?



Did Leo drink too many margueritas?

The Melting Pot, Washington, D.C.

Tonight, my friend Scott and I went to the Melting Pot for what turned out to be a *very* long dinner! The Melting Pot is a small national franchise specialty restaurant chain serving up Americanized versions of traditional and not-so-traditional Swiss fondues. The D.C. location is just south of Dupont Circle on the lower level of a newish office building. Upon entering the building, one has to descend a flight of stairs to get to the Melting Pot, and I didn't see an elevator anywhere around, so handicapped people may be out of luck. The decor is modern and elegant, and a large bar sits right off the maitre d' stand. We were seated in the main dining room in a booth that featured a large hot plate and fondue pot in the middle. We were given cocktail menus, plus large dinner menus that had probably five pages of wine lists before the two pages of food options. They had several prix fixe as well as a la carte options, and since Scott had never had fondue before, we opted for one of the prix fixe menus so he could taste a little of everything.



Naturally, our first course was a traditional Swiss cheese fondue. Our waitress started by placing a quantity of chablis wine in our pot, then slowly adding some shredded Emmenthaler and Swiss cheeses. Once they started to melt, she added garlic, nutmeg, and a couple of stout shots of kirschwasser. While it melted, she brought us small cubes of French bread, cubes of Granny Smith apples, and an assortment of small crudites, all of which were to be speared on our long fondue forks, dipped in the melted cheese, and then eaten. It was a nice fondue, though I daresay that it could have used a couple more shots of kirschwasser (the fondues I've had in Switzerland have all had an almost overpowering alcohol bite).

The next course was a large pecan and dried cherry salad on an interesting bed of mixed baby spring greens that included some unusual greens like Swiss chard, all dressed in a cherry vinaigrette. I enjoyed the salad, but I daresay it could have used a little more chicory, endive, and raddicchio for more bitterness to help cut the richness of the first course.

Next was our "Potomac platter," a lovely large plate full of assorted raw tiger shrimp, ahi tuna cubes, chicken chunks, and a whole lobster tail cut into bite-sized pieces, plus a smaller plate with mushroom caps, broccoli, quartered new potatoes, and yellow summer squash demilune slices. All of these items were to be speared on the fondue forks, then immersed into the new fondue pot full of hot cooking oil. We had the option of cooking the meats and vegetables au natural, or dipping them first into a tempura batter or a sesame batter. Once the food was cooked, we had a plethora of dipping sauce options, including a three-welled dish with a chipotle sauce, an oriental barbecue sauce, and a curried yogurt sauce, and four small bowls of sauces such as a lemon butter, a hot spicy house-made cocktail sauce, a lovely gorgonzola cheese sauce, and a "green goddess" sauce of sour cream and herbs. Seems like I'm forgetting something, but you get the gist. Fondue cooking is such a great boon to conversation, since it takes a minute or two for each morsel to cook in the boiling oil, and you just had to talk in between bites!

The waitress then forced us to eat dessert. We had about eight options as to dessert fondues, and Scott selected for us the "yin-yang" fondue, a mix of dark chocolate and white chocolate in the same pot. The dippers that came with the chocolate on a big platter dusted with confectioner's sugar included a slice of cheesecake, cherries on stems, strawberry halves, banana pieces, pineapple chunks, cubes of angel food cake, and marshmallows rolled in dutched cocoa.



Scott likes sweet drinks, so we shared a bottle of asti spumante with the meal, and after dinner while I sipped my cappuccino, he had a yin-yang martini, which was an interesting white chocolate liqueur, Ketel One vodka, and cream concoction with half the top of the cocktail garnished with a heavy layer of grated dark chocolate.

The Melting Pot is a great place to eat, though, obviously, one will want to dine with friends to be able to share the wonderful fondues. And, be sure to allow plenty of time to eat! We were there tonight for about three and a half hours.

Bistro Francais, Georgetown, D.C.

I'm just back from Georgetown, where my friend Garrett took me to eat at Bistro Francais in his little tiny red convertible sports car. It was odd being back there—I was there decades ago when I was doing my internship here—and it was vaguely familiar and yet very strange. We had a simple dinner, since this bistro is known for its prix fixe menu selections.

I started with a very delicious cold cucumber soup with little shreds of julienned cucumber and a flavorful, herbed, thin cucumber liquid. My plat was from the poissons section of the menu, a very nice grilled halibut served on a mirror of lobster Nantua sauce and accompanied by two tiny pieces of carved white potato and a luscious crab and broccoli custard timbale. Also had a nice glass of the house sauvignon blanc. Garrett had the roasted-rare sliced duck breast in an apple-honey sauce on a bed of wild rice. For dessert, we chose from the dessert tray, with Garrett opting for the strawberry tart and me having the lemon tart, followed by an espresso.

We really should go to Bistro Francais more often. It's simple, French bistro food, but more importantly, the kitchen is open late every night, and I have the hardest time finding late-night places to dine in D.C.

Sushi Taro, Washington, D.C.

Last night, Leo took me back to Sushi Taro on 17th Street, which I think is becoming my favorite local sushi bar. He had the sushi and sashimi bento box, and I had a an ecclectic assortment of food starting with a big bowl of steamed, salted edamame (soybeans in the pod), followed by an interesting salad of five different types of seaweed in a sweet, creamy, "vinegar" dressing, followed by the Tori no Karaage, which is the Japanese version of fried chicken, and ending with the Chawanmushi, that Japanese seafood soup with a layer of egg custard on top, all washed down with many cups of hot, Japanese green tea. The chicken was quite good. They selected large, bite-sized morsels of skinned, boned chicken (both white and dark meat), dredged them very lightly in Japanese bread crumbs, then flash deep fried them until just done and still quite juicy and tender. They came to the table steaming hot. The seafood soup was a little different than it was the last time I had it, since there was very little actual soup broth this time, and the custard layer was thicker. It was still good, and came with shrimp, eel, chicken, fish cake, and some vegetables in it.

Sette, Washington, D.C.

After an afternoon at the Phillip Collection Galleries, my friend Joel and I wandered around the corner to Sette for a late lunch. We sat out on the patio underneath a big canvas canopy and watched the Connecticut Avenue pedestrians walking by. I've been wanting to make to Sette, since it's one of the few restaurants open late in the area, but the reviews I'd read were mixed, so we never prioritized the trip. It's a modern Italian-themed restaurant with a rather small menu, but the service was ample and well trained. We had a rather ecclectic meal that was much more of a nosh than a lunch.

We split a bottle of prosecco that turned out to be a pleasant afternoon sipping wine. The waiter (he said he was Tunisian, and not Italian) also brought us bottles of Italian sparking water. We started with a plate of five very large pieces of grilled squid served amid a mound of dressed mixed greens and quartered cherry tomatoes. Next we had the Italian meat and cheese board, which featured five exotic Italian meats in paper-thin slices and five Italian cheeses cut in different shapes, with four big slices of grilled Italian country bread. We were chatting and lingering so long during these two courses, we should have been at a tapas bar!

About this time, the wind came up and we thought we were going to get a big downpour, so the waiters moved us all inside before we could order a third appetizer. We ended up at the end of the bar, so instead of more food, we moved to espressos and Joel was drinking crema di limoncellos. Eventually, we had a ricotta cheesecake that was ok, but the barmaid had microwaved it before serving, which, of course, I always think devastates all breads and pastries, plus the ricotta was actually hot in places, which made it feel "thin" on the tongue. It improved once it cooled back to room temperature, but the crust naturally was ruined by the nuking.

I suppose I shall have to go back to Sette sometime to try out their pastas and meat courses, but at least the noshing was fun. Joel was such a charming conversationalist, I really didn't pay that much attention to the food, anyway.

Cafe des Artistes, Washington, D.C.

Went to lunch with a friend from the Solicitor's office. Good thing we were walking, because the streets were still gridlocked with traffic, as 18th Street was still closed off from this morning's transformer explosions at the World Bank. We strolled over to the Corcoran Gallery and lunched at the Cafe des Artistes. It's a lovely place in what amounts to a grand lobby of the museum, with marble tiled floors, Doric colonades, elaborate friezes, and an elegant atmosphere.

I had a very good Corcoran House Salad, which included grilled chicken, goat cheese, toasted pinon nuts, corn, dried dates, and other goodies, served with a crisp citrus vinaigrette. My friend ate the barbequed pork sandwich, which was totally unlike any BBQ sandwich I'd ever seen. It was a huge pile of what looked to be pulled pork in a surprisingly orangey colored sauce mounded on a portion of an artisanal bread loaf, accompanied by a side order of cole slaw. For dessert, we both ordered the warm chocolate cake, which was individual Bundt cakes glazed in chocolate and crowned with a big scoop of vanilla bean ice cream.

I was very impressed with the cafe and its friendly, attentive service. Should be a good place to entertain for business lunches.

Szcheuan House, Washington, D.C.

Did you know movie tickets cost $9.75 in D.C.? Afterward seeing a movie, we dined at Szcheuan House, since we were already in Chinatown. The restaurant was ok, but nothing spectacular. The highlight of the evening was eating jellyfish. They were crunchy. I was expecting them to be soft and squishy, but they were like eating crunchy cartilege or something. Tasted good, too, and didn't have a fishy taste. They came with a plate of little ham slices that you put the jellyfish on and then eat together, but I liked the jellyfish by itself better. I couldn't read the menus, since they were in Chinese.

Lei Garden, Washington, D.C.

Had a good lunch yesterday afternoon. Leo took me to Lei Garden, over in Chinatown, for dim sum. It was fun, although I must confess that I can do without eating the heads and shells of the tasty fried and spiced shrimp. I'm not sure if I'm disappointed or not, but after we were totally stuffed full of food, one of the carts came by with chicken feet. I've never had chicken feet before. Not sure I want to eat them. But, we were too full to get a dish and try them. Maybe next time.

Bambule, Washington, D.C.

Leo and I headed up to Friendship Heights on the Metro this afternoon for some shopping at the Mazza Gallerie, and other neighborhood stores. The Metro was packed like sardines this afternoon--what was going on? It made us so hungry, we had to wander in to Bambule, a Spanish tapas bar, for a late lunch.

We stood forever at the door waiting to be seated, but the staff seemed to be preoccupied with setting up the patio deck for a big wedding reception. Eventually, one of the waiters went back to the kitchen and yelled at one of the waitresses in Spanish, and she eventually breezed out and told us to sit anywhere we wanted. We found a table in the middle of the dining room, which was actually a nice looking place, with burgundy draperies and ceiling hangings on stucco colored walls with dark woodwork. We sat and sat with no menus, no water, and no wait staff coming over to greet us. Eventually, Leo got out his cell phone to see the clock and announced that if they weren't out by 2:55 (ten minutes from then), we were leaving.

About 2:52. a waitress wandered out to pour water, but I asked her to bring us fresh glasses that didn't still have lipstick on them. That, of course, delayed things even more. After the water arrived, she wandered off again before eventually bringing us menus. After yet another wait, a different, older waitress came out to take our orders. Once we ordered the food, we tried to order sherry, and she said they didn't have any! I can't imagine a tapas bar without sherry!

Anyway, we started with gazpacho, which was cold, crisp, flavorful, and really good. The vegetables had been coarsely ground, rather than diced. The soup had a nice lemon zest to it. We had six tapas plates, including a lovely cerviche, a cheese plate, sliced sausages in sauce, a couple of veal slices, a pork dish wrapped around a potato, some nice calimari, and some sausage roll like things. Leo had some kind of round puff pastry filled with apples for dessert and I had an interesting cheesecake like thing which was freshly baked in flaky pastry (and still warm!), kind of like a small burrito. It was a tasty meal.

Unfortunately, I doubt I go back to Bambule again, since the service was so inattentive and disinterested.

Sassi, Scottsdale, AZ

Way, way out in the far northeastern part of Scottsdale is a grand Italian villa nestled in the shadow of Pinnacle Peak which houses a Southern Italian restaurant recommended by the America West (soon to be U.S. Airways, they announced on the news this evening) in-flight magazine called Sassi. "Sassi" is an Italian word for rocks or stones. The building is fairly new, but it has a definite grandeur and molto lussuoso design. Three of us—a solicitor, a judge, e io—made the lengthy trek tonight for our last dinner in Phoenix, and what an experience it was!

We were seated at a large, round table in the corner of the west side veranda for our al fresco dining experience, with a glorious view of the Arizona sunset awaiting us. With the sun going down behind Pinnacle Peak, the dusk was prolonged, and gave us nice silhouettes of the numerous saguaro cacti in the landscape. Our waiter, who is actually Italian, was very professional and helpful.

As we started with various aperitifs, I chose the DeFaveri Prosecco, an Italian sparkling wine. For antipasti, we nibbled on fiori di zucca, fresh squash blossoms which had been stuffed with a goat cheese and herb mixture, battered in a tempura-like coating, then deep fried to delicate crispness.

My first course (remembering that Italians don't count any of the appetizers, soups, salads, or what have you served before this as "courses") was a very tasty bowl of gnocchi al funghi. They found some very exotic mushrooms for the "funghi" that went with the semolina and ricotta gnocchi dumplings, bathing them in a rich mushroom cream sauce, and garnishing the plate with large shavings of pecorino romano cheese.

Scottaditi di agnello made a wonderful second course, with three good-sized grilled lamb chops from the local Niman Ranch perched on a plateful of saffron artichoke hearts and green Italian olive ragu. The chops were perfectly cooked and had such a fine woodsy taste to them I was strongly tempted to gnaw the bones! One of the other guys also got the lamb chops, and the other the pesce al cartoccio, a halibut steamed in a paper bag with diced vegetables and white wine that looked and smelled absolutely divine. I also got a chance to sample some of the zucca con noci, or slices of butternut squash baked in a wood oven with walnuts and honey, plus some other taste in the dish I couldn't quite place.

In lieu of dessert, I opted for i formaggi. The waiter didn't say what the cheeses were, so I'll have to guess that I had a fresh ricotta, pecorino, and a taleggio (though I'm a bit uncertain about the taleggio). The cheese came with a sliced green apple and another basket of the restaurant's very good assortment of Italian breads, including my favorite, pane pianto, some very thin, crispy, flatbread wafers. Other desserts at the table included a chocolate gelato topped with a layer of toasted hazelnuts and a tartufo, which I can probably best describe as a chocolate ice cream snowball.

I really liked Sassi. The environment was calm and luxurious (I've seen restaurant bathrooms smaller than the toilet stalls in this place!), the staff was attentive without hovering, and there was no pressure at all for us to vacate our prime table once we had finished eating. If one asked for directions to the facilities, a staff member actually escorted one to the room, instead of giving oral directions. (I suppose this also helped keep diners from getting lost in the large villa!) Prices were typical of a restaurant of this high caliber, so they weren't really out of line at all, though a diner should factor in the Italian tradition of what amounts to two "main courses." There is also an extensive, reasonably priced (reasonable is a relative term....) wine list which is heavy on the Italian reds, all categorized by Italian wine region. I give Sassi four and a half stars.

The Willows, Phoenix, AZ

The three "Alaska girls" from the meeting dragged me out to the casinos, claiming they wanted my company and the chance to show me around. Of course, the real reason they wanted to hang out with me wasn't my charming company, but the fact that I had a rental car. Nevertheless, we went to the Pima Tribe's two "Casino Arizonas," starting at the newer casino, since they had the nicer restaurants there. This casino had a buffet, a fancy steakhouse, and a 24-hour moderate restaurant called The Willows, which was where we dined. The food was simple and good, particularly the shrimp martini I had as an appetizer. This "martini" had eight smoky, grilled shrimp hanging from the rim of a big martini glass that was filled with cocktail sauce, lime wedges, and frisee.

Zest, Phoenix, AZ

After a long, long day of non-stop meetings, three of the solicitors from the D.C. office and I ventured out to dinner at a place called Zest Spirited Dining, another of the highly recommended new restaurants from the Arizona Republic review. Our young environmental lawyer even dressed "up" for the occasion, throwing a long-sleeved dress shirt over his t-shirt and jeans, and wearing black dress shoes to replace his highly decrepit Birkenstocks.

Zest is a dark but very open restaurant with the kitchen fully open to the main dining room and a bar by the main entry. The walls were covered by a temporary display of striking neo-Dadaistic art by a local painter. The menu is surprisingly simple, with just one page of appetizers and one page of entrees, and that was it.

Two of us ended up ordering appetizers, but everyone shared. One of the dishes was the house specialty, an eggplant cheesecake, a tender, cheesy, custardy dish served on a pool of roasted garlic tomato sauce. The other dish was the grilled scallops, with the scallops dusted in Jamaican "jerk" seasonings before being seared on the grill. While I like seared seafood, those who prefer their food thoroughly cooked may wish to specify that to the kitchen ahead of time. The scallops came with a tomatillo chipotle tartar sauce (tasty!) and a cilantro cabbage slaw with red chili oil and avocado. We washed all of these down with some very interesting beers. Mine was an "orange blossom ale" with a distinct, but delicate, orange water taste that made the beer seem almost sweet, and it had a pleasant orangy aftertaste that wasn't cloying or overpowering at all.

While we waited for our entrees, a pleasant young woman was bright magenta hair surprised us when she rolled a cart up to the table an announced she was there to make our salads. Turns out the salad course came with the entrees. She started with a base of assorted young greens in a citrusy vinaigrette (a salute to the restaurant's name??), then asked if we wanted any gorgonzola crumbles, dried cranberries, pecans, or orange wedges. The combination of all made quite a nice salad.

There were so many intriging entrees it had been hard for us to choose just four. Our vegetarian almost got the eggplant ratatouille, but chose the angel hair pasta instead. He seemed to like it, but I noted that it came with a rather thin garlicky balsamic vinegar sauce in great quantity which I'm not so sure I personally would have liked. One guy got the panko-breaded pork chop, another of the house specialties. "Panko" is the word for a special kind of Japanese bread crumbs. That dish came with mashed potatoes and a cranberry-orange chutney, and when queried about the entree, his considered analysis of the dish was that it was "good." I love verbose attorneys. The other guy selected the ahi tuna, which was seared on the grill with fresh cilantro, then served on a bed of lime-scented pearl couscous and topped with quite a lot of the tomato-pineapple pico de gallo. He said the tuna itself was very good, but it was rather overpowered by the pico de gallo.

I had a harder time picking a main course. There was a filet mignon topped with gorgonzola cheese with roasted sweet potatoes that looked yummy at another table. Osso bucco--one of my favorites--was also on the menu. I finally decided upon the domestic lamb shank. After all, the Navajo Indian Reservation takes up a huge block of the northeastern corner of Arizona, and sheep is what the Navajos herd. It was a fabulous choice. An absolutely enormous lamb shank had been wrapped in grape leaves and braised in a Syrah wine and tomato sauce. The lamb was fork-tender, juicy, and full of flavor, and clearly it was lamb rather than the "young sheep" that so many places try to sneak in. The lamb rested on a plate full of fusilli (corkscrew) pasta cooked to a perfect al dente that had been tossed in a delicious cream sauce with goat cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, fennel (adding an interesting crunch and a faint anise taste), and artichoke hearts with a grape and feta cheese relish on top. I was totally stuffed, but the pasta was so good, I forced myself to eat every last piece.

Regretfully, none of us ordered dessert. I thought maybe we'd get one single dessert to split four ways, but everyone was too full to commit to the decision. I think all of us were still a bit jet-lagged, too (at this point, our bodies thought it was after midnight).

Everyone said Zest is a place they'll try again on future trips to Phoenix. I'll give Zest four stars.

Durant's, Phoenix, AZ

Durant's is one of those old steakhouses, much like old steakhouses all over the country, that has been a fixture in downtown Phoenix for decades, and that is where we headed for dinner tonight. It was a trip back in time, as we were greeted by a gaggle of tuxedoed waiters and a flock of bar waitresses with their hair up and with a frilly apron over their clothes. The mezzalunar banquettes were upholstered in a deep red vinyl that almost matched the red flocked wallpaper. We half expected to hear a Rat Packer start crooning.

Our meal started with "Durant's Debris," a dreadful name for a delicious starter of small tips and pieces of beef marinated and broiled on a skewer. They were quite tender and tasty, and several of them would have made a fine meal. After a salad course of iceberg wedges and cherry tomatoes topped with a very chunky Roquefort dressing, we got to our main courses. I had a thick ribeye steak with garlic mashed potatoes and my dinner companion had the chicken "Oscar" (quotation marks were the restaurant's), which was a grilled chicken breast topped with a layer of grilled asparagus spears, then a layer of melted provolone cheese, and then a layer of grilled shrimp. We also shared a side dish of mixed sauteed mushrooms.

With barely room for more food, we decided to split something and ordered a strawberry shortcake. It's a good thing we were splitting, cause as it was, we only ended up eating about two-thirds of it. It wasn't that we didn't like it, it was just unconscionably huge! This tower of dessert had three big rounds of shortbread in graduated sizes with full serving quantities of strawberries and whipped cream in between each layer and on top. I do believe that this tower must have stood nine to ten inches tall!

Mezcal, Phoenix, AZ

Mezcal is touted as one of the "Five new restaurants not to forget about" by The Arizona Republic, Phoenix's main daily newspaper. Mezcal is nestled on the edge of Kierland Commons, a shopping center filled with very expensive stores and other restaurants. The restaurant has a very modern look to it, with sleek lines and darker desert colors. Art on the walls is large, simple, abstract, and limited. Mini-halogen spotlights float around the room on exposed wire tracks. In the center of the room, a huge spiral staircase goes around a series of large, rough-hewn lodge poles to Cobalt, Mezcal's bar. Cobalt targets a younger demographic and features a pianist after restaurant hours. Meanwhile, I noticed that the background music being played on the sound system in the dining room was largely pop hits from the early 1980s.....not exactly targeting a "young" demographic!

Menu items place great emphasis on "eco-friendly" food items, from organic vegetables to line-caught fish to antibiotic-free beef. The waiter seemed a bit annoyed with me when, after his eco-friendly litany of how humanely they killed their animals, I remarked that if I wanted to be truly eco-friendly, I'd be vegan, wouldn't I? The wine list, which was heavy on the California vineyards, also included several lables using organic grapes.

Dinner looked like it was going to be a pricey undertaking (especially on a $47 per day per diem, and on our "travel day," we only get 3/4ths of that!). with most entrees falling in the mid-$20 range and everything a la carte, so I opted for the four course prix fixe "summer tasting menu" and a wine flight with three half-pours, which I let the waiter select.

For the starter, I opted for the Big Sky bruschetta instead of the chicken and brie quesadilla. The bruschetta's toast was surprisingly thick and thoroughly dried before being "rubbed" with a layer of Stilton cheese and topped with diced tomatoes, red onions, garlic, and capers in a balsamic vinegar reduction. The bruschetta was tasty, but very hard to eat due to the thickness of the toast and the quantity of topping made eating with fingers messy. The four bruschette were arranged on a large plate with a huge mound of dressed assorted field greens in the middle. This was curious, as the only available second courses were salads, rather than soups. Wine for this course was a 2003 Bonterra Viognier, from Mendocino County, California. It was a nice, full white with a lot of spiciness that stood up well to the tomatoes and Stilton, and it was probably my favorite wine of the three.

My second course was the salad of baby organic field greens and herbs with pico de gallo, queso fresco, and aged red wine vinaigrette, which I thought would be more interesting than the alternative Arizona version of a Caesar salad. The salad was huge (enough for two!) and was heavily sprinkled with little cubes of freshly made Mexican white cheese. The pico de gallo had quite a kick to it, and its jalapeño content really overpowered the accompanying wine. That wine was a 2002 Markham Merlot from Napa Valley, and it was a classic example of an insubstanial merlot that wasn't even exciting when drunk by itself but, sadly, probably very popular with the masses as a cocktail party beverage.

I was excited about my main course, the highly-talked about Mezcal paella. The alternative choice was a lime-marinated flank steak. The paella was accompanied by a 2003 Wild Horse Pinot Noir from the Central Coast of California. It was a very nice pinot noir, but this particular vintage was not sufficiently acid or tannic to compete with the full flavors and spiciness of the paella. The dish included Florida white shrimp (which were very spicy!), half a dozen Penn Cove blue mussels in the shell, Chinese scallops, Monterray Bay calamari, Maverick Ranch chorizo (also a bit spicy), roasted Maverick Ranch free range chicken, and an unusual quantity of French-style haricots verts, plus the usual herbs, onions, sweet peppers, and saffron with rice. The mound of paella was presented with a large sprig of fresh rosemary stuck in the center like a proud flag. This course was very very good, but I can't say that I was ecstatic about it.

Another thing I should probably mention is the complimentary bread provided with the meal. They served a lovely herbed foccacia that was delicious when warm, but totally nondescript when it got cold (so eat it warm—it's good). It came with an unusual sauce of tomatoes and sweet red peppers whipped into an aioli with just a touch of olive oil.

Dessert was an enormous, quadruple serving of bread pudding topped with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream and a slightly Jack Daniels-infused (I actually couldn't taste it) creme anglaise, then dusted with cinnamon. The pudding was mixed with chocolate chips that I couldn't quite tel if they were cooked in or added prior to serving, or both. It had a custardy texture with a few spots that seemed undercooked, and on the whole, I was not impressed with the dessert. I ate less than half of it, and possibly should have opted for the alternative menu dessert, a chocolate gelato.

On the whole, Mezcal is a nice restaurant with a lot of potential, but I have to say that I was just not wowwed by it. The paella was excellent, but the other courses seemed rather ordinary and the dessert was merely mediocre. Similarly, the wine list was interesting, but not terribly fabulous, or even particularly geared to the menu. Out of five stars, I would give Mezcal a 3.5.

Annie's Paramount Steakhouse, Washington, D.C.

Last night, I was going to meet a friend for dinner, but after two postponements she ultimately ended up having to cancel due to her work things, so I went ahead and went to the restaurant by myself. I was already in the neighborhood, so I'd been killing time browsing at Whole Foods. Annie's Paramount Steak House is on the 17th Street strip, and has been around over fifty years. It's in an old building, and I was seated in what is now an enclosed patio. My waiter was sort of an older, scary-looking, biker type guy with a shaved head, big moustache, tattoos, and black clothes, but once he opened his mouth to talk, he turned out to be a great big old queen who called all (male and female) his customers "Sweetie" and "Hon." All he needed was a beehive and a pink apron.

It was a steakhouse, so I stuck with the program and ordered a big ribeye with a salad and baked potato, and a big Sapphire martini to wash it down. The iceberg lettuce and tomato salad was large and basic, with the addition of a few yummy ripe black Greek olives and a pepperoncini pepper. The bleu cheese dressing was ok, but commercial. When my steak arrived on a hot hot platter, it was juicy and flavorful, but cooked a bit more than the medium rare I prefer. It was edible, nonetheless. Didn't do dessert, cause I was quite full and the stock dessert selection (cheesecake, chocolate cake, etc.) didn't inspire me.

Annie's is a good, basic place for a simple, unpretentious meal, so I'm sure I'll go back.

Fino Ristorante, Georgetown, D.C.

Yesterday was Leo's birthday, so we went out to Georgetown for a late night birthday supper at Fino Ristorante Italiano. I'd never heard of the place before, but it turned out to be quite a nice little place. It wasn't terribly busy, but it was nearly midnight when we got there, so I suppose the small crowd wasn't surprising. We were given the seat right by the front window, looking out over M Street. The ethnicity of the place was a bit confusing, though.....the man who looked to be the manager was Middle Eastern of some flavor or another, our waitress appeared to be Japanese, and the busboy appeared to be Central American of some type!

The manager and waitress suggested a nice Italian red wine, the name of which totally escapes me. I'm not that expert at Italian wines, anyway. We started with a calimari with marinara sauce, then a salad Caprese. The calimari was good, though the breading fell off the squid easily. I loved the Caprese salad. Fresh mozarella is always a favorite of course, and they balanced little balls of it on halves of nicely ripe red tomatoes. The fresh basil isn't in season yet, so they had basil preserved in olive oil that they drizzled around the plate under the tomatoes. They brought dishes of olive oil and balsalmic vinegar for our loaf of bread.

For our main courses, Leo had the evening's special, which was several large slices of salmon on a bed of fettucine tossed with sauteed vegetables, and I had a very tasty spaghetti alla carbonara made in the traditional style, instead of with prepared sauce poured over the pasta as I see so often these days. For dessert, we each had a piece of very good tiramisu with real masapone on espresso-soaked cake and all dusted with cocoa, We chatted a bunch with the waitress about this being a birthday dinner, but she didn't give him a candle or comp the dessert! Oh, well, it was a good dinner, nonetheless.

O'Hare Airport, Chicago, IL

I moved my flight home from 1 to 8, and changed my connections from Dallas to Chicago. Chicago was busy. Had a two hour layover there, so I got to have lunch in their food court, which was a Chicago-style deep dish pizza with "butter crust." It was ok, just not something I'd want to do every day.

La Hacienda, Albuquerque, NM

Continuing my nearly-unsuccessful quest for a Cinco de Mayo festival in Albuquerque, of all places, I headed into the Mexican restaurant on the plaza, La Hacienda, which is one of a local chain of restaurants around town and at the airport. They had all these ristras (strings of red chile peppers) hanging from the eaves by the doorways. I asked both the hostess and my waiter about Cinco de Mayo specials, and both of them gave me sort of blank stares and "huh?" reactions. They didn't even have a margarita special. I guess people in Albuquerque just don't care about Mexican holidays.

I wasn't terribly hungry, so I just got a tamale platter. They brought chips with a smokey, thin, red salsa that wasn't terribly exciting. I wasn't overwhelmingly impressed with the tamale platter, either. I thought the tamales were a bit dry and the pork flavor was obscured by very hot red peppers inside the masa. The rice and beans were ordinary, as was the little cup of guacamole. I did like their sopapillas and honey, though, since they were nice and airy instead of flat and dense.

The main problem with this restaurant was that the service was absolutely abyssmal. I had to ask twice for an iced tea refill, it took a long time to get my food, I had to ask for my guacamole when the food came, by the time the guac arrived, I was done with the meal, I waited forever for my plate to be cleared and had to ask for the check, and, since the sopapilla hadn't arrived yet (it came with the meal; otherwise, I'd have ignored it), I had to ask for it, and when the sopapilla did finally come, there was only one instead of the menu-advertised two. I got tired of waiting for the waiter to take my credit card to pay the check, so I went up to the cashier's cage myself and paid directly. And, it wasn't just my waiter who seemed derilect--the other tables with other waitresses seemed to be waiting a long time, too, and since the restaurant wasn't full, I didn't understand what was taking so long.

Navajo food

One of the judges at my meeting, who married a Navajo from Albuquerque, brought me a container of frozen Navajo mutton stew with Navajo corn (she called it something, but I didn't catch the word) that I stuck in the refrigerator in my room to microwave for breakfast Friday morning and eat it along with a fresh mango. Yummy breakfast. The Navajo stew was really good, and I particularly liked the corn, which the judge explained to me was steamed underground and then removed from the husks before being put into the stew. I really must get her recipe!

Harvest Cafe, Albuquerque, NM

We were wrapping up our last day of business discussions, and our group opted to go to lunch together at the Harvest Cafe at the Pueblo Indian Cultural Center. I do like that place—went there the time before last when I was in Albuquerque. We got the big corner table and all ordered our own things. I ordered things for "courses," but everything arrived all at once.

My intended "appetizer" was corn fries. These are French-fry looking things served with a green chile ranch dressing dipping sauce. They weren't potatoes, though.....they were made as though they had prepared a thick cornmeal mush, rolled it out, then cut French-fry sized pieces that were then deep fried. They were quite good, with an interesting flavor, even though it's not a "traditional" food.

Next, I had a cup of mutton stew. The mutton and vegetables were tasty and fork-tender, but I would have liked the rather thin broth to have been a bit more flavorful....this broth tasted as though it hadn't stewed long enough that morning.

My main course, though, was absolutely delicious. I had the "pueblo rellenos," an Indian version of the more familar chiles rellenos on many Mexican restaurant menus. Rather than the Mexican poblano pepper, they used a great big, traditional, New Mexico pepper called a "Big Jim," which was stuffed with cheese, then breaded in blue cornmeal and fried. Two of these big peppers were presented on a bed of red chiles which were redolent with a hearty, smoky taste and a bold but not unpleasant heat bite. Oh, my, the rellenos were so good!

Other people at the table had various things including the posole (spicy hominy and pork stew), big bowls of the mutton stew, chicken quesadilla-looking things, enchiladas in green chiles, and great big, plate-sized pieces of fry bread.