Eclair

Thursday we ate at Vaccaro's Italian Pastries over in Union Station (this is a branch location of the famous Baltimore bakery), and, after having one of their traditional Sfinge di San Giuseppe—"St. Joseph cream puffs" that include ricotto cheese, pistachio nuts, and candied cherries and fruit peel in the filling, an Italian tradition on the Feast of St. Joseph on March 19—I had to get something to take home from their bakery case. It was already the day after St. Joseph's Day, and the feast officially had been transferred to last week, anyway, so I didn't get more cream puffs. I set my eye on something different.

An eclair.

But not just any eclair, the wonderful, huge, chocolate-frosted eclairs I've only been able to find at Vacarro's. These beautiful eclairs truly are big enough to feed three!

Georgia Brown's, Washington, D.C.

After our "lovely" experience at Mass last night, we decided to self-medicate a little bit and drown our sorrows in some good old down-home cooking at the South Carolina/Southern style restaurant Georgia Brown's on McPherson Square just around the corner from the church. Sometimes the place is packed and we were taking a chance without a reservation, but we were fortunate to be able to get right in and be escorted to a table.

It was the Connecticut Yankee Laurent's first time in a Southern restaurant. Naturally, there were a lot of foods he didn't know what were, and he got to see good old Southern sweet tea on the menu, just like the tea Ryan used to make us at home. I tried to provide him some menu guidance, but he kept trying to think in healthy Yankee terms and didn't really listen to me.

He started with a margarita, not realizing that that drink was a bit more southern than what we had in mind. Meanwhile, I just had tea, of course, and it came with a lemon wedge and a sprig of fresh mint.

We didn't really order in courses. Laurent's dinner all came from the nightly specials list. He got a bowl of shrimp bisque enriched with some crème fraîche that he scraped clean.



Then, he ate a petite salmon salad, a very, very interesting construction of hand sliced citrus and salt cured salmon lined up across the bottom of a rectangular plate and topped with a pile of arugula, onion, and halved cherry tomatoes; a pile of fresh mozzarella balls, and a pile of quartered artichoke hearts, all drizzled with a blackberry gastrique dressing. I thought it was an unusual presentation that looked quite appealingly delicious.



I had a simpler meal. I merely ordered the beef short ribs. The meat is amazing. It's fall-off-the bone tender, presented boneless after having been braised in a red wine and fig. It's presented on a bed of creamy grits infused with blue cheese that were just dreamy, and the plate is finished off with several baby carrots glazed in a dilled butter sauce arranged around the beef. Some frizzled leeks garnished the top.



For dessert, we opted to split a peach cobbler with vanilla ice cream. The peach cobbler here is always a little unusual, in that they use a crumble topping made from oats and crushed vanilla wafers cookies. The dish also has a darker color since they use brown sugar in both the topping and the fruit mixture. Our cobbler arrived garnished with a couple of fresh strawberries and some mint. Laurent, who'd claimed he didn't want dessert, ate most of it.



So, we had a nice dinner. Laurent particularly enjoyed the waiter, though I thought he was a bit long-winded in his spiel and descriptions of menu items. There were several families with small, small children in the restaurant last night, and I really just can't imagine where the common sense of the parents is to even think about bringing a small child to a restaurant of this caliber. The mothers at two tables clearly were not having a good time and not able to take advantage of their meals. I guess some people just have more money than sense. The only other excitement was a man getting sick in the men's room. The staff eventually loaded him up in a taxi; later, I noticed one of his table companions trying to figure out how to get home, since, apparently, the sick guy was their designated driver.

Bangkok Bistro of Georgetown, Georgetown, D.C.

Since we were in the neighborhood after having spent the evening shopping, we went to Bangkok Bistro of Georgetown for a bit of Thai food for dinner. As many times as I've walked up and down Prospect Street, this was the first time for me to visit the place, and it turned out to be surprisingly good. Sorry there are no pictures, but I didn't take a camera with me.

They have a large, pleasant dining room in two big areas. The wait staff is almost all Thai (the bartender looked more Hispanic to me than Asian), and they were all dressed in dark trousers with French blue shirts and greenish-beige ties that they all wore tucked into the shirts.

Ian started with a banana daquiri and I started with tom ka gai soup. The soup was very nice with the coconut soup slightly thickened and flavorful. My only problem was that they had a lot of exotic spices and vegetable materials in the soup still that were big flavor surprises when bitten, including one very hot pepper!

We were a bit surprised that our entrees came with little iceberg lettuce salads with a sweet, peanut dressing, and topped with crispy fried noodle strips.

For our main courses, Ian had the chicken pad pik khing, a red chile curry with green beans and chicken served over rice. I had the Thai bar-b-q chicken. Half a chicken was trimmed and stacked in pieces, accompanied by a hot spicy sweet sauce, a big mound of green papaya salad (good, but the green papaya was a little too green and didn't have much flavor itself), and a basket full of sticky rice.

We didn't have dessert, but I noticed they had taro custard on the menu, so I'll be looking forward to trying that on a future visit. And I do plan on going back. The service was attentive and the food flavorful. The prices are a little on the higher side for a Thai place, but they are in Georgetown, and they are not an expensive restaurant in the grand scheme of things in D.C.

Clyde's of Gallery Place, Washington, D.C.

The University of Kansas had a reception Tuesday night at Clyde's over in the Chinatown/Gallery Place neighborhood for local honors alumni to meet the KU undergraduates in town this week as a part of the University Scholars program. I just went for the free cocktails and food.

They had mild chicken wings with ranch and blue cheese dressing dipping sauces, some crudités, a fruit and cheese tray, and sliced breads on a buffet table; the wings were good, but just way, way too hard to eat gracefully standing up. During the course of the evening, waiters passed trays with hot hors d'oeuvres, including grilled steak on toast, miniature crab cakes, spiced shrimp, spanakopita, and spring rolls. The shrimp created a problem, since they still had the tails and end of the shell on; there was no place to deposit the tail after eating the shrimp, so we had to hold on to it until we could find a passing waiter with a tray collecting dirty glasses and plates. The cocktails, though, were just beer and wine. So I drank the Clyde's house brand white wine. Lots of it.

Hard Times Cafe, Arlington, Va.

Yesterday is believed to be the 1,515th anniversary of the death of Saint Patrick. We celebrated the feast of St. Patrick on Friday; since this is Holy Week and the church officially transferred the feast day, it would have been inappropriate to "celebrate" yesterday, so we went to dinner in solemn commemoration.

Ian (with a name like "Ian," do you think there's a chance he's of Irish ancestry?) wanted to have our commemoration at the quiet and solemn Hard Times Cafe in Clarendon across the street from the Georgetown branch campus building. There were so many solemn commemorators at Hard Times that it was difficult for us to hear one another's quiet devotional commentary during dinner.



We began our meal with the ritual consumption of sacramental beer, shared from the same pitcher. We then segued into whetting our appetites with jalapeño poppers, some jalapeño peppers stuffed with cheese, breaded, and deep-fried, then served with strawberry preserves as a dipping sauce. We were so distracted by our religious devotion that we forgot to photograph them until they were half eaten.

For our main courses, Ian had the breaded chicken tenders dinner, with the chicken accompanied by "roadhouse" fries (Ian had to eat potatoes as part of his Irish observance) and a little cup of cole slaw. Ian, who's big on tradition (he insisted on eating at Hard Times because that's where we had eaten last year), also had this dish the last (and only) time he was here.



I had a bowl of the terlingua chili, which they consider to be their "spicy" option amongst their four chili offerings (but not what I would consider to be spicy). It's okay, but it really does need some side dish offerings like a cole slaw or corn bread, since I don't find this to be as complex a blend of flavors as their Texas or Cincinnati chilis. I just ate crackers with mine, and while that was fine, it was a little boring.



Ian got the apple lava cake for dessert. This is very similar to the chocolate lava cakes that have been rather ubiquitous on local chain restaurant menus, except it uses a generic white cake batter and apple filling. It is served with whipped cream, and Ian also got a scoop of vanilla ice cream to go with it. I was going to have dessert, but as soon as the waitress took Ian's order, she ran off to the kitchen to place his order and never asked me what I wanted. Perhaps the waitress was just trying to turn her tables more quickly; we noticed that she was quick to remove plates, sometimes before we were completely done (like, she tried to take Ian's dessert plate when he'd momentarily laid down his fork but when there was still half the food there).

After dinner, Ian wanted something sweet to wash down all that nasty beer, so he ordered a Bailey's Irish Cream on the rocks. Once again, the waitress didn't ask me what I wanted to drink. Her pattern of service made this a very economical meal for me.

La Fourchette, Washington, D.C.

Several of us were in Columbia Heights this afternoon and some of the guys were hungry. We walked over to Adams-Morgan and decided to patronize La Fourchette for a quick French snack.

Kevin and I just had appetitzers. He ordered (after a couple of previous attempts that ended up being unavailable) the crab and spinach flan. It looked really good, and I didn't get a chance to query him much about it. The flan was presented on a rectangular plate on what looked like a mirror of nantua sauce, then lightly dusted with some finely minced parsley. The custard in the flan looked to have a good consistency.



I picked the artichoke vinaigrette. It was good, with the artichoke being a nice size, though I suspect from the texture that it had been made at least the day before. The accompanying dipping sauce was a piquant mustard-mayonnaise.



Michael was a bit more hungry, so he got an actual main course followed by a dessert. He reported his seafood crëpes to be quite good. They were enrobed in white sauce (bechamel? mornay?) and accompanied by a grilled tomato half topped with duxelles and a couple of little bundles of haricots verts wrapped in thin strips of carrot.



For his dessert, he got the oeufs à la neige, or "floating island," a pool of crème anglaise with meringue floating on top.



I always enjoy La Fourchette, and I think the other guys did, too. The only downside was that they charge for Coca-Cola refills, and Kevin had to send his iced tea back because they had brewed the tea with the coffee pot and it tasted of coffee.

Speaking of Coke, that's what Michael used for his Kody Pose. We shot over a half dozen poses, even using the red eye reduction feature on the camera, but we couldn't get him to leave his eyes open! This is the best we could do:

Paolo's Ristorante, Georgetown, D.C.

After the symphony concert last night, we wandered over to Georgetown to find something to eat. After Ian vetoed several restaurants because they reminded him of something or because he had a tradition of only going there with specific people or because he wasn't in the mood for certain ethnicities, we finally found a place he hadn't been that was marginally acceptable to him, Paolo's Ristorante.

For a Thursday night at 10 p.m., Paolo's was pretty packed and loud. They fairly quickly got us a table, though it was a small round five top and a little awkward for conversation what with all the background noise.

Laurent got the pizza marquez, featuring lamb sausage and pine nuts. The hand-tossed crust was covered with cheeses and fresh snipped herbs



I got the cayenne and espresso steak salad. Hot, medium-rare slices of steak previously marinated in espresso and cayenne pepper, halves of fingerling potatoes, and crumbles of gorgonzola cheese sat on the plate with mixed European salad greens on top and caramelized onions on top of the greens. The dressing included portabello mushrooms and what they called dragon honey. I liked my salad, but I would have preferred a dressing that wasn't so sweet.



Ian started off with a plain pizza margherita. It turned out to be quite large, certainly enough for two to share. It had a very, very thin crust topped with mozzarella cheese, basil leaves, and diced tomatoes (instead of the usual tomato sauce). The waiter actually cut the pizza on the table for Ian.



Even though Ian was already complaining about how big the pizza was, he was in a soup mood, so he ordered the tortellini in brodo, a huge bowl of chicken broth with gorgonzola cheese-stuffed tortellini. The soup looked really really good to me. Ian only ate half of it, though, and half of the pizza. He took the remaining half of the pizza home in a doggie box, but I think I'd have taken the soup, not the pizza.



Laurent and I split a great big piece of tiramisu for dessert. I was a bit more blasé about it, but Laurent thought it was the best tiramisu he'd ever had. Ian abstained, since he hadn't finished his soup and pizza.



We got out just in time to get Laurent to the subway stop to catch the last train home.

Tastee Diner, Bethesda, Md.

Last night late, Ian took me to Tastee Diner up in Bethesda. We had the same waitress we had when he and I were there last September.

Ian started with a bowl of chicken rice soup. I say it was canned; Ian argues that it was made there. His main course was a grilled cheese sandwich with french fries. It was the same food he had last time (except I think maybe the soup was chicken noodle).




I started off ordering the baked pork chops and stuffing daily special, but they were out, as it was late. The waitress suggested a turkey blue plate, so I ordered that. Then, she came back to report they were out of stuffing. So, I switched to the chicken-fried steak blue plate, with mashed potatoes and gravy and a side of sliced beets. It was goooooooooood.



For dessert, I had the bread pudding, and Ian got one, too. The bread pudding is very custardy and puffy; it was served with a big dose of whipped cream on top.

Dupont Italian Kitchen, Washington, D.C.

My friends must think I look hungry. Two of them took me out to eat yesterday.

As I was home early from church, Kevin decided to drive down from College Park, and he took me to Dupont Italian Kitchen for brunch. Surprisingly with the daylight savings time change, lots and lots of people were up and about, and the restaurants along 17th Street all seemed to be bustling.

Kevin had the pancake brunch special, a short stack of large pancakes with scrambled eggs, bacon, and fresh fruit. He thought the pancakes were unexpectedly good.



I had the eggs Benedict, which came with fried new potatoes and a little piece of honeydew melon. They were good, though they managed to find some of the smallest English muffins I've ever seen! LOL

Thai Tanic, Washington, D.C.

My friend Graham is one of the original volunteers for Food & Friends here in D.C. ever since the charity was founded in 1988. Naturally, he is a big supporter of last night's Dining Out for Life event, and nearly two weeks ago, he called and booked me to go to dinner with him—"just us," he said, as usually when we're out to eat, it's with a crowd.

So, he drove over and picked me up at 8:30, thinking that if we went a little later in the evening, it would be easier to get a table at his restaurant of choice, and off we went. And went, and went, and went.....there was absolutely no place to park! After spending considerable time (and gasoline) in quest of a parking spot, we happened to have a momentary stop in front of the restaurant due to traffic, and he got a good look at the packed tables and the line crammed in the bar and doorway. We decided to move to a different part of town, since we'd seen lines at several other restaurants in that area, too.

Then we drove to the 14th and P area. It still required a search, but at last we found a legal, on-street parking spot. Then, the first four restaurants we went to had 30-45 minute waits for a table.....and it was already approaching 9:30! We ended up at Thai Tanic, a place both of us frequent and like a lot, but, for some reason, a place that wasn't participating in Dining Out this year as they have in years past. Oh, well, we didn't spend that much on food, so the charity wouldn't have made that much from us...and we can always just mail them a small check. I'm really really happy, though, that all the participating restaurants had such excellent business!

Thai Tanic's food was excellent as always. The dining room was about the emptiest I'd ever seen it and we were able to have immediate seating, getting the booth that's right in the window where we could watch passers-by on the street.

We started with Singha beers and appetitzers. Graham got the por pea shrimp spring rolls with sweet chile sauce (you can't tell in the over-exposed photo, but the spring rolls are each cut in half lengthwise on the diagnonal).



I had the tom ka gai soup, a delicious, delicate chicken soup with mushrooms, tomatoes, and basil and a surprisingly large amount of sliced chicken breast in a slightly hot-sour coconut milk broth.



For our main courses, I got the pork and ginger, a mix of pork slices, mushrooms, vegetables, and fresh ginger in a light brown sauce served with steamed white rice.



Graham got one of the daily specials, and it was quite the pièce de résistance! He ordered goong lava—"goong" being the Thai word for shrimp—and got a wonderfully creative food volcano. Large shrimp were battered, dipped in coconut, and deep fried. They took what looked like thick phyllo dough and baked it into an edible bowl. The bowl was filled with an interesting mixture of ground pork, ground peanuts, finely minced vegetables and mushrooms, and a bit of spicy brown sauce, just like a volcano filled with lava. The fried shrimp then were arranged around the edge of the crater and presented.



The only problem with the goong lava was that we weren't quite sure how to eat it! Graham tried dipping the shrimp, spooning "lava" onto the shrimp, eating the lava with a spoon, and then just eating the shrimp separately and the lava with the accompanying white rice. However he was supposed to eat it, he said it was good, though.

We passed on dessert, as it was getting late, and he drove me home. It was quite a lovely evening, even if it didn't turn out to be quite as charitable as we had planned.

IHOP, Arlington, Va.

Ian and I had to go to Ballston Common Mall, so, naturally, we had to stop in at IHOP for a meal.

Ian got the strawberry fruit "shortbread" pancakes special with the egg combo plate.




There's a Dr. Seuss movie opening soon (this summer??), and IHOP is helping promote it with special foods from Whoville. I ate some. I got the Mayor's Breakfast, featuring green eggs and ham (the eggs weren't really green, just scrambled with chopped spinach), plus hash browns, and a side plate of Who-Cakes.



The Who-Cakes were made from the shortbread-flavored pancake batter they are featuring this month, with the cakes stacked like a ziggurat, colorful syrups poured across them to look like ribbons, and sprinkles liberally strewn over the top; a Dum-Dum sucker skewered the stack to hold them together.



You do not like them.
So you say.
Try them! Try them!
And you may.
Try them and you may, I say.

Alero Restaurant, Washington, D.C.

After a brief round of happy hour cocktailing at James Hoban's, we walked to the opposite side of Dupont Circle to have dinner last night at Alero Restaurant, since Ian was strongly in the mood for Mexican food and nobody else really cared.

Once there, Ian and Matt both got frozen strawberry daquiris. For dinner, they also both got burritos. Robert had the beef enchilada. I just nibbled chips and salsa. Long story. My taco salad never arrived, and I never confronted the waiter about it. Blame Ian.





For dessert, Ian had the cheesecake chimichanga and Matt had the tres leches cake, and they split and shared those. Robert had the sopapillas. Interesting how they used the same plate garnish for most of the desserts.

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

Last night Robert, Matt, Ian, and I met up after work at James Hoban's Irish Restaurant and Bar for their happy hour. They had $5 martinis (including weird things like cosmos and appletinis) plus $3 off their bar food menu items, so we got something to drink and had three kinds of hummus with pita bread wedges as an appetizer. St. Patrick was standing behind the bar wearing a plain mitre with a deep emerald green chasuble. While I usually drink Bushmill's, that's the "Protestant" Irish whiskey, so I decided to have some "Catholic" whiskey what with the bishop standing behind the bar. Ian wouldn't let me order the Jameson's, so I tried Red Breast. It was nice, very smooth, good flavor and all, but it was so sweet it reminded me an awfully lot of Canadian whiskeys. Meanwhile, Matt was drinking Blue Moon beers out of a Guinness mug.

Spaghetti Garden, Washington, D.C.

It was another "First Tuesday" of the month in Adams-Morgan this week, so Ian and I journeyed up to find a new restaurant experience with their useful "food and drink for two for $25" program. We went by about a dozen restaurants before finding one Ian didn't reject, finally entering Spaghetti Garden for some simple Italian-American food. Oh, there was one place we went into planning to eat, but, even though we both were just clad casually in blazers, khaki trousers, and striped ties, we were clearly very overdressed for the place, judging from those seated at the bar; after waiting over five minutes by the door to be seated, greeted, or whatever, all to no avail, we left.

The Spaghetti Garden is a rather older, run-down sort of place (though I hear they recently spruced up the place) that really is more bar than restaurant. Only a few low dinner tables are in the front of the restaurant. A large bar dominates most of the dining room, with tall bar tables near the bar and in the back of the room. I discovered later on a trip to the men's room that the entire basement is a full room with a big bar, so this place is probably jam-packed with people on the weekends. Ian chose a bar table opposite the center of the bar because there was a large flat panel TV over the back of the bar playing CNN and the primary election returns.

The bartender, a t-shirt clad, straight jock type, was clueless when it came to the First Tuesday promotion. I would have moved on to a more cooperative establishment, but Ian was already glued to the television, so I acquiesced in staying, since the menu was on the very inexpensive side.

Ian started with an order of bruschetta and gleefully continued to mispronounce it all night long just to annoy me (it's "bruce-KAY-tah," not "brew-SHEHT-uh"). It was a hearty dish featuring two full-sized slices of garlic bread instead of the usual thin toasts and topped with a mound of coarsely chopped tomato, basil, and mozzarella cheese tossed in olive oil.



I had calimari fritti, another dish that was served in pieces larger than the norm. The squid actually wasn't bad, and was surprisingly tender for such large rings (squid is very easy to overcook, rendering it tough and chewy). The large serving of marinara was ordinary, but I don't use much sauce, so that didn't bother me. We also split a carafe of the house red wine, a wine with the virtues of being both drinkable and cheap.



The bartender/waiter recommended three things on the menu, and we got two of them (the third was the assortment of parmeggiana sandwiches). Ian ordered the saffron linguine with grilled chicken. Red and green bell peppers had been cut into strips, cooked, and mixed in with the diced chicken, and enrobed in a cream sauce around the linguine. I expected the dish to be bright saffron yellow, but it looked to me like plain cream sauce; Ian didn't really know what saffron was, so he couldn't tell me if it tasted of saffron or not, and I never got around to sampling it myself.



I got the pasta primavera with cream sauce instead of red sauce. I had chicken added to mine, as well, and I really enjoyed the little moments of bitterness and intense flavor that you get when you grill meats and get little spots of char. The "primavera" was broccoli and bell peppers. I thought the dish tasty and filling, though clearly this restaurant focuses on quantity and satiety values, not gourmet subtlety or presentation.



We wanted dessert, but the bartender said they didn't have any. Apparently, that was an unusually busy Tuesday night—there were four tables plus one man eating alone at the bar—and they ordinarily don't do desserts except on weekends.

Dining Out for Life

Tonight is the annual "Dining Out for Life" event here in Washington. Other cities have their events on different days, but this is the day for the D.C. metropolitan area. On March 11 it's in Dallas, April 23 Atlanta, April 24 Chicago, Houston, Las Vegas, Phoenix, San Francisco, Seattle, and Tulsa, May 1 Philadelphia, Miami, Fort Lauderdale and the Palm Beaches, and September 18 Baltimore. Quite a number of other cities will have events, as well, throughout the year.

What is Dining Out for Life? It's a charity fund raiser that is one of the easiest things you can do. By eating at a participating restaurant, you'll pay normal restaurant prices for your meal, and the restaurant will donate between 25 and 100% of their gross revenues tonight to charity. In Washington, the charity will be Food & Friends, a non-profit group that provides daily, home-delivered, specialized meals, groceries and nutrition counseling to people living with HIV/AIDS, cancer and other life-challenging illnesses.

Dining Out for Life and Food & Friends are both great charities, and I encourage everyone in the D.C. area to eat out tonight—even if only for an appetizer or a dessert—at one of the participating restaurants. Remember: this doesn't cost you anything extra for a normal restaurant meal.

Participating restaurants giving 100% of their gross tonight are Blacksalt Tasting Room, Carlyle, Freddie's Beach Bar and Restaurant, and Ristorante Tosca. Luigino will give 75%. Giving 50% are Annie's Paramount Steakhouse, Cafe La Ruche, Georgia Brown's, Hank's Oyster Bar (D.C. and Old Town), Jack's, Little Fountain Cafe, Mehak Indian Restaurant, Neyla, Santa Fe Cafe, Skewers, and The Old Siam. Argia's, Arucola Osteria, Bistrot du Coin, Bombay Curry Company, Busboys & Poets (D.C. and Va.), Delhi Club, Fusion Grill, Il Radicchio, Lounge 201, Luna Grill and Diner (D.C. and Va.), Mr. Henry's, Radius, and Sake Club are all giving 35% of their take. Think especially about going to these places tonight.

Here's a list of the other participating restaurants that are each contributing 25% of their gross receipts tonight: 15 Squares American Bistro, 18th & U Duplex Diner, Alero (U Street), American Grill, Aroma Indian Cuisine, Asia Bistro/Zen Bistro, Banana Café, Bangkok Garden Restaurant, bd's Mongolian Barbeque, Beacon Bar & Grill, Black Market Bistro, Black's Bar and Kitchen, Bourbon, Cactus Cantina, Café Berlin, Cafe Ole, Cashion's Eat Place, Cee Fine Thai Dining, Chadwicks, Clarendon Grill, Colorado Kitchen, Coppi's Restaurant, The Diner, Dino, Dos Gringos Café, Dupont Italian Kitchen, Ella's Wood Fired Pizza, Floriana Mercury Grill, Foxfire Grill, Geppetto Restaurant, The Grille, Grillfish, Guapo's Restaurant (Shirlington and Bethesda), Hard Times Café, The Heights, indebleu, J. Paul's (Georgetown), Komi, La Ferme Restaurant, La Fourchette, La Plaza, La Tomate, Las Placitas, Lauriol Plaza, Logan Tavern, Lotus Lounge, M Street Bar & Grill, Mark's Kitchen, Marshall's Restaurant, Medaterra, The Melting Pot (D.C., Arlington, Gaithersburg), Merkado Kitchen, Meze, Mosaic Cuisine and Café, Mourayo, Nage Restaurant, Oakville Grille & Wine Bar, Old Glory BBQ, Panache Restaurant, Paolo's Georgetown, Paya Thai, Perry's, Persimmon Restaurant, Pesce, Pizzeria Paradiso (Dupont & Georgetown), Raku-Asian Dining, Sushi & Sake (D.C. & Bethesda), Restaurant K, Ristorante Piccolo, Rosemary's Thyme Bistro, Saigon Saigon, Sala Thai (Arlington, Bethesda, Dupont, U Street, Uptown, Ashburn), Sesto Senso, Starfish Café, Straits of Malaya, Sushi-Ko Restaurant, Tabaq Bistro, Tabard Inn, Tempo Restaurant, Thaiphoon (Dupont & Pentagon Row), Trattoria Alberto, Tuscana West, U-topia Art & Eat, Urbana Restaurant and Wine Bar, Vegetate, Vicino Ristorante Italiano, Zed's Ethiopian Cuisine, and zPizza (Alexandria, Arlington, Columbia, Fairfax, Falls Church, Herndon, Leesburg, Lorton, Manassas, Merrifield, Rockville, Silver Spring, South Riding, Springfield).

Please join us for Dining Out for Life!

The Capital Grille, Washington, D.C.

We had a lovely lunch today at The Capital Grille, one of the better steakhouses in town, as a bribe from my friend Robert for accompanying him to some business at the nearby federal courthouse. It was delicious, as always.

Robert had a ribeye steak sandwich with caramelized onions and Havarti cheese on a grilled demi-baguette of French bread, accompanied by house cut and fried potato chips, plus a side order of French fries (he didn't read the top of the menu that said the sandwiches came with a choice of fries, chips, or slaw, so he ended up with double potatoes). I had a grilled sirloin steak salad and an iced tea, as I almost always get, and it was just enough, as expected.

While I was happy with iced tea, Robert decided to splurge on a great big Tanqueray martini, up, with a twist.

Aria Trattoria, Washington, D.C.

What a beautiful day it was today! The sun was out, it was warm, twas a harbinger of the spring to come. Not a day to be cooped up inside!

Had a very good business lunch downtown with my friend Mike at Aria Trattoria in the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center. We started to eat outside on the patio, but they'd reserved a nice table for us inside, and we ended up there.

Mike had the wild mushroom risotto, which he reported was very good. It was simply presented in a large soup plate with a tiny garnish of fresh chopped parsley. I had the pulled chicken salad, and, while it was very good, I was a little bit surprised at the presentation. They started with a bed of mixed European-style baby greens tossed in a balsamic vinaigrette and in the center was a mound of pulled chicken moistened with a mayonnaise or mild aioli in a traditional "chicken salad" way; two long, thin parmesan crostini sat criss-crossed atop the chicken. I think I'd expected the pieces to be tossed lightly amongst the greens instead of being formed into a chicken salad. With our food, Mike drank a Melini Borghi d'Elsa chianti and I had a Kris pinot grigio.

For dessert, we split a tropical mousse torte and a pot of French press coffee. They used a round mold with coconut ladyfingers in the bottom and then filled it with a mousse of banana, mango and passionfruit. A little whipped cream and a squirt of tangerine coulis went atop the torte that then was scattered with a mango dice (the mangos, unfortunately, were not ripe). Ripe, fan-sliced strawberries and dollops of whipped cream garnished the plate. I thought the dessert had a very pleasant flavor and was a nice ending to the meal. The coffee was surprisingly filled with sediment; perhaps they over-ground the coffee beans before brewing the pot. While we had our dessert, our waiter brought us a tray of glasses of beers and ales with half-ounce pours to introduce us to the new beers on tap in their bar.

One of the other perks of dining at Aria is that by having a late lunch, I was able to get a 1,000 point Open Table bonus for booking between 1:30 and 3:00.

IHOP, Takoma Park, Md.

A few months ago, the company that owns the IHOP (International House of Pancakes) restaurant chain bought the Applebee's restaurant chain. We've now seen an unexpected benefit from that merger.

Robert and I were out and about in Takoma Park the other night and stopped in at their IHOP. We both ordered new menu items, Robert getting the sirloin tips and eggs (they looked really tasty) and me getting the barbecued ribs. Our waiter informed us that the ribs were the same ribs that are used at Applebee's. And, they were surprisingly good! They were smaller ribs, but they had all the expected flavor and they used a similar not-too-sweet sauce. Even better, they cost only a dollar more than the entree salad I'd originally planned to order.

Town Danceboutique, Washington, D.C.

After our dinner at Jack's last night, instead of going to some of the nightclubs in the immediate vicinity, my friend Mark wanted to try the new place at 8th and U called Town Danceboutique. So, off we went, abandoning the hard-found parking place we'd gotten over near 17th Street. And, of course, there's little on-street parking around Town and the neighborhood there is a little, um, "transitional," so we had to park in one of their overflow "secure" parking lots for a $15 fee.

Town appears to be in an old warehouse, and looks rather unprepossessing on the outside. It's been thoroughly gutted and redone on the inside into a nice, modern club. Before getting in, though, one must pay a $12 cover. And, if one wore a winter coat in, coat check is $3 per article (and there's a tip jar on the counter).

Inside, the main dance floor is high ceilinged with a stage on one side. On the far walls is a large L-shaped bar. The bars do not accept credit cards; there are, however, a number of ATMs owned by the club (meaning they get to charge a fee!) scattered around for ones "convenience." Behind the bars are large, full-wall projection screens that last night were displaying a computer screen for "Valentine" messages from one patron to another (the club was celebrating "Valentine's Weekend).

As we entered, a drag show was going on on the stage. The hostess of the show had a rather disconcertingly gruff voice that sounded more like a sports arena announcer than a drag hostess. We didn't really watch much of the show, but I did get some glimpses of a couple of "girls" who had choreographed backup dancers helping with the song.

There was a $5 Absolute vodka drink special going on til 11 p.m. With just one minute left to go, Mark had an Absolute Citron vodka Collins. I wasn't in a vodka mood and ordered a Scotch and water. Oddly, they didn't have a rail Scotch, and everything was call. I asked for the cheapest, and the drink ended up costing $7. On top of that, the drinks were served in rather short rocks glasses, and, the bars were using crushed ice instead of ice cubes (crushed ice fills up more of the volume of the glass, so the drink liquid content isn't as great).

About midnight, they opened the upstairs floor. Upstairs was rather nicer than downstairs. Again, there was a large L-shaped bar with projection screens, and a smaller dance floor with a raised end platform. What made the upstairs more interesting, though, was a long, narrow room to the side of the dance floor with comfortable banquettes along one wall, giving people a (relatively) quiet place to sit, relax, and actually carry on a conversation.

As I wandered around the dance floor, I was rather surprised that with as much money as the owners had spent remodeling and crafting this new dance club, there was a rather pedestrian lighting system on the dance floors. Perhaps they weren't using it or something, but there seemed to be little else special other than a mirror ball. At some of the New York clubs I've visited, the lighting has been so elaborate and spectacular, it's sometimes entertaining just to sit and watch the light show, but not here.

I found the crowd to be interestingly mixed. The expected twink barflies were there, but there was also an assortment of more mature patrons, and I definitely was not the oldest person in the bar by far. The downstairs dance floor seemed to attract the t-shirt and blue jeans set (removing t-shirts is encouraged, but I did not see that happening last night) and the upstairs dance floor had more people in nicer club clothes. There was also a surprising number of females there, and, given how they were dressed, I think most of them were straight girls.

We left probably about 1 a.m., and there was a long, long line outside on the street with people trying to get in. Since I did not perceive a sense of crowdedness inside (remember dancing at Nation when it was so packed on the dance floor that one could not move ones feet to dance?), either the fire marshall is holding them to an unusually strict occupancy capacity or they are trying to create a strong sense of demand by making people stand in line. Everyone seemed happy, though.

Well, at least now I can say I've been to Town.

Jack's Restaurant and Bar, Washington, D.C.

Last night my friend Mark called out of the blue and said he was in the mood to drive in to town and go to dinner. That's kind of unusual, since he lives on the Virginia outer fringes of the metropolitan area, and it's quite a trek to and from his place. I was in the middle of stewing a chicken for dinner, but that was easily enough put aside for other creations using cold chicken instead of hot, and I got cleaned up and dressed to join him.

Well, D.C. being D.C., we drove and drove and circled and circled to find a parking place, ending up about half a mile from our intended destination (for those of you readers not in the city, that is considered "good"). Our plan for sushi fell through, though, since we found a line at the restaurant running all the way down the stairs; I checked with the maitre d' and he said the wait for a table for two was at least an hour.

So, we went down the street, and found a place neither of us had previously been, at least in this year's declension, a place that once was Pepper's and then Le Pigalle and now it is known as Jack's Restaurant and Bar. The new name is deceptive. "Jack's" evokes a casual, diner-type establishment in my mind, but this new place would be suited to a much more pretentious name, as it's more bistro than diner.

The place was bustling. While the patrons included typical 17th Street denizens, there were also tables full of families with children. Some people were casually attired. Some people were dressed up. Some people were in club clothes. The waiters were all in black trousers and tight black t-shirts, giving the place a little cosmopolitan flair.

We started with cocktails. Mark had some big martini called a "double espresso" that included Van Gogh double espresso vodka, vanilla, Kahlua, and white chocolate Godiva liqueur. That drink cost more than my entrée!

They had rye in the bar, so I had a manhattan. The manhattan felt a little "thin" on the tongue, so I suspect that the bartender fixed a perfect manhattan (with half sweet vermouth and half dry vermouth) instead of a classic manhattan (just sweet vermouth). That wasn't necessarily a problem; he just went to more trouble to add the third ingredient, though I probably would have preferred the classic recipe.

When it came time to eat, Mark picked the roasted free range chicken breast topped with prosciutto ham and mozzarella cheese served on a bed of mashed potatoes and covered with a ruby red marsala wine sauce. I have to confess that when it came out, both of us looked a little shocked. It looked somewhat less than appetizing. I was thinking bloody, uncooked chicken and he was thinking other unmentionable things. Between the color of the wine sauce and the little bits of wine-colored shallot that resembled blood clots, we weren't really sure what to think. But, once he finally brought himself to sample it, he reported that it tasted much much better than it looked.


My meal was safer. I had a steak and Pommery salad with nice slices of medium rare steak tossed in a light, mild Pommery mustard sauce on a bed of European-style assorted bitter greens. It was very good, and my only suggestion would have been to add just a bit more of the greens to the plate. And, I'm not sure if it was an oversight, but we never got any bread or crackers with our meal, and those would have been a nice balance to the salad (plus, there were bottles of olive oil on the table, presumptively as a bread dip).


Mark wasn't really in a dessert mood (with that big, sweet cocktail, I wouldn't have been, either!), but I was intrigued by a couple of things on the dessert menu. I ordered the "sweet potatoes and cheese," not really knowing exactly what it was I would get. When it arrived, it was a beautiful, narrow, rectangular dish with thin strips of candied sweet potato on one end, strips of quince jelly on the other, slices of fontina cheese by sliced fresh strawberries in middle, and all the fruits drizzled with a bit of chocolate syrup and dusted with confectioner's sugar. Not only was it different, it was actually all quite good!


Jack's seems to be a hit on 17th Street. I hope it has better luck than did its predecessors. Service was good, food tasted good, and the menu has quite a number of things I'd like to try, so I'm looking forward to a return visit.