Why I Couldn't Be a Boy/Why I Hope My Dad Tries Vietnamese Food

It's Restaurant Week still, but after balancing my checkbook last night, I realized a unidate might be more appropriate than a full-on $35.09 meal. Unidates and Restaurant Week aren't mutually exclusive, but I thought I'd just go for a normal dinner, rather than brave the rabid foodie crowds tonight. However, my unidate has found me on the couch, eating half a bowl of Cheerios (didn't realize I had essentially only oat powder left), watching the Prime Minister of Pakistan on CSPAN 2. This is why I couldn't be a boy: my unidate was an utter failure.

A unidate in my book is a self-date, typically to dinner and a movie. The first time this happened was during college: I had an afternoon free, so I took myself to IHOP and to see the Othello movie with Julia Stiles. I thought everyone could tell I was on a pathetic unidate: each forkful of pancakes was like lead and I felt the wild winds of the air-conditioned theater blow past me on all sides because no one sat near me. My, how things have changed.

Tonight's unidate was supposed to be a hip, vegan dinner at Busboys and Poets and an artsy film in Shirlington. I checked movie times at the theater and nothing started for another two hours, and I didn't want to read 6 point font on my Blackberry for that long. At Busboys and Poets, none of the spots at bar stools looked appealing, and I didn't have my laptop to create at least one wall of a barrier to protect me from lonely old men and poetry-scribbling women.

So I went to Saigonique next door. I was there for a whole prefunctory 20 minutes, but was a cheap date. I ordered pho, one of my favorite meals. It's a deceivingly simple soup: slices of beef, rice noodles, and broth, served with onions, scallions, plum sauce, and Sriracha (thick Thai hot sauce). It's like any deconstructed hearty American meal: beef, noodles, and vegetables, with a sauce spicier than Tabasco. In my samplings in DC, nothing compares to the delicious abyss of pho you get at Oklahoma City's Pho Hoa on 23rd street. I used to go there quite often with my then-boyfriend; funny how it appears my father's face is on someone else's body in this older photo (apparently I've been cataloguing restaurants even before I was looking for good meals and men).

So my soup tonight was good. Then I got one of the most amazing things I've had in a while: a dish that combined by favorite Mediterranean and Vietnamese flavors. I think they were called Bo La Lot: flavored meat rolled in vine leaves and then grilled. They were like Greek dolmathes (since they were leaves with meat filling) but with the punch of kafta (rich Mediterranean meat balls with garlic, onions, and allspice), but with Vietnamese accoutrements like cucumbers, a light sauce, and cold vermincelli. And they were sprinkled with fried garlic, which is glorious in any culture.

However, I'm afraid soup almost came out my nose twice because I dumped the whole bowl of hot sauce in my soup; I went a bit overboard with the spice. I wanted to make my date up to myself, so I promised myself some romantic ice cream at McDonald's, but I turned the wrong way, saw the golden arches behind me, and was too downtrodden to u-turn. I think I'll just take myself to the doghouse.