Caboose Cafe

Despite my best efforts, there is no clever theme uniting the two culinarily significant things I did tonight. There are, however, some good (by which I mean temptingly unredeeming) reality shows on tonight, so I'm going to focus on precision tonight. I ate at Caboose Cafe. This, despite not being a reality show, was a largely unredeeming meal generally, but it was different enough to be remarkable. Caboose Cafe is a little place along Mount Vernon Ave. in Del Ray and blends into the charming neighborhood around it in the afternoon, offering sandwiches and salads. At night, however, my new friend Rhoda offers the same fare, plus a selection of Ethiopian dishes, as she is Ethiopian.

I indulgently sat at a table for three, had a beer, and ordered the Caboose vegan Ethiopian sampler, five items set atop spongy ingera.


In the middle is Miser Watt (spicy red lentils), above that is Gomen (chopped collard greens), to the right is Kik Alitcha (yellow split pea stew), below is Harvest Veggie (translation: green beans and carrots), and on the side was a cabbage/potato salad. Only the red lentils and the cabbage were really flavorful, but I used my fingers to eat it all and I'm fairly certain the two little girls in dresses at the neighboring table were jealous I got to play with my food.

And while the food wasn't the most inspired (man, two solid nights), like last night, the surrounding charm would bring me back. Plus, new friend, proprietor Rhoda, upon my affirmation that it was my first time there, gave me a full loaf of ciabatta for free.

Now, what's a girl who's had a bagel, rice, beer, bread, and Ethiopian bread today supposed to do with an entire loaf of her own? After 17 seconds, I realized that tonight was the night to try a made-for-blog gift provided to me by a certain loyal blog reader from Massachusetts.

So, tonight, I made my first Fluffernutter sandwich. To begin, I obtained an entire loaf of bread from my local Ethiopan baker:


Step two: I sliced and toasted that loaf, and pre-assembled the Fluffernutter, one part nutter, one part Fluffer.


Notice the peanut butter slowly hugging the curves of the porous piece on bread on the left. Notice the Marshmallow Fluff slowly warming to the receptive bread. However, to arrange for this love story to happen, I had to go buy peanut butter, as I had none. And there is something creepy and over-prefunctory of having to go to Walgreen's at 9 o'clock at night to buy one item, along with the neighborhood homeless lady who's buying a Coke, the drunk guys wandering the aisles for who knows what (Mike and Ikes?), the guy buying deodorant, the uptight business traveler buying a phone charger, and me, buying peanut butter so I can make a Fluffernutter.

Anyway, it was fabulous... it started off with just hints of marshmallow, then the next bite featured the forgiving crustiness giving way to the malleable center. Then, when I reached the middle of the sandwich, for four perfect bites, I had equal part melty peanut butter and melty marshmallow fluff. Thank you Massachusetts and thank you, Phil, for my first taste of what kids on Massachusetts playgrounds have savored for most of their lives.

And for the final non sequitir food account of the night, my dad's dinner in Taos: he got the mixed grill with buffalo tenderloin, whole baby quail and rattlesnake/rabbit sausage with a wild cherry glaze.

Bocas Plural

It's been a while. I'm not sure I still have it. I subsist on various iterations of pasta, enjoye flavorless oatmeal in the morning, and participate in team breakfasts (I used to eschew breakfasts with the common colleague). I even bake brownies from mixes now and don't feel guilty. I've capitulated in some regards, sometimes enjoying (the horror) the company at restaurants more than the food, keeping more preoccupied with the beer than the dinner, and other times, just refraining from pulling out my camera while eating (although I have very little shame in portraiting food anymore). Tonight, however, was a departure. An intervention, of sorts, with two women who had no idea they were to be involved in such a significant event in the life of an amateur food critic (but really, I now view eating popovers as a life-changing event; I haven't written about that yet, but I will).

Tonight was the inaugural event of the Alexandria Ladies Dining Club. I call it that when really I think the informal title was the eating club (no caps). Two married ladies and a single girl met up tonight at what has become one of my new favorite local eateries (mostly because of aesthetics), Columbia Firehouse. The nice thing about a dining club with married ladies (ladies because of their charm, not age) is that we can discuss things unrelated to my self-deprecating love life. I love myself some self-indulgent commiserating (this isn't to malign the single girl exploits I listen to from my friends, because they are much more interesting than my own). But at a dining club meeting, the focus was food. Foreign food, Alexandria food, dive bar food, hangover food, romantic dinner food (my mouth was closed during that one), cheap food, pricey food, tourist food, patio food. It didn't occur to me until after dinner that I attended a real food club meeting because the conversation so naturally centered on all things gastronomical.

However, I realized that being an amateur food critic, I need to start holding my own. No one really buys my "amateur" self-designation (to their detriment) and questions have more recently been posed in my direction implying that I am some authority on food. This is becoming dangerous. Two questions I could not answer tonight: what is Indonesian food like and what is a financier (on the dessert menu, not one eying me from the bar). To redress my educational shortcomings, when I feel so inclined to overachieve, I will do more than talk about men and eating food here. So, for one sentence of non-drivel: a financier is a light sponge cake that usually contains an almond derivative (almond flour, flavoring, or crushed almonds).

I didn't get a financier, though, and opted for a longer polysyllabic foreign word at the outset, an Ommegang Witte from New York (this is a beer). It tasted like lemon juice sieved though a thrice-used cheese cloth. The bar was rife with old people (I'm not ageist, but these were the types that negotiate divorce settlements, not the ones who make financiers for their enfants). So while the oldies were leering, I was able to secure a seat at a stool at a bar counter that backed the true bar and watch the customers come in. It was very single-girl friendly and a good way to wait for the arrival of club members.

Fellow club members joined and we sat in a lovely atrium-style dining room. I've eaten at this restaurant before when it was Bookbinders, but as the new place, it's less stuffy and buoyant with the natural light. We started with blue crab hushpuppies with sweet pepper mustard. And they were great. There was something refreshingly disorderly about hush puppies not shaped like large gumballs: think free range antithesis-of-Captain D's hushpuppies. You could taste the crab and corn (and see traces of both!) and they weren't too greasy. The bread (with chive butter) was also fresh, crusty on the outside, and meanderingly holey on the inside.

For dinner, Laura and I both had the meatloaf sandwich. My mom knows this, so I'm not spilling some family jewel secret, but I never really liked meatloaf (it was an age thing, and a preternatural fear of gristle). I just couldn't put enough ketchup on top to hide the taste of the meat and would reward my toil by eating the little pieces of bacon my mom put on top for last. For some reason, tonight a meatloaf sandwich sounded better than steak or scallops (guess I'm subconsciously preparing for my Texas trip). But, I might be able to find elementary schools that do it better. It wasn't really that bad, but there was nothing remarkable about the meat's preparation: it had carrots inside and was set atop sundried tomatoes.. it was also situated on a focaccia-consistency roll, with undulating little bread peaks. But, it was out of proportion, with way too much bread to meat (a quick-developing food pet peeve if the proportions are going the wrong way). But the sandwich was accessorized with mache (I think, and if not, it at least elicited nostalgic memories of greens-eating in France) and French fries (good, but not remarkable, but with sea salt). I tried club member and new friend Nikki's hanger steak, which was delicious and had a beautiful presentation.

Dinner was good, not amazing, but had potential. But the prices were good, the atmosphere was stellar, and there were more windows (both curvey transparent ones and sophisticated stained glass ones) than divorce lawyers there, which is a proportion going the right way. And to be part of a club, an order, even..perhaps even a society of food lovers equally invested in exploring the visscitudes of gastronomy and unwittingly and undemocratically having me as their secretary...that's reason enough to start writing again for.

Oklahoma Part One: Avgokopsi and Culinary Car Tour

Oklahoma makes me hungry. A state is a good state if you can be hungry even when its 100-plus degree heat in other places would normally dull that sensation. And Oklahomans and their restaurants can accommodate: increased temperatures mean cheaper Sonic drinks, increased threats of tornadoes are met with more outdoor grilling, and the the condensation that more rapidly forms out the outside of beer cans makes their contents more appealing. After a delayed then canceled flight out of DC yesterday, multiple phone conversations with United associates in India, research into prices for cross-country bus and rail travel (thankfully financially prohibitive enough I didn't act out of desperation), eventual flight re-routing, a Dallas airport bad-Taco-Bell-meal, I arrived in Oklahoma, a surprisingly lucractive locale for culinary adventures for an amateur food critic.

My Yiayia yesterday had me, my visiting brother, and my parents over for one of the finest homemade meals I've had probably since the last time I was home. She prepared makaronia me bouturo, which still stands as one of my top meals. But, in making what may be my new favorite Yiayia-cooked meal, we also made a startling discovery, critical to both mine and my mother's understanding of food taxonomy and nomenclature: real dolmathes are actually cabbage, not grape leaves.

This may sound like silly quibbling for adeherents to the foodie, Greek, or pretentious-food-blogging subcultures, but it's a critical differentiation to a food purist who thought cabbage rolls were the bastard child to the dignified grape leaf, whose sheath was reverentially taken from the same vine as the nectar of the gods.

So, I stood corrected and saw the creation of an avgolemono sauce for the dolmathes and by extension, witnessed the culinary act of "avgokopsi"-ing.

A cabbage roll contains rice and seasoned meat, all lovingly wrapped in a cabbage roll that is tender but has enough fortitude to keep its shape while being steamed and avgokopsied. To create the avgolemono sauce (from αυγό for egg and λεμόνι for lemon), Yiayia stiffened egg whites, later added the yolks and lemon juice, and slowly added at the end the sauce left over from the cooked grape leaves. My mom poured the sauce over the grape leaves and my Yiayia made kissing noises. This is a critical part of the avgokopsi process for unknown reasons, but almost certainly has something to do with evil spirits, evil eyes, or potential bad luck to offspring and their ability to avgokopsi.

Yiayia with the avgokopsied dolmathes.

And it was a thing of beauty, as makaronia, cabbage leaves, tabbouleh, hummus, and Kalamata olives were served on fine china; what a homecoming.

Lunch today was sedate. Tonight we're headed to a fancy steakhouse that has a neon red-colored bar and where I will find the Oklahoma oil baron who will underwrite my blog, or whatever enterprising amateur venture capitalists would do to financially support amateur food bloggers. We went to the Prairie Thunder Baking Company, a cute local bakery and sandwichery that unfortunately is staffed by women who seek to cast themselves as nouveau pin-up girls (deliberately messy hair with flowers in it). Sort of unfortunate when all you want is to order a roast beef sandwich. It was tasty, though: sandwiches on airy foccacia bread that wasn't too greasy and had about one needle of Rosemary every two square inches.

Unfortunately, the bread to meat ratio was way off, just as typically pin up girls have more eye makeup than eye surface area. But it was tasty, the view of downtown OKC was great, and the sweets were satisfyingly pretty to just admire. I

Afterwards, we drove around and I ogled at all my favorite restaurant signs that were also satisfyingly pretty to just admire. This might be a very boring series of pictures (like the equivalent of how interesting pictures of birds would be to people who collect stamps) but it's a selective snapshot of OKC's culinary ethos.

The famous Braum's milk bottle: Braum's is a local creamery and only recently put their logo on the bottle. The structure was built in 1930 and has been added to the National Registry of Historic Places.

Taco Bueno: proprietor of the finest tripartite chips' dip plate, MexiDips and Chips. I can't believe one, that that menu item is copyrighted, and two, that the phrase MexiDips and Chips appears twice on the pages of an aspirationally pretentious food blog.

Braum's: the best place in Oklahoma to get crinkle fries, peppermint ice cream, cheesy poofs, and a hamburger in shiny pink and silver foil, all in one spot.

And, finally, Sonic: hallowed temple of fountain drinks, with a legitimately-good-priced happy hour.

And because we're piously good customers, a glimpse inside the sacred edifice: