Grapeseed

Blog management has been difficult of late. Dotti and I went to Grapeseed in November. Yes, November. I wrote up the dinner that night and for some reason didn't publish it, so provide below my pre-30, top 100 blog. I've learned so much more about responsibility in my 30s.

* * * * * * * * *

In my youth (age 25), I said that at the seasoned age of 30, I'd either move into my parents' basement, learn to knit and appreciate the company of cats, or move to the south of France. In the subsequent five years, I realized that I hate cats, the south of France oftentimes is plagued by striking sanitation workers , and that my parents don't even have a basement.

But....I'm not concerned: 30 will bring, at the very least, the successful completion of the top 100 and a trip to France. To the capital, that is, whose winter lights would only serve to highlight the shiny cheese wrappers and green Bordeaux bottle-riddled trash anyway. I think it will bring something else interesting too; I don't know what, but something befitting of the successful completion of three decades of existence.

The slow dawn of 30 illuminated the beauty of fiscal responsibility this evening. Dotti and I went to Grapeseed, a top 100 in Bethesda, which we foolishly hoped would be a good locale for some National Institute of Health (NIH) doctor-ogling. When we divined that NIH could also employ overgrown, under-orthodonticated biology majors who reminded us all that's painful about middle school, we decided to focus strictly on Bethesda's culinary offerings. We began with two delicious glasses of red wine.

We split two appetizers (plus bread), which, when slowly presented, gave us the appearance of having three separate meals and we successfully tricked ourselves that we were ordering more. Call us cheap, but having more wine glasses than total plates on the table almost makes bill-paying celebratory.


After a delicious tomato-and-roasted-garlic-drenched olive oil accompaniment to bread, we began with the beef tenderloin tips with thin slices of potato (patatas bravas apparently) below and a stroke of chimichurri sauce. It was both markedly spiced and spicy, a perfect introduction to dinner and to our wines.













My choice of appetizer, which became our second course, was grated pecorino (the sole reason I ordered it) atop gnocchi and chantarelle mushrooms. If I had to order a pre-death-row meal (or turning 30 meal-of-indulgence), stinky cheese of this ilk would be included somehow. The gnocchi were perfectly imperfect (one was shaped like a heart) and simultaneously chewy and minimally crusted.


For dinner, we had the salmon atop a quinoa salad, served with grilled asparagus. It was tasty--fresh, well-textured, etc.--but it was sort of hard to follow after a magic mix of flour, cream, cheese, and mushrooms.

But from the ashes of dating despair--my last love interest tripped over his mummy linens at a Halloween party and Dotti unwittingly secured romantic confessions from a man who fits the mold for a middle school civics instructor--we made plans for the next list to conquer: a multi-region happy hour bar crawl. The tides are turning and with 30 and 2012 comes a new initiative: an anthropological examination of bars across the city entitled, Where the Men Are.