It's not a bad weekend when I get shrimp and grits (twice), eat empanadas from a truck, macabre-like reap the benefits of Greek Orthodox memorials, see of the story of Severus Snape on the big screen, and am reminded that Clifton is, in fact, one of the finest small towns in America (well, at least Virginia).
It is a brilliant idea: capture all the ephemerally moving food trucks that otherwise popularly haunt the streets of DC, put them in one spot, and see how many hipsters it takes to form a trend at any one of them (a trend comprising circa 60 very hip hipsters who form lines because the people in front of them did). Clockwise from top left: the DC Empanadas truck, a $15 lobster roll, macaroni and cheese with cheddar and Cheez-Its (as awful as it looks and sounds), an Oreo milkshake (transcendental), a black beans/chicken/corn empanada, and peach popsicles.
Hipsters, in line
This was Friday, and things only got better. Saturday night was a delicious, caloric dinner at Art and Soul, which will be detailed separately. To begin a new day of anticipated food blogging Sunday (two top 100s in one weekend!), I prayed (at church) I would have the fortitude to eat two desserts for each of my subsequent meals (incidentally, there are two more top 100s next week too). Greeks are so passionate about food that we make food to celebrate the memory of the deceased at a church service, bless it, then serve it. Second breakfast was a delicious kolyva:
Anyway, back to the celebration of live peoples' food. Yesterday, my friend Meredith and her sister, Lisha, and I took multiple back country highways to arrive at Clifton, Virginia, a small town seemingly pulled from the set of some patriotic movie that TBS cycles all of July 4th weekend. It's almost too charming for words.
To better digest the charm, I began with a cocktail, The Titanic. An iceberg of champagne sorbet poked its head out of a mix of elderflower syrup, muddled grapes, and vodka, with a patina of proseccco on top.
We ordered the three-course brunch menu, conveniently costing only about $10 less than the tank of gas I bought in nearby Burke. Each of us had a biscuit, a blueberry muffin, and one of the most ingenious breakfast inventions: what appeared to be a peanut butter cream puff.
The sisters offered the strategic approach (without prompting) that is the blog's default: divide and conquer the menu. We each ordered a different appetizer: the quiche, the fried green tomato, and the oatmeal brûlée. The quiche, delicate and beautiful, had notes of scallions, maybe jalapenos, and cumin. The fried green tomato reminded me that tomatoes are in fact fruits and can be juicy, flavorful, and hearty.
My oatmeal brûlée had I believe a cappucino foam on top and a bit of caramelized brown sugar. It was brilliant (albeit a bit too sweet) but Trummer's gets major points for making my everyday breakfast item fancy.
We fared even better for the lunch course, slowly creeping toward dessert as both Meredith and my dishes featured sweet syrups and sauces: her's was fried chicken with brioche French toast and syrup and mine was Virginia pork belly with a biscuit glazed in maple syrup and (I didn't bother to ask so could be way off but I think it was) a black bean puree. Lisha cleverly opted for shrimp and grits, adorned with pine nuts, spinach, and corn.
Even if each of our meals skidded out to the table as unmitigated disasters, I'd recommend Trummer's just for our two exquisite desserts. The first, only incredibly delicious, was homemade crushed Oreos, en-nesting two different flavors of vanilla, and covered in chocolate pearls.
The second, superlatively incredibly delicious, was a glass of devil's food cake at the bottom, obscene amounts and varieties of chocolate, and topped with more chocolate pearls. The secret--what we were scraping from the side of the glass--was what our waiter called "God syrup," a subtly salty and decadent caramel. Poured after the glass arrived, it so excited the dessert underneath that it bubbled.
The road toward 36 more restaurants:
2 comments:
Oh, yum yum yum!! What a nice way to spend the day with friends and good food on a road trip. Delightful.
Nice Site. Heading to DC in just over a month and was looking for some more recent feedback on Trummer's - this makes it look rather promising, particularly as a brunch.
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