Addie's

When an amateur food critic looks death in the eye twice in one week, her life priorities start to become clearer. She realizes that if she ever survives the tremblings of the earth and the whipping rains, she should at least dedicate her life to completing the A section of the top 100. So, the day after realizing the apocalypse had indeed narrowly missed us, I went to Addie's, a surprisingly secluded fried food place off of Rockville Pike (in Maryland). I no longer use the term "soul food," because I can't feel my soul after I eat soul food. This was just straight up unhealthy. Oh, but delicious.

So Sunday, after verifying my car was under neither water nor tree, I drove 25 miles to Addie's, a restaurant in the Black Restaurant Group, along with Black Market Bistro, Black Salt, and Black's Bar and Kitchen (all top 100's themselves). They have a great track record and while I felt a bit guilty getting Sunday dinner sans Dotti (who loves both the Black Restaurant Group restaurants and fried chicken), I couldn't take another day of being half conscious on the couch reading Jane Austen and drinking Bordeaux.

So I arrived, catching first a glimpse of the neighboring bar, Dietle's Tavern, with a few old men eyeing the arrival of a city girl pulling into the shared drive (mind you, this is across from a medical park and looking out onto a four-lane traffic artery, so it's really not, say, Checotah, Oklahoma). But, proximity-to-dive-bars bodes well (please note the motorized scooter parking).


After parking, I caught a hipster feel from the employees in the back smoking. The host was vibrant and enthusiastic and crossed my name off his reservation list (the only one that afternoon). I passed the empty dining room and went to the back, where unfortunately and suddenly, the smell of disinfectant, cat, and old person assaulted me. I'll neglect from saying anything ageist about the (only) neighboring table whose occupants matched my 91-year-old grandmother in age but not spryness (meaning: less spry). This did not bode well for my appetite ("why does it smell like formaldehyde?" and "geezer" kept running through my head). Don't watch (just listen) to the only association I want to have to the word geezer.

The association extended, though; regretting my decision to eschew sunshine, I headed out to the patio. Addie's offers an exceedingly generous $35 Sunday dinner menu which is really an extraordinary (and overwhelming) tasting menu of American fare. For $25 you get almost as much (but have to choose which two items you don't want). I ordered everything.

I started with a glass of Sauvignon Blanc from France (bien sûr) and two salads, both substantive, refreshing and perfect for summer.


On the left is a cucumber, cantaloupe, yellow tomato salad. On the right, a perfect (not too salty, anchovy-y, or overdressed) caesar salad with grilled croutons and grated egg.



















I'd like to draw your attention to what happened next: I had eight plates of food with nine types of food on them placed before me. There was first the fried (tempura style) okra, the creamy mashed potatoes, and the corn on the cob in the background, and the sliced steak and fried chicken in the foreground:


The okra was nontraditional and despite its thin, crispy batter, was dried out. But, they were beautiful and I ate nearly all of them. The steak was rich and flavorful with a hint of sweetness and the fried chicken was juicy and in each of its crispy crevices was a grain or two of pepper, which gave it character and authenticity.

I had, on the left, zucchini pappardelle, one of the cleverest incarnations of a traditional favorite I've seen in a long time. There wasn't a strand of pasta in it, but the squash and zucchini were cut widely and thinly enough to resemble it. On the right are stewed tomatoes, thickened up with foccacia. With each dish, I found something more delicious and thankfully no one outside could hear me talking to myself about my surprise that the more seemingly banal the dish was, the more delicious I found it (who thought stewed tomatoes, for example, could be exquisite?).



















I also had a full trout fillet, adorned with salt and pepper and a brown butter sauce that tasted homey like vanilla or espresso (why I'm amateur). I asked for bread (mainly for sopping up teaspoon-size portions of four delicious sauces) and got a basket of both cheddar/chive biscuits and cornbread. It was sort of like having all my Southern food fantasies apparate (sorry, I'm really amateur with Harry Potter references) before me at my table.














I couldn't help but notice how pretty my little Southern food fantasies looked all together. I was in such a state of delight that I even gasped rapturously when a neighboring umbrella turned inside out.



















There was really no need for anything save calisthenics after 10 plates of food, but the peach/blackberry cobbler came anyway. Tasting menus are merciless. The fruits were fresh and concurrently firm and giving, while the cake was sweet and salty and tasted like what all the best attributes of baking soda, a well-run farm, and polished boots would taste like.

After a quiet drive out into Virginia's countryside (I was alive, after all), I celebrated Irene never having met Addie's or Sonic.

Assaggi

Two novel things happened this evening. First, I began my exploration of Bethesda's top 100 options (I say Bethesda when I mean Rockville and Silver Spring and other cities north of the Beltway accessible only by traversing patches of forest and multiple Catholic schools) at Assaggi. Second, I finally got hit on while eating alone.

I was discussing recently how a friend and I always imagined we'd meet the man of our dreams on a train: my idea was that the train would be striking across Europe while I was reading Proust and drinking an espresso and Jean-Claude/Michel/Francois would invite me to admire the scenery with him over a Toblerone. When that didn't happen (I always ended up next to adolescent boy or young women doing their English homework), I began imagining I would meet him while I was glamorously enjoying a dinner alone, swirling my wine, and reading Jane Austen.

Tonight, Fred (or Frank, I'm not sure) and I made eye contact as he was walking his bike by with grocery sacks on his handlebars. He had caramel corn in one of them, which I thought was funny because I was having fancy cheeses for dinner. Despite what that may mean for my capacity for empathy, I kept looking and made eye contact again (he turned around again). I quickly reached for my phone to illustrate I was doing anything but making eye contact a third time and he turned his bike around, walked back, and stood there while I was desperately waiting for riveting, distracting news to pop up on my phone. The opening line was something charming and insightful like "Uh, is this an Italian place?"

I won't belabor the point, as I was in fact at a place called Assagi, A Mozzarella Bar. He asked about my cheese plate, to which I described what I had ordered, and he observed that I had three cheeses. I did. He asked a series of questions, to which I asked none in response, but persisted in telling me about the neighborhood, how he didn't like Apple products (he saw I had an iPhone), was intending to buy a Droid for his mother, and had Moby Dick for dinner. Despite my derision, I was quite patient, letting him pontificate and satisfy my dream of having a man be so enraptured with my solo dining he couldn't resist but to approach me with sparkling conversation.

I will not wish this on myself again (he finally left after I couldn't help but raise my eyebrows and hit my phone against my hand until it was obvious I preferred lukewarm cheese to him). I had a much better time with my waiter, who indulged me in every request I had. I began with a glass of supertuscan and a plate of fried squash blossoms (I only wanted these and no other fried options and he did it). Tammy and I were recently briefly discussing nonsensical menu items like flavored air and foam, which we agreed were egregious and overpriced features at "fancy" places. I decided tonight, however, that squash blossoms successfully ride this same concept, but with flavor: they are a delicate effluvium of flavor netted by being lightly battered and fried (here, with a very tangy marinara on the bottom).


I can't help it, but when I eat finespun squash blossoms, I'm reminded of Italy and mosaics and tile roofs. Pretty, tiny things cluster themselves together in my memory.













My waiter indulged me when I realized I was ordering food enough for me and Fred/ank (before he and his take-out had even ridden by). I ordered three (not a typo) types of cheeses to sample and when I asked for help on choosing the best accompaniments, my waiter said, "I'll just bring them all."

I had, starting at the top left, mozzarella di bufala, a favorite of my brother's. Well, first, I'll illustrate that cheese elitism is a family trait:


To begin again, just below the mozzarella di bufala is ricotta di bufala then burrata at the bottom (I would have invited myself back to Fred/ank's for caramel corn if he'd caught me right after that first bite of burrata). For accompaniments, I had marinated eggplant (deliciously tender but a bit too vinegary), roasted peppers (exquisite embodied duskiness), fresh tomatoes and basil, and a green tomato marmalade (a bit too sweet but cleverly flavorful).


After Fred/ank came by, my waiter asked if I was had gotten engaged through the course of my interactions with a be-biked suitor, then left me to my own devices. It was a delightful pause in dinner and I saw the sun set through the BMWs and trees.

My waiter thoughtfully allowed me to get a half order of pasta, as pasta after cheeses and fried food is ambitious. I had the garganelli pasta with veal sausage, sugar snap peas (I think they were instead green beans), crema and black pepper. It was beautiful and the sausage made it very... homey. It was comforting like pasta bolognese but still appropriate for summer.


There was little justification for dessert beyond a slurred thought of "it's good for the blog." There were butter cookies, chocolate butter cookies, lemon butter cookies, and sandwich butter cookies with hazelnut chocolate filling.


With Judy to commiserate with on the way home, it was a perfect night.

Cedar

Dinners like Thursday's at Cedar are why blogs that treat the nexus between love and food are so easy to write and maintain. Between the ecstatic cries of delight after the placement of new dishes on our table, the batting of eyes as our waiter asked us how we were faring, the stories between wine sips of love expended and carelessly brushed aside (the dismissing all on our part), and the contorted faces of pleasure that became more satisfied bite-by-bite of dessert... made me question myself as to how I ever preferred to dine alone. Bartenders never have as good of stories, insights, or exuberant of responses to food and wine as my friends.

Particularly at the good places we accidentally frequent because of their inclusion on lists. Cedar is on the more interesting end of this spectrum because it is down a flight of stairs and is without windows (a bit English basementy), its service didn't begin in a particularly sparkling manner (our waiter equivocated on cocktail recommendations), and the pulsing hum from the air system eclipsed the clarity of the piped-in jazz.

But we did quite well: Christine endured three modes of transportation to arrive and I survived apartment viewing with strange men to get there. As a reward for our troubles, we unspokenly agreed on the utility of cocktails, mine the girly one on the left with lillet blanc (a white French aperitif wine), lemon, black raspberry liqueur, and honey and Christine and her classy Maker's mark, lemon, and honey on the right.



















Restaurant Week, when we went, is usually pretty mediocre. Sometimes it seems to be the week when waitresses come on the job after only having taken a how-to-use-a-ballpoint-pen training class, when bartenders appear to forget that oftentimes you want your drink soon after you ordered it, and when a general disparaging nod is the most affirmation you'll get to a request.

To illustrate, Dotti and I went to Chef Geoff's on Tuesday and while the food was fantastic, the waitress lauded the "shashimi" (she included an extra "sh" sound), was hopeless on timing her table interactions (frequently and petulantly interrupting us in our most juicy exchanges of gossip), and told us a story about the first time her boyfriend stayed over (that's when he learned to like grits). Well, the shashimi and her boyfriend's grits were good:












As was Dotti's serrano wrapped pork tenderloin, with a saffron potato gratin (kind of unexciting) and asparagus/piquillo peppers and her key lime pie.



















But, I digress. Christine and I were lucky that after only one dish in, we found our favorite. She started with the chilled corn soup with blue crab, sweet with whipped crème fraîche and corn, tangy with lemon juice, and oceanic and fresh with the crab. I had an exquisite grilled peach salad with greens and goat cheese with a Virginia honey-black pepper vinaigrette (I had trouble concentrating at work hours earlier imagining this salad). It was to the Cedar dining room what an artificial vitamin D lamp is to dank office cubicles: a beam of light. But these weren't our favorites.



















Our waiter brought us a basket of bread, remarkable in its freshness but no more exceptional than a very good but average fresh baguette. What we realized, however, is that the bread began to get more delicious bite by bite as we slowly learned that bread, plus increasingly softening butter and a few flakes of sea salt made for bites of bread perfection. You can't see much of either because at this point there was little of either.


Christine ordered the pavé of ribeye, a term that means a cut-of-meat-the-size-of-a-cobblestone ribeye. I couldn't comment on its cooking temperature (rhymes with dell wone) but its flavor and tenderness (despite being nearly turned into jerky) were exquisite. It was served atop risotto--that really could have stood independently flavor-wise as its own dish. I'm only taking liberties on meat cooking preferences because I believe I was given implicit permission to do so; the fact that cooking preferences, however, did not eclipse our mutual enjoyment of the steak was a testament to its quality. Also, please note the squash blossom on top.



















I had grilled swordfish, which was adorable in its deconstructed Mediterraeneanism. I preferred dessert, so I'll quickly note it was arranged fallen-Jenga-piece-like with swordfish juxtaposed to chickpea "frites" atop a puree of roasted eggplant, and served with julienned pickled beets (which made for a pretty Bougainvillea-esque pop of color) and thick tzatziki with basil oil.


As our romantic observations became more insightful, the drinks became better. To get these drinks, however, our bread basket had to be taken away, which produced two very crestfallen faces. Our sparking wine glasses, slowly condensating by candlelight, fixed that fast though.


Christine recognized, when we ordered the desserts at the beginning of dinner, that usually two people should not choose the same dessert. We discussed the short-sightedness of people who hover in the same types of foods as their dining companions. We decided, however, that in cases where a dessert both sounds and appears to be superior to its fellow menu items, that we could dismiss this rule for a peach crumble financier, with a local peach compote and chantilly "ice cream." A bit of a dessert photo shoot produced these delectable images.



















The financier was moist and tender on the inside, with a chewy, crunch exterior, like any finely crafted Parisian pastry. We were incapable of speaking for a few minutes, eschewing any utility of trying to describe ecstasy in mere words. Christine was able to construct a perfect bite for posterity's sake.


We did better with the unexpected digestif, accented with a lavender liqueur, and were able to quite sufficiently articulate our delight with that one.



















Not a bad night when your blog's existence is easily justified, you have 33 restaurants left, and you find this glory in your mailbox (ignore the left side, please).

Etete

This one might be underwhelming and I intend to have more photos than paragraphs. This is not to say I did not enjoy the dinner I shared with Wendy at Etete (on the top 100) at 9th and T on Sunday. Instead, I forgot to take pictures of two thirds of our dishes, plus we shared an entree, which clearly means less plates. And, they don't serve dessert and we got water. I might be insensitive if I used the line from "When Harry Met Sally..." when he recounted what he told his date at an Ethiopian restaurant: "I didn't know that they had food in Ethiopia. This will be a quick meal. I'll order two empty plates and we can leave."

Wendy, admirably, indulges me in ethnic food getting: our last outing was Persian food in Clarendon, walking to Georgetown for a belly dancing show, and then returning on foot to Clarendon for gelato. We've had kabobs in shady cabbie-frequented joints and Greek foods at festivals. So, at Etete we had our two salads, delicious but rather quotidien tomato salads with a nice vinaigrette. I have no salad photos, but here's the interior.


Then, we got our forks, injera.


For dinner, we used the injera to grab and sop up the gomen (collard greens), tekil gomen (cabbage and carrot), yemisir kik wat (red lentils, my favorite), and yeataklit wat (carrots, potato and string beans, although I don't remember the beans) and a cabbage/tomato/jalapeno pepper salad. They were all delicious, but the red lentils was the only dish that seemed to stand alone with entree-like flavor and fortitude.

It was delicious enough, but I imagine we could be faulted for not finding it more interesting since we ordered so little. Or, cynically, because the food wasn't that dynamic. But at least we rendered the plate empty rather than it coming that way. Plus, it's restaurant week and three dishes should be sufficient for the 30 or so that will follow this week.

Blue Duck Tavern

I used to think I had an unlikely but delightedly virulent aversion to trappings of power, prestige, and fancy-ness: I thought Rage Against the Machine was fair and balanced, I understood "the man" to be a pervasive, ubiquitous force in society, and I really liked the word Foucauldian (particularly because of that random d). My proletariarism is less evident now when I listen to Rage on pirated and burned CDs, ruthlessly support "the man" (who happens to subsidize my rent and health insurance), and patronize restaurants that appeal to the puff-chested, trophy-wife-sporting, power suits.

Sometimes in DC, this clientele and the atmosphere they create in the dining room is untenable; eating congealed butterscotch flavored bone marrow in the Capitol dining room would be more appealing and I'd see more famous people. But, at a place like Blue Duck Tavern, where in response to my telling the waiter I couldn't hear him he says, "It's my braces, isn't it? I knew it," grinning, the flowing wine, fancy but comforting food, and exquisite hospitality make bourgeoisie a nice word again.

Blue Duck Tavern is fancy, indubitably, but its staff is extremely approachable, thoughtful, and unobtrusive. I went to dine with Sue, my rich-laughed friend, and upon telling the hostess our third friend wouldn't be joining, the hostess wished that everything was alright with her. In the bar, when the waitresses realized they had overlooked me for a few more minutes than they should have (I'm sure my Jane Austen book gave away how important I was), they sent the sommelier over to take my order. After having mentioned to the hostess Sue and I would take a table earlier, if possible, she remembered to seek us out in the busy bar when one came available.


We started with one of the friendliest dishes of foie gras I've ever had; it wasn't scary or lobey at all. Plus, it was sweet--if Paula Deen became goose liver mousse, she'd taste like this. Their brûlée of foie gras has a paper-thin layer of caramelized sugar and bourbon peaches, raisins, and poppy seeds on top. The amount of toasted brioche was insufficient for the dish, but the fact that the dish seemed to reach the outer limit of deepest indulgence, reeled back only slightly with the fruit, made up for it.


Smart Sue got the duck (signature) and graciously posed with the perfectly blue-colored (fancy unintentional camera effect) fountain. We felt like princesses with our frequently refilled Cabernets and the lulling cadences of our other waiter from Spanish Galicia. Her duck was tender and rich (but not sickly so) and had a fresh but sticky whole red plum.


We had exquisite side dishes: the wood oven roasted creamed corn with tarragon (with flavors from both the country and New Mexico)...


...and a warm pie of sheeps’ milk, ricotta, Swiss chard and anise hyssop (it's in there somewhere). The pie had hints both (in size and shape) of hunger-satisfying Jumbo Slice and the homey warmth of spanakopita.


As an aside, want to see what Jumbo Slice looks like at night when you haven't been drinking?

I had fat, juicy, perfectly encrusted scallops, whose scallop crevices seemed to cleave willingly to let in the light lemon and thyme sauce.


In a bit of a pseudo indecision about which one dessert we wanted, we got two. I felt compelled to get the nectarine, blackberry and almond crumble, with a filling of fresh fruit roasted with orange, lemon peel and vanilla bean and topped with an almond crumble and crème fraîche. I was powerless to resist after seeing it posted on the Blue Duck Tavern's blog.


Cleverly thematically (blue again) Sue ordered the Straight from the Oven Chocolate Cake with a Maker’s Mark flambé. So giddy on wine, gossip and romantic insights, we forgot about the flambé part, which gave us quite a show when it did arrive.

And just because I can. What better place than here, what better time than now.