Marvin

I have eaten in 2012. You wouldn't think so due to the non-prolificness of the blog. But I have dined (and not written about a handful of restaurants) to put myself at a mere nine restaurants away from completing the top 100. It's like baby weight or something: the last 10 are the hard ones. Or the nine years it takes to undue the freshman 15. Maybe a Coleridge reference to albatrosses-around-necks is more cultured and germane. I think so.

Anyway, this blog has been about catching-up: a night of excess over fancy wines and multi-compartmented dessert plates still goes undocumented (from the pre-30 era), as does a Sunday Indian buffet I almost indulged in alone--in, you guessed it, Rockville--where I instead awkwardly took a self-portrait. In good time.

Since I'm only a mere two weeks out from eating at Marvin, that is where I will being catching up. And this will be quick since nearly all my photos look exactly the same: dark. Dotti acquiesced to another top 100 foray: our last was in October, which I wrote up in January. Alas.

We wanted to go because Marvin has chicken and waffles. A few weeks prior, we went to Tabaq, that also had chicken and waffles but with an inadvisable ketchupy gravy. That caloric Southern devil is in the details. Leading up to our reason for being there (the whole top 100 thing aside), we began with the baby back pork ribs. Our table, comprised of an Oklahoman, a North Carolinian, and our friend Brian, a newly baptized Tarheel, extracted every bit of meat from those ribs.

We also had cheese croquettes, which, unsurprisingly look like ribs in low light. With both goat and ricotta cheeses, they were delicious. Taste was about the only sense we could experience the whole night though: we only knew our waiter was asking questions if he stayed inordinately long at the table, we could barely hear each other, and the muddled mix of the Belgian wine and the dark made the dining room a bit indistinct.


Dotti's chicken and waffles were delicious, with plenty of meat, rich collards, and a good-looking, crispy waffle. Brian had a southern burger topped with avocado, bacon, and a jalapeno spread. Who would have thought votives would be such abysmal light sources.



















I had softshell crab, one of my new favorite dishes, that here more closely resembles a 1950s horror sea creature. The andouille, grilled asparagus, and tarragon aioli had as much heft in the dish as Belgium has esteem for anything beyond its waffles on the world stage. That's to say, it was fine.

Our waiter non-committal-y (and unadvisedly) suggested the toffee cake with a salted caramel ice cream. The ice cream was delicious but the cake was dense and sticky, more Fran Drescher than Grace Kelly in tone.


There's always a silver lining, though. Over ribs and many fried things, we discussed the secrets of the romantic universe--resolving some--trying out our theories on Brian while fielding inquiries back. And, I remembered the subtle but discernible pleasure of photographing my food before eating it.