Vit Goel Tofu and BBQ

I'm happy to say that I've resumed dining at restaurants whose names I can't pronounce.  Conveniently, this one, Vit Goel Tofu and BBQ also goes by Lighthouse Tofu. Whether I can replicate Korean intonation or even understand what I'm eating (we'll get to that later), doesn't matter: tlunch was delicious and worthy of inclusion on the Cheap Eats Top 100.

After a hard morning of enjoying a nice latte and reading, I tried to gin up an appetite buying kitchen supplies and shoes (thankfully I bought more kitchen supplies than shoes, however). I headed south on a never-traversed part of Columbia Pike and ended up among the twisty-turny roads of Annandale, which I'm bound to frequent in the near future (Annandale is home to many Korean restaurants on the top 100). 

Vit Goel Tofu is tucked behind a Burger King and beside a golf store. Before entering, I was instructed to not leave valuables in my car (I assume that only means nine irons?). I snagged a seat and was pleasantly surprised with a concise menu with pictures and most especially, a limited amount of choices (it does make things so much easier, particularly when you have little idea what you're doing).

Before I even had a chance to peruse the 19-item menu (which still took a few sips to get through), I had a piping cup of tea before me. This was the only time my table had less than five plates on it at a time.

I started with the pork and kimchi pancake, I think, the best thing I had. Chewy, flavorful, and Korean diner-y (it looked like a flat omelet from a greasy spoon), it was exquisite. Before this gloriousness was set before me, an array of panchan (Korean appetizers) was set down. I was too eager to eat to photograph them with any reverence, but in the half-viewable plate on the left was a vegetable (I asked two people what it was, but I don't think it translates), bean sprouts to its right, kimchi cucumbers below, kimchi, and a cool tomato cabbage soup (like a thinner gazpacho).

At stage right was a small bowl of rice and (above) the container it was cooked in. The crunchy, stuck-on rice in the larger bowl was loosened with cool tea and was meant to be saved for the end of the meal (in which I indulged).

The decor was charming, not just because each table was obviously numerically labeled (with a large sticker in the corner), or because of the Korean-character wallpaper (which I selfishly am using to prove I was there), but because it's a local place. What looked to be a newly engaged-young man was there with his fiancee, who was translating for her Korean parents. A Chinese-American son and mother sat beside me and he explained they come frequently for the soup in winter (she ensured to wrap up every dish she could). Large parties of friends and families filled the dining room, occupying the time and attention of who must be the busiest busboy ever (imagine about 15 plates per table and at least 50 tables?).

By the time my entree arrived, I had 13 plates of food on mine. Pictures didn't seem to do my mushroom tofu soup justice, either. I challenge Minibar to give me something worth taping.

Faryab

I told you, dear reader, I was two restaurants away from completing the top 100. You may not believe me and you'd have every reason. "What about the obscure places in Bethesda and Silver Spring," you say, examining the un-crossed-off items on my top 100 progress list. I'd say you are correct, that I have illustrated inadequate proof for the fact that I have visited these places and consumed foods there. I'd also submit, however, that if a place was either 1. mediocre or 2. exceptionally good, causing me to come home and immediately crawl in my bed around midnight, I didn't write it up in a timely fashion. Over the next few days, I'll attempt to prove to you that I ate at the rest.

The rest includes Faryab, an Afghan place in Bethesda I have struggled to visit because it's, well, what seems an interminably long distance away (when is it, in fact, 24 miles from home, which I'll say might as well be the real Faryab). It was, unsurprisingly in my lexicon, charming, with a host who seemed thrilled a lady was gracing his tables and a waiter who let me try one single spicy turnip, because I wasn't sure I could commit to a whole plateful. We did commit, however, to a plate full of mantu, steamed dumplings filled with ground beef and onions, one of the most redeeming dishes on an Afghan menu and especially good here.

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Don't believe me? Try an extra large digital image of mantu.

Next, we had a plate of Quabili Palau, seasoned chunks of lamb under a small mountain of spiced rice, sweet carrot strips and raisins. It was exquisite and much too rich, but perfectly balanced between savory, sweet, and Lamb. With a capital L.

To sample the full range of side dishes, we had Kadu, soft, stewed pumpkin with yogurt and a bit of meat; stewed eggplant with onions and tomato sauce (top right--it was silkily tender); and Sabsi, cooked spinach with garlic. The vegetables seemed vitamin-rich and virtuous, but were in fact vehicles for richness and dense yogurtness. We barely had room on our table, in addition to the salad, bread, and wine carafe.

 

Dear, dear wine carafe.

It was tasty--it felt local, hospitable, and full of homey foods. There was no pretension and a menu full of technicolor-bright foods. Not bad for #92.

Shawafel and the Washingtonian's 100 Cheap Eats

I'm paralyzed at a top 100 crossroads: with only two restaurants left, one is closed until late 2013 because of extensive water damage and I'm waiting on another to permit me to make a reservation for a dinner that will cost me $225. That's without alcohol (aka sin vino). Needless to say, an amateur food critic who embarked on a quest to eat 100 good meals finds herself a little cranky, despite finding herself having indulged in sensual culinary pleasures for more than a year.

All that's to say that it's possible this whole food adventure could subsequently be form-less, in a series of random visits to random places to eat random, possibly good, things, all in the hopes that Citronelle gets its pipes fixed soon and its mess mopped up. Thankfully, however, the Washingtonian has another list as a foil to the $225 meals with foie gras mousses, pan-fried sweetbreads and wine pairings: Washingtonian's 100 Cheap Eats. Like its snootier old sister, the dowager top 100, the list features restaurants all over the city. However, it's refreshingly broken up into categories like "burgers and hot dogs," "Vietnamese," "pizza," and "Greek," some of my favorite things. I've already been to many of them, either in the scope of the top 100 or as accidental restaurant discoveries, but I'd hazard a guess none of them have tasting menus that tax both one's pocketbook and pant size.

So it's begun! The first deliberate Cheap Eats visit was last night, to Shawafel on H Street NE. Dotti and I find the whole area a bit dicey, so conveniently found a spot directly in front of the restaurant.  That way, we could scurry across the street to a bar, back across the street to dinner, and then to another bar without actually encountering more than 10 people. Granted, we almost got hit by at least one Cadillac, but our full bellies would have just made us bounce a little.

We knew Shawafel didn't serve alcohol (nor, it turns out, do they serve good freshly-made fruit drinks as we had hoped) so we started off with beers across the street at H Street Country Club. This was one of many Allagashes that evening.

 

Shawafel reminds me of the Lebanese places in France: the real estate is narrow but goes back rather far, with a few tables on one side and diner-style stools on the other side. The decor is no-nonsense because you're there for the sandwiches. Shawafel stays open until 3am and the charming gentleman who took our order intimated that drinkers on H Street take full advantage of its late hours.

I started with the tabbouleh and the lentil soup, both of which were delicious: the tabbouleh had almost no bulghur wheat, so was rich with lemon-drenched parsley and juicy tomatoes. The lentil soup didn't have an extremely rich broth, but was the perfect size (Shawafel serves soup and salads in half portions, perfect for trying more of each) and was hot on a blisteringly cold evening. Dotti ordered a very pretty hummus--the olive oil was beautiful, but it could have done with a bit more garlic or salt.

I had Shawafel's flagship sandwich, the Shawafel (it took me until I actually ordered it to figure that out). It featured a combination of both shwarma meat and falafel, and was packed with lettuce, tomato, pickled turnips, parsley, and what I think was mint tahini. It was fresh and rich and the variety of textures made each bit different: sometimes meat, sometimes vegetarian, sometimes salad. Admittedly, this is not a flattering picture but I was too eager to keep eating it that I didn't have time to do it much justice.

  

It's going to be a good adventure, full of cleverly-named restaurants and others that might be impossible to actually pronounce. Bring on 100 more!

Maple Ave. Restaurant

It takes a lot of mustered-up security to enjoy the restaurant of someone who's living one of (many of) your dreams: abandoning a day job to run a restaurant. It's one of those dreams in the 10-15 years away category vice something on the 1-5 year plan, most simply because I still largely view not catching my kitchen on fire while cooking a moderate success.

The chef and owner at Maple Ave. Restaurant in Vienna, however, abandoned his job as an engineer and enrolled in the French Culinary Institute in New York City, which I probably unnecessarily-frequently invoke as it's my friend Sonia's alma mater. He settled in Vienna, Virginia, across from a grocery store and between a funeral home and an auto shop. This only adds to the charm.

It's a tiny dining room, what I would imagine would be the size of the Tastee Freez in that sort-of-bad-but-catchy John Mellancamp song. But, it's on what is still Vienna's Main Street (you guessed it, Maple Ave.) and is disarmingly clever, sophisticated, and homey.

I got there a smidge early and had what turned out to be one of the best Bloody Mary's of my life. I had a good one in (I believe) 2005 and have been struggling since then to find its equal. It vacillated between tasting like olive juice, garlic, and tomato in each sip: it's exactly what I imagined vermouth to have tasted like when I was reading Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. I've since tasted vermouth and think I will stick with searching for elusively good Bloody Mary's.

My friends arrived and we all briliantly and coordinatedly had the tasting menu, extremely reasonable for $28 for two people. We started with what my friend Ashley and gracious blog reader had gushed about a few weeks earlier: truffle eggs. I'll admit that I could still recollect the taste the rest of the afternoon, as it was so memorably good. The bacon was sweet and tender and I ate it all, because that is what one does with bacon.

Next, we had the mushroom duxelle and gruyère cheese crêpe. Oh, was it delicious. The crepe was tender and crisped-up on the edges and the interior was salty and a tad sweet. It was an exquisite dish after the rich (and I ate all the bacon, so, fatty) one before. 

  

The salad accompanying the crêpe was good and simple so I was a bit disappointed that we had another immediately afterwards. It was beautiful, though: slices of apple, candied walnuts, and Gorgonzola or bleu cheese (I know, I know, a real food critic would know the difference). But, it was lovely in its contrasts.

Next, we had more meat. House-made coppa was served with pickled onions, gruyère, mustard, and baguette slices doused in what must have been brown butter. Our waitress, unfortunately, was not very enthused about serving or explaining our dishes to us, but I suppose the silver lining is that our conversation was largely uninterrupted, save for the incessant table-bussing (that's the drawback to tasting menus, I suppose). 

The most difficult dish to resist followed: baked mac with Panko crumbs and a hint of rosemary. The fusili were nice and relaxed, twisting and undulating but without the 1980s-hair-perm spring. It was creamy and flavorful, but perhaps could have done with some sort of meat or vegetable populating its fusili gaps. But it was tasty.

All good tasting menus should conclude with a dessert and this was no different: we had beignets (fancy word for donuts) with, I believe, an apple compote. The beignets were airy and eggy, so despite their girth and caloric properties, felt rather light. It was the perfect cap to a new brunch, new assemblage of brunch girlfriends, and a celebration of an engineer's new vocation.

Ambar

I welcome myself back: I dined in true Boca Sola fashion last night. When DC Restaurant Week arrives, a girl has had a long couple of weeks, and all she wants to do is read a rather trashy novel and drink pastel-colored drinks, she goes out Boca Sola style. This time, for a culinary respite, I opted for Balkan. That's right. This, here.

Thanks to Balkan culinary tradition, there were no foam-covered foods or too-delicate-to-eat appetizers like last time I dined Boca Sola-style a year ago.  Last night was cabbage and meats and hearty.

I went to Ambar, in Eastern Market. Along the main drag there are reliably delicious standbys like Greek and pizza, but then there is Ambar, a new addition to Barracks Row. Somehow, its shyness and unobtrusiveness seems to have attracted the entire neighborhood: I barely snagged a stool at the bar while I waited for my table for a very typical Boca Sola drink-before-the-drink.

It was chaotic, as Restaurant Week is wont. In particularly bad form, though, a runner passed dishes to a bartender behind the bar between two bar patrons. Despite the restaurant's gloss, the move seemed like something from a Balkan diner rather than a Balkan club, but later became more forgivable...the longer I stayed, the more I saw the warmth of the staff and how genuinely engaged the owner seemed.

I started with a glass of white wine (only because the delightful-sounding description made it sound like red) and it did legitimately have hints of rosemary. It tasted like spring--like a subtle spring, not a Disney-esque-birds-landing-on-fingertips-spring.

I had settled at the bar upstairs and when I descended to be seated, the hostess thanked me for my patience, apologized, and touched my elbow. The fact that I'm lauding elbow-touching underscores what good, memorable customer service the restaurant had. My charming, young waiter eagerly checked on me to ensure I was well-fed and comfortable. One couldn't mistake the swanky decor for being reminiscent of someone's home, but the food did feel like a hip derivative of someone's grandmother's recipe collection. 

The Restaurant Week menu--I think very cleverly, here--is accompanied by a cocktail. I chose a grappa rakia sour. Rakia is a grape brandy--bottles of which contributed to the clever bar background in the first photo--and was muted-ly sweet and not too strong. 

 

To begin, I had veal stew, less perfunctory than it would have been in this cold weather since I'd already warmed myself with the cumulative effect, nonetheless, of cold drinks. This was convenient since the soup wasn't that warm in the first place but it was a great tasting soup: small pieces of rich veal in a shade-thicker-than-thin broth with ribbons of sour cream. A squeeze of lemon juice on top sufficiently cut the richness.

For a second appetizer,  I had a more photogenic view of my cocktail and the mushroom crepes. They were filled with four types of forest mushrooms (per my charming waiter) and potatoes, then brushed with a thin layer of bechamel. After two, I was quite full. Upon the resumption of enjoying my crepes (and reading another chapter of said trash literature), I noticed they began tasting better the more they basked there. It was incredibly rich and hearty, but perfectly sized.

For dinner, I couldn't resist cabbage rolls. This is country food and I appreciated the no-fuss method of serving them. They were hot in their small cocotte, served with a side of yogurt. The meat (veal and beef) was rich and flavorful without extravagance--no deconstructed anything added on, no French sauce, no bizarre gelatin-based accoutrement. Just two things on my dinner plate.

It was delightfully refreshing and good, especially in blustery weather. However the only hint of real vegetable were the microscopic adornment-chives, the  mark of any good comfort food regardless of culture.

Woodward Table

We're back to real-time. Well, ok, not permanently--I still have birthday dinners from 2011 to write up--but we'll get there. But not this week. It's Restaurant Week in DC, which has put the fire under my seat (I'm not sure that's how that saying goes) to be efficient. Stealth. Shrewd. Nimble. Linguistically economical.

I am also returning to my old habits, like trying a new place with the inestimable Sue. She sent along the Washingtonian's 2013 Restaurant Preview a few days ago and after minimal discussion--they were all new to us--we settled on Woodward Table. For the life of me, I couldn't and can't remember the name. Westwood Table? Westward Kitchen? Westward Table? It didn't matter; we both found it. And in accumulating snow, no less.

In the Washingtonian write-up, we were both drawn to the Southern: Sue is a Georgia girl and I'm, well, a mid-westerner who likes fried things. We were drawn to sophisticated prose like "Southern-with-a-twist plates include pan-roasted lobster with grits as well as turtle bisque" and something else about fried-chicken biscuits and country-ham flatbread with bacon marmalade. We exchanged our Christmas presents--a ridiculously soft but practical winter hat from Sue (that I've worn every day since) and a sparkly Sooners t-shirt to Sue. One could (and hopefully would) say that we are women of warmth and substance.

That's to say we agreed pretty quickly it wasn't really Southern. But it was tasty. I left home--scraping snow flakes off my little windshield--and arrived a bit early because I'm not adept at driving in snow (or minimal flakes of any sort). So, I had a glass of French sparkling wine as I watched the kitchen machinations just beyond the wooden half wall. I watched the kitchen staff go between stations and chit chat before the severe dinner rush. For an amateur food critic, this is like peeking behind the Kennedy Center curtain before a night of opera. Less dramatically, it's a lovely way to spend an evening when one's book was left at home.

 

I (I'll say tackily) asked for bread since I was gauche enough to chew gum on the ride up and almost inside the restaurant. The waiter indulged by high and low-brow tastes (I specifically asked for the sparkling wine from Alsace--une région en france--and I accidentally pronounced it in my Frenchiest accent) and the potato roll oozed yeast and Parkerhouse.

 

I couldn't resist an appetizer. The waiter and I had discussed the duck soup, because my fingers were tingling with cold and I still felt uncomfortably frozen. Francophilically of me, however, I got the charcuterie plate. It wasn't the best.. or comparable to the one at Proof (a pho terrine!) or as pretty as the one at Brasserie Beck (incidentally, do you know how awesome it is to search oneself and "charcuterie" and get results?) but it was tasty and a very good foil to a cold evening.

One thing I will lament at restaurants of this caliber serving charcuterie plates, however, is their runners' and servers' reticence to indulge in a description of the extensive amount of work--and naming conventions--involved in preparing what they are serving. We had pâtés and terrines, yes, but of what? The cornichons and sweet-and-sour pickles were easy enough to decipher, but I know this isn't easy. I had a conversation just this evening at Society Fair, my neighborhood fancy foods store, about the delicate treatment of sausage during the cooking process. These aren't meats that emerge naturally: they are constructions of butchers who give thought and life to their creations.

Where did that soapbox come from? Ahem. Sue, who graciously allowed me to photograph her and her grilled New York strip steak, enjoyed it accompanied by cipollini onions and wild mushrooms.

I had the pan-roasted trout with king trumpet mushrooms, Brussels sprouts, sweet potatoes, and a cider-rosemary jus. It was an attractive-enough presentation, but the sweet potato chunks were large, the Brussels sprouts too small, and the trumpet mushrooms lacked their extravagant, tender bouquets (it was all stems). It was good, but it was good in the way that food is when when two girls are catching up. Neither one of us became silently rapturous about the plates before us. Which is fine--we had too much to discuss anyway.

Sue had the foresight to order French fries, which came paired with a rosemary-garlic aïoli. This type of food is critical in the free flow of girl gossip.

Sue is a trooper in indulging the oftentimes difficult burden of bloggership: ordering dessert. Sue took steak home to-go and I polished off all but one bite of my fish. But, as true amateur food critics, we indulged. We had a dessert straightforwardly called "Coffee and Cream," with a mocha mousse, almond chocolate crumble (a very cleverly textured crust), coffee toffee, and cappuccino cream. It was excessive but still restrained-enough, like any fancy dessert, and with coffees and espressos and last-minute gossip-divulging, was a delightful meal. And only happened two days ago. 

Obelisk

I can continue to begin each new blog entry (I'm catching up, see?) with apologies and excuses of what I've been doing, but I'm determined now to prove that I have only two restaurants left now on the top 100. Dear reader, that means I have successfully reserved, consumed, and photographed meals for the rest and I intend to prove it to you.

Obelisk was a birthday dinner meal (meh, circa three months ago) that took some effort to schedule, cancel, and subsequently reschedule: I initially thought it was a hard reservation to make, settled on my birthday weekend, cancelled it last minute thinking I had other plans, then snuck back in an hour later than originally. 

I have been eating, I'm sure you can tell, but not entirely alone. This was not an alone dinner and my companion was kind enough to indulge in joining me. It was charming--low lighting (it's not my camera) and prolific amounts of food. When we entered, though, I'll admit it was underwhelming: the whole room looked like a Days Inn free breakfast room, with bland-textiled tables and wicker-y chairs. It wasn't something out of an Audrey Hepburn-Gregory Peck romp.

We did the tasting menu with the wine pairing (good man knew there was no alternative on the day a woman turns 31, yikes), but the good stuff was front-loaded, even as the room's shadows started to meld together after more and more wine.

We started with an exquisite mix of antipasti--bread, breadsticks, and olives--and everyone's favorite Italian caloric cream-ball, house-made burrata, which is a mozzarella skin enclosing cream. Seriously.

The beautiful thing about antipasti at Obelisk is that they keep coming. Next were sides of sardines on soft, caramelized onions and applies with raisins. It was salty and sweet.. and glistened. Next were pork head cheese balls with a side of lentils. Their name probably makes it too difficult for you to think they're edible, but they were... very much so.

So, back to sardines. Sardines remind of Mediterranean evenings, so of course, I was instantly transformed from a Dupont Circle restaurant on a chilly night to... Athens. Cue flashback. 

In my youth, I went to Greece with my friend Sonia, now an esteemed graduate of the French Culinary Institute in Manhattan. We went to a delicious restaurant in Athens called, but of course, Sardelles, Greek for... you guessed it. For the first time, we had limoncello (granted, not Greek) and Masticha, Greece's delicious, secret non-ouzo cousin. Anyway, that's neither here nor there.

 

Next on the tasting menu were the pasta-esque dishes. We're going to speed through this section because I don't remember the details of what we ordered and I'm not sure I'd get them again. My friend had some seafood soup (he liked it) and I had a rabbit stew.  It was light on the stew but the pasta was good. I get the heebie jeebies a bit now because rabbit has little bones and I always manage to get at least one. Then I think of Thumper and it's over.

Same with the main courses. My friend got a small-boned bird (about which he was moderately but not excessively enthusiastic) and I had fish. It was tasty--I don't recall what specifically, so alas. It had a romesco sauce (a nut and red pepper sauce) and a beautiful artichoke. It was beautiful and simple and if Hemingway were a vegetable, he'd be a beautiful and simple pared down artichoke like this one.

Then there was a cheese plate. Italian-style, it's dessert. Which I love. My friend had some sort of cake... maybe? I had an apple strudel-esque pastry. It was lovely but a bit too advanced Italian for me--in my simple Italian tastes, I'd rather have big meats, big pasta, and big vegetables.

This was big regional Italian cooking. The wines were beautiful, though, and the service was kind and attentive. We just couldn't achieve the same levels of food satisfaction as we had with the first wave of dishes... creative but simple appetizers that showcased the rich flavors from quality ingredients that mark fine Italian food. But alas. It brought me one step closer to two restaurants away.