Michael's Noodles

I'm already back--I forgot that I like eating and writing in such quick succession.

My adventurous noodle eater man and I went to Rockville, Maryland yesterday, building our entire afternoon activities around a Top 100 Cheap Eats restaurant, Michael's Noodles. Rockville, as I have noted in past culinary excursions, seems like it's a prime hub for shops-that-Americans like--DSW, Dick's Sporting Goods, Bed Bath and Beyond (where I used three large blue coupons), etc.--but unfortunately also seemed to entertain all DC area drivers who wanted to go anywhere. That means there was an amazingly dense amount of traffic.

 

After we stopped for halvah at one Middle Eastern grocery and picked up meat pies at a Russian grocery--and endured Maryland traffic--we were ready for food. 

It's always an adventure stepping into a top 100 restaurant of any variety, particularly ones on this list. We were greeted--unofficially--by a young boy taking a picture of the art in the entryway; I halfway assumed he must have been a food blogger too, so I felt at ease (he was a bored kid at a multiple-adult dinner, so this was only one of many diversions we saw him participating in). It was a good sign, though; it was loud with lots of families.

 

We used the Washingtonian write-up as our starting point because the menu was eight pages long with about 30 items on each page. Intestines, duck blood, jellyfish, mustard greens, squid, fish head, and live fish--almost certainly the head too--are on the menu. We started with tea and beer; those choices were easy.

 

 

We started with Szechuan wantons, exquisite little gathered-dough packages with a rich meat filling and chili oil and scallions soaked into every little dough rivulet. Proud chopstick users, we couldn't savor them well enough with chopsticks so we broke out the forks. And because they were really slippery.

 

 

We ordered dumplings next. The dumpling dough was thick and soft on the inside but crisp and crunchy: nothing like the glorious effects of food that comes out of a fry pan.

 

 

I had the dan dan noodles. I had no idea what that entailed but the alliteration was too alluring. Nevertheless, I was still surprised at what it looked like: lightly steamed spinach took up half the bowl and the other half were Michael's homemade noodle covered with dried, shredded pork. I gingerly took a little of each noodles and spinach and put it on my little plate; our waitress soon came over, tsked me, and stirred everything together. Then it tasted good; she dredged up all the sauce at the bottom and coated the dry pork with its sweet sauce.

 

 

My co-cheap eats-er demurred on trying my dish as his "would be the star of the show," or something similarly overconfident. He was right: pork, chicken, shrimp, and tons of vegetables were in a thin gravy and floated on top of a nest of crispy, thin noodles. The longer it took us to work our way through his lunch, the more the noodles soaked up the sauce and the better they became.

 

 

So, we're one more cheap eats joint down, with about a million more restaurants, calories, and meals (but not dollars!) to go. One could say the same for the photos of leaves I intend to take until they are all gone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ris

Today was a day for the blog. Well, I took the day off and got an expensive haircut too, but it was really a day for the blog: a boca sola meal, a glass of wine in the middle of the day, a gratuitous dessert (after more than enough food) and a novel on the table (even though it was more decorative than utilitarian as I was near a window with much people-watching).

This morning, after already deciding to take the day off, I took a gander at the Washingtonian Top 100 list for 2013. As you may know, my 99 culinary adventures (save Citronelle) were from the 2010 list, so I was curious what I have missed in the meantime. Of the 20 or so I have not visited, Ris--near the heart of fancypants Georgetown--was one.

 

I'd heard it mentioned--by a fancypants colleague--but rarely have found myself in the Westend, except twice notably at the Westend Bistro, also quite sophisticated. I cleverly drove, which I note sarcastically, as I barely made my reservation on time despite departing about 20 minutes earlier than I needed to. I'm shocked I made it at all, in light of my delightful morning Old Town lollygagging (stopping to photograph the sidewalk).

 

...More than once.

 

 

As is the Boca Sola custom (I'll admit I'm a bit rusty), I thought of my dear readers when I ordered. That means, I ordered everything on the menu I thought I might possibly be able to eat most of, which ended up being three dishes and two drinks. I started with the Scallop Margarita, a sort of scallop ceviche with quartered oranges, chili peppers, avocados, and a scoop of tequila sorbet, with a salt rim and chips. It was terrific--I savored each bite, scooped up every last bit with my chips, and admired each forkful's unique blend of textures.

 

 

I enjoyed it so thoroughly, though, the kitchen evidently had expected me to have finished dining 10 minutes earlier, because my lunch had been under the heat lamp for a while (I learned few things at Santa Fe Cattle Company in Oklahoma as a waitress, but one of them was that food kept under heat lamps inherently depreciates in taste).

 

That means my food--salad, yogurt, pomegranate seeds and all--had been under the heat lamp while I was still rapturing about scallops.

 

It was a lovely lunch but its arrival was rushed; post-scallops, I had read about one paragraph of my book before lunch arrived. Since a blog is one big soapbox anyway, a key frustration about lunch dining is restaurants' bias that you want to eat quickly and leave. My lunches during the workweek are usually things like Generic Asian at an airport because I'm flying somewhere, so I haven't encountered this problem frequently. Nevertheless, I can't understand why a fine restaurant (as Ris is) would sacrifice dining pacing below a quick meal. I had a book and a glass of Sauvignon Blanc... and nothing but time. 

 



The grilled swordfish fish was still delicious--flavorful and juicy and just enough char to balance out the richness of it--and was served atop Greek yogurt, a small ribbony cucumber-radish salad, with sides of "mint tabbouleh" (nearly all bulgher wheat and little mint) and pomegranate seeds. The fish was tasty but since it hadn't come directly off the grill, lacked the mix of textures--of char and moist flesh--had it not been sitting and warming up. Similarly, warmish yogurt gives me the heebie jeebies. 

 

Dessert was lovely, though--I had a warm chocolate tart with ice cream and caramel popcorn. The brown butter ice cream that was supposed to accompany it was rum butter, but was still delicious.  The interior of the tart--a separate  melty puck of chocolate gooeyness--was warm and rich and the chocolate crusty cup surrounding it was crisp and stuck to the plate with caramel. I followed each bite with either the ice cream, popcorn, or little bits of chocolate crumbs on the plate; it was a great accompaniment to people watching. While pondering bite pairings, I saw an Indian diplomat hop into her blackened out Suburban and saw a handful of personal security officers head into Ris' back room.

 

I can complain as an amateur blogger that it wasn't fully up to snuff, but as a lady playing hooky (don't worry, I asked my boss) it was a treat. And treats were par for the course this week.

 

My non-mountain man and I had fancy hot dogs earlier this week from Haute Dog and Fries up the street: "The Monroe" on the left (a hot dog with chopped jalapenos, grilled onions, and mango-pineapple salsa) and some German sausage monstrosity (with sauerkraut and brown mustard). That was a treat--he indulged me in glasses of tempranillo and a cheese plate right before. What a guy.

 

 

Earlier in the week, I caught up with Christine at Bazin's in Vienna, a lovely, sophisticated-but-homey bistro, where we collectively had a butter lettuce salad, tuna tartare, tagiatelle bolognese, and sea bass with wasabi mashed potatoes. Since my camera has no flash, this is the only photo that resembles what it is meant to represent. 

 

 

Then there's the normal treats, thankfully, trickless. Happy Halloween and happy blog-reading in near real-time!

 

Gom Ba Woo and Other October Culinary Adventures

I finally have a hook. A headline. A justification for why I'm writing this catch-up blog entry at all: I knocked off a restaurant from one of my lists.

I'd like to say it's the elusive Citronelle, so I can finally have completed the Washingtonian Top 100 list. (Or that I have updated my Top 100 check-off list to reflect restaurants I have actually been to). But, extensive water damage and perhaps a more desirable location in New York City has prevented this amateur food blogger from a very simple dream, completing a 1 million calorie adventure and hitting up this purported paragon of French cuisine.

Nevertheless, I can proudly say I don't need escargots and a high-brow Georgetown location to bring me back to the blog; instead,  I will write to you about the glories of dining in a strip mall, drinking rice water, and dining in Annandale, which permits pumpkin patch viewing beforehand and a trip to Sears afterwards.

We headed to Gom Ba Woo, one of many Annandale establishments on the Washingtonian's Top 100 Cheap Eats. We parked and assessed our surroundings: a shoddy looking grocery store off yonder, an odd looking karaoke bar next door--with some weird looking cartoon characters smiling from the walls--and our future blog-worthy dining experience. Everyone knew we didn't belong when we went inside, but that only made our waitress welcome us more.

We started with panchan, Korean appetizers, which feed a nasty sort of dependence: after either a bite of kimchee or the pickled, spicy cucumbers, I coughed and teared up until the bit of chili stuck in my respiratory system decided to abandon its position. To help it out, I had a bit of mayonaise-soaked apples in a Waldorf-esque salad. It was great fun, having vegetables that on their own are quite unsophisticated: cabbage, cucumbers, sprouts... and then seeing them accesorized with sesame oil, chili, and vinegars. We washed it down with cold glasses of water that tasted delicately of rice.

Then we each had soups: broths with hunks of tender meat and big bones, in a ghostly liquid filled with wispy eggs, clear noodles, and unidentified chunks of a root vegetable. I'd like to call my dining partner my man friend--or better yet, my Mountain Man (what a lovely acronym for its alliteration alone)--but I think I'll stick to "he" and "him" out of respect for his urban, sophisticated sensibilities and his lack of living in, well, the mountains.

But he does laugh at jokes like this. Everyone loves a little scatological humor.

There has been much dining here in Virginia, however, that for some reason hasn't or couldn't merit inclusion in top 100 lists. As I am catching up, please forgive the flashcard-style of my food recounting, but consider these culinary highlights!

There were three types of delicious cake at former neighbor Steve's wedding--buttercreams, mollasses icings, ganache, you name it. The cake was so good, we took video.

There was fancy French food, when we finally got to Le Diplomate, to celebrate Sonia's birthday.

There was fancy triple cream with Vidalian onion jam, courtesy of my brother.

 

There was a wonderful special sushi roll at our new favorite sushi place, Zento (predominately because it boasts legitimately-cheap happy hour specials), a tuna roll with ginger, cilantro, jalapeno, and tuna.. and also a really photogenic masago-confettied eel roll.

 There were impossibly flaky turnovers from a Russian grocery store in Fairfax.

 

Then, apple picking...

...And eating of apple derivatives (cider donuts and homemade applesauce).

There was a delightfully enthusiastic birthday cake for Yiayia.

There was a surprisingly sophisticated dinner at Zaytinya....

 

...Only because of the event it preceded.

 

Even Trent Reznor would have to appreciate tapas like these.

Summer Dining with My Man Friend (part one)

It's hard to say I'm an amateur food blogger these days. I cook, I dine out, I take photos, I request those with whom I dine to rotate their plates to positions that flatter their food the most, and I think about turns of phrase to describe what I'm eating in my head. And out loud. Even to waiters. I talk about old posts, old dinners, and lists I've kept and intend to complete. But, truth is, there have been a lot more food developments than my lack of food cataloging/recounting/opining would have you believe.

So, with maybe not-enough-hand-wringing (I've got to make it to Buffalo Wild Wings in a few hours for OU's first game so I can't be that self-flagellatingly penitent to dedicate more than one paragraph to the how many beautiful food photographs will exist caption- and blog-less) I'd like to tell you about my culinary adventures with my man friend. Soon.

This summer, I dined once (legitimately Boca Sola-style) sidling up with a book at a linen-clothed table at Del Campo in Chinatown. Granted, my man friend was down the street drinking craft Oktoberfest beers and hunting HD African animals on a $1.00 video game, but I'll showcase his sophisticated tastes in a few short paragraphs.

Since it's summer, cold things have been preferable to warm things. Del Campo prides itself on an "everything is grilled" menu which, while a bit militant, is delicious. I started with a cocktail, the Encanto Del Campo, with pisco, lime juice, syrup, allspice dram, and mint. I had an exquisite brothy/crunchy/charred tuna ceviche, with grilled avocado, olives, burnt shallots, pistachios. Tuna ceviche typically feels so dainty and contrained; this one was equally centrifugal but the burnt avocado made it taste like something with a flavor of a beach-side barbecue or a mostly-attentive backyard griller. It was a shade enough beyond a normal ceviche to really intrigue.

 Then, since there are a few things in the world that are my anti-kryptonites that I am obliged to order on menus, I had the burnt artichokes with grilled zucchini and parmesan, with my food-crush, squash blossoms.

I also accepted the challenge of eating something I probably could have easily passed up: beef heart. Not being a man, it seems it did me no good in the plussing-up-on-virility department and not being anemic, I'm not certain I needed an explosive amount of iron. But, I couldn't resist.

And it didn't disappoint (until, admittedly, the final bite and I thought about my childhood preferences for filet mignon). It was served two ways: on the left, on a kabob atop griddled polenta and on the right, tartare, with a quail egg. Tartare was the unexpected double challenge, particularly when I thought of a pretty vital organ going straight to my plate. But I ate it all. Just for the blog (and because I was still hungry).

However, the majority of my summer dining has been spent with my man friend. The blog really likes him: he takes care to postpone the first bite until a photo is taken (he has even taken some himself!) and always shares with his amateur food blogger. He also has exceptional taste, ordering his eggs over easy and not fearing a little runny egg yolk.

And can pair his chili (that he's made) with an appropriate beer pairing.

For his birthday, we went to the Ashby Inn, a charming little establishment in Paris, Virginia, and we ate on its exquisite patio with some very fancy folk. It was remarkable in all its details. He ordered scrapple--the charmingly tiniest bit of scrapple with rich sunlight-dense tomatoes--and I had raw tuna with visibly large salt flakes and the most exquisite charred broccoli. We were in raptures (each at our own level of rapturing, of course).



My man friend had venison with edible flowers and salted potatoes that looked like small rocks. It was extemely sophisticated mountain man food and was rich but since the rareness chilled it, making it a little lighter. I had grilled fish (something I had to confirm was fish with the waiter before ordering as it was something I'd never heard of) and a lovely, light salad with marcona almonds. The fish skin was crisped just as I like it and its flesh was rich and moist.

We ordered two desserts because that's just what one does when faced with difficult dessert choices. He had an elderflower and jasmine rice pudding with streusel (with something green in it like parseley we couldn't place) and peanuts. I had a broken up financier with nectarine sorbet, toasted cream mousse (it was like astronaut ice cream) and hazelnuts and ridiculously tasty.


















And, because this place was fancy, we had a second round of exquisite desserts--free-form Turkish delights and root beer macaron.

We've even had French, with my man friend ordering two Ricards (travesty of travesties, the wait staff had no idea what that was). We went to Bastille, a charmingly (mostly) French place up the street that while enclosed in run-of-the-mill American siding used in 90% of churches in Oklahoma, is quite lovely.

We started with fancy cocktails: I had a flutey Sauternes-centric drink (Sauternes is a dessert-wine from the Bordeaux-region) and he had a delicious rum drink. Restaurant Week (which recently concluded in Alexandria) allows diners to put aside their caloric considerations while spending only $35 and change on a dinner (in my mind, a prix fix meal obviates the need to be concerned with caloric intake).

My man friend ordered really exquisite shrimp beignets, with corn and basil: they were whole-shrimpy and light, but still had the unruly flavor of delightful fair food.  I had the peach salad with caramalized pecans and a fried bit of chevre, which I learned was called a cromesqui.

 

Our dinners varied a bit in quality: he had hangar steak that was quite chewy. I'm a big sauce-on-beef fan but even that couldn't hide the over-marbling. The fries tasted like Charcoal Oven's, but that's a fast food place in Oklahoma City. I had grilled fish with ratatouille; it was tasty but a bit over-charred. Nevertheless, it was tasty.

Dessert was inventine, but not singular: he had compressed watermelon (it was so adorably brightly-colored to seem like a Fisher Price toy) with an exquisite mint sorbet, but it was more clever than delicious. I had three really wonderful cheeses (with half a candied fig and some probable quince paste), but I'm not sure I can give the restaurant credit for good taste in fromage.

There has been lots of good dining this summer though, fancy and not. And this fall, there will be boneless chicken wings, starting tonight. Boomer!