The Boca Sola

Passage to India

2012-01-30T21:27:00.009-05:00

I haven't eaten alone and written about it--the whole point of this semi-literary endeavor anyway--since mid-October. That night, I had champagne and tuna tartare before seeing Les Misérables at the Kennedy Center (my, how sophisticated I once was; Saturday I was talking to a 25-year-old at Murphy's over Bud Light).

Tonight, largely out of jealousy of a friend's own culinary escapades downtown, I decided I'd take myself out for dinner. The point of an amateur food critic's existence is to forge ahead in cuisines and on highways she typically doesn't frequent (and 495 north at 6pm is one of those).

I'll admit, here in the obscure third paragraph of a Bethesda restaurant write-up, that I didn't complete the top 100 by the end of 2011. This is probably evident, as I am still writing up restaurants that happened pre-30, pre-Thanksgiving, and at restaurants even my friends don't recall joining me at. I cancelled my Citronelle reservation at least twice, considered it depressing to take a posse of girls to Inn at Little Washington (it seemed a bit too feminist even for my tastes), and Minibar I think has taken me off of their last-minute cancellation list. The 12 restaurants left are either 1. too romantic, 2. unjustifiably expensive, 3. in locations like Frederick, Maryland (I'll note that's 53 miles from me), or 4. ethnic food in Bethesda.

Ethnic food in Maryland generally has been delicious: Assaggi, Indique Heights, and Nava Thai were all classy joints with interesting foods. But parking there is never conventional, I usually go the wrong way on Wisconsin coming or going, and I most of the time stick out (I've found that typically only balding men reading newspapers eat alone at Indian places, so a grinning 30-something reading a book about Paris to me screams amateur food critic).

In any case, tonight I ended up at Passage to India, number 83 on the list. My Nepalese waiter was charming, my waitress with three gold teeth was attentive, and the bus boy thanked me every time he filled up my water glass.

The decor was fantastic: carved elephant sculptures in wood, a plump chandelier that looked like it would crash on the floor in relief at any moment, and old prints of Indian landmarks. I was impressed that even the bathroom door was intricate....

...And that I could cunningly take a picture of myself in the very detailed bathroom mirror.

I began with pappadums and tamarind chutney, mint raita (yogurt sauce), and a spicy tomato sauce. And what I considered a fairly gigantic glass of red wine.

The beautiful thing about Passage to India is that it breaks down its menu by regions in India. Because it was impossibly difficult for me even to select a corner of India I wanted to sample, I ordered the Badshahi Khazana, the latter word apparently meaning "treasure." This dinner offered me only the choice of meats; at the choice of the chef, multiple appetizers and entrees would then be served to me on a silver platter. The idea of having food delivering to me on a silver platter and being thanked for that was too irresistible.

First, I had chicken tikka on the left, moist and tender and delicately yogurty. In the middle, a sort of lamb kofta, generously imbued with onion and that coupled exquisitely with a bit of cucumber and the mint raita, and finally tandoori chicken on the far right.

Then came the platter, with its own charming, bevelled ramekins. On the far left was creamy chicken with almonds, a tender lamb dish, spinach, and daal (lentils), all to be added to a small mound of cashew/raisin topped basmati rice.

I also ordered the garlic naan, which is usually shameless in its butter-slatheredness. This naan had roasted garlic rubbed into all its bready peaks and valleys.

Thankfully, dinner ended with a delicious whimper--rice pudding with cardamom, pistachios, and almonds--my tucking my book away in my purse, and an incrementally stronger resolution to knock out the dozen restaurants left.

A Tale of Two Pizzerias

2012-01-28T10:31:00.013-05:00

There is something so romantically suggestive about pizza: the sweet but acidic bite of the tomatoes, the way stringy mozzarella makes your lips play with it, the slow but determined pleasure derived from waiting to reach the chewy crust of a good pizza.

I'm not the only who thinks this (PG-13) way. Yesterday, upon walking by the new pizza-making-man at work and admiring the uniformity and perfection of his calzones, I complimented him on his good work; I've noticed the attention he lovingly puts into his work. He grinned, beckoned me closer, and as we admired the glistening plumpness of the formed dough, he said "listen, I know they're beautiful.. they look like breast implants." Not the most poetic elucidation, but a variation on the same theme.

The top 100 features two pizza restaurants: Two Amy's, an institution on Wisconsin, has been heralded as having the best pizza in town. Pete's New Haven Style Apizza, with three locations in Clarendon, Friendship Heights, and Columbia Heights, has also been lauded for its pies and gritty original location (we opted for the yuppie location, vice the ones in the gentrifying or mostly-under-24 years-old neighborhoods).

So which one was better? Unscientifically, Two Amy's: it was irresistible, with an admirably soupy combination of melted cheese, barely-there crust, and a thin enough layer of sauce to not overwhelm the other ingredients. The pizza we ordered at Two Amy's also has the designation of being D.O.C (Denominazione di Origine Controllata), just like proprietary French wines that meet certain standards from the region from which they hail. Most importantly, it was prettier.

Pete's APizza featured good ingredients and clever combinations of them on pizza, but was greasier and less.. Italian, with the entire surface covered in cheese and toppings.

Where Pete's excelled in the Amy-esque regard of proportion was with its Sorbillo, a calzone-esque "pizza turnover" stuffed with sopressata, ricotta, mozzarella, as well as with its antipasti plate, which was a smattering of miscellany including a roasted squash salad with pomegranates, potato salad, roasted beets with goat cheese, and a wheatberry salad with sweet and savory things:

What both did well were fry things and stuff cheese in them, with Pete's more keen on presentation and Two Amy's leaning toward substantively and overwhelmingly-sized. At Pete's, we had arancini, fried risotto balls on a bed of pesto.

Pete's threw down our fried things on simple plates, fried things that belied the glories within. On the left plate, we had potato and prosciutto croquettes, warm and salty and splashed with bits of prosciutto. On the right plate, we had suppli a telefono, risotto balls as well, with a generously-stuffed center of cheese. The cheese strings and contorts and quivers like telephone wires, from which it gets its name. I couldn't focus long enough to photograph it, but caught a croquette. Ciao bella!

Kinkead's

2012-01-18T21:06:00.000-05:00

Well, it's hopeless writing about a restaurant more than a month afterwards. Relevant details I remember from a visit to Kinkead's in October are that Dotti and I went on a federal holiday, met up ostensibly to buy our plane tickets to Paris, and instead drank wines and ate fishes. So biblical of us.

I got there a few minutes early and had one of the snootiest combos I can think of: Sancerre and oysters. With a tabletop King Triton butter cover!

Like a considerate friend, I was working on my second appetizer before Dotti even got her entrée. Why I have friends who dine with me, I don't know. I had the tuna tartare, gussied up Hawaiian style ("poke") with mango, toasted macadamia nuts, and delicious but now mystery chips. (Separately, in the case you'd like my opinion, I preferred Zentan's Pacific twist on steak tartare. Thank you.)

Lovely Dotti's food came, a staid study of temperance and responsible dining (it was one plate). She had brioche-crusted white fish and a pretty little softserve of mashed potatoes.

She also ordered fried okra. Or I did. It's one of those things like macaroni and cheese that we trend toward ordering at places like this just to see.

Unsurprisingly, it didn't taste like Oklahoma or North Carolina fried okra. Please compare. (That's catfish, not misshapen okra, on top by the way.)

Maybe let's try this picture instead; at least these okras have their own pile and no extraneous dipping sauces.

My meal (finally) was a delicious Yucatan tuna soup with tomatillos, chiles, lime, sour cream, and tortillas. I'll admit, it was pretty fantastic with a flavorful broth and large chunks of tuna. And refreshingly un-raw.

Top 100, you may have won a battle but I'll win the war: 14 to go (technically more if you include the fact I've hit more but have been to lazy to write them up)!

Black's Bar and Kitchen

2012-01-17T21:00:00.000-05:00

Dotti and I went to Black's Bar and Kitchen in September. Unfortunately I only know this because of where my picture files are located on my computer (the date, not the fact I went). I do remember that:

1. This was part of our Bethesda-friendly top-100 sampling, based on our assumption of there being a higher percentage of men there (perhaps true, but most were of the over-60 variety)
2. The lighting gave everything a more-romantic sheen (good ambiance for a Dotti date)
3. The food was clever, but not quite as memorable as other Black's Restaurant Group
restaurants (the paragon of course being Black Market Bistro)
4. I received yet another parking ticket (only in retrospect did I notice some sort of parking restriction on the meter, oops)

Dotti began with a Malbec and the night began.

I had a beautiful, delicate grilled shrimp and avocado salad to start, with arugula, slices of grapefruit, and a citrus vinaigrette.

Dotti, for her entrée, had chicken and waffles. The waffles were a bit dry and a request for additional syrup landed on receptive but unsympathetic ears.

I have a bit of a proclivity for brussels sprouts at restaurants.. it's like tofu: they are a canvas upon which chefs can create. I had them with bacon. For dinner, I had softshell crab. Since I'm amateur, I can say I have no idea what was going on under it.. but I'm not certain it had to be that complicated.

In the great Where the Men Are adventure, at least I should ostensibly have a reason to forget the course of the evening. Here, I'll just chalk it up to age.

Grapeseed

2012-01-16T16:40:00.000-05:00

Blog management has been difficult of late. Dotti and I went to Grapeseed in November. Yes, November. I wrote up the dinner that night and for some reason didn't publish it, so provide below my pre-30, top 100 blog. I've learned so much more about responsibility in my 30s.

* * * * * * * * *

In my youth (age 25), I said that at the seasoned age of 30, I'd either move into my parents' basement, learn to knit and appreciate the company of cats, or move to the south of France. In the subsequent five years, I realized that I hate cats, the south of France oftentimes is plagued by striking sanitation workers , and that my parents don't even have a basement.

But....I'm not concerned: 30 will bring, at the very least, the successful completion of the top 100 and a trip to France. To the capital, that is, whose winter lights would only serve to highlight the shiny cheese wrappers and green Bordeaux bottle-riddled trash anyway. I think it will bring something else interesting too; I don't know what, but something befitting of the successful completion of three decades of existence.

The slow dawn of 30 illuminated the beauty of fiscal responsibility this evening. Dotti and I went to Grapeseed, a top 100 in Bethesda, which we foolishly hoped would be a good locale for some National Institute of Health (NIH) doctor-ogling. When we divined that NIH could also employ overgrown, under-orthodonticated biology majors who reminded us all that's painful about middle school, we decided to focus strictly on Bethesda's culinary offerings. We began with two delicious glasses of red wine.

We split two appetizers (plus bread), which, when slowly presented, gave us the appearance of having three separate meals and we successfully tricked ourselves that we were ordering more. Call us cheap, but having more wine glasses than total plates on the table almost makes bill-paying celebratory.

After a delicious tomato-and-roasted-garlic-drenched olive oil accompaniment to bread, we began with the beef tenderloin tips with thin slices of potato (patatas bravas apparently) below and a stroke of chimichurri sauce. It was both markedly spiced and spicy, a perfect introduction to dinner and to our wines.

My choice of appetizer, which became our second course, was grated pecorino (the sole reason I ordered it) atop gnocchi and chantarelle mushrooms. If I had to order a pre-death-row meal (or turning 30 meal-of-indulgence), stinky cheese of this ilk would be included somehow. The gnocchi were perfectly imperfect (one was shaped like a heart) and simultaneously chewy and minimally crusted.

For dinner, we had the salmon atop a quinoa salad, served with grilled asparagus. It was tasty--fresh, well-textured, etc.--but it was sort of hard to follow after a magic mix of flour, cream, cheese, and mushrooms.

But from the ashes of dating despair--my last love interest tripped over his mummy linens at a Halloween party and Dotti unwittingly secured romantic confessions from a man who fits the mold for a middle school civics instructor--we made plans for the next list to conquer: a multi-region happy hour bar crawl. The tides are turning and with 30 and 2012 comes a new initiative: an anthropological examination of bars across the city entitled, Where the Men Are.

Paris

2012-01-09T21:49:00.000-05:00

What happens when you realize that you've fallen in love.. with a city? There are, admittedly, massive amounts of discontent and frustration that follow--starting when you are no longer in that city--but a mildly rational understanding that that city will somehow determine your future. What is worse is when an amateur food critic--this one right here--realizes that she fell in love with a city that is itself a nexus between food and love. These types of thoughts lead said amateur food critic to realize that whether or not she has her own personal nexus between food and love, she'll always have Paris. And that gives her hope and a lot of pretty pictures.

So what inspired these profound tragic yet inexorably fatalistic observations? A whirlwind of esgargots, gruyère, pastries, conversations with half of Paris, vins, and forays into the Parisian night.

I am reluctantly embracing my new time zone (my watch still is on Paris time and I've as of yet refused to remove my "Plan de Paris" from my purse), but it might behoove me to show rather than describe our nine-day Parisian adventure. Events that are not documented were when poor Dotti's mouth was spat in (while yawning, a man on the metro managed to spit in it), when we attempted to determine the sexuality of two men at a nearby table (we later learned they were Americans from DC... how outrageously unsurprising), and when we spent two evenings in the weirdest bar of our collective memory: a bar full of starers, vaudeville-esque performers, joke-tellers, fight-provokers, and an appropriate venue to learn that French men don't fear very public displays of affection.

We ate, but my friends thankfully indulged my love for my old apartment on Rue de Savoie:

My love of the Parisian skyline, despite many-kilometer-fast winds and mild vertigo:

My love of exorbitantly expensive drinks (at the Hemingway Bar at the Ritz) with roses in them and heavy hors d'oeuvres that functioned as dinner on New Year's Eve. We even saw Ina Garten--the Barefoot Contessa--who lives sometimes in Paris. We were all intrigued to learn, after we read her biography the next day, that she worked for the Office of Management and Budget in DC and left for something more soul-stirring. I, of course, began uncharitably hating her more.

I had duck--twice--first at Christian Constant's restaurant Café Constant (a meal about which I found before and after pictures to be very illustrative), and then a second time at A La Petite Chaise, a quiet neighborhood favorite and the oldest restaurant in Paris that we visited twice.

We had fancy cocktails with American names that complemented our new Frenchy scarves and bright nails:

We even had one scandalous day where all we did is eat French onion soup for breakfast and Gerard Mulot macarons for dinner.

Then, we went to Disneyland Paris and fell in love with being an eight-year-old obsessed with princesses again. That's Dotti in a teacup and me in front of Le Château de la Belle au Bois Dormant (Sleeping Beauty's Castle).

That night, I had butter and garlic stuffed snails at Chez Georges, my favorite bistro with simultaneously snooty and hospitably warm service and where I learned (very indulgently) that rare is "saignant" or bloody. Très bien.

Dotti and I also went to the Breizh Cafe, a favorite gallette/crêpe place of mine in the Marais, where raw-milk cheese and ham are lovingly folded into a crisp buckwheat savory gallette and the best crêpes come with salted butter caramel.

Thankfully, though, Paris is a moveable feast.

Sushi Taro

2011-12-17T11:51:00.007-05:00

With being 30, comes a revived sense of responsibility. I'd like to say that's true, as I am still at least five restaurants and multiple side events behind. The truth is, however, I'm only writing on a Saturday morning about a dinner I had more than a month ago now because I'm afraid to miss a hair appointment I've already missed once and am tethering myself to my computer until then. Thirty, schmirty.

I visited Sushi Taro (one month ago) with a new friend, one who thankfully had the patience to endure my ordering a nine-course tasting menu (and obnoxiously taking a photo of each one). The bad thing about lazily writing up multi-course meals ages after they're partaken of, though, is that I have no recollection of what I ate.

There were sea urchins, salted fishes, broths, and tempura-ed glories galore, but I'd estimate another 30 unknown ingredients that will go unmentioned. While begging for forgiveness, I present to you what I remember of a very good meal, where fortunately for me but unfortunately for you, the conversation was more memorable than the plate components.

I started off with pomegranates soaking in white wine. I don't remember what kind, but I do remember fishing out the pomegranates that didn't get swept out with the unknown wine. Next, I had the densest, silkiest bean curd I've ever had, heartied with a shallow pool of broth and sea urchin. I think. It, memorably at least, had the same consistency of my own tongue. Maybe it's good I don't entirely recall what I ate. But, I at least doubled up the photos to reduce the effort you expend to scroll. As penance.

Next, I had a fish tartare-stuffed persimmon with a shot of fruit juice with a skewer of tempura-ed... I don't know. I fail as a culinary Nancy Drew. I can better recall the exemplary tuna, salmon, and yellowtail that graced my tongue with more sophistication than an urchin and with the chewy yet forgiving tenderness that only fresh raw fish can offer.

Then, I ate what could have credibly passed as an involved centerpiece or paintable Japanese still life. I feel less guilty, however, in being unable to recall this dish as the waitress had to repeat its contents about two minutes after she conveyed it the first time.

In the ceramic container, top left, were black edamame (soy beans in their shell). A real sea snail was in its shell at the top right (which I ate, while having cartoon-like visions of x's over my eyes). There were roasted (?) chestnuts, with nut meat soft enough to pull out of the shell in the middle. In the lower middle, I think I ate some caramelized banana (that doesn't sound very Japanese though) and I even unwrapped something from a banana leaf (I could be 0 for 2 on the final guesses). Then I perhaps had baked fish atop a bed of crusty salt on the right.

Next, I had a type of Japanese fondue. In the small bowl on the right were fried pieces of fish, which I unsophisticatedly baptized in a a creamy soy milk broth with its own Sterno. At this point, I actively ceased trying to remember beyond the next course what I was eating. Further, every time the waitress placed a new dish before me, she giggled a little in delight at my mildly horrified eyes that yet another dish was coming that required at least 30 seconds of explanation. At that point, ingredient retention seemed futile. Next I had nigiri...well, what I could sample despite battling competing senses of accomplishment and exhauastion after a parade of plates.

Hours later, after robust discussions of work, men, and children (it's possible there may be a new blog cameo-er in the future), we had pudding with an exquisite flan-like sweet sauce at the bottom. I know I'll remember better next time because I've already gone.

30 (and Corduroy)

2011-12-01T18:20:00.006-05:00

It finally happened: I became a grown up. Despite knowing for 29 years and 364 days that this would one day happen, I decided the final week of twentydom to eschew the hand-wringing, knitting-class-enrolling, flinging-with-24-year-olds, or Las-Vegas-Strip-indulging that previously seemed the appropriate response for a terrified 29 year-old. Instead, I ran head-long in, hurtling toward 30 and hitting four top 100s in six days. That's right.. I've been busy spending 25% of my salary (I calculated it) on bars, drinks, and requisite hotel rooms to welcome myself into a third decade but not writing a single thing about any of it.

This presents a bit of a problem, particularly for an amateur food writer with the memory of a fruit fly. Particularly fruit flies 29 1/2 years her junior. I'll cover them all, but the fact that this following week has been a parade of Netflix films, Lean Cuisines, and polishing off a magnum of generic red wine (read: three strong indicators of laziness), I make no guarantees this will be a prodigal or quick return.

But how better a way to ring in a new first digit of one's age than a trip to a fancy schmancy white-table-clothed restaurant with old friends Dotti and Eric (over medium rare venison and conversations about Paris no less) at Corduroy; a bawdy (yet classy; they are not mutually exclusive) dinner with Christine over Chiantis, Brunellos, and Calvados at Tosca; a dinner with a new friend who passed the test of patience with both food photography AND a tasting menu at Sushi Taro; and three Dotti meals (only one of which was the build-up-to-3o week; I'm behind) all around the city where we planned European vacations and the post-top-1oo project, Where the Men Are, a geographical inquiry into men-rich regions.

I'll begin with the most recent, because that's the only hope I have. Eric, loyal reader of early top 100 Proof fame, chose Corduroy and Dotti and I were glad to redux over more red wine. She and I drove in to the big city, valet parked our car, and ordered two Bordeauxs, please, at the bar, because that's what 30 somethings do. And talk about their sophisticated international travels, as we all did, over more fancy red wines. A bottle, to be exact, which of course paired well with the chewy, porous, deliciously fresh bread.

Eric started with the soup--the most impressive dish of the evening, which is a rare feat for that category of appetizer and one of the few presentations of a dish for which I wish I had had the foresight to record it. I'm truly an amateur.

The soup was served with a cracker-thin ring of cheese (I think?) that rested atop the bowl's lip. The staff, already impressive in reciting the menu-length list of specials, poured the cauliflower bisque into the reminiscent-of-ice-fishing hole in the middle.

I had the surprisingly good scallop tartare, cleverly arrayed in its own scallop shell with an accompanying cabbage salad with shiso, a charmingly punch-packing Asian green. Two tablespoons of raw fruits-de-mer, though, ensured I was starving for my main course.

I had the venison with the chestnut puree. It also had limp green beans, but I'm wiser now and didn't eat them. It had a delicious red wine reduction and the chestnut puree was nutty, albeit a bit saccharine. Sucrosey? But the venison, oh it was tender and juicy.

Dotti and Eric did better in their choice of pork, adorably served with mini-squashes. The sauce was good, despite me having any recollection of what it actually was.

Dinners like these are especially nice if they finish with a reminder of someplace else, a recollection of a beautiful memory or locale, particularly a place that was discussed over the first few glasses of wine (if you guess Paris I'm predictable). Eric was clever enough to propose the cheese plate for dessert, and we chose two (delightfully ubiquitous but unique chèvre cheeses), a few French and Spanish ones, and my stinky favorite, a bleu. How ridiculously delightful is an evening filled with conversations about France, food (we learned capon was a castrated rooster... well, it was described more delicately than that), and love? Hello 30, 14 more restaurants await.

Jackie's

2011-10-24T21:58:00.001-04:00

What happens when two girls who have been cooped up all weekend long from the cold are let loose for brunch? Seven mimosas, seven donuts, and one Bloody Mary find themselves on our table then in our bellies. Hundreds of dollars are spent on shoes, Starbucks is raided, and cheapie cubic zirconia-esque earrings get bought.

Before closing down Jackie's this past Sunday afternoon, Dotti and I had an exquisite brunch. Jackie's, #82 on the top 100, is nestled among laundromats, a Jamaican restaurants serving ox tail, potholed alleyways, and a particularly divey Greyhound bus stop--and yet is just blocks from a Reston-like town center in Silver Spring, Maryland. With a velvet curtain hung outside the large wooden doors, quirky pink tables, chairs, and back lighting, and construction lamps floating like lightening bugs above the dining room, it's the type of place I'd open if I sought to highlight the best of Barbie and Bjork.

I had a head start before Dotti so had a thick, spicy (the flecks of white are pepper seeds) Bloody Mary. When I said I'd just be waiting and when my friend did arrive, we'd probably stay awhile, our waiter underscored that the restaurant was pretty laid back and that'd be fine. It was: as a spoiler, even after the restaurant closed, our water glasses kept getting filled up and we were joking with the kitchen staff. That's because I was staring at the donuts they were carrying around and Dotti was looking for the bathroom in the kitchen.

We started with the cinnamon sugar donut holes as an appetizer. They were chewy and soft and more like marshmallows than greasy cake. Even the cinnamon sugar was appropriately proportioned so we got enough cinnamon to make them very autumnal.

Dotti got an English muffin sandwich (cleverly wrapped in patterned wax paper) and potatoes.

I had the poached eggs set atop slices of baguette with a potato/cabbage/bacon/onion hash. I've probably mentioned that gooey egg yolks remind me of my grandfather--who ate them long before I gained an appreciation for them--so meals like this seem as classic yet anachronistic. Salt and Tabasco helped me reach a new breakfast plane.

But, then we were done with breakfast. With much more gossip and life discussions to delve in to, we had.. some more Mimosas.

Like two or three more. Each. Oops.

In between topics of conversation, our eyes would wander toward our lovely waiter and the handsome bartender yonder. While watching the movement of plates and drinks, waiters and busboys, and other diners to and fro, a chef approached us and asked if we had the donuts. Technically yes, but only the hole variety. He brought us a raspberry donut, with sprinkles, on the condition that we speak positively about the restaurant (something to this effect; I think I had Mimosa in my ear). I didn't think I was compromising my food objectivity--if I was going to write effusively anyway--by greedily nodding and having a simultaneously cakey and airy donut that matched the decor.

Not wanting to still be at the restaurant when they began serving dinner, we decided to wear off excess Mimosa at DSW. We both found it much easier to be decisive when posed with shoe-buying dilemmas: get both. With the end in sight--there are only 19 restaurants left on the list--I hope to soon by more pairs of shoes than pairs of Mimosas. Maybe.

Montmartre

2011-10-23T22:11:00.000-04:00

Why is it that French men, largely reviled for their country's military ineptitude, tight jeans, and amour-de-fromage, are exceedingly more generous in attention-giving, particularly to a party of an amateur food critic and her sidekick friend, than a whole host of American men?

Over offal and slugs last week, Dotti and I at Montmartre discussed the merits of a town where two grown women and our assorted acquaintances associate ourselves with silly men who pause relationships for "marathon-training," men who leverage three types of communication systems in a three-hour time period to relay one message, and men whom we can't figure out if they adore or hate us.

Further, it is a puzzle to me how more than 80 restaurants in, it is only the restaurant owners and managers--working class men of all persuasions--and one creepy but bold biker who have the correct manly attributes to even consider engaging a woman dining alone or gasp, with a close friend. I eke out nexuses of food and love, but DC naturally offers little to link the two beyond providing a list of 100 good restaurants that someone liked along the way.

Nevertheless, Dotti and I were welcomed with French hospitality at Eastern Market's Montmartre, a beautiful upscale bistro. I enjoyed, quite easily, a Ricard at the bar. As proof of my paragraph above, as one of the owners prepared unknowingly my drink, he asked what I wanted to drink. I said that was it, he understood it was my drink he was making, then he poured a bit more on top. There's no bitterness here, just a broad-brush repudiation for a city that cultivates such silly men beyond those who staff restaurants. If I were doing a top 100 list of business sectors, restaurateurs would have to be #1.

Our waiter took our drinks to the table (like a gentleman and good host) and we commenced our wine drinking and conversing. Our waiter, French-style as well, deferred to us to set the pace and order when we had sufficiently gossiped our most important gossip.

To begin, I had the most exquisite escargots--the mind-numbingly buttery-garlic variety--such that I've not had since that first taste my freshman year of high school. Dotti can attest that I couldn't keep myself from shaking and shuddering in delight.

I also ordered the pâté, a solidly tender tranche, with cornichons, salad, and a sliced and toasted piece of bread. Pâté to me conjures up sophisticated fairy tale picnics or something a huntsman in a Hans Christian Anderson story pulls out of a satchel for his afternoon lunch. Or something I really enjoyed that night with fresh, warm bread.

Dotti ordered the skirt steak, a rare and tender concoction with a soy sauce and accompanied root vegetable and asparagus side. With red wine, it was magnifique.

I told my waiter, who couldn't decide whether to recommend the scallops or bronzino, to surprise me. He brought the scallops, crusty, plump, and tender with a bed of spinach, grapes, and pine nuts.

To sweeten our resignation, we had delicious desserts. Dotti had a blackberry and raspberry tart. I had l'Ile Flottante, the dessert I ordered the first time I went to Montmartre back in 2004.

At least we'll always have Paris.

Eola

2011-10-18T21:00:00.013-04:00

Why is Miles Davis' Autumn Leaves so good? Because it's got such a good season for inspiration. Jagged spikes of red, chilling breezes that transition to cool if you thank autumn for the apple cider it's brought you, and foods that inspire you to keep watching football or meander through crunchy leaves instead of pitifully letting winter defeat you. On a crisp day that started like fall and quickly swiveled to summer, Christine and I dressed up for brunch and a garden party.

At the White House.

On a brisk Sunday morning (somehow we both managed to get somewhere before noon), we headed to Eola for one explicit culinary purpose, photographed, perhaps vulgarly, a few paragraphs below.

Knowing what food challenges we were on the horizon, we each instinctively thought of bloody marys. In color and subtle heartiness, no other drink seems to match autumn as well. After enduring the indignity of being told "the restaurant didn't have them and they were out of season anyway," we girded ourselves for the frigid chill of winter.

I got a kir royale, a French cocktail of champagne and blackcurrant liqueur. Christine ordered a cocktail I forgot to photograph and as sturdy pot of coffee. Then we began strategizing; we knew we had to make smart choices.

We began with the biscuits and jelly. They were perfectly and lovingly crafted and didn't need a lick of butter. Weird.

The biscuits were also a wait to prepare ourselves for the only reason Eola itself was open for its monthly brunch: its bacon flight. From a list of 12 bacons--including jowly face bacon--Christine and I ordered three. I have no idea what we got but at least one of them was a Berkshire and each varied in saltiness, fattiness, smokiness, and meatiness.

Thick pork is an intimidating thing; as such, puns about squealing in delight or pigging out would be misplaced. We congratulated ourselves on about four bites each and retreated to more traditional plates. Christine had corned beef and hash with eggs and I had eggs benedict.

And the more-breakfast-than-brunch-dish, grits.

After staring up the nose of our waiter (can that be a reverse metaphor?), enduring the charmingly silly inquiries of our platinum-haired busboy, crisscossing the anti-GMO protestors and enlightened Occupy DC protestors very proud of themselves for going to see Cornel West, and savoring the attire of those who appeared more fit to fix their transmission than visit the White House, we silded up to the bar at Elephant and Castle. Seemed in season to me.

Westend Bistro

2011-10-15T10:26:00.000-04:00

I don't think I ever want 15 minutes of fame, but I'm quite content with the 20 second intervals of it that seem to come my way. In true DC socialite form (or rather, like any frugal early-bird-special qualifier), I headed to Georgetown ("the West End," technically) to both valet my car for a show that evening and to grab a bite to eat. Granted, the bite and the valet was at the Westend Bistro at the Ritz Carlton, but it's 67th on the top 100 and the valet was only $8 ($2 more than street parking and a guarantee of not getting a ticket, of which I've received three at top 100 restaurants).

My 20 seconds of fame did not come when I was recognized as a famed amateur food critic in the dining room or when Eric Ripert, "culinary director" of the restaurant, strolled over and blinked at me with his piercingly beautiful eyes (neither of those things happened, of course). Rather, it came when I was leaving the restaurant, walking to the Kennedy Center, and saw that my seven-year old car--with pashminas, umbrellas, and a bottle of Windex in the back seat--was parked on the Ritz sidewalk. I've only seen Rolls Royces and Jaguars typically on esteemed Ritz cobblestones, so I couldn't help but proudly giggle that my car--for perhaps a brief moment--was an accidental beacon of luxury.

As I arrived before the dining room was even open (what happens when you're part of a snooty "pre-theater" crowd), I settled in at the bar and ordered an exorbitantly tall cocktail. It was exactly the type of happy hour you'd expect at a fancy DC hotel--bartenders who don't keep eye contact for more than four seconds, youth listening to iPods while their books idle to the side, and impeccably dressed older men in suits projecting their rank to younger women.

The cocktail--a flute of prosecco, cherry and pink peppercorn bitters, with a cube of sugar elusively dissolving itself at the bottom--was gorgeous. Its height made it teeter, but I raced it to the bottom to make sure my sips were somewhat proportionate to the pace of the dissolving sugar. I was bored, wanted my table, and didn't want my last gulp to be straight sugar.

I had my last gulp at my table, seated on a beautiful banquette subtly reminiscent of Paris but entirely American. It stormed alternately delicately and violently during my dinner and the flashes of lightening--that I thought came from cameras the first few times--kept pulling my eyes out the window.

The bread was, refreshingly, good. Porous and crusty, chewy and in some places, smooth.

I had the tuna carpaccio to start. I would have been fooled that it was one miraculously single piece of tuna; the manager explained to me that rather the small pieces of carpaccio were pressed together, but it appeared seamless and was simply flavored with lemon juice, olive oil, chives, and shallots. It looked like a praline-colored skating rink.

My waiter, charming, had instantly cut the think fog of pretension that occluded the bar when I sat down at the table. He brought a great glass of wine and I had the 72-hour barbecue brisket for dinner. It's probably not surprising that I would have preferred the Midwestern version $20 less, served in a red basket with a side of fried okra, but this was quite delicious. The broccoli and mushrooms were respectively crisp and smooth and the brisket was tender, smoky, but severely lacking in barbecue sauce (remember: KC BBQ tactics are superlative). He indulged me and brought me more.

I had the carrot cake brownie for dessert, a beautiful little gem with a scoop of ice cream on top.

The 20 seconds of fame after dinner was soon followed by a simultaneously delightful yet interminable show, Les Miserables; avoiding three fat, scurrying rats; and a series of creepy text messages from a now-former suitor, but the ebullience wrought by Ritz-parking-spot-glory lasts longer than a little sugar cube.

PS7's

2011-10-09T19:10:00.000-04:00

Hopping almost directly off a plane after a four-day bender (not really, but sounds better) of oyster, clams, and pasta and heading to a Friday-night urban haute-hot-dog-and-pizza picnic, it's impossible to deny how lucky I am (culinarily). Maybe I'm defeatist in promoting a tired theme of my good food fortune, but what else would you call it when an amateur food critic has a bacon-chocolate milk shake less than 24 hours after admirably creamy burrata (besides full up on calcium)?

Dotti, new and old blog fixtures, and I went to PS7's, the 66th best restaurant in the city. After four orbits around the same block (that was me being unable to converse and spot parking spaces), we settled in quickly for a drink. Our waitress was quite possibly the most enthusiastic smiler-nose-schruncher I've ever seen, which put the table at ease.

And, again, why wouldn't I be at ease? The night before, in Boston's North End, I had a whole portion of burrata, a tomato half the size of my head, and butternut squash tortelloni. Plus, my waiter's name was Carmen. I vowed to myself I'd watch the Godfather II and sip chianti this weekend to prolong the memories.

At PS7's, we focused on all the details of the present. We ordered six of the eight appetizers to start. With there being four of us and three appetizer food units per appetizer plate, we ordered to maximize the amount of food each of us could try. In thinking we were ordering three full plates, we actually received two hot dogs instead of two plates of hot dogs, one pork belly banh "mini" sandwich, and one tuna tartare bun. After portioning up our mini-servings, we clarified and began filling the fully round Scarface table with more plates (Carmen's legacy lived on a day longer).

We ordered two flatbreads--exercising some restraint as there were three on the menu--starting with the "nutty goat" flatbread featuring walnut butter, goat gouda cheese, arugula, toasted shallots. Breads--particularly the pizza kind--are great complementary vehicles to gossip over.

We also had the Autumn flavor flatbread: butternut squash puree, spiced pepitas, pickled cranberries, and Virginia ham.

The tuna tartare sandwiches, as they began trickling out, were adorable in their modesty. Each was served with white miso aioli and cucumber-cilantro slaw.

The banh minis, a diminutive play on Vietnamese banh mi sandwiches, were ridiculously tender and flavorful too, even when divided into two extra mini portions.

We kept drinking and food kept arriving. We had a charcuterie plate with reed-like breadsticks with exquisitely and complexly flavored meats.

We finally capitulated and ordered entrees, three of us getting the pork loin, set atop potato salad with pancetta, a side of BBQ peaches, and a fried basil leaf.

It seemed reckless and foolish to order any more, but when the waitress mentioned a dessert with banana, peanut butter, and bacon, rational-decision-making seemed irrelevant and we got “The Elvis.” Cutting into the peanut-encrusted cubes released a wave of melty peanut butter and banana. On the side was a chocolate bacon milkshake. It started off as a hunka hunka burnin' love, but quickly devolved to a bizarre aftertaste. It was worth it, though.

To finish, we had chocolate espresso balls.

One of our party graciously picked up the entire tab, pulling the pay-while-en-route-to-the-little-diner's-room. Thankfully, 24 additional--albeit veggie-ful--opportunities exist to repay the hospitality.

Palena

2011-10-02T18:20:00.000-04:00

Sometimes, when I'm old-fashioned-thinking, I feel a little guilty for my self-congratulating tone when I write about my terrific meals and my wanton financial ways in ordering whatever I flittingly want. I know it's for a greater good--marking restaurants off a probably arbitrarily crafted top 100 list, which hopefully has some societal value...to someone--but sometimes I get a bit existential wondering what-does-the-incessant-desire-to-photograph-and-write-about-food really mean? Then, on Sunday afternoons, I find myself for 43 minutes sucked into and perusing the sordid world of Twitter and its role in memorializing the dissolution of marriages and I realize that mine hopefully classifies as quite a minor online self-indulgence. Before those 43 minutes, what 2.5 hours of brunch glory I luxuriated in, self-congratulation be damned!

Christine and I, this morning and afternoon, went to Palena, a cozy but proper establishment on Connecticut. Christine kindly called a while ago to set up a week-of reservation; after they more or less scoffed at her for presuming to get in reasonably soon, we walked in straightaway this morning and got a quiet seat near the kitchen. As anyone who's hosted a party knows, near the kitchen is where the talk is good.

In the minutes before Christine arrived, I had a delicious, roasted, and rich coffee and wrote postcards (what else would I do?). When Christine arrived, we delved into phase one of brunch: more coffee and breads. The impressively tender and porous options included sourdough, wheat, and semolina.

After we covered the first phase of catching-up (and sufficiently sampled each of the breads), we transitioned toward the glory of Palena cocktails. Christine's had an exquisite ginger foam and was spiced with cardamom or cinnamon (a fall day spice) and featured the famous memory-evoker, Calvados...

Mine, the Alexandra, had pear vodka and soaked raisins (which I unabashedly retrieved with my soup spoon); a drink this exciting only exacerbated my wrist flourishes.

A good hour and a half in, we tucked into brunch. Our waitress, to our delight, timed our entire afternoon to our conversation and preference. Observervant, she neither rushed nor slowed us down unneccessarily. For her meal, Christine commemorated another fine one we shared together, eating buckwheat crepes (galettes) in Paris.

Since it's fall and I'd frankly rather be in Paris, I'll impose on the linearity of the previous paragraph and promote the legitimate Breton galettes at Breizh Café we had there. Located in the Marais, Breizh Cafe crafts somber but soulful buckwheat crêpes, with things like raw cheese and yolky eggs in them. All this is paired with cidre in pottery cups.

And if Demi Moore can post creepy photos of herself with her eyes closed on Twitter, I can post a year-old photo of another hand-crafted meal Christine and I shared in Paris, with the salted butter (to accompany the bread, radishes, and even chocolate a few verres in) as the centerpiece. Self-indulgent indeed, on all accounts.

Ok, back to today. To suit my Classics-friendly sensibility, I got a Roman-inspired stew. Vaccinara con Polenta featured oxtail, pine nuts, and raisins with a coddled hen egg, wilted spinach and cardoons, beautiful and celery-esque and also called artichoke thistles. I was so eagerly enamored with it, I consumed it entirely with a fork.

Making it a two-day donut weekend for me, we ordered the frosted lemon donut, what Christine called the best of her life. It was crisp on the outside, porous but dense on the inside (reminiscent simultaneously of the textures of sourdough and pound cake), and subtly lemony.

Saturday's donut adventure was loukamathes at a Greek church's festival, so I should be set for the next few months.

Being so close to the Zoo, it seemed only natural to wander south and see the side of a zebra:

A panda bear in profile:

And an elephant...

...Up close on a poster.

Having 25 restaurants left on the list is something to congratulate oneself on, though, right?

Virginia, part two

2011-10-01T18:21:00.000-04:00

(continued)

I like serializing. After our delicious dinner at C&O Restaurant in Charlottesville over Labor Day weekend--part of the Julie-and-Christine-traipse-around-Virginia-weekend--we ventured down Main Street for drinks.

Liam and Josh
In search of local color, we first found and wandered into a sushi bar playing live music and serving four dollar beers. Josh, the drunken college kid to our right, flattered us with his lascivious glances and slurred compliments and impressed us by downing three sugary shots in roughly 10 minutes. The intersection between food (well, drink) and love would have been quite palatable if we saw those shots again. As he was determined to get drunker while he could hardly stand (but somehow managing to dance quite well), we encouraged him to pound plastic cups of water, which we convinced him were huge shots of vodka. We placated his hard-drinking ego, talked to his beautiful but terrible friend who soon abandoned him for his resident co-ed, and enjoyed our too-cheap beers.

All manner of men found this amusing, including Liam the 60-year-old Irishman and didn't-catch-his name who asked us if were were students (the penultimate UVA law student, more adept at getting his collar to stand than securing our attentions). After more bars and more drinks, we started posing.

Thomas J.
After a hearty breakfast, Mr. Jefferson made it quite easy to see the link between food and love at his estate, Monticello. Would is be disrespectful to say IHOP breakfasts are almost as impressive as Jefferson's wall calendar jiggered with cannonballs or his below-ground ice pit?

At Monticello, Jefferson's love of food, wine, and agriculture manifest itself in his gardens, expansive kitchen, beer and wine cellars, and multitude of squash blossoms. He crafted ice cream in the summer with his reserve ice from the winter, imported French wines, and even tried make his own.

Bob
After all that Virginia history, I returned to DC and learned about present-day Pennsylvania and its vibrant sweets scene. Dear friend Tammy's husband, Bob, has a sister who runs a heartily successful cupcake shop, Warm Sugar. Tammy and Bob, love me (and I, them) and their own health, so decided to send me home with nearly a dozen cupcakes. Oh, and homemade, Tammy-made squid ink pasta.

I had the P.B. Incognutto, peanut butter-filled Valrhona chocolate cake, swathed in swirls of peanut butter frosting and chocolate ganache.

Then the Tikicup (don't kid yourself, the same night), a coconut cupcake with coconut frosting, strewn with toasted coconut shavings.

And the Sugar Boy (the next day): lime–infused graham cake stuffed with real key lime filling and topped with toasted meringue.

Then I stopped taking pictures. But, I also tried the Limoncello cupake (lemon cake covered in fluffy lemon frosting). And the Strawberry Blonde cupcake.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that a state named after a clever but single queen (and imported cupcakes brought into that state) would disappoint a couple of clever and single girls.

Virginia, part one

2011-09-25T23:01:00.001-04:00

What would you, dear reader, say if I claimed to 1. have had an epic Labor Day weekend and 2. be able to pair ever significant food experience with one of "love." You may say it can't be done. You might also say it took me damn near long enough to force everything to meet those two criteria.

I'd say that I can do it if I change the definition of love to mean either a passionately positive or negative experience with an individual of the opposite sex. I'd further say that this will be most symmetrical food/love nexus description ever been written about a trip about traveling around Virginia. I've even included real names to praise the innocent and shame the brazen.

Unnamed (well, unknown) Men
The food/love adventure began as most of these described in this weekend do, over fish and alcohol. Dear Christine and I had beer, moules, and frites, to test to how strong our constitution would fare when faced with a weekend of fried-food eating (we passed the indoor-fried-food-consumption test). We found ourselves at Brasserie Beck at the moule-friendly happy hour, we met two young men, one of whom provided useful information on rural Virginia.

We rewarded him with an invite to a bar down the street, as well as his friend, who runs drunk across townhouse roofs. Focusing more on his knowledge of Jefferson's accomplishments than his name, we thanked him heartily but generically at midnight and congratulated ourselves on securing beer, travel advice, and mild flirtation on a school night.

Scot (deliberately one T) and Andy
Ever wonder what culture has the best skirts and the worst food? After visiting the Virginia Scottish Games and Festival, watching strong men throw stuff they'd find in forests or toolsheds, and eating three bites total of both haggis and a Scottish egg, I had an idea. The day after Brasserie Beck, I caught up with old friends Andy and Rachel and had the wherewithal to order (see above) fish and chips and beer. Christine cleverly got a bridie, a burrito-shaped meat pie that evoked flavors of stew, pastry, and not-haggis.

But, with all the bagpipes, wool socks, and log-tossing, I started getting restless. Everyone's second-favorite fair treat (kettle corn) wasn't enough: haggis was my object. It was, quite possible, the most hideous thing I've ever eaten and tasted like how it looked: like ground up corn nuts, cat fur, and liver. I can say little better for the Scotch egg, whose sausage tasted like haggis with the haggis casing still on.

While largely similar in appearance in texture, I'd prefer to eat these and enjoy the company of Wilford Brimley, an added bonus.

James M.
I did live and luckily was able to celebrate the life and residence of James Madison, our fourth president, who built his fine estate in Orange, Virginia. What's the nexus here and how would I dare presume to compete with Dolley? Traveling to learn about James permitted Christine and I to eat at a fine Charlottesville restaurant and to swat love away in all the wrong places. But first, feast on Montpelier and its surrounding countryside:

Madison was a smart man and we admired the intellectual endeavors of the Father of the Constitution a great deal. So much so, we decided to discuss them in detail at Charlottesville's C&O Restaurant, a quite blog-worthy meal.

We had bread, a delicious dense, biscuity, hearty-yet-pliable fortifier, and Christine had a delicious-looking salad with a mustard vinaigrette.

For my appetizer, I had the cleverest combination of Mediterranean and Super Bowl potluck flavors: kibbeh and burrata from the former culture, fried onion straws from the latter. The base of the plate was filled with stringy burrata, holding in place the pine nut-studded kibbeh meat. In case you also wanted to simutaneously indulge in the buttery sparseness of a popover, a small profiterole sized one was sliced in half and placed on both poles of the plate. Atop it all were the fried onion straws. If I were fully reconciled to my skirt sizes getting progressively larger, I'd eat this every night.

Then, we really commemorated the Federalist Papers and Dolley Madison's fine-art-related bravery by enjoying our entrees, Christine with the beef tenderloin and I with the salt-crusted fish and the best skin-on potatoes I may have ever had.

We polished off our dinners in less time than the Articles of Confederation even existed.

Proceeding to Calvados (apple brandy indigenous to Normandy and which we both tried sentimentally for the first time in la Normandie), we had for dessert the coupe maison, a scoop of ice cream infused with grated vanilla bean, toasted almonds, whipped cream and brandy laced Belgian chocolate sauce. We were in train to have a few more digestifs afterwards, though...

To be continued...

Sushi Sono

2011-09-25T00:47:00.000-04:00

I like eating pretty food on days where the clouds mute city noise, when Madeleine Peyroux seems the only appropriate music to listen to, and when you can sip pink wine and look out on a tranquil lake to clear your head. Today I headed 52 miles north to let slippery raw fish glide down my throat.

When I arrived wherever I was in Maryland (ok, Columbia), I moved cochlea-like through small roads and parking lots to arrive at Sushi Sono, situated perilously on the cusp of Lake Kittamaqundi. I had a delicious, dramatic glass of plum wine, which looked like something offered to princesses in Disney movies.

I started with shrimp shumai, the one Japanese food item I've had that seems like soul food: it's warm and chewy and adorably bite-sized, but here had the delightfully bonus of featuring fresh shrimp.

My waitress was attentive and informative and apparently coveted by other diners (more about that later). Between the jelly fish salad and the live scallop, she recommended the latter. They loved their soy sauce bath (don't worry, I didn't see any recoiling).

I didn't realize that despite all the yawn-inducing mediocrity of an overcast day, I'd eat one of the most delicious sushi rolls, at least this year. I had the Hurricane Eye roll, featuring spicy tuna and crab meat wrapped with soy paper, covered with crispy brown rice, and
garnished with a hot sauce dot. The pieces crunched and gave and didn't hide behind normally chewy nori (toasted seaweed).

I had exquisite, generous pieces of saba (mackerel), garnished with green onions, lemon, and a bit of ginger.

I was already overwhelmed by this point when my last roll came out, the Sono Roll, tempura-fried shrimp (it's there, at the bottom) in the roll, with tuna hugging the roll on top, and sprinkled with flakes and fish roe. As I slowed my efforts to dip these pieces in my soy sauce without them being deconstructed and get them to fit them in my mouth, I was able to watch the show a regular patron put on.

After staring down the small,spoiled, disrespectful girl at the table in front of me (who had only served to make me fear for the future of children and their incompetent parents) and making her and her father uncomfortable, she was seated after running through the list of waitresses she hoped would serve her.

She ordered a glass of wine and in between sips, left her lipstick upright and open on the table. I can only imagine that this was so she could apply and reapply it easily, to leave those sophisticated lipstick marks on her stemware that all women who used to be little girls secretly love. In between puckers, she poured white wine on her sashimi to make it taste better. I couldn't help but giggle. If Sushi Sono's dining room was as stage, it was like being in the midst of Sunset Boulevard or Gypsy.

Without applying any lip gloss before, I had black sesame ice cream for dessert. It was creamy and toasty and salty, but delicious. Calcium gives me fortitude for the endeavor of dining at 27 more lipstick worthy restaurants.

Indique Heights

2011-09-20T23:15:00.000-04:00

Tonight was an Indian food night. Maybe I can be convinced, but a person has to be in a particular mood to subject herself to Indian, by which I mean four types of carbohydrates and liquid yogurt. I had spent a a long (good) weekend at home (and thus, was reticent to return), was drenched on two occasions this morning, and crushed by a deluge of work e-mail and all manner of Virginia bills in my mailbox. The likelihood good conversation could be safely had over wine and greasy food seemed small to my friends and me; our proclivities toward excess (ie, too much wine coupled with greasy food) was the primary fear, in addition to the general diceyness of eating ethnic foods far from home. So I forged ahead alone.

But why the Ganeshing of teeth? (sorry, couldn't think of anything more clever or less offensive). It might have been most immediately because I had a weekend full of Oklahoma-delicacy eating, then turned around to have a dehydrated packet of oatmeal for my first meal back. Or the fact that I wasn't able to drink beer before noon, like it was game day in Norman. Let's pick up here: the morning of Oklahoma's second win, we visited Blackbird gastropub, a new bar on Campus Corner.

Over beers, we had blue corn tortilla chips with guacamole and roast beef sliders...

...and (a food that maybe explains why Oklahoma is number 1 in the nation), deviled eggs on fried black eyed peas and jalapeno cornbread. It's lite time travel to have beers with your parents in the same building where you bought your first professional clothes (it used to be Harold's), where your mom bought text books before that, and where your dad understood, from others, that it had also been an establishment that served Norman's gentlemen.

Even the banal was beautiful in Oklahoma, from the mural in a parking lot where cars are repeatedly vandalized to neon red light gently illuminating fried okra at Earl's Rib Palace.

Anyway, that's all a dramatic introduction to a normal top 100 night, this time at Indique Heights, a beautiful gem in the lobby of a very oddly situated business building (the metro is immediately below and streets surround the triangular property on all sides). I sat next to an indoor fountain on a chair that made me feel like a Kipling-esque raja, plus had chutney with my wine.

It was the chair, rather than the service, that inspired the Kim-ness, though. My waiter was charming and provided great suggestions, but provided the same level of service I used to get upon ordering a hot dog at the public swimming pool (I got a lot of thumb's up rather than verbal inquiries, the table bussing was spotty, and the descriptions sometimes incomplete, all of which he made up for with a grin). He was quirky but got everything right and had good taste: I started with the fractured vegetable samosa atop a bed of chickpeas, a smooth and crunchy delight.

He also recommended a dosa, a crêpe made with a fermented batter of lentils and rice, stuffed with chicken, and served with five different chutneys, including cranberry, coconut, and spicy coconut, and was spicy, stewed, and delicious.

For good measure, I got shrimp varuval, with onions, tomatoes, curry leaves, and spices and a side of lemon rice, perked up with crunchy lentils. My waiter thankfully disassauded me from the tandoori shrimp, one huge super tandoored crustacean, and steered me here.

I was too far from home for another glass of wine but felt entitled to a full evening, so had a mango lassi (another good waiter pick, a mix of mango juice and yogurt). Plus, the excruciating (maybe only to me) first date at the neighboring table made me enjoy my pleasant company to myself that much more (I didn't brag to myself about my study abroad experience in Italy, dedication to life-long learning, or try to take myself seriously while sporting a pink tie). I'd ask me out to a top 100 again.

Marcel's

2011-09-12T23:59:00.000-04:00

Let's play a guessing game, tangentially about tonight's dinner at Marcel's. Do I:

a. have three food guardian angels at Marcel's in the form of my waiter Jonathan (who kissed me goodbye on the cheek), my driver (who shares my affection for a delicious Latin place in Courthouse), and the maitre d', who spoke perfect French

b. no longer need an introduction and am known for my secret but amateur food blogging jaunts, which results in impeccable service

c. consider myself lucky that a top 100 restaurant lives up to both its reputation for superlative food and hospitality

It matters little because whatever the reason, I felt more indulged than the more important individuals who had diplomatic-plated black sedans or black Escalade convoys picking them up at the Kennedy Center. Because my dining establishment came to get me tonight after my opera. That's right, I got an amuse bouche, amuse feet, and amuse patience.

So what am I talking about? I went to Marcel's, a Robert Wiedmaier restaurant on Pennsylvania I had largely brushed aside because Brabo and the Tasting Room, his restaurants in Old Town, were notable but not memorable and for some reason, it always seemed like an old person place.

But, humbly submitting myself to my third decade this year, I figured I'd join the AARP crowd for the pre-theater menu before seeing Tosca tonight. I was there ten minutes early; as soon as I had parallel parked (well, five minutes after I started jiggling my car around), the maitre d' approached my car. Instead of regaling me with criticism (as I expected him to do), he knew who I was when I simply said I was going to dinner at Marcel's, took my keys, and led me to my table. I read about this stuff in my Jane Austen books; I don't often write it here.

He pulled the table back, and I sat in the restaurant's ideal seat: on a banquette, facing the kitchen, but far back enough I could see the entire panorama. I met Jonathan, who flattered and explained and proferred detail, in an excessively personable way I didn't mind at all (pre-decision time is usually a hallowed time of reflection, panic, and fitting the puzzle pieces of a tasting menu together that I usually prefer to do uninterrupted).

Before I delved into considering what three choices from the seven course menu I'd select, I had a Ricard, which required no additional explanation (first time this has happened since the last Belgian place I went to).

The amuse bouche was a beautiful pâté terrine, crusted in pistachios, and adorned with a port reduction. To illustrate the depths of my admiration, I will point out every fault I can find. First: on this dish, there was sprinkled water. How delightful to be so unblinkingly picky and still be so extraordinarily satisfied.

If I were a paranoid food critic, I'd think they were messing with me when I got the bread and butter. Served with a Kalamata olive bread were three types of butter: sun dried tomato, normal creamy, and fennel butter. Who would have thought my aperitif would even match my butter.

For my appetizer, I had an oyster stew with pastry vol au vent. As I slowly excavated my soup, I found fat but smooth oysters, small cubes of delicate potato and celery (I think), one of my favorite pork products (lardons), and lily pads of puff pastry. The second faux pas was one less-than-bright oyster in my stew, but he was the last one consumed. And he didn't tarnish my delight with a remarkably smooth, delicate, and hearty stew that made me wish for bitterly cold winds if I could have this regularly as an antidote.

For my main course, I had boudin blanc. It was so delicious, I'd go up against a firing squad that may or may not be shooting blanks instead of bullets (oops, Tosca spoiler and gross hyperbole) for a few more bites. The boudin blanc--made of chicken and pheasant (I believe)--was ornamented with marigold petals and micro basil, nestled on two piles of softened, caramelized onions that themselves were secured on a disc of pureed celery root. Haloing the dish was a pinot noir reduction with caramelized shallots. I scraped off every last bit.

For dessert, I had cheese. I hesitated ordering it as it doesn't showcase the pastry capabilities. Instead, it makes me happy and secondarily and more seriously, can illustrate the quality of the service and their taste.

Jonathan, my delightful waiter, after telling me his stories of working at Windows of the World at the World Trade Center, of his marriage, and his son in the Southwest (charming and welcome, rather than intrusive, stories), selected for me a cheese on the far left produced by Trappist monks and soaked in a walnut liqeur (served with honey); a triple cream (served among raisins and candied walnuts and that winningly tasted like a French barn (think French barn from Madame Bovary, for sensuous effect)), and Brillat Savarin which was somehow slightly chilled but still gave like butter (with more port reduction). I think I eked out perhaps 17 bites to prolong my satisfaction.

To cap everything off, the petits fours (if that's not correct, I'll call it the small-fancy-plate-of-unexpected delight) were clever. The bottom was a chocolate tartlette that had exquisite crust, above that was crunchy amaretto ball (was distracted apparently for the first two descriptions), then above was a banana cream tart (with expertly made crust), and at the top, passionfruit sorbet enrobed in white chocolate.

I was so impressed, it got a close-up alone.

Maybe I unfairly associate restaurants with context, so inherently, this meal would have been exquisite because I knew I had a date with Puccini afterwards. But, I don't think so: every element of service was carefully considered and executed. My meal was paced perfectly so I finished just in time for the chauffer to take me to the Kennedy Center. My plates never stayed too long on my table without being quickly bussed, but were never taken away before I was finished. My wine was decanted, the chef (well, one) smiled at me (briefly), my waiter Jonathan consistently used my name without artificial intimacy, and I even got two boudins blancs instead of one (and I could verify because a guy across the room just got one).

If Floria Tosca had loved Marcel instead of Mario Cavaradossi, she might not have been so upset.

Nava Thai

2011-09-11T20:41:00.000-04:00

I had a moment of panic this weekend. While perusing Soft Blanket, Cucumber and Canteloupe, and Vineyard-scented candles at the Yankee Candle outlet flagship store in Williamsburg, Virginia, I realized Christmas was only 108 days away (thanks to the LED countdown right next to the animatronic dancing bears (no, I'm not kidding)).

Days later, with this is in the back of my mind, I realized that my own more serious deadline was looming: crossing off every top 100 restaurant before the end of the year. With only 111 more days of 2011, I have 29 restaurants to go. It's time to get serious.

The source of all the panic: Pumpkin Buttercream candles, left, and the permanent Christmas display, right.

I must confess, however, that I may have recently, frequently, and delightedly idled at non top 100 restaurants. At Christine's recommendation, I went to Chowning's Tavern this weekend, also in Williamsburg, a replica of an old-style tavern with a fiddler and a self-important proprietor (all in period costume), and foods with strange names (breadsticks are "sippets" and small portions are "rashers"). I had peanut soup (with ham stock) and "rarebit," which in my imagination I associated with foods served at old ladies' houses that smell like dentures and mothballs. Rarebit features salty Virginia ham atop pieces of carefully-balanced, dried out bread, all drenched in high school athletic event quality cheese sauce.

My Virginia wine, cornbread (seemingly cooked in a cast iron skillet), and pasta entree were delicious, however, and my informative historian/waitress was charming. The next day, I found Greek church ladies selling sweets at the Farmer's Market, even though they didn't remotely resemble my own Yiayia's cuisine in either delicacy or flavor.

Back to Thai. I headed north today to Wheaton (that's in Maryland) to Nava Thai, a delicious, unassuming restaurant next to VFW Post 2562, Hung Phat grocery, and at least three body shops. In it, I had the best pad Thai, maybe of my life.

I started with the country beef salad (nuer nam tok), grilled flank steak tossed in ground roasted rice, onion, cilantro, and scallions in a chilli lime sauce. The meat was rich, tender, and flavorful and the tiny slivers of onions, cilantro, and lime gave it a refreshing coolness.

While it may be poor form to be an unadventurous amateur food critic when ordering Thai, I can't resist my favorite, pad Thai. Here, the noodles were tender but chewy, the sauce was flavorful and sticky and the shrimp happily basked in their delicious glaze. It was exquisite.

How effective these anti-panic Yankee Candles are.

Addie's

2011-08-29T20:22:00.022-04:00

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

2011-08-22T21:21:00.011-04:00

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

2011-08-21T12:40:00.001-04:00

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

2011-08-15T23:05:00.006-04:00

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

2011-08-08T21:56:00.014-04:00

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.

Lakeville, Connecticut

2011-08-01T17:02:00.001-04:00

Sometimes, very rarely, if invited to a place like Lakeville, Connecticut and if I am cooked for all weekend, provided the opportunity to eat tomatoes picked right off the vine, savor temperatures never over 90 degrees, and allowed to explore the glories of pastures, haystacks, hammocks, and Ferraris, I'll write a whole entry about it. In this case, it's fairly easy to make an exception to traditionally restrictive blog-worthy categories like "top 100 restaurant" or "BBQ place in Oklahoma," particularly if the inviter exerts a bit of pressure as to the likelihood of a blog entry being created. I'm not entirely averse to being coopted.

My first trip in and out of Connecticut took me and my hospitable friends deliberately to the Red Rooster, my first of many celebrations of Americana in Connecticut (correction: a loyal New Yorker reader let me know I was, in fact, in New York not Connecticut). With no-frills burgers and fries, delicious peanut butter milkshakes, and al fresco dining (fancy picnic benches with paint that cools in-the-sun metal in a mulched courtyard), we were better able to gird ourselves for the requisite amounts of energy it would take to regularly sun ourselves, eat, and decide on which types of wine we would drink for the next four days.

A few hours later, me and Jane Austen were here.

Foreign to an amateur food writer was the dearth of restaurant-going: we had ice cream at Sweet Williams and of course, the Red Rooster Drive In and Mini Golf, but we focused our culinary attentions on preparing a variety of delicious meals. I was on vacation so didn't know where my phone was most of the time, reducing my propensity both to remember and be able to take photographs of my meals. But, if there is little difference between the quality of the dish when I randomly remembered my camera and the culinary highlights of the weekend, that delta means my meals were uniformly delicious.

We had swordfish steaks and fresh corn...

And caprese salad...

Double cheeseburgers...

And our final evening, a tiki-lit dinner in the middle of a field...

I did a fair amount of slow meandering and engaged in a bit of casual pensiveness.

In the equally superlative tier of what else was good to eat was the garden, the source of the best parts of meals: fresh rosemary in the potatoes; tomatoes on the sandwiches, in salads, and absconded on the way to the pool; mint in the cocktails and water; and basil in the salads.

We also stuffed tomatoes with Black Cats for post-meal shows (we needed shorter wicks for in-air explosions; the contiguous cans of Whoop Ass gave a more reliable show).

In between all the relaxing, we managed to find a few spare moments for a trip to the races. Ferrari, not horse. We saw the pretty Ferraris...

And the ones emanating heat, just having completed their laps minutes earlier.

For a cinematic, automotive masterpiece, watch this (it will make you feel like Dale Earnhart, William Wallace, and a Roman gladiator all at once):

Top 100, I'll be back tomorrow.

Equinox

2011-07-22T23:42:00.023-04:00

There's something clever women like about being taught something. Whether it's Jane Eyre devouring the contents of Mr. Rochester's library, the Princess Bride learning about the Dread Pirate Roberts, or a girl discovering the difference between bourbon and whiskey, a woman likes to know she's associating herself with intelligence. Which, is why on Friday night I knew I was falling for the tender culinary caresses of Equinox when gougères were wantonly put on the table almost immediately.

The night before, I spent the better part of an evening, a bottle of white wine, and my patience making gougères, a deceivingly complex gruyère cheese/choux pastry served typically during a cocktail hour or as an amuse bouche. They're airy yet leaden and saturated with butter, cheese, and more gruyère.

My endeavor started well enough, with a glass of chilled white and a "simple" one page recipe.....

....that yielded a cheese-confettied kitchen and 2-dimensional cheese blobs.

In the end I made three tiers of gougères: ones that would not agree to separate from the cookie sheet, the majority of which crisped up unsophisticatedly and crunched, and the precious eight that turned out at least the commonly-agreed upon color of gougères.

So, imagine my chagrin when I was immediately put in my place with a properly-consisted gougère at Equinox. Combine this with my realization that I was eating my final Andy-and-Kerry blog-worthy meal and a resolved solemnity overtook my regret at deflated gougères. How far we've come from the Cowboy Cafe.

We started with three exquisite cocktails, both Kerry and mine featuring subtly sophisticated accouterments: a slice of cucumber to accompany her gin cocktail and candied ginger on mine, complementing the citrus and vodka.

Those drinks tasted delicious both because of their quality and our need; our arrival at the restaurant an hour before wasn't entirely certain. Andy and Kerry, on their final stateside days, were busy with a variety of other departure preparations and suffered a minor-yet-wheel-debilitating car mishap, seconds after their voyage to the restaurant commenced. After some quick thinking, tires were replaced, carpools established, and valet parking capitalized on. Merely one hour after the threat of take-out seemed imminent, we were back on track.

The alcohol rushed to our fingertips as we used them to scan the menu and we started ordering, beginning with the risotto fritters and the gazpacho. Kerry's risotto fritters were creamy with stalwart grains that combined long enough to be fried. Andy's gazpacho tasted smooth, had a bit of vegetable chunk, and a hint of citrus (orange juice?) woven through.

I had stuffed squash blossoms, which are fairly easy to obtain but hard to find on menus. These were stuffed with goat cheese, fried tempura style, and propped on olive tapenade; fried so delicately, their waving petals seemed to be frozen in motion. Our appetizers were a testament to the chef that despite the sweltering weather, appropriately flavored fried foods could satisfy in 100-plus degree heat.

Our pre-dinner salads and dishes were delicious and mostly remarkable, but lacked the proper fanfare to introduce the next course. Andy, who had ordered the tasting menu, had a pickled cabbage salad with a single shrimp on top and a drenched spinach salad with a citrus vinaigrette. I had a chopped salad with fresh figs, candied walnuts, roasted beets and a quail egg cooked up in the hole of a buttered piece of brioche. Kerry and I shared it but didn't realize the good stuff was in the middle of the salad until most of the frisée was gone. Andy also had a swordfish steak with tomatillo salsa, juicy and summer-complementarily tart.

Despite the seven preceding plates, we each ate all of our entrees. Kerry had the hand cut fazzoletti with poached lobster, fresh fava beans, charred farm corn, and smoked bacon. Andy had the grilled tenderloin of Pennsylvania pork with caramelized chanterelles.

Kerry also ordered a delightful side of roasted beets and peaches, topped with a chilled, raw fennel salad on top. That's a summer salad that vaccinates against heat exhaustion.

I had soft shell crab, a food that has historically intimidated me like steak tartare did. Would it be like eating crab battered in egg shells? Like eating shrimp with the tails on? Would I have the same aggravation the remainder of the evening as I did when after a movie with stubborn popcorn hulls stuck in my teeth?

Apparently not: every part of the crab, from its spiny legs to its meaty body was rich in flavor and crunched delightfully and the tomatillo-based salad underneath cut the delicate sweetness of the crab. Ah well, better late than never.

Dessert was a bit of a disappointment, but after a few hours of rich conversation and a good bottle of red (from Virginia!) we didn't notice much. Andy had the pot de creme, a bit annoying in its trendy foam and missing a proper proportion of berries to cream. Kerry and I split the bread pudding. It was dense, as promised, but more like a very moist flourless cake than a homey, gooey bread pudding. The salted caramel ice cream was delicious, but wasn't salty or enough to match up bite-for-bite to the chocolate.

Dinner, as a whole, was tremendous and featured all the hallmarks of an Andy/Kerry dinner: good conversation, good food choices, good plate diversity, good food-observing, good plate-passing, and another good memory of dining together. The BocaSola and I will miss you.

Art and Soul

2011-07-21T22:31:00.010-04:00

I'm starting to be skeptical of soul food, particularly when two girls with soul go to restaurants that serve it. And me and Dotti know soul: from her love of fried chicken, to my love of shrimp and grits and BBQ, and to our collective passion for a variety of undeserving objects, we got soul and some to spare. But copiously butter-drizzled cuisine soul food does not make. Particularly, when this soul food prompts not-seen-since-elementary-school visceral reactions to both butter and vegetables.

Dotti and I headed to Art and Soul on Capitol Hill last weekend, a bar and restaurant claiming southern influences to its food. It started off promising enough with homemade barbecue chips at the bar and butter rolls and some dark (not tasty) sweet bread on the table. This iteration of butter was measured, appropriate, and proportional.

Next, we had shrimp and grits, the first of the weekend and second in a row for this publication. The shrimp glistened with a butter glaze and each hominy of grit was infused with garlic, with a shallow pool of butter hovering above them. If you can have brain freeze from popsicles, can you you have catatonia from butter?

Butter's cousin, cheese, starred in the highlight of the evening, the macaroni and cheese. I consider the pasta noodle almost as important as the sauce and here both shone: tight spirals caught as much of the cheese as possible in its threads, as well as the breadcrumb crunch on top.

Dotti ordered her fried (nearly whole) chicken with greens and mashed potatoes. She cleverly got a real Southern dish. There was gravy, sort of like butter, but no visibly extraneous butter.

I opted for fancy (that was silly): rabbit stuffed with spinach (I believe), garlic/cheese biscuits, and an unappetizing mix of my least favorite combination of vegetables: fava beans (too much like the lima kind), carrots, and pearl onions. The rabbit was chewy and eating the vegetables seemed obligatory rather than pleasurable, so I re-feasted on macaroni and cheese and waited for the dessert menu.

I hate to be dismissive of Oprah's former personal chef, but it's almost a farce to serve soul food--a comfort enjoyed by families on Sundays--in the shadow of the Capitol, in a sleek, modern, deliberately-dramatically-lit restaurant.

Dessert, like a dinner triangle being rung, woke up the rest of the meal. We had a pecan pie the likes of which I've never had, with a dense, praline-like pecan filling on the bottom and a chocolate ganache-like top. We also had a multi-berry cobbler with ice cream. They both had butter but thankfully we couldn't taste it.

Dessert turned out to be exquisite but as a whole, dinner wasn't exceptional..and afterwards I didn't much hope the South would rise again. That is, unless I knew Clifton would be its capital and butter wouldn't be used with Paula Deen-like abandon.