Liberty Tavern

It is both horrifyingly embarrassing and flattering to have things you've said yourself quoted back to you. When I was in San Antonio recently, visiting my dear friend Lisa, I said that San Antonio was full of real manly men because it had lots of strip clubs and men driving pickup trucks, she recently reminded me. Sometimes salty-mouthed girls transplanted to DC say things like that. It is also flattering when a friend, in response to my eager question about whether he had read a recent blog post, says, "You wore a hoodie to the opera?"

I've written about Andy before, who met me last night at his recommendation, Liberty Tavern. After kindly forgiving me for showing up late (I won't even say how late to risk offending conscientious readers who would be offended at my lack of planning and ability to ably find parking) and almost losing our table for rushing off to buy us beers (oh, but they were good), we started indulging.

Andy and I, as you could see from a quick perusal through this online publication, have spent a fair bit of time at Cowboy Cafe. And at Asian restaurants. And eating burgers and fries together. We felt grown up last night, though, he with his corduroy blazer, me in my monochromatic get-up, and with us discussing things like ethics in the workplace, professional development, and his upcoming wedding. Like a good friend though and true to form, Andy permitted my photographing, and we began.

Liberty Tavern is pretty great. It's in (I think) a building that used to be a drugstore and has an open yet intimate feel, with good service, a delightfully expansive menu, and even bell-shaped, glass cheese protectors. These probably have names, but it's almost nicer to let them exist in their own abstractness.

For an appetizer, we ordered grilled octopus. Octopus, I recently realized (partially because me and a date came to the mutual conclusion that octopus is one of the best items on a Mediterranean-themed menu) is one of those foods I like so much, that I have an obligation to order it regardless of where I am and what I else I get.


How heartbreakingly beautiful is this picture: grilled octopus (with the delightfully chewy, crunchy, tender suckers) with an English pea and baby carrot salad, farro, and a lemon-coriander vinaigrette. The octopus was reminiscent of lemon juice, Greek blue ocean waters, sailboats, springtime and salty air. The salad, with the slightly crunchy peas and the farro, was a complementary texture to the pliability of the salad and the varied consistency of the octopus. Total success.

Andy got pheasant, with the forward-leaning justification that one should order menu items based on their general availability on menus, which in this case (pheasant), was low. It was amazing. The pheasant came with LT bacon, red flannel hash, a small cooked quail egg, pea shoots, and roasting jus. In reality I have no idea what those things mean.

Andy is such a good friend of the food blog, letting me take photos. His pheasant was lovely; my sauteed escarole is the plate in the middle. I like getting greens because they are anachronistic and were eaten during wars and famines, which reflects the triumph of ingenuity in times of trouble of eating.

I found it to be like eating a warm salad, but in this case, it worked: they were heavily doused in shallots and a vinaigrette.

So, that was plate number two for me (although Andy was helping along the way). Dinner was.. fantastic.. with one only mildly undistributed mound of pesto. The gnocchi was accompanied by spring vegetable succotash, pinenut brown butter, and the aforementioned concentrated basil pesto and was even better when, with about seven bites left, I realized that I had accidentally been eating around the pesto in the middle until I bit into a large chunk of it. My pesto in the first 16 bites didn't have a whole lot of flavor beyond the vegetables. But, being a pseudo-aesthete, I didn't want to mess with the presentation or arbitrarily alter the dish's composition. Oops. That's what you get for using words like aesthete in your head.

(I guess the mound of pesto is sort of obvious in the middle). After good food and good conversation, the waiter put the dessert menus in our faces. To me, unsolicited menu giving is as annoying as a creepy single guys talking to me in bars diving into one-sided conversation with me without waiting for me to acquiesce (an approach which always clearly works out in their favor and not mine) so I guess it's no surprise that I ordered dessert. After about a second of each demurring, which Andy cleverly termed the dessert stand-off, we ordered ice cream. Unsurprisingly, it was awesome.

We even got to choose: one scoop each of vanilla, chocolate, and cinnamon. Little did we realize upon ordering, they are perfectly tri-paired with each other. How lucky were we. And thanks, Andy.

The Opera

"You're a special girl," the man with the treetrunk legs, vaguely Christmas-themed tie, heavy but foul-smelling breathing, and visible pretension said to me, at the end of tonight's opera. "Don't sell yourself short," he advised, as I successfully bolted from my seat in as unalarming of a way as possible and with a curt goodbye. I have a quality, that helpfully Steve--1976 Yale graduate, former opera singer, friend of the Senators, friend of the conductor (he yelled "Giovanni mio" when the conductor bowed), friend of the Kiwis to his right, friend to the mother-daughter duo to my left [so a prolific hand-shaker], friend to another Yale '76er sitting somewhere behind him--pointed out to me: I am a patient listener.

Damn straight I am a patient listener. I clearly don't know any better. "What book are you reading?" he asked, during the intermission, while I tried to avert conversation by feigning intense interest in my book. I closed it, showing the cover. No response. It apparently was unworthy of commentary. "I'm reading this," as he proudly displayed some book about Dutch settlers. (I think he may have even read me the riveting title). He proceeded to tell me why it was of interest to him, and presumably why I should care. What I stewed about until about scene 3, act II, however, was his inquiry into my career.

When I initially sat down, he inquired whether I was an actress or musician. I had a "sparkle," he said, after telling me I was a long way from Oklahoma upon seeing my hoodie. When I laughed a bit too derisively, perhaps, he tried again at intermission. "What exactly do you do at your job," he asked, after I mumbled something about government service. Before I even had a chance to ponder a response, his follow-up question was "Secretarial?" The theater started to turn black and white, I envisioned him in his pipe and loafers in his arm chair watching Leave it to Beaver, and I completely ignored the sexist and geographically-ignorant nature of his question and said yes. I capitulated, but I could have said I designed shuttle engines and he wouldn't have heard. "I know people," he crooned. "I know people at the State Department. I had lunch with John Kerry. We all need a little help," he offered. Have I mentioned this town is a great place to meet men?

If I had known that was my fate for meeting men tonight, I would have asked for extra onions on each dish tonight. Thankfully I didn't, though, and enjoyed a really stellar meal at the Kennedy Center's Roof Terrace restaurant. They offer a prix fixe menu with really, too much nonsense, so I ordered a la carte. The restaurant's arrangement is a bit strange; I was sat at a table opposite the large middle cluster of tables so there was something a bit adversarial about my table and the rest, which, being special, I quickly overcame. The chairs are also those terrible ones that remind me of chairs featured in 1980s office dramas or used in failed mortgage and loan lobbies: they're boxy and feel/look like they're upholstered in burlap. If I sat in the middle of the chair, I couldn't reach my food. If I rested on the outer edge, balancing precariously, I could reach my dinner but towered over it. There was something very Foucauldian about it. That's right, I said it. Even the copies/coffee-retrieval girl knows a little something about power structures.

I had a delicious salad with a glass of sauvingnon blanc. They arrived at the same time, about 1.5 minutes after I had ordered them (better than a Mexican restaurant, the point of reference for a provincial toner-replacer like myself). Bibb lettuce, watercress and endive were arrayed on the plate, with strips of Asian Pear, a small block of Gorgonzola, hazelnuts, and lightly (refreshingly) drizzled with pomegranate vinaigrette.

Dinner elicited a bit of cynicism (but I calibrated, showing I am not hard hearted). I ordered risotto, which came out looking like rice with gravy. It could have been a disaster, but may have been some of the best risotto I've ever had. And I only got it because I liked how I heard an old man pronounce it a table away (rolling his r's, rrrrrreeee-SO-tow).

It was called forest mushroom risotto, and the menu advertised its featuring white truffle oil and aged pecorino. I often recall, upon thinking of truffle oil, my nearly open hostility to a blind date who admitted to buying a $30 bottle of truffle oil because he liked the taste. Where's that guy now?

The view was beautiful though. Light mist, pretty blue sky. I was one of perhaps three diners who didn't qualify for AARP membership.

AKA:

The outside terrace was beautiful and gasp-eliciting as well. It was one of the best self-dates I've ever had. I really outdid myself this time.

The view south (Lincoln memorial in the center distance)

The view southwest

The view east (Washington monument in the center)

The show, Porgy and Bess, was great. My favorite songs didn't send chills down my spine. Maybe that was because in the second half I was physically recoiling from Steve's presence, breath, and space-invading thighs. It may also have been because it wasn't a super stellar performance, which I think is more likely. But the theater is beautiful. When one rolls their eyes repeatedly in frustration (even if only figuratively), the view above is quite nice.

Majestic

Tonight, I ate an eye ball. It would almost sound like a Katy Perry song if I said "I liked it," but I didn't. It was a fish eye ball, so small, delicate, sophisticated, but I ate it when it had connective tissue hanging from it. And without knowing that its consistency would be that of a soft acorn or a stale gum ball with a lollipop stick bisecting it. By the time I thought it tasted tolerable, it was down my throat and any residual flavor was washed down by a gulp of Chardonnay. Purposefully. It creeped me out.

I went to the Majestic tonight and I feel like I won some culinary credibility tonight.. with myself.

That's right, that's an eye ball, and some pretty clever (macabre) photography. The Poor Fish looks a little Edvard Munch-Screamy.

I know, appalling. I was really surprised that no one noticed that I was giggling nervously as I gently separated the eye ball from its socket encasement. Should I rate this PG-13 perhaps? And what you can't see is the entrails (entrail? there was only one). It didn't have a bad consistency until you hit the middle. What is that, eye core? The eye stick? I'm grossing myself out now.

The Majestic is a nice place, fancy, dignified, nice lighting, intimate dropped ceilings. I'll say in advance I wasn't a fan of my waitress. I didn't feel I was adequately.. served. Despite the fact that I wasn't a pushy patron with a pink Blackberry (to my right), a lady who dinners (with her Blackberry flashing green through most of my meal), half of a pair of women who were sharing champagne on ice (both tables in front), or one of several rude men at a business dinner to my left who were playing with their phones, I deserved just as much attention.

Whatever. She was much too fragile of a waitress to not faint while I was conducting my surgery, so good thing she stayed away. But let's start at the beginning. The Majestic is co-owned one of my favorite Alexandria chefs, Cathal Armstrong, who runs Restaurant Eve, Eamonn's, and PX. I wanted fish tonight but I didn't realize I'd get so lucky. So, first I had bread. There was honey in there somewhere.

Then I had a great spinach salad with shallots, toasted bread crumbs, caramelized onions, and a balsamic vinaigrette.Then, it came. The orata, aka gilted seabream. Almost sounds like a type of bangle sold at Tiffany's. It was served with a chilled fennel salad (with pesto cream), accompanied by orange slices, capers, and kalamata olives.

From left

To right

I got wine, too. These are the ladies with the tableside champagne chiller. Also, notice the clever mise-en-abime. If they are going to drink alcohol from a container in a container, I can make erudite French artistic references.

Eye ball intact. I always thought fish cheeks were some kind of delicacy, but these weren't. I tried eating those too.

This fish was amazing; it was like creme brulee of the mer. The orata was grilled, clearly intact, so the skin of the fish was crispy and warm and delicately came off the flesh. The flesh was delicate and gladly left the bones, but was, I don't know, delicious. I haven't had myself a whole fish since Greece on Santorini. Maybe one time in my life I preferred to have a lecherous man serve me food instead of tonight's cold fish.

Afternoon Delight

Oh boy, it was. I departed Restaurant Eve this afternoon a happy woman. While there has been much lamenting and wringing of hands about power outages, hours of shoveling snow, falling icicles, frozen windshields, feet of precipitation, immovable vehicles, frighteningly ghoulish-sounding winds, unhygenically-colored snowdrifts, and weather-induced cabin fever, I'm satisfied. I had Restaurant Eve for lunch. On the phone with my mom, she described it as THAT place. The place I had a really good first date. Where I took my brother for dinner on one of his early visits to DC and he liked it. Where I took myself when I got promoted. And I went today, braving minimally dangerous sidewalks and dripping awnings and avoiding eating my lunch at my desk, work-style. Bring on the snow!

Going to Restaurant Eve for lunch is like going to those wedding dress factory stores in New York where you score a Vera Wang for.. some exponential amount less. But there is no defect in Restaurant Eve's lunch menu; it's only offers more diminutive portions. I'll say size doesn't matter at Restaurant Eve though.

The bar is nice--a friendly bar for the single diner. I knew I was where I wanted to be when the bartender explained to the hapless dining couple to my right the difference between pate and terrine. They were only hapless in the way they asked (and for criminally askeing for their lunch to be expedited.. maybe they had a good, life-preserving reason, but that didn't seem to be the case) as I had no idea either.

I also didn't know what Papri Chat was either. But first, let me explain Restaurant Eve's lunch menu. I may have explained this (reverentially, respectfully, awe-fully) before, but the idea is so good I'm going to do it entirely again. For $13.50, a diner can order two items off their "lickety split" menu, which includes wine/beer, appetizers, entrees, and dessert. So, I asked about the Papri Chat, which I've seen on the menu but ignored...it stoically stands alone, with no indication of even from which continent it's derived (I thought it was an Indian cracker, so never asked about it because it sounded a bit... too deconstructed). So, I got it because the bartender said it was delicious and the terrine as well, because the bartender explained so thoroughly (nearly literally) how the sausage was made. I quietly asked for an appropriate glass of red wine and my nice bartender brought me a $13 glass of pinot noir. Nice choice, buddy, but rarely has a glass of wine cost 96% of the cost of my meal. Thanks for appreciating my deference.


So, Papri Chat is a mix of about seven delicious things in a very flavorful but very innocuous salad. At the base are chickpeas, studded with roasted pearl onions and baked Indian, cumin-infused bread bits. On top a small mound of the chips are a tamarind sauce, a jalapeno chutney, and a tangy yogurt sauce, underneath parsley and.. some other charming green micro-herb. It was delightful: cool, refreshing, flavorful, smokey, crunchy.. It was the perfect assemblage of multiple flavors that allows the slow, deliberate diner (me) to make every bite unique forkful
by forkful.


So, I got the terrine of Randall Lineback. The menu is admirable in its simplicty, but it's certainly not helpful in explaining why the menu subordinate components are capitalized. Am I getting terrine served in the Randall Lineback style? Commemorative of famous terrine-eater Randall Lineback? From the small French organic enterprise La Ferme Randall Lineback? Googling my food, a frequent habit of amateur food writers, suggests that Randall Linebacks are an endangered breed of cattle who provide "the discriminating and health-conscious gourmet the finest rose-veal in the world." I buy that, my terrine was awesome.


But, maybe that's just because I appreciated its geometric shapes. South-terrine are dijon mustard pools, north-terrine are homemade cornichons, one of my favorite French treats.. they are like the Napoleons of the vegetable world.. a bit small but of enduring import. The salad was tasty (mesclun looking but with real leaves too, as well as large chunks of shallot) and the terrine was delightful in its erudite meatloaf-ness. I imagine that terrine is one of those dishes that has a vaunted culinary status while its origins lie more humbly in French farmhouses, by butchers who sought to make appetizing cuts of meat that had a less-than-appetizing appeal on their own. The bartender explained terrine as the mixture of a variety of cuts of meat, mixed with cream (and some other stuff I've already forgotten), baked in a loaf pan and served cold. And it was delightful, especially when I realized it had bright green jewels-of-pistachios mixed in and could be complemented differently by bites of fresh bread, cornichon, salad, and mustard. I can't resist the pun nor can I say I'm disappointed that while everyone else is digging out, I'm digging in.. :)

Day of Tripe and Kimchi

I've been eating plenty, that's not the issue. I've yet to tally how many hundreds of dollars I spent during Restaurant Week, but it was more than one. I went to both a ladies and a co-ed dinner party this past weekend, in fact, and have savored boar, rice pudding, and grilled octopus. But I just haven't sat down to write up the glory. But today was different. Today was Asian. It's much easier to write on a theme, so I regret the reverse chronological order. But a girl can't eat tripe and not immediately write it up.

After laying in bed this morning watching funnyordie.com and going to church (the Catholic one down the street and I'll boldly admit that Vatican II rendered one slightly more satisfying than another), I had to get in my car and go somewhere. The Washingtonian's Cheap Eats suggested Pho 75 in Falls Church. It's all business there: you sit at one of perhaps seven long rows of tables and have a waiter at your side after about a minute in your chair.

I got two waters (the waiters were prescient) and a small bowl of pho, a delicious soup that's perfect for winter and for ministering to most variations of a weary soul. It's a robust broth, delicate but meaty and this had a hint of cinnamon. I ordered pho with brisket, some other type of normal beef, then soft tendon and bible tripe. Thankfully, the soft tendon looked like a less-opaque onion slice but the bible tripe had the qualities I like of be-suckered octopus, but had the limp, blanched consistency of... offal from the most interior part of some animal's intestines. Since it looked like a really texturized noodle, I could easily hide it in noodle batches without knowing the difference...sort of..

In case you want to know what type of offal (to remind, that I ate today) includes the words "reticulorumen orifice," "mucosa," and "volatile fatty acids" in its description and what it looks like in profile, see a photo of bible tripe from Wikipedia below.

Anyway, lunch was delicious. I ate all the meat, all the noodles, as many onions as I could grab with my chopsticks and would have devoured the remaining broth, if the spoonful of it I took didn't make me tear up and have to dab my eyes because of the copious Sriracha I put in. I coughed like a smoker the rest of the afternoon.


Eating pho in my eyes should be following up by eating something sweet. Like a mung bean paste dessert, clearly. I'd rather not know what a mung bean is, but I know mung bean cakes are delicious. At weekend dinner party number two last night, I received a recommendation to go to Super H Mart, an Asian grocery store of which there are handful in the city. I love Asian grocery stores. I fell in love with Super Cao Nguyen in Oklahoma City, a huge Vietnamese market (super really means super), that has the energy, colors, and smells of a fair. Sometimes these smells include fish, sometimes fresh, sometimes not, which is often concurrently thrilling and reviling.

This one was pretty awesome, but full of a variety of international customers who each were operating on their home countries' rules of driving, which were almost always at odds with everyone elses. Hands, arms, carts, children, and vegetables were in constant movement. Things improved beyond the produce section, thankfully. But despite the taxing commotion, it was still beautiful.

There were serpentine Chinese eggplants...

Intimidating durians..

And very cheap chicken hearts...

A major highlight was the amount of women actively hawking samples. They competed for attention from other hawking women, distributing free cups of hot curry, rice dumpling balls, fried chicken, a sweet vinegar drink, tofu with gravy, and bulgogi beef. I tried all of those. The fish strip soup was as bad as it looks:

Note the shrink-wrapped fish below. Awesome.

I also found my mung bean paste pastry. It was individually wrapped and made it as far as the parking lot before it was devoured.

Super H has it's fair share of prepared foods, too. I picked up some kimchi, but a different sort than I've had before, with refreshingly crisp cucumbers mixed in. A few bites were enough (seemed to have as much garlic as cabbage), but it was tasty until ceased to be so.

The unidate went well.. the candles and Bordeaux wine were a nice touch. The mini pork buns squarely squirted juice on my shirt and the kimchi, after about five bites, ceased to be appealing. I love myself some Korean food, but if I am going to be involved in its production rather than solely its consumption, I'd rather just aisle shop...

Back

The preceding culinary period has been a long stream of pop tarts, corn dogs, criminally uniform ravioli, and turkey sandwiches. Less turkey sandwiches than I should have eaten, as I forayed too often into the aforementioned realm of over salted/sugared/deep-fried foods, but I finished. I lived to tell the tale. I escaped with my desire for fine foods intact. The terrorists haven't won this round.

So, Christmas, needless to say, has been an equally steady stream of fine items: chevre, well-crafted fishes, aerated wines, (non-fried, non-canned, non-peaked colored, non-limp) vegetables, and good Oklahoma meat products. It's been a delight to taste and then recall memories of good food, past recollections meeting present culinary tastes and aromas, in a cosmic uniting of..really, acceptable, non-offensive foods.

Christmas has also delivered that stark reminder that four months of not writing about food or men makes an already amateur food/men critic more amateur. We'll call this a growing post, to be followed subsequently by wittier culinary/social commentary. I will note, however, trip food highlights included a male dining companion at Pizza Hut. However, critiqueing food in places like that is like criticizing a kindergartner's coloring skills... it's just kinda..mean.

Let us begin by what I missed the most: American food. From the grill out back or from the fancy chef. Eaten in bed or on oddly-shaped modern plates or in a grease-reeked diner or on wobbly checked-tablecloth-decked tables or in plastic baskets. It really hasn't mattered.

Christmas (as the holiday on the 25th of December) sort of went on without me this year. My Christmas lunch was at the Atlanta airport:

It was both some of the worst Chinese I've ever eaten, as well as the Chinese meal I have eaten the most quickly (to keep from missing my flight back to a destination I just came from because of the weather).

Dinner was better, which is saying little. When you know you are going to miss Christmas and have neither car nor cable, you pay $17 for a veggie pizza.

And you eat it in bed.

And act Miss Haversham like, but without the wedding dress. But the same sort of despondency, but with microbrewed beer. Patiently attending you on your nightstand.

Then you snap out of it, your parents thoughtfully buy you a business class seat home when the weather clears so you don't despondently continue eating bad food in bed, and you have Christmas. Hours after you land. Then you start enjoying America's culinary fruits.

One of the top fruits in Oklahoma is Chelino's. We are such dedicated patrons that my father purchased my mother and I Chelino's aprons for Christmas. It's not American food, but it's Tex Mex and thus American by extension. And they very ably make Tex Mex food without slathering everything with cheese; there is a remarkable amount of non-orange/brown color on their plates.

Chelino's coctel de camaron, with avocado, onions, citrus juice (orange?), and shrimp

Chelino's array of chip baths: salsa, queso, relish and their "special salsa" (free, not on the menu, and spicy)

Then we began the process of new-restaurant-sampling. My dad is very good with spotting new restaurants and taking me there when I'm in town. We ventured to Sage, an innovative little cafe in the Deep Deuce area of OKC. The menu is slightly pricey, pretentious enough to attract a crowd that will keep them in business, but with a solidly varied menu to encourage multiple visits. The service was slow and the soup was lukewarm but I got chocolate cake bigger than my head.

Ground turkey noodle soup (with fancy grilled, buttered bread)

My double-entree topped salad with shrimp and portabello mushroom, with chevre and tomatoes over spinach (with balsamic vinaigrette)

It's not just big because it's in the foreground.

After hydrating after airplane flights, I got a flight: of Belgian beers at McNellie's in downtown OKC, which included Chimay, Maredsous, Hoegaarden, Lindeman’s Framboise, Triple Karmeleit. The last two were a bit sweet, but look how beautiful they are in their little glasses.

I also got fish and chips, but if I don't photograph unhealthy food, it's like the calories don't count.

Then, I got my first home-cooked meal: fish from the grill on a bitterly frigid night (from what I heard, I lazily drank my beer inside). My dad talentedly made:

Salmon on a cedar board with carmelized pecans

...and swordfish with lime. And some barbecued shrimps.

Satisfied with our American culinary forays, we ventured to a new Mediterranean restaurant, Camilya's on May Avenue. Camilya needs a website, but that's it. One man ably cooked for us and served us delightful lunches. Tabbouleh is our constant: we judge the quality of a Mediterranean place by the proportions of parsley to bulghar wheat and oil to lemon juice. Tabbouleh construction is indicative of a restaurant's broader ability to make anything.

My dad's perfect, photogenic taboulleh

An inviting cornucopia of kafta meat

...And my lunch, tabbouleh and hashwa (rice cooked with black angus ground beef, pine nuts and almonds, served with cucumber/yogurt sauce)

Mere hours later, we celebrated a New Years vespers dinner (in early anticipation of the new year) at Paseo Grill. Just thinking about dinner has caused me to readjust my typing position to a more serious (combative) posture. I joke about restaurant pretension, but in a restaurant, I'm paying to be served. And, I'm the boss. To myself pretentiously be self-referential, this same experience has happened before. I admire a restaurant's effort to keep on-schedule for timely table turnover. I don't appreciate when a cheeky waitress calmly explains to discerning adults that the new tenants of our table have arrived and we can get our dessert to -go, implying that eating cheesecake from a Styrofoam box in the parking lot will soften the blow of spending $150-plus dollars to be unceremoniously kicked out of your feed trough for the next herd to come in.

I was already a little perturbed that I left my driver's license in my gym jacket. This, in turn, caused me to be a bit humiliated that I had to pull out four types of identification, piecing together analytically that my voter registration card, judging by its date of issuance, suggested I was at least 21 now. I even pointed out I had wrinkles. My mom ordered my cocktail, let me sneak the four sips I got out of it, kindly ordered my chardonnay for me, and played waitress/manager look-out so I could enjoy it without being arrested. I'll demur on criticizing America's liquor laws now, and focus my attention instead squarely on Paseo Grill's unsophisticated and offensive efforts to kick out guests 89 minutes after they are seated, to make room for the next set of fools to move in and blow on the same New Year's noisemakers. I sort of wish I had made a scene; they couldn't have blamed it on the alcohol.

Dinner was tasty though: blackened trout with avocado kiwi salsa, a side of orzo and pine nut pilaf, and a small up of a hearts of palm and artichoke medley salad. It would have been a hell of a lot better if the wine were in front of me instead of by my mother, to be spirited away when no ridiculous wait staff were watching.

My dad had the ribeye...

My mom had the filet...

And I got the last laugh because I get to write nasty things about the Paseo Grill on my blog prolifically read in the Oklahoma restaurant community.

And we got Christmas-lights viewing instead of dessert.

New Year's Day brought football and pastitsio/dolmathes eating. As well as some pretty sweet baconful black-eyed peas, plus a visit from Yiayia.


New Year's resolutions took us to Ron's Hamburgers, home of the $16.95 burger (not inflated DC burger prices because of the ridiculous addition of truffle oil), the "Who's Your Daddy," two patties of beef, seven slices of cheese, with fried and raw onions. My burger was $3, so imagine the beef- to-dollars extrapolation. And check out the fried okra: perfectly crisp and Kermit-green on the inside.

Below, my dad's cheeseburger steak.

After extricating ourselves from the grease-induced euphoria, we took advantage of OKC's Museum of Art. There's no food link here, but the photos are too good. Plus, I went on a date here way back in the last decade, so there's a man link. But he lingered way too long in the modern art wing and I think I had to buy our lunch, so we'll just keep this excursion non-blog-germane. The museum has a great collection of glass from eccentric artist Dale Chihuly.


The glass tower is 55 ft. tall.. it's delicate and majestic and made by a guy (non-pirate) with an eye-patch.

Sans eye patches.

While it's a convenient segueway to call BBQ art, we all agreed pre-blog-writing today that Leo's BBQ's banana cake is art. Call it performance, edible, or 3D art, it's genius.

I got a mangled piece, but liked the linearity of the barbecue sauces ("red is hot, white is not"). But admire this:

And at a coy-ish banana cake angle:

If you've read this far, I thank you. Bon appetit.