America Eats Tavern

I love American food. I love a steamed hot dog in crinkled foil with only a few pumps of mustard from a vat to adorn it. I love McDonald's French fries: the short, pointy, crunchy ones and the long mushy ones that have absorbed generous sprinklings of salt alike. I love macaroni and cheese from a cafeteria hot bar, pineapple upside down cake with uniformly-arrayed-pineapple-from-a-can at picnics, and juicy burgers with even juicier tomatoes. I particularly like the complement beer and potato skins add to already good conversations. Real American food, however, is not improved with condescension and tradition-skewering improvements. I suppose that's my opening shot.

Christine and I this afternoon had a lovely day celebrating Western landscapes and colonial portraits at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. We admired photos of Americana by Annie Liebowitz and the juicy still lifes.














We saw portraits of Reagan, Davy Crockett, cowboys, Indians, Benjamin Franklin, and expansive landscapes of mountains and gorges, with glimmery waterfalls, idyllic little deer, and light that can't possibly exist in reality. Patriotism was clearly in no short supply, making us extremely biased toward sampling our Motherland's food.

As such, we decided to try Jose Andres' new restaurant, America Eats Tavern. The space that previously housed Cafe Atlantico and its swankier 6-seat restaurant-within-a-restaurant upstairs, Minibar (both top 100s), has been converted to a dining room "that brings the history of America to life on your plate." It's like a food Epcot, without any animatronic Presidents.

You can tell from the subtle derision I've already exhibited that the concept didn't fly like Old Glory on a windy day, for a variety of reasons. One, Americans don't really eat like this (you'll see). Two, American food is significantly cheaper that the prices we were charged (our bill was $100+). And three, our waiter's puritanical view of food (he invoked the glories of the restaurant's "catsup" while freely admitting there was nothing on the menu to put it on) coupled with his latent snootiness (he called me out for rolling my eyes when he mechanically said the strawberry shortcake's selling point was that the berries came from the nearby farmer's market). Christine wisely noted that there is no point changing something that's already good if you're not making it better.

After 10 minutes of perusing the menu (each item had a small paragraph more focused on food history than actual ingredients), we were exhausted and needed a drink. I had the Moscow Mule with lime, ginger beer, and vodka and Christine had the French 75, a cocktail created at Harry's New York Bar in Paris (with gin, lemon and sparkling wine). We split biscuits with blackberry butter.



















Clearly, we were looking past our slightly intrusive waiter (who readily admitted to listening to our conversation--quite a juicy one at that) and enjoying our cocktails and sweet things.


With our first dish, we realized that really delicious classics--the historic culinary favorites a restaurant like this is both celebrating and capitalizing on--oftentimes can't or shouldn't be improved upon. Case in point: Waldorf salad is good because of the creamy mayonnaise, the grassy and nutty crunch of celery and nuts, and the tart apples ubiquitous in each bite. Instead, the potent integration of the various textures and tastes today was watered down and deconstructed with layers and lettuce for a reasonable $12.


Christine wanted a burger, but the filet-mignon-grind was mixed with bone marrow. Instead, she had the fried hot dog on a crusty roll and relish. It was tasty but, well, a $10 hot dog.

I didn't fare much better: I had the peanut butter and jelly sandwich with foie gras. The sandwiches were charmingly pocketed into little pouches but they were heavy and, I found, an unappetizing mish-mash that went half eaten. The milk and the chips were good, but I guess they were the only parts that made me successfully and sufficiently nostalgic.



















We had dessert, largely driven by the fact that I was still hungry. Since American Express and Dole are sponsors of America Eats (not sure how this works since you'd think the patrons were being sufficiently financially extorted), pineapple was on the menu. It was admittedly beautiful, but was a little too sugary, lacked sufficient amounts of pineapple in the cake, and missed a tacky maraschino cherry on top (ok, I'm not judging them there but who thought I'd miss it). Next time I have American, it will be in baseball stands, on a paper plate, or on a stick, please.

Marvin

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

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

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

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

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


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



















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

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


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

Volt

In my top 100 quest, it's proving impossible to sprint to the finish: I'm ending not with a bang but with a whimper. It's ok, though, because so are my restaurants. Today I took my second trip to the Rockville area in as many weeks (the top 100 list is the only reason I know Rockville exists). I bundled myself up, braved leaf-swirling winds, prepared myself with only Cheerios for breakfast, and parallel parked in quaint historic Frederick, Maryland (Frederick is past Rockville, or a mere 53 miles away from my apartment) to dine at Volt.

This is a restaurant where you anticipate going and the dining room is charged with excitement. The staff over the past week has called me twice to confirm my reservation. The restaurant even has a separate voice mail box where you confirm your reservation via answering machine. I found this silly and onerous, but I'm crotchety in my old age.

I arrived early--I superficially perused Frederick's charming main street, including an artisinal tea shop--and relaxed briefly in the leather-clad bar. The atmosphere at Volt is formal yet warm; the staff wear uniform semi-formal attire with the same dark Converse low-tops.

It's easy to relate my experience at Volt today with the sometimes disappointing romantic trajectory of a single girl, though: the first few culinary forays were exciting, breathtaking, and whimsical, while the final engagements were mediocre and a tinge uninspired. The food was never bad, but the dating equivalent trajectory for the meal would be a great mini-golf first date with a two-straw-shared strawberry milkshake to cardboard-crust pizza with watered down beer in a dingy bowling alley a few weeks later. I'll explain myself.

Delicious fennel pollen-ed and sea-salted breadsticks arrived first and I ordered the leña cocktail with mezcal, allspice dram, orange, lemon, mole bitters, spiced salt. I didn't like it but was warned of its uniqueness; while I couldn't resist trying a drink with mole in it, I sent it back. That was my fault, not the restaurant's, as that's a clever cocktail.



















The amuse bouche was a delicious beet macaron with foie gras mousse. The texture wasn't completely and convincingly macaron-esque, but it was delicious, beautifully constructed, and quite clever.. and I was delighted.

A generous and pleasant treat around brunch time is good and plentiful bread, particularly in a tasting menu (I ordered the five-course variety) where bread can calibrate one's stomach to tolerable levels of hungry and full. A server would regularly come around with beautiful breads-- chocolate croissants, bacon scones, cheese/chive biscuits, and a traditional sea salt rolls--which all helped either curb the pre-meal hunger, sop up sauce, or permit nibbling while waiting. I took three.

The first course was hamachi, or raw yellowtail. It was beautiful and covered in ribbons of fennel and crunchy ginger, as well as sprinkled blood orange vesicles (don't worry, I had to look that up). If My Little Ponies and Barbie invented the perfect color scheme, this would be it and that's not an insult. This was tremendously good.


Next, I had a signature Volt dish, goat cheese ravioli atop a parsley root purée with vegetable ash and black trumpet mushrooms. A year ago (fine, in Paris) intimidation turned to respect for these mushrooms, which in French translate as "trumpets of death." Now I am compelled to always order dishes with them. The flavors were exquisite--rich and new (vegetable ash was tasty)--and the textures of foam, grainy ash, al dente pasta and creamy cheese kept my eyes from rising once from my dish until I finished.

Unfortunately, in subsequent dishes, my brunch branched off from exquisite: it became standard trending toward mediocre. I had rockfish--smooth and flavorful with a crisp skin--with a tablespoon's worth of farro, butternut squash, and half a mini brussels sprout. The next course was beef cheek with cippolini onions and yukon potatoes. The first bite was very hard to cut off and a gelatinous ribbon running through the middle was off-putting. It was pretty, but disappointing. Both dishes tasted fine, but paled in creativity, flavor, and spirit from the previous ones.




















I sorted out my thoughts over an espresso, opting for a haphazardly artistic self-portrait via the sugar bowl. I was already a bit discombobulated because I pushed on the wall thinking it was the bathroom door and when trying to get out, kept pushing and pulling before someone outside slid the pocket door open for me. Take my critique with a grain of salt as my anecdote may be an indicator of my intelligence.


For the dessert course, I was expecting a simple marshmallow (another thing I learned in Paris is that marshmallows or grimauves can be arts unto themselves) but I had a plate of five desserts in one (it's uncharitable to call it a mess; I'll just say it's a pastiche). The textures were delightful-- gooey marshmallow beneath, crumbled textured chocolate, a crispy baked bark, ice cream, and frozen cocoa balls--but nothing was particularly or exquisitely delicious or memorable.

I wanted to like everything, really--at each course, I reverentially listened to the rapid-fire description of the dish--but I just couldn't. I returned to my car, peeled yet another top-100-induced-parking-ticket from my windshield, and wished I had waved the white flag after course two.

Passage to India

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

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

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)!