Trummer's on Main

It's not a bad weekend when I get shrimp and grits (twice), eat empanadas from a truck, macabre-like reap the benefits of Greek Orthodox memorials, see of the story of Severus Snape on the big screen, and am reminded that Clifton is, in fact, one of the finest small towns in America (well, at least Virginia).

The weekend started innocently enough, unsurprising when one's current work day terminates around 3 pm. After a food fest-friendly clothes swap out, I took the (gasp) green line to Nationals Stadium to experience my first Truckeroo, an event that even satisfied my ideas of populist food served right (fried food dished out on plastic plates, seating provided on barely sanded down tables, and the general promotion of delicious, unpretentious food).

It is a brilliant idea: capture all the ephemerally moving food trucks that otherwise popularly haunt the streets of DC, put them in one spot, and see how many hipsters it takes to form a trend at any one of them (a trend comprising circa 60 very hip hipsters who form lines because the people in front of them did). Clockwise from top left: the DC Empanadas truck, a $15 lobster roll, macaroni and cheese with cheddar and Cheez-Its (as awful as it looks and sounds), an Oreo milkshake (transcendental), a black beans/chicken/corn empanada, and peach popsicles.

Hipsters, in line

This was Friday, and things only got better. Saturday night was a delicious, caloric dinner at Art and Soul, which will be detailed separately. To begin a new day of anticipated food blogging Sunday (two top 100s in one weekend!), I prayed (at church) I would have the fortitude to eat two desserts for each of my subsequent meals (incidentally, there are two more top 100s next week too). Greeks are so passionate about food that we make food to celebrate the memory of the deceased at a church service, bless it, then serve it. Second breakfast was a delicious kolyva:


Anyway, back to the celebration of live peoples' food. Yesterday, my friend Meredith and her sister, Lisha, and I took multiple back country highways to arrive at Clifton, Virginia, a small town seemingly pulled from the set of some patriotic movie that TBS cycles all of July 4th weekend. It's almost too charming for words.

To better digest the charm, I began with a cocktail, The Titanic. An iceberg of champagne sorbet poked its head out of a mix of elderflower syrup, muddled grapes, and vodka, with a patina of proseccco on top.

We ordered the three-course brunch menu, conveniently costing only about $10 less than the tank of gas I bought in nearby Burke. Each of us had a biscuit, a blueberry muffin, and one of the most ingenious breakfast inventions: what appeared to be a peanut butter cream puff.

The sisters offered the strategic approach (without prompting) that is the blog's default: divide and conquer the menu. We each ordered a different appetizer: the quiche, the fried green tomato, and the oatmeal brûlée. The quiche, delicate and beautiful, had notes of scallions, maybe jalapenos, and cumin. The fried green tomato reminded me that tomatoes are in fact fruits and can be juicy, flavorful, and hearty.



















My oatmeal brûlée had I believe a cappucino foam on top and a bit of caramelized brown sugar. It was brilliant (albeit a bit too sweet) but Trummer's gets major points for making my everyday breakfast item fancy.

We fared even better for the lunch course, slowly creeping toward dessert as both Meredith and my dishes featured sweet syrups and sauces: her's was fried chicken with brioche French toast and syrup and mine was Virginia pork belly with a biscuit glazed in maple syrup and (I didn't bother to ask so could be way off but I think it was) a black bean puree. Lisha cleverly opted for shrimp and grits, adorned with pine nuts, spinach, and corn.


Even if each of our meals skidded out to the table as unmitigated disasters, I'd recommend Trummer's just for our two exquisite desserts. The first, only incredibly delicious, was homemade crushed Oreos, en-nesting two different flavors of vanilla, and covered in chocolate pearls.


The second, superlatively incredibly delicious, was a glass of devil's food cake at the bottom, obscene amounts and varieties of chocolate, and topped with more chocolate pearls. The secret--what we were scraping from the side of the glass--was what our waiter called "God syrup," a subtly salty and decadent caramel. Poured after the glass arrived, it so excited the dessert underneath that it bubbled.

The road toward 36 more restaurants:

Ludivine

Because I have such a terrible short-term memory, I have to insist to myself to write about restaurants as soon as possible afterwards (oftentimes within 36 hours). Otherwise, what I write is a goopy, unsophisticated, unfunny mess. However, rarely do I dine with my parents and even less frequently do I dine at restaurants I promised my dad afterwards were "blog worthy." Further, Halley's-comet-rare is it that my (nonetheless bold) mom digs into crazy things like bone marrow with zeal. Like mother like daughter like mother.

My parents' love for me is profound, judging solely by the fact they found, inquired about, and reserved via the OpenTable iPhone app (!) a table over July 4th weekend at Ludivine, a restaurant in downtown Oklahoma City. Ludivine is situated in a formerly industrial brick building and has sparse but intimate seating at small dining room tables, an intriguing open kitchen, and waiters who look like Jesus (if He came back as tight-jeaned, overly emotive, hipster).

Downtown OKC

The problem with Oklahoma is that it has (universally) really good food for cheap. Barbecue, for example, is masterfully done and although brown-sugar infused organic tomato reductions (BBQ sauce) are served in squeeze bottles, they're complex and reasonably priced.


So, hooray for a fancy but still pretentious restaurant like this in Oklahoma that boasts its sourcing integrity. But, I can just as easily get locally-sourced food from Bubba in overalls selling his watermelons on the corner and get a discount if I compliment his truck. It ain't hard.

I started with a cocktail, which was delicious, and they get props for serving pastis in a mixed drink. My Pastis Sour had Ricard, orange liqueur, lemon simple syrup, and egg white.


As an aside, I can't help but be biased toward a restaurant who knows about the glories of Ricard (French anisette) when one, two, three places on the top 100 in DC gave me puzzled looks when I asked for it (in English, but of course).

Richard:

Ricard:

We started with four appetizers (there were three of us) because that's how an amateur food critic and her food-writing-supporting parents roll. Dad got the celery soup with crème fraîche and herbs (you spend three months in Paris and you gotta use the accents) and I got the greens and heirloom tomato salad with bison blue cheese squash blossom (essentially, a squash blossom stuffed with cheese and bison meat and lightly battered and fried), confit beets, horseradish yogurt, blueberries, and duck fat dressing. When I think about the salad, the catty comment about sourcing a few paragraphs up was probably mean.



















Because my dad loves me, supports my dreams, and is as fearless as my mom, we got the pan roasted sweetbreads with sauerkraut and an egg yolk emulsion. The Annointed One told us how amaaaaaaazing the sauerkraut was. He didn't really go into excruciating detail because there was very little that was factual about his description of the amaaaaaaazingness of the sauerkraut but he did emotively describe his own personal affection for the awesomeness of the flavor profile.


It was kind of boring and we ended up preferring the fried lamb testicles at Cattleman's we ate a few days later (three bucks cheaper and more of them).


This is when things got weird (well, when our waiter was starting to make us feel stoned too). Business associates of my dad didn't like their bone marrow (crybabies) so sent the whole plate over to us. My parents used to be cops so this plate had no chance. We ignored the tackiness of their sending a picked-at plate our way (but they were so weak we could hardly tell they ate anything) and my mom dug straight in. A little gelatinous, we all agreed, but the bread and pickled onions were good.



















Then things took another turn for the oversold: my mom doesn't like shellfish, the waiter insisted she keep them in her pork shoulder dish "to conserve the delicious flavor," and she realized that without the mussels, she just had a dab of meet and a bunch of steamed vegetable orbs. Not very impressive.


My dad got a bison ribeye with smoked elephant garlic, creamed greens, and carrot top chimichurri. He liked it just fine but didn't display his normal good-steakhouse enthusiasm.


I got the Massachusetts Day Boat Scallops with lobster sweet corn puree, beer battered shiitake mushrooms and basil honey syrup. For $32, or the equivalent of three pounds of ribs at our favorite Oklahoma barbecue restaurant. Plus, in the 15 foot transit from kitchen to table, scallops and corn puree were thrown askew on my plate, debilitating the silent perfectionist/food photographer in me (I rearranged).


We were all hungry after our seven plates of food (see: portions) and each got dessert. I had the lemon and white chocolate pot au crème (you bet I said it the French way) with pistachio, honey, and black salt. All four bites were exquisite.


My parents got the homemade peach ice cream with fresh peaches, blueberries, rum cream, and strawberry coulis. Certainly, they said between the two of them, one can't mess up peach ice cream, a ubiquitous summer treat in Oklahoma. The ice cream (the long block) came out still frozen and was difficult to cut without silverware clinking.


It wasn't quite as refreshing as the $1.25 piece of lemonade pie we had at Hideaway pizza the day before (ok, that's my refreshing beer but the lemonade advertisement is above).


For locally sourced, though, there's no place like home.