Black's Bar and Kitchen

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

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

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

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)

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.