Ceno Ergo Sum

Tout le monde

2008-07-23T22:34:00.002-05:00

Struggling to come up with something to make for dinner, the answer arrived in my weekly vegetable delivery: a bunch of organic baby beets. I washed the greens, trimmed them from the root and tossed them with a quick vinaigrette. Meanwhile, I baked the roots in an aluminum paquet and tossed some chicken breasts on the grill (seasoned with the aforementioned Matiz Herbed Sea Salt). I diced the chicken and beets and tossed them (still hot) with the beet greens. The result was a delicious (and highly nutricious) dish that is pure summer.

Matiz Herbed Sea Salt

2008-07-20T22:51:00.001-05:00

Rummaging around in my spice cabinet last night, I uncovered a jar of Matiz Herbed Sea Salt. It is a greenish mix of sea salt, thyme, basil, rosemary and oregano. I have since used it as a seasoning on grilled chicken (just a dash on each side as it is cooking) and as a rub on some pork tenderloins. The spice blend lends a unique depth of flavor to the meat and will have your guests thinking you worked much harder than you actually did. This just became my favorite pre-blended seasoning blend (beating out stiff competition from Tony's and Adobo).

Citronelle (DC - Georgetown)

2007-10-26T19:57:00.000-05:00

Last evening we dined at the Chef's Table at Citronelle. It was a magnificent experience - equal parts theater, food and wine. The food itself was superb, but I can't really do justice to each of Michel's dishes because of the outstanding wine service. It was the best set of wines I have had in a single setting sice we dined at Enoteca Pinchiori in November, 2005.

Amuse Bouche
- Smoked salmon w/ cauliflower mousse
- Onion and gruyere tart
- Escargot w/ garlic custard
=> Merry Edwards Vineyards "Cuvee Meredith" Blanc de Noirs, Russian River Valley, 2000

First Course
- Portobello and truffle "cappuccino"
- Mushroom croque monsier
=> Blandy's 15 Year Old Rich Malmsey Madeira

Second Course
- Virtual cuttlefish linquine w/ chal chowder sauce
=> Rousanne "Besson Vineyard" Sarah's Vineyard, Gilroy, California, 2006

Third Course
- Rockfish with lemon verbena sauce
=> Sauvignon Blanc "L'Apres Midi" Peter Michael Winery, Sonoma Mountain, 2005

Fourth Course
- Lobster burgers w/ chips
=> Criots-Batard-Montrachet Grand Cru, Domaine Fontaine-Gagnard, 2004

Fifth Course
- Breast of muscovy duck w/ black cherry anise sauce
=> Chateaunuf-du-Pape "Pignan" Chateau Rayas Reserve, 2004

Main Course
- Saddle of cervina venison w/ huckleberry and fig sauce
=> Cabernet Sauvignon "Hillside Select" Shafer Vineyards, Napa Valley, 2002

Cheese Course
=> Shiraz "Carnival of Love" Mollydooker Wines, McLaren Vale, South Australia, 2006

Desserts & Petit Fours
=> Quarts de Chaume Grand Cru, Domaine de la Bergerie

As I said, the wine program was beyond parallel. The food ranged from the playful (lobster burger, "cappuccino") to the imaginative (virtual fettucine), to the artful (amuse bouche) and the technically superior (rockfish and venison). The venison was the hands-down crowd favorite and the only dish that didn't quite measure up was the duck. The skin was ideally crisp, but the meat itself was a little tough.

Finally, the desserts exhibited a variety and flair that I haven't seen since they shuttered the doors at Le Cirque in New York. Eight different desserts, each a kaleidoscope of color, covering the panoply of ingredient and technique.

Taleggio Ice Cream

2007-09-16T10:39:00.000-05:00

You have to hand it to the folks at Hook: not many people would conveive of - let alone attempt to make - taleggio ice cream. For starters, this is one of the more notoriously "stinky" cheeses - one that belongs firmly in what we affectionately refer to as the "daiper" family of cheeses. Secondly, making ice cream out of a substance that is already nearly 50% fat is sheer decadence. Nevertheless, they pulled it off. A deeply rich ice cream that smells like taleggio cheese and tastes like pure milk fat - imagine a buttermilk popcicle. They pair this opulent, dense frozen trasure with their uber-sweet ligonberry linzertorte. You get sweet, salty, sour, warm, cold, crunchy and creamy all in one bite. What's not to love?

2005 Ridge Pagani Ranch

2007-08-27T22:16:00.000-05:00

The good people at Ridge held up my wine club shipment for a few weeks, waiting for the heat wave on the East coast to break (the last thing anyone wants is to have their juice driving around in triple digit UPS vans). I popped the 2005 Pagani Ranch within days of receiving the shipment and it was more than worth the wait.

This is a refined, elegant wine that is a far cry from the countless zinfandel "fruit bombs" out there. The initial nose is berries (when I opened it, someone with their back turned to me asked if I opened a pinot) that give way to an earthy must and maybe a hint of cloves. On the palate, this wine has quite a bit of depth, unraveling in waves through your mouth. Of course, it is a zin, so eventually the acidity and alcohol close it out, but even here, it is a delicate transition.

In one word, I would describe this wine as "comfortable." Comfortable as in your favorite flannel shirt, or an aged pair of khakis. It drinks very well now, but I could see it holding up to several years in the cellar.

Cypress Grove Fog Lights

2007-08-27T21:15:00.000-05:00

This is the little brother of Humboldt Fog, the legendary chèvre from Cypress Grove. Like its big brother, this is a pasteurized goat milk cheese, ash covered and mold ripened.

This has the tang of a classic chèvre, but erupts in your mouth with a very, very long finish. The most intriguing characteristic is the consistency. Beneath the rind, this cheese has a smooth, uniquely uniform composition. We enjoyed it on its own, but you could easily pair it with fig jam, balsamic syrup or mostardi di frutta.

Hook (DC - Georgetown)

2007-05-15T23:17:00.000-05:00

Georgetown finally has a restaurant worth writing about - Hook. Barton Seaver has built a hip, sleek temple to responsibly sourced seafood. Pay no attention to the recent reviews that describe the food as "bland." When you can source really great food (and fish, in particular), you don't need to bury it under a sea of sauces, rubs and reductions - those theatrics are typically employed to disguise inferior product.

The crudos are a must, as is the white salmon when it is on the menu. Fans of Catalan cooking should definitely order the "Black Risotto" - Seaver's take on Arroz Negro. It is lighter and less salty than the Catalan classic (both welcome changes, in my mind) and makes an ideal side dish (NB: If your waiter forgets to tell you, the kitchen at Hook will prepare many course as side dishes if you ask).

Finally - and I rarely say this - save room for dessert. My favorite is the carrot cake (served "deconstructed" with crème fraîche sorbet, raisin chutney and candied walnuts) but my wife loves the chocolate tart (with caramel ice cream and salted cashews) and the beignets with nutella are always a big hit. The menu changes frequently to keep up with the seasons, so dont be surprised to find basil ice cream, etc.

Zenbu Sushi (CA - La Jolla)

2007-05-06T23:27:00.000-05:00

Everyone has their favorite sushi places - and every sushi restaurant claims to have some special "in" to get the really good fish. If you eat enough sushi, you eventually hear all the whispers (read: lies) of "our chef flies this in from Japan" or "the tuna was caught this morning." Blah, blah, blah.

This is not the case at Zenbu in La Jolla. This hip little restaurant is owned by Matt Rimel, who also owns Ocean Giant , a commercial fishing company. Rimel's fleet catches the fish and less than 24 hours later, it is on your plate. Ocean Giant is also dedicated to eco-friendly fishing. Each fish is "hook and line" caught - one fish at a time, off a fishing pole. This is a stask contrast to the long-liners that use 20 mile lines with thousands of hooks to catch everything from tuna to sea turtles and marine birds.

Those of you who know me understand that I am no envronmentalist. I was in search of the freshest fish - not the most responsibly caught fish. What I didn't realize was how much long-lining detracts from the flavor and texture of the fish. A fish caught by "hook and line" is hauled aboard and immediately killed and iced down. By contrast, fish caught via long-lining suffocate and die often hours before they are eventually hauled aboard. The burst blood vessels, etc. make for lower quality meat. One taste of Zenbu's catch and I was a convert. We had the most amazingly fresh fish I have ever had. We ate piece after piece of translucent, melt-in-your-mouth fish, followed by some of the more creative rolls I have seen recently (including one that combined freshwater eel, tempura banana and avocado). One caveat - all of this quality doesn't come cheap, so swing by the bank on your way there.

Aguibal Manzanilla

2007-04-23T21:32:00.000-05:00

Last night, as I was making my famous huckleberry vinaigrette, I realized that I was out of canola oil. Canola is my preferred oil because it is relatively heart healthy and, more importantly, it is nearly flavorless. In a pinch, I had to make the call between a bottle of Aguibal olive oil or a tiny bottle of olive oil that was smuggled back from Tuscany for me. I went with the Aguibal.

Aguibal is an olive oil made exclusively from Manzanilla olives (my favorite). The olives are hand picked, pressed, and bottled without any processing, filtering, or chemicals. The result is an oil that has a very mild aroma and tastes initially very "green." A few seconds later, your mouth is coated with a warm, "peppered endive" flavor. This is a "big" olive oil.

The rest of my salad was comprised of spinach, grilled chicken, red grapes, walnuts and Harbourne cheese (thank you again, Cowgirl). To compensate for the peppery finish in the Aguibal, I used the Harbourne cheese instead of a bolder blue and opted not to finish the salad with fresh ground pepper. It worked brilliantly. Typically this dish comes off a bit sweet, but the addition of the Aguibal added a depth, richness and edge to the dish.

Cowgirl Creamery

2007-04-07T09:07:00.000-05:00

If you haven't yet been, you need to run directly to Cowgirl Creamery. They have the most interesting selection of cheeses I have found in the D.C. area. The U-shaped cheese counter is separated by animal (cow, sheep, goat) and they let you sample everything before you buy. Separate coolers house artisanal butters, chevre, creme fraiche, etc. as well as cheese accompaniments like olives, etc. The front of the store also offers wines, fruit spreads, bread and prepared sandwiches but the main attraction is the cheese.

On this trip, I picked up some of their St. Pat, a hunk of Vermont Shepherd, some Harbourne Blue, a bit of Sottocenere and a bit of what they call "Cabrales Butter."

St. Pat is a cheese they make each spring. It is a whole milk cheese wrapped in stinging nettles. Unlike my other favorite nettle cheese, Taylor Farms Stinging Nettle Gouda, here the nettles are not incorporated in the cheese, but used to wrap the cheese before aging. The leaves imbue the cheese with a fresh, herbal perfume.

The Vermont Shepherd is an old favorite from our days on the "cheese trail" each fall in Vermont. This is a natural rind sheep's milk cheese that is made in the summer, when the ewes have been grazing on fresh grasses and wild herbs. It is light, earthy and leaves a lingering nutty aftertaste.

Harbourne is a blue goat's milk cheese from Neal's Yard Dairy. It is a firm blue cheese (won't crumble easily, but also won't melt at room temperature) whose most appealing trait (in my opinion) is that it is light and almost sweet. This is a rich blue cheese without the "cotton mouth" effect.

Sottocenere is a sweet cow's milk cheese from the Venetto that is infused with black truffles. It is slightly salty and incredibly rich. When we got home, Kate made this into a sinfully rich macaroni & cheese.

"Cabrales Butter" is a 50/50 mix of cabrales cheese and butter. I have yet to try it, but it sounded too good to pass up. It is currently in my freezer and I plan to slice thin disks of it to dress tenderloins the next time I fire up the grill.

Be prepared for sticker shock - many cheeses are over $30 per pound - but many of these cheeses are not available anywhere else in the area, at any price.

Blog 2.0

2007-04-05T22:45:00.000-05:00

Many of you have noticed a precipitous decline in my blogging of late.

While I would like to blame the drop in output on the loss of my culinary wing man to prenatal dietary restrictions, that is only part of the story. A sudden onslaught of fiscal responsibility associated with the dual responsibilities of furnishing a nursery and funding my chocolate lab's expensive chemotherapy habit also played a role.

To be honest, the real reason is that I feel like this blog strayed too far from its intended purpose. I began this effort hoping to chronicle my culinary adventures. What I hadn't planned on was that it would escalate into a game of gastronomic oneupsmanship. This well-intentioned blog devolved into a game of "trophy dining" - a hedonistic parade of increasingly famous, lavish, and expensive restaurants.

With hat in hand, I am now humbly recommitting these pages to their original purpose - the celebration of culinary delights: The first fiddle heads of spring; that bottle of wine you forgot you had in the cellar; that amazing cheese you decided to try against your best hygienic judgement. These are the great moments in gastronomy - and they exist independent of Michelin stars, celebrity chefs, 12-course tasting menus and checks that surpass the monthly rent on your average single family home.

New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival (NOLA)

2006-05-10T21:28:00.000-05:00

Katrina be damned, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival came back in 2006 as strong as ever. This was a much-anticipated homecoming for the hundreds of musicians and artists scattered around the country, as well as an emotional shot in the arm for a population striving to "feel normal" again. However, while the artists and musicians were able to find paying gigs elsewhere in the wake of the storm, the restaurant industry had nowhere to go. Faced with the combination of property damage and a severely depleted client base, many of them are still boarded up, most with a goal of trying to open their doors again by Mardi Gras 2007.

For four days during the second weekend of Jazz Fest, in addition to drinking in the best live music anywhere on Earth, I humbly donated my wallet and my stomach in my own small rebuilding effort. . .

Friday
We landed at 10:30 local time, which gave us enough time to drop off our bags and stock the apartment with beer and groceries before heading to lunch.

Parasol's - We broke with our traditional visit to Fat Harry's on the first day of 'Fest in order to make a pilgrimage to Parasol's. I say pilgrimage, because in a town where every dive bar and gas station sells Po'boys, Parasol's is amongst the best around. Their specialty is a roast beef Po'boy, which I am told is the quintessential roast beef Po'boy. I ordered one of these as well as a shrimp Po'boy, both "dressed." (Just as Philadelphians order their Cheese steaks "wiz wit", you need to learn the New Orleans lexicon. "Dressed" means that your Po’boy will come with lettuce, tomato, pickles and mayo. "Nuttin" means that you will just get the main ingredient on bread (though, generally speaking, the grease from whatever type of Po'boy you order will likely provide sufficient lubricant as it soaks into the crusty French bread.)

[NOTE: Those of you who did not grow up on or at least near the water will have some trouble with the phonetic menu at Parasol's. To order a fried shrimp Po'boy, you would need to point to the line item labeled, "swimps." Similarly, the fried oyster Po'boy appears under "erster." Please do try to play along.]

Let's face it, the difference between a fair Po'boy and an outstanding Po'boy is the bread. Some kitchens work their own brand of voo doo into the batter before frying, others have a lighter touch with the fry basket, but generally speaking, great bread separates the "haves" from the "have nots" in Po'boy land. Parasol's has great bread. The crisp, bordering on sharp, crust yields to a light, airy center that provides the perfect pillow top mattress for whatever you choose to fill it with. You get the dual sensations of sharp crust abrading the corners and roof of your mouth, while the soft center combines with the fry grease or roast beef jus to form almost a savory oatmeal mush on your tongue.

The fried "swimps" Po'boy was great, but for my money, the roast beef Po'boy is the way to go. The beef is warm and cooked all the way through and the resulting Po'boy is what one might expect if a Philly Cheese steak married a French Dip and raised their children in an Irish pub.

We washed these down with a tall, cold pint of Abita amber (from Parasol's bar, just on the other side of a pass-through window) and headed out to the Fairgrounds.

Fairgrounds:
Kajun Kettle Foods - If 'Fest were a religion, Crawfish Monica would be our communion. Every single person at 'Fest eats at least one order of the stuff during their time at the Fairgrounds - and for most it is a daily ritual. After driving through an eerie, semi-deserted, flood-ravaged neighborhood to get to the Fairgrounds, one bite of Crawfish Monica and the World started to seem right again.

Monica consists of spiral shaped pasta smothered in a Creole-infused cheese sauce and punctuated with crawfish. What sounds like a simple recipe is an intoxicating dish that has become the stuff of legends. All through the crowd, you hear whispers of, "my friend actually knows Monica," followed by, "my sister's roommate got the recipe - can you believe it?" Whoever Monica is, she should be canonized.

Scales Strawberry Lemonade - This is another 'Fest favorite. Aside from beer and bottled water, strawberry lemonade forms one third of 'Fest's trinity of liquid hangover fighters: strawberry lemonade, sweet tea, and cafe au lait. The lemonade is fresh-squeezed and over-packed with ice to create a cool, refreshing, not-too-sweet libation that is just what the doctor ordered to stay cool under the hot New Orleans sun.

As an aside, towards the middle of their set on Friday afternoon, Little Feat had Jimmy Buffet join them on stage. This wasn't too much of a stretch, but at one point they broke into a cover of the Dead's "Darkstar." There was a collective look of confusion in the crowd, like nobody was really sure whether they were hearing it, imagining it, or flashing it back.

Fat Harry's - After our first day at 'Fest, we retreated to Fat Harry's to pick up the rest of our party. We got there as they were polishing off their Po'boys and boiled crawfish. We grabbed a few cold beers, closed the tab and headed out for dinner.

Casamento's - Having grown up in Maryland, I couldn't help but fall in love with Casamento's. The front room has a few small tables and an oyster counter and the back room has some longer tables for larger groups. The kitchen is maybe 8x10 and if you want to use the bathroom, you walk out through the kitchen, outside, past the storage area and hang a left. The decor is pastel tiles - floor to ceiling - no muss, no fuss.

They were too busy to take our party of eight, so we crowded around the oyster counter where we sucked down some of the plumpest, freshest oysters I have had in a long time - all for the bargain basement price of $7.95 per baker's dozen (technically the pricing was per dozen, but in Louisiana, you always get a thirteenth oyster on the house - a "lagniappe").

Once we sat down, we perused the menu and quickly made our decisions - the menu is very simple and skewed towards seafood. You basically need to pick an animal and then decide on "platter" (no bread and served with sides), Po'boy, or "loaf" (same philosophy as a Po'boy, but served on thick Texas toast, not a French roll - the result is a higher meat:bread ratio).

I opted to share a cup of oyster stew with Kate and then have the soft-shell crab loaf for dinner. The oyster stew was a letdown. I had some last year at 'Fest and thought it was the best I had ever had outside Maryland's Eastern Shore, but this year's batch was "broken" - the cream separated from the broth into little white chunks that resembled curdled milk. Not good.

The soft-shell crab loaf was a World apart. They crammed two thick fried crabs onto a piece of toast and dressed it with lettuce and tomato. The crabs were juicy, tender and up there with the best of them. I actually struggled to get both down (what with a dozen oysters already rolling around in my belly) but in the end I prevailed. This continues to be one of my favorite places in New Orleans.

Ms. Mae's - Just a few doors down is a fantastic no frills bar. I bought a round of mixed drinks for the eight of us - including a few "doubles" and got change from a $20 bill. We settled in here for a few rounds to let dinner digest and to get ready for some dancing. As a bonus, we got to meet Ms. Mae who, like Yeltsin, is living proof of the preservative effects of alcohol, albeit with the same look of the "living embalmed."

Le Bon Temps - Still trying to decide where to go for the night, we decided to stop in to Le Bon Temps for a quick drink. On our way in, we found out that Anders Osborne would be playing two sets at 11:00, but that it was still early, so there was no cover. We marched in, started ordering drinks and staked out some real estate in the back. Anders put on a great first set in a room that was so packed that he practically had to stand in the crowd to play. The second set wasn't as "tight" so we retreated to the patio to cool off and wind down.

Saturday
We managed to get everybody up, showered and out the door and were sitting on our blanket at the Fairgrounds by noon - truly a logistical feat and a testament to the powers of Advil and Gatorade.

Fairgrounds:
Panorama Foods - We decided it was time for some crawfish bread - the only other foodstuff that comes close to rivaling Crawfish Monica in popularity. The dish consists of a ciabatta-like bread, split horizontally, stuffed with crawfish, cheese and Creole spices and then wrapped in aluminum foil and baked. The result is a delicious pocket of cheesy, hot, dough goodness. The trapped steam moistens the bread and as your teeth sink into it, strings of cheese trail away from your lips to the aluminum foil. Ambrosia.

Papa Ninety Catering - While Kate and I munched on Crawfish bread, our friends picked up an order of boudin balls. Imagine taking the filling for sausage, before it goes into the casing, then rolling it into little balls and tossing it in a deep fryer. This is not recommended for those with a family history of heart disease, but it is truly outstanding. It rivals Chef Nobu's "tempura avocado" under the same belief that the only thing tastier than fat is fat that has been fried in a different fat.

Patton's Caterers - We also picked up some crawfish beignets to snack on. These are similar to the fried dough confection that has made Cafe du Monde famous, but are savory, not sweet. This is accomplished by wrapping the dough around a ball of spicy crawfish before tossing it in the fryer. The resulting golden brown morsels are served with a mustard cream sauce. I think this particular batch was a bit overdone, but I didn't see any go to waste.

We heard some blistering horn section from the Jazz & Heritage stage, so we took our food over there to check it out. We were delighted to see that the Lil' Rascals Brass Band was playing an unscheduled performance AND that Derrick Shezbie and Vincent Broussard from the Rebirth Brass Band were sitting in with them for the set. "I said - I - I - feel like funkinitup - funkinitup-funkinitup-a." How can't you love Jazz 'Fest?

After Theresa Anderson's set, we listened to Warren Haynes lay down a great acoustic set and then went looking for some lunch (yes, the aforementioned food was breakfast).

Vaucresson Sausage Co - Realizing that dinner was only about four hours away, Kate and I decided to split a hot sausage Po'boy from this venerable purveyor. The sausage was dynamite - spicy, reddish sausage somewhere between a hot Italian sausage and chorizo - grilled, split lengthwise and laid out on a French roll. The only downside was that there was about twice as much bread as you needed, so we tossed the top half of the roll and ate ours open-faced. You haven't lived until you have burned the roof of your mouth with pork fat. Next year I will get two small orders and combine the meat from both into one roll.

We got back to the blanket just as Robert Randolph and the Family Band were taking the stage. They played a characteristically upbeat and lively set that concluded with Warren Haynes joining them for a cover of Jimi Hendrix's "Voodoo Child." I go to a lot of concerts and it will take a long time for that memory to be surpassed.

Cafe du Monde - Starting to fade from a day spent dancing, drinking beer and eating fried foods in the sun, I stopped off at the Cafe du Monde stand for a 24 ounce Cafe Au Lait to re-charge my batteries before the Jimmy Buffet set. They offer hot, iced and frozen varieties of this delicious beverage (one of my friends confessed that it contains three of the four essential food groups: caffeine, sugar and fat). I opted for the silky smooth and deceptively strong iced variety and had consumed it all in about 20 paces.

Jimmy played a solid set of mostly old favorites to a standing room only crowd. People packed the infield, spilled over the crown of the track, packed the track itself and I even saw some people on the railing outside the track craning their necks to see the jumbotron. I'm not sure what was in the water this year, but just as he did on Friday with Little Feat, on Saturday evening Jimmy covered another Dead tune, this time it was a fairly inspired version of "Scarlet Begonias."

We packed up our stuff and began my favorite 'Fest tradition - the sprint to Jacque-Imo's. We drive there as fast as we can, screech the car to a stop outside the front door, send in an advance party to negotiate a table and then take turns trying to use the back seat of the car and the sidewalk to change clothes, slather on fresh deodorant, etc.

Jacques-Imo's - As luck would have it, we were early enough that they gave us a table for 10 as long as we were out before the 8:30 reservation showed up. Isn't it funny how when a restaurant in NYC says, "you can only have the table until 8:30" you want to punch them in the face, but when someone in NOLA says it, you thank them for their hospitality? I guess there is a lot to be said for style points. Anyway, we sat down, ordered up a round of drinks and sank our teeth into Jacques' fantastic cornbread while we read the menu. It really is outstanding cornbread - the top caramelizes and seals in the moisture. It is served garnished with butter and a bit of basil.

For starters, we all shared: Fried green tomatoes w/ BBQ shrimp on top, fried oysters, and smoked boudin w/ mustard sauce.

The fried green tomatoes w/ BBQ shrimp have become a signature dish here. The shrimp are massive - often sticking out from both sides of the tomato slices - and cooked to tender perfection under a sweet/spicy glaze of BBQ sauce. We start with two orders and we always want more. Jacques' fried oysters are exactly as they should be - lightly breaded and barely fried - closer resembling a soft chocolate truffle rolled in cocoa powder than the heavy, greasy racquetballs that many people pass off as fried oysters. [NOTE: If you don't want to order a whole portion of them (the only reasonable excuse being that you already ordered the shrimp & fried green tomatoes and ate a plate of corn bread), rest assured - a fried oyster tops every house salad at Jacques'.]

And then came the boudin. I must confess, as much as Maryland was a slave state during the Civil War, I have never felt more like a Yankee than the first time I was served boudin at Jacques'. Unlike sausage everywhere else I have ever had it, in Louisiana, you do not eat the casing, and rather you squeeze the meat out of it like a bizarre savory push pop. During the day, at the 'Fest, people use their hands to squeeze it onto saltines, but at night - armed with fork and knife - it is customary to slit the casing lengthwise and then remove chunks of meat with a fork - more like Scottish haggis than anything else. The sausage inside is a sweet, spicy mixture that is Heaven-sent when dredged through some of Jacques' spicy cream-based mustard sauce.

After these came everyone's house salad - spinach in a light vinaigrette, topped with a fried oyster. It is so simple, but so perfect. It is also routinely the only greens I eat during my entire run at 'Fest each year.

By this point, sun burn, alcohol and the fullness of the appetizer orgy begin to set in and most people forget what they ordered for an entree. What ensues is a confused communal dining where people randomly take a few bites of a dish, then pass it along. Over the course of the meal, I sampled fried chicken w/ corn macquechaux and smothered cabbage, fried grits, fried venison steak and grouper.

The fried chicken is really not to be missed. I know there is nothing exciting about going to a restaurant with a cloth napkin and eating fried chicken, but trust me on this - theirs is amazing (and enough to feed two people comfortably).

I thought the fried venison steak was a little tough and greasy - really a terrible thing to do to venison, but I was in the minority here (when in Rome. . .). The fried grits were a little too close to polenta for my taste, but perhaps I just wasn't in the mood for fried anything else at that point in the meal.

Finally, the grouper was a nice, light change of pace. A remarkably fresh piece of fish delicately seasoned and bursting with moisture. It marks the first time in the history of civilized man that fish was successfully used as a palate cleanser.

We stopped back at the apartment for a quick change of clothes and then headed out to Ms. Mae's again to fortify ourselves for the "late night show" at Tipitina's. Our tickets said "Greyboy Allstars - 2AM" but I think they went on stage closer to 3:00 and were still playing when we called it a night at 6:30.

Sunday
Sunday is a special day at 'Fest - aside from the fact that everything has a fuzzy “morning after” haze about it, nowhere else on Earth is going to "church" more fun. I am not a religious man, but a quick stop by the gospel tent on Sunday morning of 'Fest and I feel like I shave years off my time in purgatory. Afterwards, my attention turns to thoughts of "what do I need to eat more of, since it has to last me a whole year?"

Fairgrounds:
Mrs. Wheat's Fabulous Foods - Spicy Natchitoches Meat Pies are an old Louisiana tradition. After Katrina, their factory was destroyed, so they relocated to Atlanta, set up shop, and returned to the 'Fest this year same as it ever was. Grab a piping hot meat pie (in a wax paper bag) and pour hot sauce straight into the bag. After a few quick shakes (remember the instructions on the back of a "Shake and Bake" box?) you are good to go. A crispy, flaky outer shell yields to a gooey inner layer of dough and a hot mixture of meat and potatoes smothered in hot sauce. This is to Louisiana what samosas are to Indian fare.

Galley Seafood Restaurant - Just after I picked up my sack of meat pies, Kate spotted the soft-shell crab Po’boy sign. This turned out to be an exceptional soft-shell crab. It was still juicy and had just the right meat:bread ratio (they used smaller rolls to avoid the mistake that the Vaucresson Sausage folks were making half way across the Fairgrounds). We had no sooner paid for our breakfast than the skies erupted and the rain that had been threatening to pour down all weekend finally arrived. We polished off our food under a blue tarp (cliché, I know – at least I didn’t say “FEMA tarp”) and when the sun finally came back out, went looking for dessert.

Cafe du Monde - If you aren't already in love with what you have read of 'Fest above, this should seal the deal. All day - every day - at the Fairgrounds, the lovely people fro Cafe du Monde serve up fresh beignets and cafe au lait. These are the real deal - the original - the often imitated and never equaled - little mounds of powder sugar covered fried dough. Imagine the best funnel cake you ever had at a state fair growing up, this is hundreds of times better - this is Plato's form of the fried dough. We grabbed a plate of beignets - fresh from the fryer - and headed back to our now water-logged blanket.

Sunshine Concessions - With more powder on our face than at an Escobar family reunion, we stopped off for some sweet tea to cut through the sticky paste of powdered sugar that lined our mouths.

Shortly after returning to our blanket, Paul Simon came out onto the Acura stage to deliver a truly uninspiring performance. He sounded old, frail and out of tune. He also selected songs that were slower and somehow more depressing than you could ever imagine. Hey Paul - you are playing in New Orleans after Katrina - and the audience in front of you is now sitting in a sea of mud - maybe now is NOT the time to play, "bridge over troubled water." He didn't even bother to bring his usual assortment of fourth world backup singers/dancers. We left after a few songs in search of anything that might give us a reason to live.

Mrs. Linda's Catering - Mrs. Linda is famous for serving food in the wee hours of the morning to denizens of Tipitina's. Her signature dish is called Ya Ka Mein - a spicy beef noodle soup that locals have nicknamed, "old sober." We grabbed a bowl of this while listening to the Real Untouchables Brass Band. Between the searing horn riffs and the beads of sweat forming under my eyes from the pepper in "old sober" we managed to exorcise Paul Simon's demons.

Coffee Cottage - The one note most appropriate to end 'Fest with (unless you need a fourth or fifth Monica or crawfish bread) is white chocolate bread pudding. Coffee Cottage makes this deliciously gooey bread pudding in massive baking trays and serves it with ice cream scoops. Once your scoop is safely nestled in a bowl, they baptize it with a white chocolate sauce. The sticky, sweet, warm confection melts in your mouth and somehow eases the pain of having to face the end of 'Fest.

We left towards the end of Lionel Ritchie's set and made a beeline for Frankie & Johnny's.

Frankie & Johnny's - This little place looks like something you could drive by a dozen times and never notice. Even if you got past the grease trap on the front sidewalk and actually walked in, the entrance is a dark, smoky, low-ceilinged bar that looks very uninviting to out of towners. Those that press on - and more than a few do - are treated to some of the most honest cooking around. This is pure Louisiana cooking - nothing fancy: crawfish, Po'boys, gumbo, jambalaya, etc. - served on sticky red and white checkered plastic tablecloths with pitchers of beer. What could be better?

The thing to do here is put in an order for crawfish, pitchers of beer and several orders of "fried pepper rings" while you look over the menu. The crawfish are superlative (they boil them with knobs of garlic, which imbues a unique depth of flavor), but the fried pepper rings are as good as they are unique. They take green bell peppers, slice them into rings, batter then and then fry them before serving a heaping mound accompanied by a ranch dressing dipping bowl. What a great concept - and one that could only be born in LA - take something healthy, bread it, fry it in fat, and serve it with a bowl of a second kind of fat to dip it in. Try it - you'll like it.

After the crawfish and fried peppers were cleared away, they brought out our salads. Don't get excited - these are iceberg lettuce and a plastic cup of dressing - you almost with they wouldn't bother.

After that, as at Jacques Imo's, there was a random sampling of entrees that ranged from gumbo and jambalaya to crawfish and shrimp Po'boys and even a fried catfish. I thought the gumbo was a little thin and bland, but the jambalaya was simply amazing - thick, spicy, full of bits of andouille - exactly what I was hoping for when I ordered it. The Po'boys are fantastic as well - I think the crawfish Po'boy is better than the shrimp, for what its worth. Finally, the fried catfish may have been the best thing on the menu. It was a butter flied catfish, glowing red with spices and very lightly fried. The meat was tender and not at all flakey the way catfish can get when it is over-cooked. Next year I will be hard pressed to decide between the catfish and the jambalaya.

Cooter Brown's - We retreated to Cooter's for some of their 100+ beers afterwards. Next year I want to sample the curious new potato and cheese mixture that most people seemed to have on their tables at Cooter's - it looked like some pre-historic ancestor of cheese fries.

We ended the night at one of our favorite clubs in NOLA - Blue Nile. This place was closed after Katrina, opened up just for Mardi Gras and 'Fest (with temporary walls erected to make it structurally sound) and was to begin a total re-build as soon as the last note was played at Jazz Festival. We caught the better part of three sets from Kermit Ruffins - the legendary trumpet virtuoso. He sounded as good as ever and true to form, despite promises to "play all night long" we walked off stage early in his third set at just after 3AM. Feel free to stop by Cafe du Monde on your way back out of thw Quarter if you didn't already get your beignets fix.

Monday
Monday is the first day of recovery post-'Fest. The unlucky ones have to do this at work or on a 6Am flight. Savvy veterans of 'Fest know to take Monday off, sleep in, get one last big meal in NOLA and then face the World on Tuesday. We were in the latter camp.

Superior - This is a micro chain of very good Mexican restaurants in LA. We dropped in to drink as much water as we could and devour as many baskets of corn chips as they would bring us.

We started off with chile con queso, which was a thick, spicy, meat and cheese concoction that broke more than a few chips. We also sampled a surprisingly good crab, scallop and avocado ceviche while we nursed our water (and maybe a few margaritas).

From there, we moved on to a soup course - every entree is served with your choice of black bean or tortilla soup. Both were good, but the tortilla soup was the better of the two, with a real spicy kick to it versus the somewhat tired black bean soup. We finished up with chicken and beef fajitas all around. There was nothing remarkable here - just your better than average fresh fajitas.

With full bellies, hardened arteries, ringing ears and scarred livers, we made our way back to the airport having had another tremendously successful 'Fest.

As Kermit Ruffins says, "if you don't love this life, you must be crazy."

Rasika (DC - Penn Quarter)

2006-04-24T21:11:00.000-05:00

We stopped in for another memorable meal at Rasika recently. This time we arrived before our reservation, so we killed some time at the bar, where we discovered some interesting cocktails and perhaps the best bar snacks in the area.

I ordered the "Geezzy Teasy" (something like that) which is an odd combination of Raj gin poured over ice cubes made of tonic, bitters and lime juice. Raj is more herbal than most gin and by putting all of the other flavors in the ice cubes, you get a drink that actually gets better as it sits, as opposed to the other way around. You need to really like gin to enjoy this, but the flavor is somewhere between a gin and tonic and a Collins. It went perfectly with the spiced popcorn they serve in paper funnels at the bar. The concoction is a mix of sweet and hot spiced popcorn and a few fried chilies (watch out - get one of these stuck in your teeth and it is lights out).

For dinner, we repeated many of our favorite dishes (see previous review http://cenoergosum.blogspot.com/2006/02/rasika-dc-penn-quarter.html), but added the following:

Ginger scallops - This is a delicate dish with hints of ginger that get more or less lost in the sea of garlic and honey. There is a bit of a pepper kick at the end, but even those with meek taste buds will enjoy it. The scallops themselves were perfectly tender and unlike anything you have ever had in an Indian restaurant before.

Sag Paneer - I'm not sure you will actually find Saag Paneer on the menu, but that didn't stop Kate from ordering it. The waiter deftly combined the Spinach from the Palak Makki and the Paneer from the Paneer Makhani to customize the dish she had in mind. The spinach was great - bright green, fresh, not at all drowning in cream the way it usually gets served and the cheese was brilliant as well - firm, sharp cheese curds that bore little resemblance to the mushy globs that festoon most take out Indian dishes.

Shrimp Pepper Masala - This was probably the biggest hit of the three new dishes. A plate of juicy, tender shrimp smothered in a thick tomato-based sauce simply radiating with heat from the pepper. As intense as the heat is in this dish, it is at the front of the mouth, not the tongue and is dissipates quickly.

Rasika continues to fire on all cylinders.

Jackson Hole Dining (WY - Jackson Hole)

2006-02-28T21:18:00.000-05:00

Jackson Hole has changed very little in the thirteen years since I last visited. The elk still roam just outside of town, stray moose still stop traffic occasionally and Rendezvous Mountain is still "the big one."

The most noticeable change is the culinary revolution that has been carried into town in the wake of the fur and jewel encrusted jet-setters that now make Jackson their playground.

A day on the slopes used to be followed with nachos and a beer at the Mangy Moose or steak and ribs at any one of a half dozen chop houses. If you were really going out on the town, you would head to the Cadillac Grille.

Today, Jackson boasts three Thai restaurants, three sushi restaurants, a wine bar, a microbrewery and myriad restaurants that would feel right at home in Chicago, New York or Los Angeles. Even the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar now serves its Pabst in BOTTLES.

Day 1

We landed too late to get in any skiing, so we unpacked, took a nap (damn elevation) and then headed out to an early dinner.

Koshu - Koshu is a wine bar and 20-seat Asian restaurant attached to the Jackson Hole Wine Company. Most people who come to Koshu for the food stop into JHWC and buy a bottle to BYO.

JHWC does a brisk business in everything from cold cases of my beloved PBR to bottles of first growth Bordeaux. I was shocked at the selection. They have every wine growing region, price point and format represented. Want a $9 magnum of white zin? No problem. A split of Vin Santo? Check. A $100+ bottle of Napa Valley Cab? Pick your vintage.

The restaurant itself is just a handful of tables and a few seats at a bar. The back wall is opaque Plexiglas that hides what would be an open kitchen. The result is that you can see shadows dancing back and forth in the kitchen, but not make out the detail - like shadow puppets.

We started with a few selections from their fairly extensive list of wines by the glass, seaweed salad and "dry fried green beans." The seaweed salad was good enough - the stuff you get in most Japanese restaurants (sesame oil, a little lemon, etc.) but the green beans were superlative. They are coated in hoi sin sauce and sesame seeds before being pan fried. They come out slightly crispy on the outside, but still tender in the center and the hoi sin reduces to a thick glaze.

For entrees, we shared a Vietnamese chicken bowl and Coho salmon in green curry. The chicken bowl was disappointing. It was bland and colorless with the chicken grainy and dry - showing signs of having been kept at high temperatures for a long time (think of those immense vats of soup in your college cafeteria that were continually replenished, but you never actually saw them emptied and cleaned).

The Coho was another story altogether. Vibrant, tell-tale vermilion flesh still raw in the center riding on a wave of pungent green curry and coconut milk. We discarded the sad Vietnamese chicken and devoured the Coho. When we were done, we dumped in a bowl of rice in order to soak up every last drop of the green curry.

Day 2

We had a great day of skiing with clear blue skies and temperatures in the mid teens. After a hot tub back at our hotel and late afternoon tea, we showered up and headed into town.

Million Dollar Cowboy Bar - You want Wild West kitsch? You've got it. Saddles are mounted as bar stools, Wagon wheels are turned into chandeliers and yes, just like at the Phil Vassar concert, you can pick up a souvenir thong for that special lady in your life.

After a few PBRs and some good natured shenanigans with a group of wayward Montanans, we settled up and headed over to OYG.

Old Yellowstone Garage - A few people suggested that this was a pretty decent Italian joint (many of the same people who told me to avoid Nani's at all cost) but everyone we met swore by the Sunday night pizza dinner at OYG. For $18 per person, you get a salad of mixed greens and all-you-can-eat of whatever pizzas the chefs feel like making that night.

They manage to keep it civilized, with the chefs making four or five of a given type of pizza and then dispersing the wait staff in different directions. You then have five to ten minutes to wait before the next pizza is pulled out of the brick oven.

Over the course of the evening, we sampled:

- spicy pepperoni
- pesto / sausage / red onion
- red pepper / zucchini / potato
- four cheese
- pesto / potato ("Genovese")
- grilled chicken / mushroom
- grilled chicken / pepperoni / sausage

Our favorites were the pesto / sausage / red onion and the four cheese white pizza, but they were all very good. I highly recommend this if you are in Jackson on a Sunday night.

Day 3

The wind kicked up a bit, carrying in clouds and the promise of fresh snow. We had a great morning of skiing and then stopped for lunch at Casper Lodge (at the top of the Sweetwater Triple).

Casper Lodge - Sunday afternoon we choked down some pretty bad "rubber" turkey burgers at Casper, but the weather was so glorious, we didn't really care. Monday, we had the opposite experience - a killer cheese steak eaten near the fire as we sought shelter from the whipping winds and poor visibility.

Casper is great - a warming hut that serves a surprisingly wide variety of good food. Aside from the Mangy Moose, this is probably the best option for slope side food at Jackson. If you go, be sure to go early (before 11:30) as the place can get very crowded.

After a few more runs, we called it a day, with flat light, shadows and drifting snow conspiring to get the better of tired legs.

We partook in our daily ritual of hot tub and afternoon tea before showering off and heading back to Koshu for drinks. We had a few glasses of wine and then walked two blocks to the Blue Lion.

Blue Lion - We had reservations at the Rendezvous Bistro (same owners as Snake River Grill) but really didn't feel like taking a cab or bus to and from dinner, so we cancelled it and scrounged up a table at Blue Lion. Big mistake. Huge.

The Blue Lion feels like a holdout from an earlier, less culinarily advanced era - the culinary equivalent of a wooly mammoth. Everything is just a bit overdone - massive salads come with the entrée and meats are drowned in heavily seasoned sauces. They have completely missed the boat on everything good that has happened in cooking in this country in the last 15 years (fresh ingredients, simple preparations, smaller portions, etc.).

We started with the French Onion Soup and a bowl of the daily special, a White Bean and Sausage stew. The French onion was pretty good and massive - it could have been an entree by itself. The White Bean and Sausage soup was somewhere between a cassoulet and a ribbolita - a thick mélange of beans, sausage and green vegetables. This was also very good, but man did it drop into your stomach harder than a bad matzoh ball.

The salads arrived with a Chipotle/Raspberry dressing. I was very much looking forward to this dressing, before I realized it was basically Russian dressing from a bottle with nary a hint of Chipotle to be found.

For entrees, my wife had the house specialty, Rack of Lamb and I had an Elk Tenderloin. The Rack was massive. There were eight or nine chops, heavily breaded and floating in thick rosemary cream sauce. Inside they were perfectly medium rare, but you couldn’t taste the meat through the hard shell of butter and seasoned breadcrumbs. Any lamb essence that might have slipped through was instantly drowned out by the rich rosemary cream sauce. They could have served my ski boot in the same preparation with no noticeable impact on the overall flavor of the dish.

The Elk Tenderloin was beautifully cooked. It was silky smooth, deep purple in the center (I requested it rare) and the texture was a velvety, melt-in-your-mouth feeling that even the best beef tenderloin struggles to achieve. Unfortunately, it too was drowned in a rich sauce - this time the culprits were green peppercorns and brandy. Minus the sauce, this dish would have sung - garnish with some fresh vegetables and a starch and you have a real award winner here. Drowned under the brandy and supported by a cast of over-cooked green beans in butter and ready-mix mashed potatoes, it simply a terrible thing to do to a great piece of meat.

We cut our losses and skipped dessert.

Day 4

We decided to give our legs a day of rest from skiing and try our hand at dog sledding. We drove the hour and a half north to Togwotee Lodge, where we spent the morning behind a team of 12 eager dogs. I can't say enough good things about this experience - especially if you are a dog lover. You are alone in the back country, with the only sounds coming from the dog's breath and the crunch of the snow under the sled's runners. Absolutely breathtaking. Togwotee Lodge - Our half day package included round trip transportation, dog sledding and lunch at the Togwotee Lodge. I suggest you skip the lunch. We had well done bison burgers served with cold fries in a room that felt very much like a high school cafeteria - well, what your high school cafeteria might have felt like had it been full of snowmobile operators ogling your women folk because they hadn't seen another female in days. I recommend saving the $20 a head and scooting back to town to visit Sweetwater or the Bunnery for lunch instead.

We spent the late afternoon lounging in the hot tub and napping and then headed off to an early dinner at Trio.

Trio - As I mentioned earlier, when a "star" restaurant experiences chef defection and said chefs hang out their own shingle just down the street, then a town has reached culinary maturity. When three chefs from the Snake River Grill left to open Trio, Jackson dining came of age.

Trio is a zero aesthetic sort of place. Simple wood floors, corrugated metal walls, high unfinished ceilings and an open kitchen with a few seats at the bar. It felt like they hired the same design firm as the folks over at Koshu. [By the way - I mean Trio and Koshu no disrespect. I actually prefer zero decor - and am highly skeptical of restaurants that spend too much attention on the decoration.]

Our waiter was the first person we met in Jackson who I believe actually knew something about food. Many restaurants neglect the front of the house, especially in a resort town, but the gang at Trio really spent some time educating the servers. He had sampled everything on the menu and was as facile describing their béchamel sauce preparation as he was commenting on the cold front that was moving in (most waiters in Jackson are way more comfortable discussing snow conditions than food).

We started with a mango mojito for my wife and - against my better judgment - a basil mojito for me. These are the sort of drinks that usually signal an unhappy end to the evening for me - not because of their alcohol content, but because they are a great leading indicator of the trendy cuisine that will likely follow.

We sucked these down while snacking on the delicious basil infused olive oil and fresh bread. They infuse their oil at the restaurant, which I know isn't that hard to do, but theirs is really outstanding stuff - like a very good basil pesto, without the gravity of the garlic or cream. [BTW - our candidate for “Resort Town Waiter of the Year" was able to describe in painstaking detail how the chefs infuse the oil with such a strong basil flavor.]

We started with the "BLT soup" and Waffle Fries w/ Blue Cheese Sauce. Our waiter noticed we planned to share both, so he split the soup for us and had it plated as two smaller bowls. It arrived looking exactly like something out of Todd English's deconstructionist daydreams - a pool of deep red tomato soup punctuated with chunks of crispy pancetta and a mound of green lettuce "pesto." Individually, the tomato soup, lettuce and pancetta were very good, but when sampled together, it absolutely tasted like a BLT sandwich - a little "gimmicky," but good.

I would never have seen the waffle fries at the bottom of the menu - and had I seen them, I would almost certainly never have ordered them - but the front desk clerk at our hotel told us they were her favorite dish in Jackson. She is definitely onto something. A pile of crispy, golden-brown waffle fries is covered in a blue cheese béchamel sauce. The sauce is rich, but not overpowering and the blue cheese just sings. Do not miss this dish. I recommend a progressive dinner beginning with Koshu's green beans followed by these fries. . .

For an entree, we split the Elk Bolognaise, a hallmark of the chefs' former employer. This was lighter than I was expecting and actually tasted like elk. It reminded me very much of some of the boar and other wild game ragout we had last fall in Tuscany.

We were going to skip dessert, but our waiter noted that the banana crepes are "out of this World." He is right. They serve three fresh crepes under a wave of grand marnier, bananas, candied walnuts and vanilla ice cream. It is a good thing we are spending our days burning calories on the slopes.

Day 5

OK, so maybe dog sledding isn't as relaxing as we had originally thought. We woke up too sore to even think about skiing, so we crawled down to breakfast and then directly to the hot tub. As it turns out, the road to the mountain was closed anyway due to white out conditions. We lazed in front of the fire, reading until we got hungry for lunch.

Sweetwater Grill - After settling into a cozy seat next to the potbelly stove, I realized that I was one of only two men in the entire restaurant. It wasn't uncomfortable, just a little "Stepford" for my tastes - like walking into any restaurant in New Canaan, CT for a late lunch on a weekday. The ladies who lunch come here for the salads, sandwiches and fresh baked goods, though most just push them around on the plate. Those of us who actually intend to consume the food at Sweetwater aren't disappointed either.

We both had salads that, despite being some of the first leafy greens we had seen in WY, were excellent. My Baja chicken salad with ranch dressing was solid, as was my wife's Cobb salad. NB: both salads were massive and could easily have been shared.

After a stroll around town and a stop at The Bunnery for coffee, we headed home to resume reading by the fire.

For dinner, we were jonseing for Thai food in the worst way. Even since moving to New York City in 2000, I have noticed that I start to get the shakes every three to four days if I haven't gotten my fix of coconut milk, lemongrass, kefir lime, chili peppers and curry. After some brief confirmatory diligence with the front desk at our hotel, we decided on a place we had overheard some locals raving about - Teton Thai.

Teton Thai - When the people of faaaabulous Jackson get to be too much for you to stomach, this is the place to go. To get there, you walk a few blocks off the town square, down an alley and through a court yard, ultimately arriving in a 10'x20' room that pushes maximum density to contain a lunch counter, cooler, cash register and kitchen. Cash only. BYO.

Here people cram shoulder to shoulder at the bar, or just stand up to eat. Two Thai women work the stove at a feverish pace while extreme skiing videos play on the TV overhead and the thick, sweet perfume of Thai cooking hangs in the air like a modern day opium den.

We stopped off at JHWC to pick up a bottle of wine on the way (no need to chill it, really - at 12 degrees outside, it is pretty much chilled by the time you make the ten minute walk to the restaurant). When we got there, we grabbed two empty seats and a menu and tried our best to blend in. It was no use. We were not just the only ones in the restaurant that didn't have a season pass, we were the only ones in the restaurant that didn't work at the mountain. It didn't help that we were drinking Caymus Conundrum while everyone else swapped beers.

The food is outstanding. We split a chicken satay to start and then moved on to Pad See Ew and a Massaman Curry that was served in a bowl big enough to backstroke in. The Pad See Ew had a vinegar-tanginess to it that was a little odd, but it was good nonetheless. The Massaman Curry offered chicken and potatoes in a thick, spicy red curry. After fishing out all of the meat and potatoes, I dumped in the rice to repeat the ritual scavenging that I performed with the green curry a few nights earlier at Koshu.

As we were leaving, some of our fellow diners were busy working the phones to find friends to cover for them at work in the morning - it appeared certain that a front was moving in and bringing with it more of the "fresh."

Day 6

The kids were right - it started snowing after midnight and when we got to the mountain there were six inches of fresh snow and counting. We skied all morning, taking advantage of the fresh to explore more of the mountain, eventually grabbing a late lunch at the base.

Cafe 6311 - The lines here are very long, no matter when you arrive. They offer made to order sandwiches, coffee, breakfast and smoothies. We split a turkey sandwich and a mango smoothie that were both very good, but not worth the effort it took to get them.

We skied the rest of the day and then grabbed a sunset hot tub before changing for dinner.

Snake River Brewing Company - This is another place that some locals recommended to us, more for the beer than the food. Sure enough, the place was mostly packed with locals. We saw the night bellman from our hotel as well as the musher from our day of dog sledding both hanging out at the bar. I don't want you to get the wrong idea about me, but is there anything better after a long day of skiing than a cold beer? We sampled a few of SRB's offerings:

Snake River Pale Ale - Light, hoppy, refreshing beer with a bit of backbone to it

Last Tram Ale - Malty, amber ale that reminded me very much of - forgive me - Sam Adams

Monkey's Dunkle - Classic German inspired dark lager that is smooooooooooth

Zonker Stout - SRB's award winning stout is more coffee and chocolate than cream, if you know what I mean (think Beamish, not Guinness or if you are on the old sod, "home" not "away")

We bid our friends farewell and headed back to the center of town for a "gut buster" at Billy's.

Billy's Burger - This venerable grease trap has been on the town square in Jackson forever (at least it seems that way). In addition to providing the burgers for the Cadillac Grille next door, they also have a few dozen stools at their counter. You can expect thick, fresh, greasy burgers and waffle fries all served with the wit and witticism of Billy's line cooks. This isn't haute cuisine, but when you need a really good burger, this is the place to go.

Day 7

Another six inches of fresh snow overnight brought the three day total to an even two feet of snow. We were on the mountain when the lifts opened and skied through noon before taking a break, opting instead to eat a late lunch in town on our way back to the hotel.

Mountain High Pizza Pie - This is another local favorite. Nothing comes close to New York pizza, but this place makes some very good - and very creative - pies. You can choose thin or thick crust and select from ingredients as pedestrian as pepperoni to as adventuresome as Thai sesame sauce. We had a small thick crust Sunny Pesto pizza - a chewy crust topped with pesto, mozzarella, sun dried tomatoes and chicken.

After lunch we strolled around town before all of the shops closed, eventually stopping into Shades for a cup of coffee.

Shades Cafe - This place is tucked in just down the street from Sweetwater and is a funky combination of two parts coffee house to one part sandwich shop. The coffee was pretty bad, but the food we saw while we waited (and believe me, we waited a long time) looked and smelled very good.

Wild Sage - Nothing in Jackson requires you to get terribly gussied up, but there is something very appealing about not having to put on a parka to walk to dinner, so we decided to try the restaurant on the first floor of our hotel. Besides, after eating fantastic breakfasts all week, and getting to know all of the wait staff by name, it would have felt rude not to try them for dinner at least once.

Wild sage only has about six tables and the open kitchen is at most 8'x8'. The wince cellar shares one wall with a fireplace and the other wall is windows that look out on the town of Jackson. We had a quiet table near the window and after selecting a wine, were offered an amusee of tuna sashimi with sriracha sauce.

We began with the Yakinori Salad Roll and the Venison with Sweet Potato Gnocchi. The salad rolls were passable - crisp fresh vegetables wrapped in rice paper and served with a racy ginger, ponzu and lemongrass dipping sauce. The venison was better, with the peppercorn and juniper berry crust on the meat providing a good counterpoint to the silky sweetness of the gnocchi, but was very heavy as a first course.

For entrees, we had the Montana Beef Tenderloin with Red Potato Hash and the Achiote Rubbed Wapiti Loin. The tenderloin was pretty simple - a beautifully rare piece of meat astride a mound of red skin mashed potato and garnished with a ratatouille of sorts. This wasn't overly creative, but very high quality.

I was drawn to the wapiti (elk) loin because it was described as being prepared with an achiote rub and a hemp seed mole. I had visions of luscious, gamey elk cured in spicy pepper and cooled with rich mole. I could not have been more wrong. The elk was perfectly rare, but there was no trace of the achiote and whatever "mole" was there got lost in a sea of mushroom and tomato which was described as "cuitlacoche and smoked Portobello ragout" but I can't honestly vouch for that claim. [NOTE: cuitlacoche is a fungus that grows on corn in Mexico] There were so many different ingredients, but the flavor had all washed out and on the whole, the dish was a real let down. Remember our favorite German architect’s mantra, "less is more." The dish was an optical disaster as well - shades of grey and red intertwined on the plate like some leftover goulash from behind the iron curtain.

For dessert we had the Chocolate Mousse Martini and the Croissant Bread Pudding. Both were outstanding. The chocolate mousse arrived in a martini glass and topped with an "olive" of milk chocolate wrapped around peanut butter. The bread pudding was a thick, rich, gooey mess of croissant chunks, pear/apple chutney, caramel sauce and vanilla ice cream.

All-in, this was a decent meal, but very uneven. I think the kitchen suffers a bit from an inferiority complex - trying to dress up their dishes to justify the lofty prices on the menu as though diners somehow do food cost calculations in their head during dinner and judge restaurants by that math.

Day 8

Well, all good things eventually come to an end. For our last day at Jackson, the sun came out and we enjoyed the blue skies and mild temperatures as we cruised all over the mountain. Finally, just after noon, we got in line for our last tram ride ever (the tram was retired on April 2, 2006).

After some technical difficulties (one of the tram cars hit a tower and sheared off some piece of equipment), they got us up top. After some photos, my wife rode the tram back down and I headed off to race her to the bottom. Once we were all present and accounted for at the bottom, we grabbed some PBR pounders to enjoy in the sunshine, toasted the mountain and then kicked off our skis to head to the Mangy Moose to relax.

The Mangy Moose - This is a Jackson institution. There is a dining room attached to the bar, but the real draw is the noisy bar with great live music, cold beer, a roaring fire and solid bar food. These are what get this place named "the best après ski bar in North America" time after time. They proudly serve, amongst other brews, two of our favorite domestic beers: Moose Drool Stout and Fat Tire Amber Ale. We ordered a few of these to nurse our quivering quads while we awaited our order of their famous nachos.

The nachos measure a full twelve inches across and eight inches high. Inside this tangled mess are tortilla chips, beef chili, jalapeno peppers, melted cheddar and jack cheese, sour cream, salsa and guacamole. These are some of the best nachos around. The two of us picked at them for half an hour and still barely made a dent.

We caught a ride back to town, enjoyed one last après ski hot tub and then took a nap before heading to dinner.

Snake River Grill - This place has the reputation as the best restaurant in Jackson. As such, it attracts all of the beautiful people that the locals love to hate.

The uniform for women is tight black pants or Sevens jeans tucked into newly-purchased cowboy boots crafted from an exotic leather (extra points for endangered species) with an over-sized belt buckle of semi precious stones, a tight-fitting, low cut top that shows off the 300-600 cubic centiliters of what God DIDN'T give you (but your surgeon did) and a fur. Men generally wear the same uniform below the waist, with slicked back hair and an unbuttoned blazer up top. Nowhere else in Jackson are people quite as pushy, loud and obnoxious and the overall feel of the place reminds me very much of why I moved out of Manhattan a few years ago.

I was immediately on edge and as my wife and I took turns rolling our eyes, I was determined to hate this restaurant.

Try as I might, I couldn't do it. The server was a charming, knowledgeable, altogether too perky woman who knew the ins and outs of every dish on the menu and was even fairly well versed in the wine selections. We started with Buffalo Carpaccio and the special, Venison Tamale.

The Carpaccio was one of those elusive "perfect" dishes - ruby-red slices of buffalo topped with cracked black pepper and very thinly shaved pieces of pecorino. The gamey flavors of the buffalo paired perfectly with the slightly nutty notes in the cheese.

The tamale was bizarre. I would never have ordered it, except that the waitress assured us that, "I don't normally eat tamales, but this one is great." Inside the corn husk were tender morsels of venison, bits of mushrooms and spicy red peppers all combined with some of the softest tamale filling I had ever tasted. This stuff was closer in consistency to good risotto than it was to that kindergarten paste that you typically find inside tamales.

Next we opted for the restaurant's famous Wild Game Bolognaise and the chef's signature Crispy Pork Shank. The wild game bolognaise was outstanding - a plate of papardelle dotted with tender bits of venison and elk in a hearty tomato-based sauce. This was comfort food of the first order - reminiscent both of the Elk Bolognaise from Trio and of many of the game-based pasta dishes we enjoyed in Tuscany.

The pork shank is another dish that I was prepared to look past until our waitress recommended it. It arrived as a Fred Flintstone sized pork shank on its end rising out of a bowl of sauce like some porcine iceberg. The outer skin is crisped to perfection - what my Southern friends would attest to as "good cracklings" and glowed golden brown in the dim light of the dining room. Inside, the meat was tender, pink, succulent and fell off the bone in ribbons, cascading into the moat of tangy, vinegar-based sauce below. The caramelized cippoline onions that garnished the dish tied it all together, proving an adequate foil for both the opulence of the pork and the bite of the sauce. I wasn't quite able to finish this dish, but I desperately wanted to.

The waitress left us alone for a bit of a breather as we worked through the rest of our wine and buoyed our strength for a run at the dessert menu. In the end, we couldn't avoid the "New Orleans Style Beignets." Jazz Fest is just around the corner and when the waitress admitted that these were made to order, we had to try them. The piping hot balls of fried dough arrived at our table in a paper cone, having been freshly dusted in powdered sugar. On their own, they were outstanding, but dipped into the accompanying pool of melted semi-sweet chocolate, they were divine.

Suffice it to say, if you can stomach the other guests at SRG, the food is well worth the trip.

2941 Restaurant (VA - Falls Church)

2006-02-15T22:33:00.000-05:00

Ahh Virginia - land of Civil War battlefields, Beltway Bandits, Red State values and yes, serious food. No, I'm not talking about that much ballyhooed Relais & Chateaux joint in Little Washington (I think we've all realized by now how far they have fallen), I'm talking about 2941 Restaurant.

I had my doubts at first. A Falls Church location and naming the place after the address were serious warning signs. Falls Church conjures visions of strip mall ethnic food, not fine dining and the "name your restaurant after your address" thing was very popular in the late nineties - with many restaurants that are no longer with us. I worried that I was stumbling into just the current power lunch spot du jor, struggling to attract dinner crowds.

My first experience at 2941 was on a sleepy Sunday evening in May. I was completely blown away by the breadth of ingredients and depth of flavors. Knowing that you can't draw a trend line through a single data point, I went back Tuesday night - on Valentine's Day. Sure the kitchen hums when it is slow and everything under the sun is coming into season, but how would it be on the busiest night of the year, with a more challenging sourcing environment?

They didn't skip a beat. A small group of us dined at the kitchen table and came away convinced that 2941 is turning out some of the best food in the area. Period.

First of all, this is one of the most pleasant kitchen tables I have ever experienced. Some, like Charlie Trotter's and the one at Galileo are cramped, in-the-way offerings, where you feel the heat of the line, experience every smell of the kitchen and occasionally get tossed around by over-zealous runners. Others, like Tru are so civilized that it is hardly like being in a kitchen at all - almost like sitting in a private room watching the Food Network.

2941 is the best of both Worlds. You are set back into an alcove that provides sound protection and climate control, while also providing a front row seat for all of the drama that unfolds over the course of a service. Two examples underscore my point: First, someone was shaving fresh black truffles just ten feet from the table, but because of the ventilation, we couldn't smell a thing; Second, someone dropped a tray of crystal wine glasses next to our table, but we were completely untouched - safe and sound in our alcove.

The meal began with the restaurant's signature bread service. DC is the baking equivalent of Chernobyl - there has been no life here for so long that we begin to doubt if there ever will be again. Against this sad backdrop, where Firehook passes for good bread and Cake Love is where people go for desserts, 2941 rolls their own. The result looks to me like they are trying to run up the score. Every night, they serve up to eight different freshly baked breads, each one better than the one before. On your table will be everything from a plain French baguette to a pumpernickel raisin bread, a sun dried tomato and oregano bread, an olive and rosemary bread and even a chocolate and cherry bread. You could very easily make a meal out of the bread basket and a bottle of wine (Hell, they could serve the bread basket with a flight of wines paired to each bread and call it a day!).

As we gorged ourselves on bread, the first course arrived, a lobster bisque with aged sherry, tarragon oil and chervil paired with champagne. The bisque was a deep orange/brown - the kind that comes from roasting your own shells, not using the bright pink crap from SYSCO. [Don't laugh, I worked in a white tablecloth place in Baltimore that added MSG to the SYSCO stuff, garnished it with canned lobster meat and sent it out the door for $15.] It was a silky, luxurious, uniform consistency punctuated with a few tender lobster morsels. The tarragon and sherry nose gave way to the sweetness of the lobster, which was held in check by the bite of the chervil. The champagne was an excellent pairing, with the bubbles and crisp acidity clearing the palate for the next course.

Our second course was a departure from the set Valentine's Day tasting menu. It was poached salmon with black truffle braised yukon potatoes, black truffles and truffle vinaigrette paired with pinot gris. Here a barely poached cube of glistening, fatty salmon perched on a bed of alternating slices of yukon gold potato and black truffle. This was in turn encircled by a moat of black truffle vinaigrette which formed a yin and yang with a another sauce that I believe was a white truffle oil (I don't have a copy of the menu so I am going on memory alone here). Everyone knows truffles like fat - that is why they are so often paired with butter, egg yolk or oil. This was the first time I had ever seen truffles brought to life with just the animal’s naturally occurring fat. The tender, opulent salmon melted in your mouth and provided a more than adequate conduit for the truffles. The sweet, tender potato wafers were a stark contrast to the thick, earthy truffle shavings and the acidic tang of the vinaigrette was an exclamation point at the end of every bite. The pinot gris, like the salmon, was from Oregon and served as our second excellent pairing of the night. I am not a big pinot gris drinker, typically finding them too thin, oily and inconsistent to merit any serious attention. This one was different, with significant body and acidity. It cut through the truffles and fat better than coffee beans at a perfume counter.

For our third course, we returned to the V-Day menu for some caramelized sea scallops with sun choke, melted leeks and lemongrass sauce paired with a white burgundy. The scallops were expertly prepared, with a crisp outer skin and a uniform firmness that stopped just short of cooking the tenderness out of them. They were topped with a dollop of caviar and fixed to the plate with a smear of sun choke puree. This formation was flanked by some melted leeks and a sauce of Meyer lemon and lemongrass. Here again, chef Krinn combines a dizzying array of flavors and textures that all work together harmoniously, but challenge the diner's senses to keep up. The hard saltiness of the caviar collides with the tender sweetness of the scallop, played out against the backdrop of the creamy, herbal nuttiness of the sun choke and the lingering citrus notes of the Meyer lemon and lemongrass. The Louis Jadot Mersault smelled amazing - a big bouquet of flowers and hay - but was too thin and tart. In fairness, if you were a wine, would you want to follow a mouthful of caviar, scallop, sun choke, Meyer lemon and lemongrass?!?!

For our fourth course, we were served a miniature cast iron Dutch oven full of risotto, topped with black truffles and paired with a red burgundy. This was a very simple, but well executed "mid-course" that allowed us to catch our breath. The creamy risotto absorbed the heady truffle scent that was further echoed by the earthy notes of the burgundy.

Chef Krinn re-emerged to check on us and ask how we felt about a foie gras course. We all nodded enthusiastically, undid our belts and eagerly awaited our fifth course - another deviation from the set menu - seared foie gras with saffron glazed apples paired with Sauternes. The foie was lightly pan seared, but rare to medium rare in the middle and plated with a fan of orange glazed apple slices. Apples and foie are a classic pairing - with sweet tartness of the apples a worthy foil for the nutty, fatty elegance of the foie. In this preparation, the saffron glaze adds an extra dimension to the canvas - an ethereal, fragrant high note that flits around the palate alternately playing with the foie and the apple. The Sauternes (and forgive me, I don't remember the producer) worked perfectly. Nobody will ever win an award for creativity by pairing foie with Sauternes, but the one selected here was younger, racier and more acidic than most. A heavy, syrupy-sweet version would have crushed the dish, where this accentuated it, emphasizing the apples and still packing enough punch to wash away the foie.

For our sixth course, Krinn stayed with the duck theme and served us duck breast in a cassis and huckleberry sauce with shaved almond, caramelized fennel and candied orange paired with a Barolo. I will pause to let you read that again. This was a perfectly rare roast duck breast fanned out in slices against a caramelized fennel bulb and topped with all of the other ingredients. The duck/almond/huckleberry/orange combination gave me flashbacks to Thanksgiving. The tartness in the candied orange and huckleberries kept the richness of the duck and the sweetness of the fennel in check. The anise notes of the fennel and the depth of the cassis sauce were a perfect match for the Barolo which, mercifully, was a lighter, kinder and gentler version of the wine as opposed to the tannin bombs some producers release.

Like a boxer leaning on the ropes, we braced ourselves for a body blow - our seventh course - beef tenderloin with wild mushrooms, pomme macaire and a bordelaise sauce paired with a Saint Emillion. The tenderloin was tender, juicy, cooked perfectly, covered in wild mushrooms and served atop the pomme macaire. The macaire is like a twice baked potato patty. At 2941, it was seasoned with truffles and crème fraiche, though you often see this dish done with some combination of thyme or blue cheese in the mix. Anyway, the pomme macaire absorbs the bordelaise sauce from below and the tenderloin jus from above. The result is something the consistency of a firm polenta, but with a depth of character that would make it the envy of the entire tuber World. The bordelaise sauce was a deeply concentrated affair that lent both sweetness and acidity to the out and out, over-the-top gluttony of the pomme macaire and tenderloin tower. The poor mushrooms were somewhat cast adrift in this preparation, though they did lend moisture to the dish and provide taste buds with some shelter from the storm. The Saint Emillion was another great pairing - if you can't match a red bordeaux with a bordelaise sauce, what can you do?

After a brief standing eight count, we sipped our wine, compared notes on favorite dishes (each of the five of us had a different favorite) and contemplated some calisthenics to prepare for the pending dessert course.

For dessert, we had the coeur a la crème. This was a light, sweet, vanilla cream heart that was decorated with a thin chocolate heart, a sugar coated rose pedal and a passion fruit sauce. It was topped with a miniature heart-shaped chocolate well of raspberry sauce and paired with a pink, sparkling moscato blend. It was very clearly valentine's day, but the airy crème was a great way to end the meal. The dark chocolate paired well with the raspberry sauce and the passion fruit really brought out the vanilla flavor in the crème. I didn't take the wine seriously at first - a glass of light pink bubbles - but it was a surprisingly serious wine. The fruity telltale moscato nose and effervescence yielded to a sturdy acidic backbone to create a blend that actually works.

Just as we were about to push back our chairs, mignardises of pink cotton candy (cherry flavored), vanilla macaroons and lime macaroons arrived. The cotton candy joins the bread service as one of 2941's signature pieces. It is good cotton candy, but after eight courses paired with wines, it is more for amusement than for eating (though we all managed to cram in a few fistfuls of the stuff). The macaroons were outstanding - soft, chewy, almost too underdone. The vanilla version was an honest interpretation of the classic. The lime version was totally unexpected and when the lime paired with the coconut, it gave the macaroon almost a Thai flavoring. Traditional Jewish confections infused with Thai flavor - why not?

Perhaps owing to the fact that we had two pastry students with us - or maybe just because he was feeling generous, chef Krinn made one final departure from the set menu by bringing out an extra dessert course. This was a four-part dessert platter set in front of each diner. From top right, moving counter-clockwise, we had: (1) a napoleon of mascarpone and cassis mousse with quince paste, quince jelly and coconut ice cream; (2) a brown sugar brownie with rum raisin ice cream, funnel cake and roasted pineapple; (3) a chocolate jewel box with chocolate mousse, caramel and hazelnut brittle and espresso gelee; and (4) a chocolate cake "coulant" with chocolate tuille, dark chocolate caramel sauce and vanilla ice cream.

The sound you just heard was my pants ripping as I bent over to pick up the teeth that just fell out of my mouth. Seriously, does anyone have a spare insulin needle?

This was a dessert tour de force.

The napoleon was light and airy, with the mascarpone and cassis mouse layers evenly balanced by the quince. The coconut ice cream cleansed the palate en route to the next stop.

The gooey sweetness of the brownie paired with the bite of the roasted pineapple and the funnel cake was both an amusing visual as well as an outstanding tool for dredging up melted rum raisin ice cream.

Intensity built further with the chocolate jewel box - layers of hazelnut brittle studded chocolate mousse sandwiched between layers of milk chocolate, topped with a caramel wafer. It was easy to get lost in a chocolate/caramel/hazelnut fog, but a touch of that espresso geleé snapped you out of it.

The crescendo was the chocolate cake "coulant" - a soft center chocolate cake topped with a chocolate tuille and a touch of vanilla ice cream, surrounded by a pool of dark chocolate caramel sauce. As we worked our way through the preceding three desserts, the ice cream melted, trickling down the cake and mixing with the dark chocolate sauce creating a decadent marbled rye looking confection. The cake itself was moist, warm and sinfully rich dark chocolate though, to be perfectly honest, I could only muster a forkful or two.

I consider it the mark of a truly great restaurant when your experience has been so enjoyable that you don't even look at the bill when it comes. Maybe I am a sucker, but after truly command performances like this (meals at The French Laundry and Tru also come to mind) I simply hand over a credit card, not wanting math to spoil an otherwise lovely time. It is only when I feel like my expectations were not met that I scrutinize the tab.

All-in, for seven dinner courses and myriad dessert courses, with eight paired wines, our tab came to roughly $230 per person including tax, 20% tip, etc. This is not a bargain, but it is easily a market rate for the quality of the experience, especially in DC, where you can spend a lot more to get a lot less.

Rasika (DC - Penn Quarter)

2006-02-09T21:04:00.000-05:00

There are so many new restaurants opening in DC that it is hard to keep up with them all, but such is my charge in life.

I had been anticipating Rasika's opening since I first heard whispers that Vikram Sunderam would be leaving his post at Bombay Brasserie. BB was my favorite restaurant when I was living in London (albeit many years ago) and I couldn't wait to see how well the food translated across the pond.

A small group of us tried Rasika last night and were very impressed. The menu is long and difficult to get through, but the servers are well versed in ingredients, preparation and portion control.

We shared:

Trio of Chicken Tikka
Available in both a small and a large portion, this dish arrives as three separate preparations of chicken tikka: chili, basil and cheese. Each is incredibly tender, juicy chicken in a completely unique seasoning. From the heat of the red chili preparation to the herbal calm of the basil to the rich opulence of the cheese, each is as outstanding as it is difficult to synthesize.

Dahi Batata Puri
These are puffed up papadams - like the "golgapas" at Heritage India - light flour shells filled with a variety of ingredients. In this preparation, they are stuffed with potatoes, yogurt and tamarind date chutney. The dish explodes in your mouth, with the tartness of the yogurt amplified by the sweet tanginess of the chutney. The potato is more or less along for the ride, but you need something to provide a neutral base for the other flavors.

Palak Chaat
This is quickly becoming the restaurant's signature dish. That is not to say it is the best dish on the menu, or that Chef Sunderam is particularly known for the dish, but it is the one that no food critic fails to mention.

Chalk it up to the American fascination with novelty - if you take a leafy green like spinach and petrifying it by tossing it in a fryer, people are amazed. It is the kitchen equivalent of a parlor trick (everyone remembers that "fried ice cream" at Chi-Chi's - sure, it never really tasted that good, but we ordered it anyway, because we couldn't imagine how anyone could actually fry ice cream).

This dish features flash-fried spinach, yogurt and tamarind date chutney tossed together as a salad. Think of it as the crispy spinach from The Palm married to the sauce from the best Chicken Chaat you have ever had. It is a fun juxtaposition to the chicken tikka trio mentioned above - the chicken presents uniform texture across three unique flavors, while the salad offers a synthesized flavor with different textures in every bite.

Black Cod
Black cod in an Indian restaurant, you ask? Yes. Part of the adventure at Rasika is seeing ingredients you don't normally associate with Indian food shown a new light. Here the cod is just barely cooked - crispy on the outside, but moist, flakey and meltingly fresh in the center. It is ever-so-slightly glazed with honey and kissed with star anise before being plated with fresh dill and a red wine vinegar sauce. Each of the flavors is very subtle and they blend together in perfect harmony. It is a study in balance and restraint.

Typically we associate the panoply of Indian spices with overpowering, in-your-face, bold flavors and sensations. Here the Chef reminds us that the seasonings can be elegant and delicate as well. This dish reminds me of hearing your favorite song on the radio, just as the signal is fading out - the sound is so soft that you crane your neck, hoping to tease a little more out of the radio.

Dum Ka Duck
Picking up where the cod left off, duck was another dish that you don't immediately expect to find in your typical Indian kitchen. It appears here, rubbed with chili, perfectly medium/rare (still light pink at the outer edges, deep red in the center) and astride a puddle of saffron cream and cashew nuts. Here too the flavors are subtle. Just a hint of heat from the chili, not at all over playing the duck itself, followed by just a breath of saffron and a fleeting encounter with the crumbled cashews. The dish is topped with some caramelized onions, so if the combination of duck fat and cashew fat is too thick for you, the onions provide a little acidic bite to get you over the hump.

Lamb Shank Roganjosh
This is the dish you have all been waiting for - the big, bold, bowl-me-over dish. We have all had varieties of lamb roganjosh in our neighborhood Indian joints - cubes of tough stew lamb in a hot (though less incendiary than vindaloo) garam masala and tomato sauce. In this preparation, Chef Sunderam cooks the entire lamb shank and the result is closer to osso bucco than any lamb roganjosh you have ever had.

The presentation is marvelous, with the shank lying on its side, topped with frizzled green onions and virtually floating on a pond of spicy tomato-based sauce. The meat itself falls off the bone and arrives still medium/well done with traces of light pink in the center - tender, juicy and melting in your mouth.

The sauce is lighter and fresher than any you have likely had before as well. This isn't that brownish-red sauce that has been on the buffet line for a week. This sauce is a vibrant red and you can actually taste fresh tomatoes in between the richness of the lamb and the heat of the garam masala. I am salivating just writing about it. I devoted nearly half of our table's bread basket to sopping up every last drop of that sauce.

[NB: The wine list is also ambitious. They have searched far and wide to find wines - including an unusually large variety of wines by the glass - that pair with Indian spices. I had a glass of Gruner Veltliner with our starters and then paired a Spanish Grenacha with the Roganjosh and duck.]

This was a tutorial in how mind blowing Indian spices can be. From the delicate cod perfumed with anise and dill to the tangy duck with saffron, chili and cashew and on to the heady depth of the garam masala lamb shank, each dish was unique and balanced.

This is what keeps me coming back to Chef Vikram Sunderam's cooking. He constantly pushes the envelope of Indian cooking, innovating at every turn. He throws an amazing array of flavors and sensations at you and dares you to keep up with him. Ever since college, when I phoned my Parents from London to ask if I could use their credit card to take my girlfriend to dinner at Bombay Brasserie, I have been mystified by his cooking.

The Metro isn't the tube and the Penn Quarter will never be mistaken for Kensington, but we are extremely lucky to have Chef Sunderam here in DC.

Zengo (DC - MCI Center)

2006-02-08T21:45:00.000-05:00

I tried Zengo last night and was very pleasantly surprised by how good it was. When I heard that it was opening, I tried to avoid it at all costs (fusion cuisine, chain restaurant, celebrity backers/trendy scene - the Holy trinity of what I avoid in restaurants), but a good friend convinced me I was being to rash.

Zengo has the familiar feel of many of the restaurants in and around the Verizon (nee MCI) Center neighborhood - you enter a dark, sleek lounge/bar and then graduate to stark, brightly colored, ultra-modern dining rooms [See also: IndeBleu, Rosa Mexicano, Zola, Zaytinya, etc.]

After stopping at the bar for a mojito and a very mediocre glass of zin, we headed upstairs to our table. The menu is broken up into little bites, sushi, soups, entrees and everything in between. Some people will be put off by the entropy of the whole affair, but I like it. The chaotic choose-your-own-adventure style lends to sharing/communal dining and is a nice counterpoint to the set, formal tasting menus I often enjoy.

After much debate, caucusing and lobbying efforts (this is, after all, DC), we decided on (in no particular order):

Angry Zengo roll
This is a spicy tuna, avocado and cucumber roll topped with a sesame/chipotle mayonnaise. I'm not going to lie to you - that is a lot of flavors to pack into one roll. The dominant flavor is the spicy tuna, with the avocado and cucumber really just adding texture. The sesame/chipotle sauce is placed as a dollop on top of each slice of the roll and as such, it is the last flavor to hit your tongue. The sauce adds a long, warm, smokeyfinish to each bite.

Hamachi
Straight out of Nobu's cookbook - Thin slices of hamachi surrounded by a moat of soy sauce and each topped with a paper-thin slice of serrano chile and a single cilantro leaf. Nobu's is better. He omits the cilantro and uses a sauce that is far more dynamic than the yuzu/soy used in this dish. Zengo's version is still pretty good, just not as good or creative as most of the rest of the menu.

Arepas de Puerco
Pulled pork is tossed in what is described as an "achiote/hoisin" sauce (sweet and hot - but hot at the front of the mouth, not lingering), then set atop thick corn tortilla discs and then dressed with avocado, a slice of serrano chile and crème fraiche. While nobody seems to know if this is finger food or fork and knife food, the taste is very good. The pulled pork was tender and juicy and the hoisin base worked well - not syrupy or overly sweet and cut with just enough achiote to keep it honest. The avocado and crème fraiche played off the serrano chile well enough, but teetered very close to the brink of a "deconstructed taco" (thank God there was no lettuce or tomato). The entire dish was a juxtaposition of flavors, temperatures and textures - the sweet hoisin versus the hot achiote on the meat, the warm pulled pork versus the cool crème fraiche and the crunchy tortilla versus the soft avocado.

Pot Stickers
Pretty standard fried dumplings here - nothing to really write home about, except that the lobster/rock shrimp stuffing was lighter your typical dumpling. You could actually identify individual ingredients in the dumpling and the overall sweetness of the dish was cut by the serrano/wasabi dipping sauce.

Peking rolls
These were like little duck and mushroom egg rolls served with a trio of dipping sauces: a traditional hot mustard, a chipotle/apricot and a wasabi/crème sauce. The rolls themselves were very good - you could taste the duck confit and mushrooms seperately - unlike the unidentifyiable mush that fills most egg rolls. The wrapper was light and crisp - not at all greasy. Each of the three dipping sauces worked, but the hot/sweet of the chipotle/apricot one was by far the best.

Asiatica Soup
Move over Adobo Chicken Soup at Merkado, I have a new favorite soup in town. This murky, mysterious bowl of chicken and vermicelli steeped in coconut milk, red curry and guajillo chile has stolen my heart. I slurped up every last drop of this re-interpretation of a Thai dish with the reckless abandon my labrador shows towards a bowl of water on a hot day. Don't approach this soup thinking Tom Ka - it is a kissing cousin of that dish, but without the lemongrass and lime perfume. The result is a bolder, simpler, heartier, unadulterated affair. Order it by the gallon.

Szechwan Pork Loin
Frollicking as I was in my soup, I barely noticed the Szechwan Pork arrive on the table. This dish is a generous portion of pork tenderloin slathered in what the menu describes as a "habanero guava bbq sauce." I can't say that I recognized the guava, but the habanero is there, clear as day. The combination is a sweet, hot BBQ sauce that works beautifully with the pile of corn salsa that accompanies it. The salsa is roasted corn with traces of red onion, cilantro, lime, etc - the usual entourage. The meat itself is tender, juicy and smokey - I'm not sure where the smoke comes from, but it is definately there.

Ice Cream
We opted to try two of the four available ice cream flavors: cinnamon and dolce de leche. The cinnamon was as good as any other cinnamon ice cream I have had - a standard representation of the classic. The dolce de leche, however, was out of this World. Light, sweet, ethereal cream with just a hint of caramel on the finish. This is the real deal - it reminded me of the stuff you get from street vendors during the various national pride parades in New York.

Churros y Chocolate
The zenith of our meal was the much anticipated churros y chocolate. Our host had really talked them up in hopes of attracting us to Zengo in the first place, but even after the fantastic meal described above, we were skeptical.

The bar is pretty high. I remember ending long nights of drinking in Spain with a thick, comforting, stand-your-spoon-up-in-it cup of chocolate and a plate of fresh-from-the-fryer cinnamon and sugar coated churros. I used to say that if dunking the churro in the chocolate didn't create an oil slick similar to diving into a pool covered in tanning oil, someone was doing something wrong.

Zengo's version delivered as promised - almost. The churros are faithful interpretations - fresh fried dough strands covered in cinnamon and sugar. The chocolate, however, is a shot glass of melted semi-sweet chocolate. Thrilling as this proposition may be to anyone who possesses two X chromosomes, you are left in the awkward position of having to pour the chocolate onto your churro, rather than soaking your curro in the chocolate.

Next time I would skip the pot stickers and the hamachi. They are both good efforts, but there are too many other good things going on here to waste your time with them.

One constant theme at Zengo is the presence of cooling agents wherever spice is used. Whether it is slipping the cucumber and avocado into the angry zengo roll to counteract the spicy tuna and chipotle sauce, or tempering the achiote sauce and serrano chile slice with some avocado and crème fraiche in the arepas de puerco, at every bite, the chef is trying to balance the flavors.

All-in, this is fusion cuisine that actually works. It helps that much of the heat in Asian cooking comes from new-World peppers, making this a much more natural union than say, French and Indian - two cuisines that never really shared a historic dialogue (no offense to my friends at IndeBleu - you are doing some magnificent things with the two cuisines, they are just more of an arranged marriage).

So get over your prejudices about fusion cooking and multi-unit restaurant ownership groups and give Zengo a try. Just be sure to bring your wallet - we topped out around $70 per person, which is a little steep for your casual Wednesday night after-work gathering.

Cite (NY - Midtown Manhattan)

2005-12-17T20:26:00.000-05:00

In Soprano's parlance, Cite is dead to me.

I am as big a fan of unbridled capitalism as there is, but in the restaurant business, the pursuit of profit alone is a dangerous thing. Cite used to be an average steak house, but an extrordinarily fun place to go (catch my drift?).

The real draw (besides the fries) were the famous nightly "wine dinners," where for $69 plus tax and tip, you got an appetizer, an entree and a dessert along with all-you-can-drink of four wines that changed quarterly (always a sparkling, a white and two reds). This policy fueled a bacchanalian festival every night of the week where over the course of the night, the bachelor party in the back room would eventually meet up with the bridal shower across the dining room while tables of young investment bankers mingled with roving female bands of B&T.

I admit that over the years, the overall level of decorum dropped significantly. The slightly amusing elderly gentleman who was too drunk to find his table upon returning from the men's room was replaced by the college coed taking a header down a flight of stairs. And yes, while a glass of red wine disgorging its contents all over white tablecloths (and nearby diners) used to be a serious gaff, eventually it was replaced by vomiting in public and departing via stretcher and EMT.

The current rendition of the $69 wine dinner consists of decent enough wines, but stingy pours, burned pieces of the lesser cuts of meat and a conspicuous absence of the once revered "fries w/ filet." Seriously, they used to serve a juicy filet with a mountain of fries and practically open a case of wine onto your table. Now, they serve charred skirt steak and a cone of fries alongside empty wine glasses.

No wonder the place has twice as many empty tables as occupied tables - in midtown Manhattan on a Friday night in December. . .

2 Amys (DC - Cleveland Park)

2005-12-05T18:48:00.000-05:00

We stopped into 2 Amys again and had a night of firsts: four new dishes and the real surprise, a bad pizza!

We went with a group of friends and were introduced to a bevy of new appetizers. Usually we are bottle of wine and two pizza people, but this night we shared:

Suppli de Telefoni
Piping hot fried balls of risotto and cheese. You will recognize these as being very similar to the amuseé you get at Obelisk - a sort of grown up comfort food (like an Italian version of macaroni and cheese with a crispy topping and that you can serve at cocktail parties). We had suppli like this all over Italy on a recent trip and have no excuse for why we have overlooked them on 2 Amys menu for so long.

Boar Sausage
A plate piled high with thin disks of boar sausage. The sausage itself was gamey and nutty, a little heard, spicy like chorizo, but without any of the grease that comes with that sausage.

Meatballs
2 Amys packs a tiny baking dish full of meatballs and then covers them with tomato sauce before tossing them in the oven. The result can be anything from some of the juiciest meatballs you have ever had to pathetic, died, cotton-mouth inducing lumps. It all depends on how long they were left unattended in the oven and whether you are eating one from the center of the dish or the outside.

Frittata
Redolent of a Spanish tortilla, 2 Amys serves theirs as a 1/4 circle of room temperature egg and potato composition. You need to enjoy eating cold/room temperature eggs to get into this dish, but any fan of Spanish tortilla (myself included) will feel right at home.

Now for the real surprise - the pizza. As I mentioned, we typically order a bottle of wine and two of the day's special pizzas. We have tried this countless times and never been disappointed (we have been surprised, challenged, delighted and intrigued before, but never disappointed).

Anyway, we ordered the special porcini mushroom pizza. It arrived as a sea of mushrooms and garlic with very sparing amounts of cheese and no sauce. I think I understand what they were going for - porcinis were in season and they had some lovely ones, so why not create a dish that really showcased them?

The problem is that the garlic overpowered the mushrooms and the lack of cheese and sauce resulted in a dish that lacked the requisite lubricant to comfortably descend the esophagus.

Oh well - maybe this is the exception that proves the rule!

Chiu's Sushi (MD - Baltimore)

2005-11-27T18:38:00.000-05:00

Not to be down on the Baltimore food scene (again), but I have had a Hell of a time trying to find really good sushi in Baltimore. Kawasaki is not good. Matsuri used to be pretty good, but now is less so. Anyway, when I saw that Chiu's had opened, I decided to pop in - in hopes of sushi salvation.

The first thing that amazed me about Chiu's is their list of maki - it is literally an entire 8.5x11" sheet of paper - in three columns and 10 point font. There appear to be hundreds of combinations and permutations - replete with a legend at the bottom indicating abbreviations for ingredients, cooked rolls, etc.

[Notice to expecting mothers - Chiu's has the largest selection of cooked rolls that I have seen anywhere]

We ordered the special "toro martini" and a vegetable tempura to start, while we continued deciphering the maki encyclopedia.

The "martini" was chunks of toro in sesame oil, served in a martini glass. The fish was silky smooth, firm and fatty - exactly what you want in toro. The tempura was light and crisp, not at all heavy and full of that, "you can't do this with the panko you have at home," aura.

We are usually sashimi people - pure, simple, clean fish - the best measure of a sushi restaurant's quality (as one of my friends often says, "I think Sushi is Japanese for sourcing"), but it felt like maki was the thing to do, so we ordered an Alaska roll, a Gregg roll and a steakhouse roll.

When they arrived, we were struck by how large they were. Each roll was half a dozen disks, each over two inches across and an inch thick.

Once you got past the sheer magnitude of the rolls they were very good, even if they made you look like a chipmunk. Fresh fish and vegetable ingredients combined in creative ways, with the only drawback being the number of ingredients. At times, there were so many different things in each roll that it was easy to lose track.

The steakhouse roll was fairly unique. Grilled sirloin topped with a spicy pepper sauce and tucked into the center of a nori wrapper and white rice. I don't really think of this as sushi, but it was interesting to try.

I need to go back to Chiu's and sample more of their sashimi and a few more maki before I can render a final verdict, but the early returns look promising - especially if you are a pregnant woman.

Tio Pepe (MD - Baltimore)

2005-11-26T18:34:00.000-05:00

Restaurants like Tio Pepe are the reason that Baltimore has long been a culinary brown field. They serve average food at outrageous prices with poor service and live well beyond their life expectancy because a certain crowd likes to go there to see and be seen.

[See also: Peerce's Plantation, Linwood's, Kawasaki, Brass Elephant, Da Mimmo (anyone who thinks that Mimmo can hold a candle to Boccaccio should be tossed in the Inner Harbor without a tetanus shot)]

Don't get me wrong - growing up in Baltimore, I loved Tio's. We went for birthdays, anniversaries, etc. Hell, I even went there to celebrate my high school graduation. If you have never left Baltimore County, sangria sounds "exotic," rude Dominican waiters appear "Spanish" and being seated 30 minutes after your reservation looks more "in demand" than disorganized.

After years of declining views of the place, I gave it one last try and came away more disappointed than ever. Our party of eight ordered a dizzying array of dishes, but I was able to sample: gambas, crema Escorial, Dover sole, veal Sevillana and the pine nut roll.

Gambas al ajillo
In Andalucía this is a magnificent, simple dish. You bring a cazuela of olive oil up to temperature, then toss in thinly sliced garlic, spicy red peppers and raw shrimp and remove it fro the heat. The three new ingredients boil in the oil and cook to perfection in front of you while you stare at it - bursting at the seams with anticipation - wondering how soon is too soon to begin dredging bread through the seasoned oil. Jump too soon and you burn your mouth - badly, I might add.

Anyway, the folks at Tio's have managed to take what was an elegant, peasant dish and destroy it. Their version is a few rubbery shrimp swimming in a bowl of dark brown gravy punctuated with minced garlic. This is closer to the gravy that accompanies Egg Foo Yong than anything Spanish.

Crema Escorial
I was intrigued by this dish. It was advertised on the menu as a sherry and cream based seafood soup. The red herring here is the name - in particular, the use of the word, "Escorial."

Escorial is a town approximately 40km north west of Madrid and houses a summer palace for the Spanish royal family, a monastery and a mausoleum for Spanish kings. What the hell does a landlocked town that hosts a summer palace have to do with a seafood soup? Nothing. As with everything else at Tio Pepe, they have draped an exotic, Spanish sounding name across an otherwise unrelated dish and hoodwinked Baltimoreans into paying through the nose.

Naming conventions aside, this was a thick bowl of sherry-scented cream with very few pieces of seafood in it. A total disappointment.

Dover Sole
If ever there were an argument that people can be tricked into eating mediocre food through theatrics, this is it. Forget bananas foster and tableside Caesar salad - this has them both beaten by a mile.

The sole arrives on a piping hot platter and is then filleted tableside by a waiter using nothing more than two spoons to completely de-bone the fish. Everyone drops what they are doing and oohs and aahs over it - staring in amazement at the waiter’s mastery of the spoons. When he is done, he makes a very big show of plating the fish and accompanying vegetables and generally gets rewarded with applause.

Here is the rub. From the time the fish has left the oven, it has sat on the line under heat lamps (don't even try to tell me Tio's doesn't use heat lamps - my "Crema Escorial" had a hard baked skin on top of it), then carted through the dining room, sat for another five minutes while it is de-boned, then finally plated and presented for consumption. The result is an over-cooked piece of fish that is cold to the touch. Gross. But OH MY GOD - did you see him remove the bones with a spoon? AMAZING!

Veal Sevillana
As the quality at Tio's has waned, this has been the lone standout. Veal cutlets, lightly breaded and fried, served in a sherry-based brown sauce with liberal amounts of green olives. You might actually find a dish that resembles this in some restaurants in Sevilla. Unfortunately, this too has finally met its maker. The veal was the consistency of shoe leather and the once appetizing sauce - light, perfumed with sherry - is little more than SYSCO beef gravy. So sad.

Dessert was and still is the high point of the meal at Tio's. Their pine nut roll is a classic. This is a yellow cake roll with cream filling and topped with toasted pine nuts. The cream looked more orange than I remember it being in years past, but the flavor is still there. Paired with an espresso, it is the only way to end a meal there (though I seriously recommend you avoid the place altogether).

Heritage India (DC - DuPont)

2005-11-22T18:14:00.000-05:00

With the weather now decidely cooler, I can't get enough Indian food (alas, the lingering vestige of a Fall semester spent in London as an undergraduate). I find myself making bi-weekly trips down Connecticut Avenue to Heritage.

This time around, we went with a group, so we were able to sample a wider variety of flavors than usual. We ordered:

- Golgappas
- Samosas
- Chicken Tikka Masala
- Chicken Mahkani
- Dal
- Saag Paneer
- Channa Masala
- Raita
- Nans

As always, everything was very good. The Dal was a little bland - a little nothing of a dish. The saag paneer was a surprise hit.

I continue to worry about how empty the dining room at Heritage is on week nights. . .

Pazo (MD - Baltimore)

2005-11-22T17:47:00.000-05:00

I am generally down on the Baltimore restaurant scene - and cast a highly skeptical eye on new restaurant openings - but Pazo proves me wrong, time after time.

This funky, converted warehouse has been draped in thick, dark velvet, warmed by candle light and split into a bar/lounge area, an open kitchen, a dining room and reserved areas upstairs. The result is something that would be far more comfortable in Manhattan than in downtown Baltimore.

The menu is another curve ball. Here you get a heavy dose of pan-Mediterranean tapas in a dizzying range of ingredients and preparations. I would argue that it is primarily a modern menu and that Barcelona is the dominant influence, but there are plenty of dishes that defy categorization.

I have now been about a half a dozen times - various days of the week, various times of day and with parties that ranged in size from four to 14. Each and every time, the service has been well-informed, polite and more than capable and the kitchen is already showing the ability to deliver the same dish, with the same appearance and flavor each and every time I order it.

The dishes that I keep coming back to include:
- whole wheat fougasse
- eggplant spread
- tono crudo
- jamon iberico
- manchego & manzana salad
- grilled lamb chops

Whole wheat fougasse - This dish reminds me of a soft pretzel scented with rosemary and garnished in rock salt. It arrives at the table deliciously fresh and still warm from the oven. It is a must. This is the sort of bread people go off Atkins to eat. Pair it with olive oil or order the eggplant spread - a dish that is similar to a babaganoush, but a thicker, more uniform consistency with perhaps a bit of sesame (maybe tahini?).

Tono Crudo - If Pazo has a signature dish, this might be it. Fresh-off-the-line cubes of red Jell-O colored tuna are coated in chili oil and sea salt and presented on wooden sticks like a plate of upside-down lollipops. Don't miss this dish - and order more than you think you need, because once people try it, it is addictive.

Jamon Iberico - This is a faithful reproduction of the classic Catalan dish. Coarse bread is topped with a tomato and olive oil spread (pan tomate) and then luxurious ribbons of melt-in-your-mouth jamon are draped over them. The ham will never be as good as what you can get in Spain (at least not until the FDA loosens its attitude towards Spanish agricultural practices and curing techniques) but it is as good as anything else you can get stateside. I will never tire of this dish. Order a plate of this and a bottle of cava and save the airfare to Barcelona.

Manchego y Manzana - This is one of the simplest - and best - salads you are likely to encounter. Strips of nutty, opulent manchego cheese are tossed with similarly sized strips of green apple and garnished with walnuts. What this lacks in visual appeal (the flesh of the apple and the cheese are identical in color) it makes up for in flavor. Manchego is a hard/firm sheep's milk cheese that has enough body to neutralize the acidity in the green apples, but doesn't overpower the apple. In New England they offer pair sharp cheddar cheese with green apple, which does a great dis-service to the apple.

Lamb Chops - Here too, there is a simplicity of preparation and presentation that belies the extraordinary flavor of the dish. Superior quality lamb chops are seasoned with salt and pepper and expertly grilled to medium rare perfection (red in the center, in this case) and dressed in nothing more than a "salmoriglio" sauce (olive oil, lemon juice, garlic and oregano). As with all of the other dishes I mentioned, simplicity is the rule - there are no gimmicks or elaborate sauces to cover up mistakes in the kitchen - and none are needed.

Pazo has a lovely list of desserts available, but I am usually too full to try any of them. Besides, who needs dessert when you can order a perfectly authentic "cortado" to finish your meal?

Oyster Riot - Old Ebbitt Grill (DC - Downtown)

2005-11-21T21:07:00.000-05:00

As always, the Old Ebbitt Oyster Riot kicked off the "eating season" (runs annually from Thanksgiving through New Year's) in style.

Where else in the World can you sample 23 different oysters paired with a dozen white wines under one roof? Mix in passed oyster hors d'oeuvers, bread & cheese stations, a "shrimp shack" (featuring stone crab claws and shrimp cocktail), Guinness on tap, the "hall of losers" (the hundreds of wines that were not selected as feature wines) and some gritty, live blues music and you have the makings of a really big party.

It is easy to understand why everyone - and I mean everyone - in DC stops by to partake in the fun. You will see Georgetown students in jeans and baseball hats, standing next to couples in black tie (presumably on their way to the Kennedy Center), while gaggles of 30-something cougars from Virginia-tucky mingle with roving groups of youngish, male, American-Psycho-looking lawyers.

Tickets for this event are pricey, at around $80 per person, but even at these prices the event sells out well in advance. In fact, this year I saw people scalping extra tickets outside the event.

People cue up for hours before the official 6:00 start time - crowding all three of the Ebbitt's bars. Eventually they make their way to the atrium to begin the three hour food orgy. After handing in your ticket, you get a wrist band, a wine glass, a plate (with a hole to hold your wine glass) and a map of where to find all the oysters and wines.

What ensues is typically 45 minutes of frenzied pushing and shoving as people try to sample as many different wines and oysters as possible. Their goal is to find their favorites and spend the remainder of the evening camped out next to them. Others of us take a more leisurely and holistic approach realizing that if one were to cover the entire event, sampling two of each oyster and a half glass of each wine, one would emerge three hours later having consumed nearly 50 oysters and at least six glasses of wine. Discretion is the better part of valor here - it is a marathon, not a sprint.

After the initial surge, people start to get tipsy, so they migrate over to the cheese tables for bread, cheese, nuts and anything else that isn't an oyster and might soak up some of the wine. Others begin to feel full and start looking for places to sit down and take a breather.

At about this point every year (about a third of the way through the night) people remember that there is a shrimp shack and there is a massive run on shrimp cocktail and stone crab claws.

After snacking on the shrimp and crab, participants are re-fortified and dash around the corner to begin sampling from the 100+ wines in the "hall of losers" while others make their way towards the Guinness taps (bad idea, really bad idea).

Finally, with everyone drunk, full and perhaps a bit "energized" from consuming so many oysters, the dance floor becomes a sea of uncoordinated bodies crashing into each other to the tune of a driving rhythm and blues sound track.

My tasting notes from this year's event are a crumpled, salt water smeared mess, so I can't be too specific, but I do have the following observations:

Passed hors d'oeuvers - These were bigger and better than I remember in past years. Over the course of the evening, I sampled fried oysters, oyster shooters, bacon wrapped oysters and the biggest crowd pleaser of them all, the "oyster slider." The latter was a small, round potato roll stuffed with fried oysters and cole slaw. The result was somewhere between an oyster po'boy and a White Castle hamburger.

Wines
- The Grand Champion (2004 Jackson Estate Sauvignon Blanc - Marlborough, New Zealand) was outstanding. Clean, crisp, grapefruit notes and a long finish - everything I like in a Sauvignon Blanc.

- The Second runner-up (2004 Santa Rita Reserva Sauvignon Blanc - Casablanca Valley, Chile) was a total bust. This was an example of the heavy, cat piss scented Sauvignon Blanc your Mother warned you about (OK, maybe she said "yew scented" but you all know what I mean).

- The biggest surprise of the night was one of the Gold Medal winners (2004 Adegas Galegas Gran Vinum "Esencia Diviña" Albariño - Rias Baixas, Spain). This was a light, energetic wine with an oily mouth feel and short, but tight finish. I think they converted a few people to Albariño that night.

- The worst wine of the night (yes, I feel compelled to point them out) was another one of the Gold Medal winners (2004 Linden Vineyards Seyval, Virginia). I give the organizers credit for trying to support the wine industry in our neighboring state of Virginia, but this was not a strong showing. Maybe I tasted a bad bottle (someone liked them enough to vote them into the Gold Medal category), but this was acrid, fruitless stuff that I poured out after the second taste.

Oysters - There were quite literally too many to remember. I sampled from VA to the Puget Sound, from oysters the size of my hand to oysters the size of my thumb and everything in between. The organizers do a fantastic job of arranging oysters in playful combinations. They will pit two identical oysters, grown in different water next to each other at one table while at another, there will be different oysters grown in the same water.

Finally, my hat is off to the army of Oyster shuckers that turn out for this event. Rumor has it that the Ebbitt shucks over 20,000 oysters each night - an alarming 7,000 oysters shucked per hour. Many of the local oystermen turn out for the event and their ranks are augmented by a large contingent from Baltimore's Lexington Market.

Rome Dining

2005-11-20T19:48:00.000-05:00

Day 1

Piazza Navona - After taking the train from Florence to Rome, getting ripped off by a cab driver and checking into our hotel, we needed to cool our heels for a bit. We strolled next door to the Piazza Navona to run the gauntlet of restauranteurs who lay in wait, pouncing on every tourist that wanders past. The guys in the Latin Quarter in Paris have nothing on these hawkers, except that these are Italian, not French, so they are somehow charming, even if they are basically busquers in ties and aprons.

I can't remember the name of the cafe we chose and they didn't accept credit cards, so I don't have a receipt. It doesn't really matter, we chose where to eat based on who had the best seats available, not what was on the printed menus. In the end, we wound up sitting in the front row of tables, closest to the fountains, on a gorgeous late fall afternoon - sunny and 65 degrees, not a cloud in the sky.

We ordered a plate of antipasto and the first two legs of the "Holy Trinity" (red wine and bottled water), leaving the coffee for later. This order would later be repeated everywhere we stopped in Rome.

Generally speaking, this was good antipasto - roasted red peppers, olives, artichoke hearts, proscuitto, fresh mozzarella, a hunk of Parmigiano and a selection of salami. We had fun toying with different combinations, dredging our bread in the olive oil, etc. - forget what our Parents taught us about not playing with our food!

At no point did I feel compelled to find out which butcher had supplied the meat or where else I could find that cheese, but it was all very solid and a completely enjoyable way to pass a few idle hours.

We left Piazza Navona, checked out the Pantheon, then strolled up to Piazza del Popolo to sneak a peak at Caravaggio's Cesari Chapel before heading home past the Spanish Steps.

Romolo nel Giardino della Fornarina - After a nap and a shower, we hopped in a cab and headed across the Tiber to Romolo. Romolo sits in the shadow of Porta Settimiana and is rumored to be the home of Raphael's mistress, "La Fornarina." Today, it boasts several cozy dining rooms and a truly magnificent garden. It was 45 degrees and breezy by the time we got there, so the garden was closed, but we took a tour on our way out. In nicer weather, you would be hard-pressed to find a more peaceful or romantic setting for dinner anywhere in Rome.

We were one of only two tables occupied at 8:00 on a Thursday night. I know that November is the low season and that many people only bother to cross the Tiber to visit the Vatican, but this definitely had us a little bit spooked.

We ordered up a bottle of Lambrusco (why not? we were on vacation), some bottled water and a plate of antipasto to enjoy while we studied the menu. The antipasto was the usual assortment of salami, proscuitto, mozzarella, red peppers, olives and artichokes - nothing really to write home about, but solid.

We ordered wild mushroom risotto, linguine in artichoke sauce, grilled lamb chops and a side of artichokes. It sounds like artichoke overload, but when in Rome. . . The waiter promptly delivered the linguine, but there was no sign of the risotto. He had apparently not heard us order it, so we tucked into the linguine while he went back to get some risotto.

The linguine itself was quite pleasant, but somewhat bland. In an effort to let the artichokes really stand out on their own, the chef had not seasoned it at all. Imagine a blender full of warm artichokes and olive oil poured over a plate of pasta. I appreciate what they were going for, but it wasn't the best.

When the risotto finally arrived, it too was fairly bland. Perhaps our taste buds were shocked from having just come in from Tuscany, but the risotto was little more than a creamy, warm, mushroom-scented pile. Liberal application of salt brought out some of the flavor, but this too was a pretty average dish.

The kitchen got back on track with the arrival of the lamb chops and the artichokes. The chops were prepared medium (my wife and I prefer rare) but were amazingly tasty. Each bite was a delicious mix of crispy outer skin, tender meat in the center, the tang of salt and rosemary and left your mouth coated in delicious fat in the way that only lamb really does - nutty, almost gamey, opulent and not too greasy.

The steamed artichokes were a perfect accompaniment and my wife had to confess that they were very similar to those that she remembers her Grandmother making. Tender on the outside, slightly tough in the center and perfumed with just the right amount of lemon and garlic.

We ordered some coffee and a cab and opted to skip dessert.

Day 2

We began the day with some awful espresso and biscotti in the Piazza Navona and then headed out to Santa Maria della Vittoria. We worked our way back to Piazza Navona through the Quirinale, past the Trevi fountain and then settled into a lovely little outdoor patio between our hotel and the Piazza Navona.

Santa Lucia - Santa Lucia is nestled into a shady grove just next to the Hotel Raphael. It sits in a little triangle that was formed where the Roman street grid meets the curve of the Piazza Navona. We ordered the usual bottles of water and red wine and then shared an Antipasto and Spinach Ravioli in red sauce.

The antipasto was an elaborate affair that combined the usual red peppers, artichokes, proscuitto, olives, etc. with white anchovies, steamed shrimp a seafood salad and grilled squid. All of the seafood dishes were tossed in an olive oil and vinegar mixture, like a rough Italian cerviche.

The ravioli were actually spinach pasta (green) filled with ricotta cheese and covered in a light tomato sauce. The pasta was so fresh that it melted in your mouth and the filling was delightfully and uniformly creamy - not in the least bit grainy. The sauce was pure tomato - light, fresh and not at all overpowering. If we had another free night in Rome, I may have tried dinner at Santa Lucia - lunch was very impressive.

We grabbed a few espressos and the bill before heading out to meet our tour guide for the afternoon.

After an afternoon tour of the antiquities, that included the Colosseum, the Forum Romanum, the Capitoline Hill, Trajan's Markets, etc. we retired to the roof top bar at the Hotel Raphael.

Raphael rooftop - This is one of the few places in Rome where you can get a panoramic view of the city. We arrived just before sunset and settled down with a bottle of Vino Nobile de Montepulciano to rest our feet and take in the scenery. The waiter brought us a complimentary plate of lettuce/proscuitto finger sandwiches as well as bowls of pistachios and crisps.

We were staying at the Raphael, so it was easy, but no matter where you are staying in Rome, you should make it up there for sunset. What could be a better end to a day in the eternal city than enjoying a glass of wine while the sky turns to orange, then pink, then fades to pale blue and eventually black, with the entire city spread out below you?

Ambasciatta d'Abruzze - For dinner, we headed out to Ambasciatta. The current version of this old Abruzze restaurant offers two dining options: a la carte and all you can eat. It is still very much a locals-only place, but the demographics are different than I remember (from 15 years ago). Today, the place is overrun with 20-something Romans in search of cheap eats and a jumping off point before they head out on the town.

After lunch at Santa Lucia and a snack on the roof at the Raphael, we opted to dine a la carte. We ordered Mixed Salami, Antipasto Fritti (risotto balls, meatballs and tomato crostini), Linguine Carciofi, Tonnarelli d' Abruzzo, Calamari alla griglia and a Lamb Chop. This sounds like a mountain of food, but it was quite manageable.

The salami arrived as a half dozen hunks of various sausages on a paper towel. The antipasto fritti were similarly plated with no care to presentation. Within the salami assortment were some heavily peppered morsels, some that resembled blood pudding, a greasy red, spicy version that reminded me of chorizo and a very mild version that was reminiscent of the genoa salami we get here in the States.

The antipasto fritti was far better. The risotto ball (yes, they only brought one, even though they knew we were sharing) was a great mix of cheese and risotto tossed in a fryer and reminiscent of suppli. The meatball (yes, that is singular) was also very good - light and airy, with just a hint of bread filler. The tomato crostini reminded me of a Catalan Pan Tomate - a crust of bread smothered in olive oil and fresh tomato.

The Linguine Carciofi was a rich mixture of proscuitto and artichoke hearts in a garlic cream sauce. The garlic was a little overwhelming, but in spite of it and the proscuitto, the artichoke flavor really came through. The folks at Romolo should take note.

The Tonnarelli d' Abruzzo was thick, twisted pasta in a spicy tomato based sauce with bits of bacon and green peas. The inclusion of the peas was a bit odd, but all-in, this was a hearty, spicy, stick-to-your-ribs pasta dish.

Rounding out the meal, we had the grilled squid and the lamb chop. The squid were fairly good - simply tossed on the grill and garnished with lemon. The lamb chop was a disappointment. It was cooked within an inch of its life and was both tough and very fatty.

We settled up our bill quickly and called a cab, anxious to hit the door before the chef noticed that we hadn't finished everything.

Day 3

We spent the entire morning and early afternoon in the Vatican, finally returning to Piazza Navona around 2:30 for lunch.

Tres Scalini - We chose Tres Scalini the same way we chose all of our Piazza Navona dining options - sit at whichever restaurant has the best seats available. We ordered the requisite water and red wine and then Tortellini al Tartufo and Penne Arabiatica.

This was the first time I really felt like a tourist in Rome. The "al tartufo" was so clearly out of a jar that I was tempted to say something. After eating fresh truffles all over Italy for a week, the canned variety was laughably bland and limp. A healthy shot of garlic gave the dish some backbone, but it was still a pretty sad dish.

Likewise, my penne arabiatica was thin, runny and disappointing. The spice was there, for sure, but it couldn't mask a watered-down tomato sauce and penne the consistency of cardboard. It reminded me of the pasta we were served in the cafeteria in college, which we all doused in red pepper flakes in an attempt to manufacture some flavor in it. We finished up quickly and headed across the street for gelato.

I ordered one chocolate for my wife and one pistachio for myself. The incredibly rude attendant proceeded to place alternating layers of chocolate and pistachio gelato in the same cup. He wouldn't admit his mistake and take it back, so we paid and stormed out.

The gelato itself was icy and grainy. What a nightmare. Avoid it at all costs.

After a nap, we caught a cab to the Borghese gallery in time to catch the two-hour window on our admission ticket. Too many people leave Rome without making a trip out to the Borghese because it is rather far a field and requires reservations. Do not miss this museum.

We strolled around the museum and then walked out through the gardens and around the Parioli district. Arriving early for our reservation at Al Ceppo, we killed time with a few Proseccos in the Hungarian Cafe just down the street.

Al Ceppo - This has the feel of a neighborhood restaurant. You walk into a tiny bar area and off to the right, the chef is busy grilling a wide assortment of meats over the restaurant's massive wood burning fireplace. The low, timbered ceiling and smoke from the fire wrap you in a blanket of comfort and familiarity. The patrons are almost exclusively wealthy residents of the parioli and nary a word of English is spoken - even by the waiters.

We ordered the Antipasto and a bottle of Vino Nobile de Montepulciano while we used the dictionary in the back of our tour guide to translate parts of the menu. We are pretty adventurous eaters, but I still want to know if I am ordering tenderloin or lung. We eventually decided on sharing the fettuccine carbonara and the grilled tenderloin.

The Antipasto was delicious - even by standards that had been climbing every day since arriving in Rome. Beautifully soft and creamy mozzarella, intensely flavorful sausages and rich, concentrated roasted peppers.

The pasta arrived next. As soon as it rounded the corner, I could smell the truffles. This was the cleanest, purest carbonara I have ever seen. Forget the creamy, pasty white sauce that passes for carbonara in the states. This was fettuccine tossed with pancetta, raw egg yolk and shaved black truffles. The salt from the pancetta gave it a sturdy backbone while the truffles reverberated through the egg and pork fat. The wide, soft fettuccine absorbed the egg yolk and created mouth feel similar to a big bite of bread pudding. This was heaven in a dish. Several times, my wife and I each put our forks down and just stared at our plates in awe.

Before bringing out the pasta, the waiter noticed that we intended to share each dish and without being asked, had the kitchen split the dish for us. I think my wife was most thankful for this because without the artificial boundary of separate plates, I would have happily mowed down far more than my pro rata share of this amazing dish.

As we basked in the afterglow of the pasta, we caught our breath and enjoyed a bit of wine.

Eventually the tenderloin arrived - perfectly rare slices of meat astride a pile of rosemary roasted potatoes and dressed in olive oil. The meat itself was seasoned in salt and pepper and seared over the open wood fire. The exterior was crisp and flavorful while the center stayed rare and tender. This was an amazingly good piece of meat.

The accompanying potatoes were tossed with fresh rosemary and roasted in what appeared to be pan drippings. This effect was accentuated by plating the potatoes under the slices of tenderloin to enable even more jus to be absorbed.

This was the best meal we had in Rome by a wide margin - and perhaps the best meal of the trip. There were no tricks, no gimmicks, just incredibly fresh ingredients, expertly prepared. In looking back at my notes, I doubt any dish had more than four ingredients. At 122 Euro, it was also a very good value (roughly $70 per person).

Now you have two reasons to go to the Parioli district - the Borghese museum and Al Ceppo. Both deserve a spot in your itinerary next to the Pantheon and St. Peter's.

Tres Scalini - After dinner, we went for one last stroll through the Piazza Navona and grabbed gelato at Tres Scalini (the site of this afternoon's pasta disaster). We ordered our usual flavors (chocolate and pistachio) which were both excellent. This was the best gelato we had in Rome and a fitting end to our stay.

Florence Dining

2005-11-20T18:46:00.000-05:00

Day 1

Loggia Del Grano - We arrived in Florence, checked into our hotel and then set out towards Santa Croce. Along the way, we stumbled into Piazza de la Signoria and then down the hill into this lovely little restaurant. It was 65 degrees and sunny - not a cloud in the sky, so we really couldn't resist this open air loggia.

We shared a half liter of red wine, Pizza Margherita, and a Speck & Brie Sandwich, while we perused our tour books and maps. All of the food was awful. The wine was diluted and sour and we quickly started referring to the pizza as "Skateland pizza" - you know, the frozen stuff they serve at bowling alleys and skating rinks. The speck and brie sandwich had promise, but they grilled it within an inch of its life - burning the bread and cooking off much of the fat from the speck - what a waste.

We left the Loggia, wandered over to Santa Croce, toured the church, the leather school and the convent and then crossed the Arno to see spectacular sunset views of Florence. On our way back, we wandered over the Ponte Vecchio, past the Mercado Nuovo and wound up in the Piazza de la Republica.

Giubbe Rosse - After our long walk, we stopped here to relax over some prosecco as we watched people ride the carousel in the Piazza de la Republica. The wait staff was indifferent, bordering on gruff, but then again, after the charm of Venice, everyone seemed a little "on edge." We didn't eat anything here, but it is a lovely place to sit and take in the Piazza.

Dei Fagiole - After a nap and a shower, we headed back towards Santa Croce to this little hole in the wall that one of my friends had described as, "the best steak I have ever had." Our concierge wasn't much help at handicapping local restaurants, so we decided to go it alone. We got lost, but eventually found it and had no trouble securing a two top in the front of the restaurant. After we were seated, the place filled up with locals. I only counted one other table of English speakers and one table of polyglots - alternating between Italian, Spanish and English throughout the meal. Perhaps this is unfair, but when traveling abroad, I always follow the rule of thumb that the quality of the meal can be expected to be inversely related to the number of English speakers (particularly Americans) present.

When you walk in, the kitchen is immediately on your right and you are instantly struck by how tiny it is. Inside this cramped room, a man that closely resembles Vic Tayback's character "Mel" from the television series Alice slaves over a grill that is covered with some of the thickest porterhouse steaks you are likely to see (at least, outside of Argentina).

On the menu, steak is served by the kilo. After a bit of debate as to whether it was 2.2 lbs per kilo or 2.2 kilos per pound (I argued that with respect to selling steak, seven ounces was a much more reasonable increment than 35 ounces, but I was wrong). We ordered a one kilo, bone-in porterhouse as the main event. We also ordered a Ribolita (if not in Florence, where?), Ravioli in Red Sauce and side orders of White Beans and Spinach. In re-telling this, it sounds like an amazing amount of food for two people, but after walking all day, it seemed reasonable. We paired all of the above with a Vino Nobile de Montepulciano.

The ravioli were a simple affair - al dente noodles concealing pockets of spinach and ricotta - but the sauce was outstanding. This was the first red sauce we had tasted in Italy that reminded my wife of her Italian Grandmother's "gravy." Like the ravioli, the ribolita was simple, straightforward, yeoman's fare. It was a very solid interpretation of the classic dish - a thick, rich, hearty vegetable stew.

As we were eating our first courses, the waiter walked over with our rare steak on a plate to ensure that it met our approval. Not knowing the Italian for "looks like a steak to me" (it would be days before I picked up "va bene"), we both nodded enthusiastically, hoping our enthusiasm would mask our ignorance, like junior Hill staffers at a meeting with their representative. A few minutes later, the steak arrived at our table, still sizzling in a bath of jus. The presentation was similar to that at Peter Lugar's - the meat had been separated from the bone sliced horizontally and then reconstructed on the plate.

The steak was perfect. Salty and seared on the outside and rare in the center. The jus pooled in the plate with what I believe was a bit of beef stock. In any event, we each dove in and took turns slicing a bite-sized piece of steak and then dredging it through the collected juices. At some point, the spinach and white beans arrived, but to be honest, all of our attention was focused on the truly outstanding steak.

I left my wife to finish the last of the Vino Nobile while I went out in search of an ATM. [NOTE - Dei Fagiole is outstanding and belongs on your next Florence itinerary - but it is a CASH ONLY establishment.] We skipped dessert in favor of ending a truly Tuscan evening on an appropriate note - a short stroll and a touch of Vin Santo.

Enoteca Baldovino - We strolled East from Dei Fagiole, towards Santa Croce and wound up at Enoteca Baldovino, the Sister establishment of Trattoria Baldovino just a few doors down (just across the street from the North side of the church). We were too full for dessert, but this place had some outrageous looking desserts and cheeses and the menu at the affiliated Trattoria Baldovino looked like another good option (pizza, pasta, etc.). We settled into the bar and enjoyed a few glasses of Vin Santo before heading home.

Caffe Fiorenza - On our way back through the Piazza de la Signoria, my wife fell prey to that most powerful feminine craving: chocolate. Knowing better than to try to fight the urge, we stopped into the Caffe Fiorenza for some chocolate gelato. This soon became my wife's favorite gelato place and one that we would visit several times in the coming days.

Day 2

Trattoria Casa di Dante Gia "Pennello" - After a morning walking tour of Florence, we dropped in on this little place near Dante's house (or at least, the building that houses the Dante museum). Once again, we were the only English speakers in the place - and the back room was packed with local octogenarians.

We ordered some house red, which arrived in one of those silly rotund bottles covered in what looks like wicker. It was actually quite quaffable and we were told that we would be expected to pay for whatever we drank - no more, no less. This seemed odd, but it worked - two glasses is not enough, but sometimes you struggle to finish a half liter at lunch. Anyway, we decided to share the Ham and Paté Crostini and then each get pasta - Tagliateli with Wild Boar Ragout for me and Linguini with Pesto for my wife.

The crostini were amazing. They arrived with the paté already spread on the crostini and then topped with a slice of proscuitto. The warmth of the freshly toasted bread softened the paté and the clean saltiness of the proscuitto cut through the nutty opulence of the paté to finish cleanly. This is definitely not how we pictured the dish when we ordered it, but we can't wait to try to replicate it at home.

The Linguini with Pesto was well done, but uninspiring. The noodles were cooked properly and the sauce was a very pleasant - not too overly burdensome with garlic. Where it missed the mark was the consistency - it was lumpy and uneven so that there were pockets of noodles with little sauce at all and others where there was nothing but sauce. My wife concluded (correctly), "I make a much better pesto."

Conversely, the Tagliateli with Wild Boar Ragout was excellent. The tagliatelli were thin ribbons of melt-in-your-mouth pasta and their breadth was ideal for scooping up big batches of the hearty ragout. The ragout itself was earthy and a little smokey with the tomatoes contributing just enough acidity to cut the fat flavoring.

All-in, this was quite a find and someplace we will go back to on our next trip.

Enoteca Pinchiorri - We spent the afternoon shopping the leather stores between Ponte Vecchio and Santa Croce and then made our way to the Ferragamo museum and Santa Maria Novella (especially their "pharmacy"). After a brief nap and a shower, we headed out to our much anticipated meal at Enoteca Pinchiorri. I will describe this meal in a subsequent posting - both because of the grandeur of the meal and the fact that by itself, the meal cost nearly as much as our other eight dinners in Italy, combined.

Day 3

Golden View - We awoke on Day 3 a bit groggy from our meal at Pinchiorri (perhaps more from the wine pairings than the meal), but we fortified ourselves with some espresso and were able to squeeze in a tour of the Bargello museum before lunch. After the Bargello, we beat a hasty retreat back over the Arno in search of a nice window seat in one of the restaurants overlooking the river and wound up in the Golden View Restaurant.

We were a bit skeptical of both the English name and the fact that we were the only diners in the restaurant, but the view was spectacular, so we decided to stay. I was instantly drawn to the Four Cheese and White Truffle Crostini, which we ordered along with the Gnocchi Gorganzola, Pizza Margherita and the customary half liter of red wine.

[It was about this point in the trip that, inspired by the omnipresence and ubiquity of red wine, bottled water and espresso, my wife began referring to the three liquids as, "the Holy Trinity." From there on out, every meal incorporated the "Holy Trinity" - a half liter of red wine, a liter each of naturale and frizzante water and two espresso.]

The gnocchi gorgonzola was a massive plate of gnocchi swimming in a thick gorgonzola sauce with swirls of spinach. The sauce was sharp and rich, not at all grainy the way many cheese sauces can be. The dumplings themselves were a little hard (they definitely didn't pass my wife's "stick to the roof of your mouth" test), but I would gladly have eaten a cardboard box served in that sauce.

The Pizza Margherita afforded me just such an opportunity. The pizza was fair - actually, by the standards of what we found in Italy, it may have been the best - but it just isn't really a strong suit over there. You would have thought that by my sixth day in-country, I would have stopped ordering the stuff, but I kept hoping that eventually one of them would have some redeeming quality. I ended up using the pizza as a conduit for the luscious gorgonzola sauce - folding bits in half to form a scoop that could maximize cheese sauce throughput.

Gelateria Carabe - After lunch, we met a guide for a tour of the Ufizzi Gallery and then headed over to the Academy to see David. Just a few blocks from the Academy, heading back towards Santa Maria del Fiore, our guide told us we would find the best gelato in Florence. She boasted of using only the freshest, natural, in-season ingredients. My wife ordered chocolate chip and I opted for hazelnut.

The chocolate chip was a disaster. Imagine miniature chocolate kisses suspended in ice milk. Wretched stuff that we discarded before we reached the end of the block. The hazelnut was totally different. This was thick, gooey, frozen custard punctuated with bits of roasted hazelnuts. It had a uniformly smooth consistency with none of the ice crystals that sometimes plague gelato. I would definitely put this on your next Florence itinerary, but be careful to order flavors based at least in part upon local ingredients.

La Pentola dell'Oro - Before heading to Italy, I emailed a friend who had spent a year in Elba studying and cooking and asked, "I am going to Italy, where should I eat?" Without any notion of my itinerary, the reply came back, "you need to try Pentola dell'Oro in Florence." Luckily, Florence was on our itinerary, but the fact that my friend made this single recommendation - without knowing if we even planned to be in Florence - rocketed this restaurant to the top of our "to do" list.

Pentola was about a 20 minute walk from our hotel and didn't look like much from the outside. The front door lets you right into the kitchen, from which point a quick left turn takes you to a few large communal eating tables, crammed with locals, and a right turn takes you downstairs to a tiny (6 tables) dining room.

We had apparently made quite a stir by booking reservations a month in advance (apparently, outside of Manhattan, nobody else feels the need to do this). They greeted us enthusiastically, apologized that the hostess, who is the only one who really speaks any English, was out sick that evening. The chef/owner, Giuseppe Alessi, came out and in very broken English, apologized again, but said that he hoped we could make it through the menu together.

As we perused the menu, Giuseppe brought out bread and some of his private stash of olive oil. He held up a clear bottle containing yellowish liquid and proclaimed, "this you buy in market." He then pulled out a similar bottle full of bright green liquid and explained, "this I make." His was young, spicy and the raciest olive oil I had ever tasted. We poured some of each and the chef's own pressing made the market variety - outstanding, local Tuscan olive oil by any other measure - pallid and greasy by comparison.

As we picked over the bread and sopped up the delicious olive oil, Giuseppe led us on an Italian/English journey through the menu. He explained the ingredients in each dish as well as the careful preparation and even the history of the recipes. It turns out that when he is not cooking, Giuseppe researches Medieval texts for signs of ancient Tuscan cuisine. While others re-invent and experiment with food, he looks back - to the roots of Tuscan cuisine - and takes his inspiration from there. The result is a very eclectic combination of flavors and presentations, born from culinary passion the likes of which I have never seen before. He became more animated with every dish and the gleam in his eye flickered as he flipped over the menu and built to a crescendo - a dish he claims Brunelleschi served the men who worked on constructing the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore.

We ordered a Mixed Antipasto, Ribolita, Papardelle Chingale, Boar in Chocolate Sauce and Beef in Five Peppers with Pear (Peposo).

The antipasto was your standard spread of salami, roasted red peppers, fresh cheeses, etc. It was nothing to write home about, but after a long walk to the restaurant and the spirited discussion of the menu, it performed well at staving off our initial hunger and preparing our minds and stomachs for the culinary journey that was to follow.

Giuseppe described his ribolita by saying, "Ribolita is uniquely Tuscan and in all of Tuscany, Florence is the home of the dish - nowhere else is it authentic. I make the best ribolita in Florence, which is to say I make the best ribolita anywhere." With a lead-in like that, I had to order it. The ribolita I had two nights earlier at Dei Fagiole was some of the best I had ever had, so I was anxious to see how Guiseppe's stacked up. It arrived as a mound of thick greens and white beans, which Guiseppe dressed tableside with a liberal dosage of his homemade olive oil. The dish had the consistency of porridge - no broth at all - and the flavors were amazingly concentrated. The principal is the same as behind any other reduction - boil off the liquid to concentrate the flavor. I had never had anything like it - and I think it is safe to say Guiseppe can walk the talk.

My wife was intrigued by the papardelle chingale. After a few days in Florence, you begin consuming more boar than anything else, but again it was Guiseppe's tutorial that put us over the edge. He said, "Papardelle began in Tuscany and we still do it better than anyone else." The plate he brought out was a pile of inch wide ribbons of pasta that were so fresh that they melted in your mouth. Their supple structure and large surface area also aided in getting the thick, hearty, tomato-based boar ragout to adhere. The result was that each bite was the perfect ratio of noodle and sauce - with no effort wasted trying to chase bits of meat around the plate with your fork.

We finished each dish, then wiped the plates clean with bits of bread. Guiseppe came out and thanked us for the complement, saying "this is, for me, the best anyone can say."

The boar in chocolate sauce was described as, "like a Mexican mole, but the dish originated in Tuscany." I can not vouch for Guiseppe's anthropological accuracy, but just like when Bluto in Animal House suggested that it wasn't, "over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor," I didn't want to stop him, because he was on a roll. The presentation was awful - a steaming pile of dark brown nuggets. My wife never really got past the visual impact of the dish (perhaps owing to the fact that she shoulders the bulk of the care, feeding and cleaning up after our 115lb Labrador retriever). Oh well, I suppose the medievals were long of function and short on form. The flavor of the dish was outstanding. It was, as Guiseppe promised, very much like a Mexican mole. A combination of sweet, spicy, smokey intensity that clung to the palette even after a thorough flushing of Chianti. The boar itself was as tender as can be - like the meat from a good osso bucco - it fell apart at the first sign of contact from a fork. I thoroughly loved it and licked the plate clean.

The culmination of our culinary tour was the beef in five peppers with pear (beef peposo). This is the dish that Brunelleschi supposedly served his workers, from the kitchen he had constructed in the drum of the dome at Santa Maria del Fiore. I can't really imagine day laborers eating so richly, but then again, they were all members of the guilds, so perhaps they got good food as part of their collective bargaining agreement. The dish was nearly identical to the boar in chocolate sauce in presentation, the only difference being a slightly darker shade of brown and the occasional appearance of a sliver of white pear. The flavor was a combination of intense blood and beef essence, a little salty and very spicy. Imagine the richest beef stock, cooked down to a slurry and laced with piperine/capsaicin. Unlike many Thai and Indian dishes, where the heat comes with other flavors, this dish was primarily seasoned with peppercorns, so the heat was immediate and intense, but didn't convey much additional flavor. The pears provided a needed respite from the heat and achieved a sweet/hot balance that has proven successful in every corner of the Earth. The meat itself was a little tough, like the lamb in a good Irish stew.

At the end of the meal, we had some espresso, finished out Chianti and then Guiseppe thanked us profusely. On the way out, he gave us a copy of one of his cookbooks, apologizing that it was only in Italian.

This was a truly unique evening. I have to admit that towards the end of the meal, my wife was longing for some simple pasta and red sauce, noting that, "I could have stopped at the papardelle and been happy - the rest was more Indian than Italian," but I wouldn't have missed the experience for the World.

Caffe Fiorenza - On our way home, we bid Florence ciao! with one final trip to Caffe Fiorenza for gelato. My wife swears by the chocolate, I found the pistachio to be grainy and uneven - far inferior to the hazelnut I had had earlier that afternoon.

Venice Dining

2005-11-20T17:44:00.000-05:00

Day 1

Le Cafe - After our long journey to Venice, our hosts suggested the quiet tranquility of Piazza San Stefano over the pigeons, tourists and 15 Euro drinks in Piazza San Marco. Le Cafe is one of several restaurants ringing the Piazza San Stefano, but as it was packed to the gills with Venetians, we were instantly drawn to it. We grabbed a candle lit table for two and settled into a few glasses of Prosecco and an order of Bruschetta Veneziana (mozzarella and anchovies on crostini, tossed under the broiler). The pairing worked well enough and the only knock on the bruschetta is that the anchovies came from a tin and way overpowered the mozzarella. When I try to recreate this at home, I will substitute milder, fresh white anchovies. Anchovies or not, the food is really an afterthought here - go for the quiet, romantic setting and watch Venetians go about their daily lives as you begin to ease into their rhythm of life.

Fiaschetteria Toscana - Several people recommended this place to me, but I couldn't find out very much about it online. When I asked our host what he thought of the place, he said, "it is very special - when the boss, my Father, is in town - this is where I take him." That was all I needed to hear.

After a relaxing stroll past the Rialto Bridge, we grabbed a cup of coffee to warm up and then headed to our reservation at Fiaschetteria Toscana. We were led to a quiet dining room upstairs where our waiter (Alberto) walked us through the menu. We opted for Tagliolini Al Tartufo, Monkfish in a saffron sauce and Serenissima (a combination of fried vegetables and fish). We paired these with a split of Soave (a good pairing) and a split of Gattinara (far too tannic for these dishes).

The Tagliolini Al Tartufo arrived first - a delicate mound of al dente pasta (think Raman noodles) drizzled in olive oil and tossed with white truffles. It was a simple, honest, homage to the white truffles (which, as luck would have it, were in season for our entire trip). Despite the simplicity of so few ingredients, the heady truffle fumes made this a very rich dish, which we were happy to share. It would have been hard for one person to eat the entire dish (though I would have liked to try).

Next, we tucked into the monkfish and the serenissima. The monkfish was amongst the freshest I have ever had and the saffron sauce was more like olive oil perfumed with saffron - very light and clean. This was served with what I will call an artichoke hash - a mixture of artichokes, tomatoes and mushrooms. The real star of the show, however, was the serenissima. It was a blend of fried calamari, shrimp, zucchini, eggplant and carrots. The consistency of the fried items was amazing. They were lightly coated in a salty batter - so lightly coated that they resembled that fine coating of sand and sea water that gathers on the windshield of your car when you park overnight near the beach. Inside, everything was just barely cooked - the seafood remained tender and the vegetables each retained their unique flavors.

For dessert, we had an apple tart with caramel ice cream. This was one of the last desserts we ate in all of Italy (excluding gelato). It was a perfectly lovely tart (sweet dough, evenly caramelized apples, not too sweet - just the sugar in the apples themselves, etc.), but we found that in general, the rest of the meal so far overshadows the desserts in Italy, that it was an anticlimactic course upon which to end. It was far better to just have a cheese course or coffee (or both) and grab a gelato on the way home.

Day 2

[________ it kills me that I can't remember the name of this place, but from the Academia, on your way to the Peggy Guggenheim, as you cross the bridge into Campo San Vio, this place is on the corner - with a wine barrel outside the door and an extensive list of wines by the glass] - After a busy morning that included a tour of Basilica San Marco, the Fenice opera house and a walk over the Academia bridge to visit the Peggy Guggenheim museum, we needed a place to cool our heels for a bit. We stumbled into this little place and sat down at the banquet that runs the length of the restaurant. The food was pretty good - especially considering the proximity to so many tourist destinations.

We shared a mammoth proscuitto and cheese panini and then a composed salad of arugula, tuna, artichokes, olives and tomatoes. I can't say that I would go out of my way to eat there again, but that is precisely the point - if you are visiting the Peggy Guggenheim or the Academia, you are already in the neighborhood and you would be hard pressed to do better. Also, embrace the semi-communal seating - order a carafe of wine and meet your neighbors - we were between a lovely British couple who gave us their passes to the Correo museum and an Australian Art Dealer just in town for the biennial, who had some interesting opinions of the US art market.

VizioVirtu - What can I say? Nestled about halfway between the Academia gallery and the Rialto bridge is this lovely little temple of decadence. After touring the Academia gallery, we set out to wander the residential streets of the Dorsoduro, more or less heading towards Santa Croce and the Rialto markets. Down a narrow side street, my wife suddenly yanked my arm, pointed to VizioVirtu's window and said, "Chocolateria translates in every language." Here again, we found ourselves amongst a predominantly Venetian crowd. People lined the L-shaped counter two and three deep, barking out orders for every size, shape and color of chocolate confection you can imagine. We had decided to just get a little bit of white chocolate macadamia bark and perhaps some dark chocolate espresso bean bark, when we noticed the glowing brass orb on the counter at the end of the bar. Our eyes nearly popped out of our heads as this Willy Wonka-esque scene was compounded by the thickest, richest, gooey-est hot chocolate oozing out of the brass vessel and into Styrofoam "to go" cups. We ordered the bark - as well as a cup of chocolate to share.

Even though the hot chocolate only filled about half of the 12oz cup, it weighed a ton. This dense, dark chocolate was barely drinkable - it eased its way down the cup towards your mouth like molasses dripping off a spoon. The taste was an explosion of pure chocolate. We nursed the cup as we continued our walk and only stopped licking the container when we realized that we had stumbled onto Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari (don't you just love how in Venice, there is a surprise waiting around every corner?).

Later that night, we tasted the two barks - both were brilliant. The white chocolate was silky smooth and an excellent medium for the very fresh macadamia nuts. The dark chocolate and espresso bean bark was like de-constructed chocolate covered espresso beans. It was a little intense on its own, but would have been sinful with a glass of port.

Enoteca Mascareta - On our way to dinner, our host suggested we stop into his friend's Enoteca, Mascareta. When we arrived, it was standing room only, with people spilled out into the alley outside. They had dozens of bottles - many from the Veneto - open for tasting and some beautiful plates of antipasto and oysters on the half shell parading by. We were about to have a large meal, so we opted for just two glasses of Bardolino. It was a lovely, light, playful version - the dominant impression was cherries - and on the whole, it was superior to any that I have had here in the States (not that I am a big Bardolino drinker).

While we were there, we witnessed the spectacle of the proprietor teaching one of the patrons how to open a bottle of Prosecco with a sword. Everyone was a bit tipsy, so we took a big step back and squinted as he knocked the neck of the bottle - cork and wire basked still intact - clear across the bar. What a hoot!

Alle Testiere - This was mentioned by some as "the best restaurant in Venice." Never one to trust statements like that, I again ran traps with our host. When I asked him his impression, he smiled, took off his glasses (more for dramatic effect than anything) and said, "it is the best - it is where I gave my wife the ring." Sold.

This restaurant is tiny - even by Venetian standards - with less than a dozen tables and a maximum seating capacity of maybe 20 or so.

I also didn't see any menus. The waiter tells you what they have that evening and makes recommendations. We opted to start with Raw Scampi (shrimp) for my wife and their famous Razor Clams for me. We paired these with a bottle of Soave Classico and told the waiter we would order more as we went.

The shrimp were amazing. Raw, head-on shrimp the likes of which you would be lucky to see in a sushi restaurant. They were peeled and served with thin slices of strawberries and a garnish of olive oil and sea salt. The meat was sweet, buttery and so fresh that you barely had to chew. The strawberries were an unexpected, but very welcome addition to the dish. When eaten together, the tartness in the strawberries cut the opulence of the shrimp.

The razor clams were equally good. Having never had them, I wasn't sure what to expect. Picture steamers, whose shells are long and thin and look like the blade of a straight razor. Inside, the meat is sweet, almost nutty and tender as can be. You would never place these succulent morsels in the same Species as those chewy, salty littlenecks we tend to steam. They were served in a pile, with no garnish whatsoever - the flavor didn't need any fancy presentation or accompaniment.

The Soave Classico held up well here. It was a darker yellow, older, wine than most of the Soave you see in Venice and had enough acidity and backbone to cut through the fatty richness of the shrimp and clams. We called the waiter over and ordered plates of Pumpkin Gnocchi and Seared tuna to share.

They split the pumpkin gnocchi order into two for us and brought it out as our next course. The gnocchi were perfectly cooked, tender, almost chewy morsels, plated with chunks of pumpkin and tossed in a sage butter. There was nothing too crazy here - pumpkin/pasta/sage butter is a time honored and universal combination of autumnal flavors. What was remarkable, however, was the combination of the extreme sweetness of the pumpkin and the herbal flourish of the sage. This was amongst the freshest sage I had ever tasted and would have easily dominated the dish, were it not for the fact that the pumpkin was so amazingly sweet. I didn't see the dish prepared, but I suspect the chef slow roasted the pumpkin (as one would do with fresh beets) to concentrate the flavors, then cut the tender flesh into bite sizes roughly equal to the size of the gnocchi.

After the gnocchi, came a plate of Seared Tuna. This arrived as a large cube of tuna, lightly seared on the outside, then thinly sliced to reveal beautiful, rare, "red Jell-O" colored meat inside. This was served with a balsamic reduction and more fresh strawberries. Strawberries and "balsamic syrup" (what you get if you cook down your balsamic vinegar) is a classic pairing, but I had never tried them with raw tuna. It actually worked very well and the tuna was sinfully fresh. By now, the Soave had given up (the balsamic was just too much for it), so we ordered two glasses of Valpolicella to finish our tuna.

Afterwards, we opted out of dessert and decided instead to share a cheese course. For a restaurant this tiny, they had a surprisingly large variety of cheeses, which they served with bread and a mostardi di fruta of sorts. Of the three cheeses that we sampled, all were good, but the one that really stood out was a blue cheese from Chianti. This was a deeply veined, pungent, almost grainy blue very much in the spirit of a Cabrales. It rendered the poor Valpolicella about as flavorful as diluted grape juice, but I loved every last bite of it.

This was truly an amazing dining experience and one I would recommend to anyone who is going to Venice. At around 120 Euro, it was also very reasonably priced.

Day 3

We awoke on Day 3 to a total rainout. Luckily, we had already covered much of our Venice itinerary and had very little planned, except a 10:45 "Secret Itinerary" tour of the Dogge's Palace. We ended up touring the Dogge's Palace until 2:30, at which point, we were completely famished.

Il Grotto - Owing to our extreme hunger and the driving rain, we were limited to eating in the area of Piazza San Marco - something we had been trying to avoid. We wandered into this little pizza joint attached to the restaurant Angelo, just a few blocks off the Piazza. It was warm and smelled of a wood fired oven and fresh basil, so we decided to stay. We ordered two pizzas - Quattro Stagione and Margherita. Both were very good, with the quattro stagione arriving in four quadrants, each with its own topping: roasted red pepper, artichokes, mushrooms and ham. After the pizza and a half bottle of the house red, we ordered coffee and then the waiter brought my wife a slice of apricot tart - gratis. This was both a lovely gesture (I think he felt sorry for us - we looked like drowned rats when we stumbled in) and an amazing pastry. The tart was some deliciously rich, apricot preserve sandwiched between layers of thick, sweet, buttery pastry dough. When we complimented the waiter, he admitted that the same chef that made the tart also made the preserves from scratch.

After a trip back to our hotel to pack our bags, nap and shower, we headed out to a few local bars before dinner.

Just across the Grand Canal, near the Rialto markets, we stopped in for some Prosecco at a bar whose name I forget, but that had a picture of a mermaid on its sign. We were easily the only English speakers in the bar and local workmen kept coming through to pick up dinner on their way home.

A few blocks away, we stopped into another local watering hole for some Lambrusco. I believe the place was called "The Devil and the Priest" or something like that (the sign had a picture of a devil and a priest on it). This was a very cute place that looked to have some decent food as well. On this particular evening, the crowd was mostly young Venetian couples and their children (strollers were double parked in the alley outside).

Trattoria alla Madonna - Just after 7:00, we made our way to Trattoria alla Madonna. They do not take reservations and we had been warned that often by 7:20 they are full to capacity. This restaurant was described as a locals-only place, despite its location just a few blocks from the Rialto bridge. Our hostess admitted that, "tourists have found out about it," but encouraged us to go anyway.

When you walk in, there is a glorious fish display, full of every kind of sea-dweller imaginable. We had already been advised to order the Gnocchi in red sauce and the Spaghetti with Black Squid, but we perused the menu for a fish dish. Finally, we gave up and asked our waiter what was the best fish they had. When he recommended John Dory, I paused, but then felt compelled to take his advice (imagine the insult at asking his advice and then ignoring it?).

The gnocchi were so tender that they stuck to the roof of your mouth. My wife was nearly in tears as she remarked that this was the sign of authentic gnocchi - the kind her Grandmother used to make. The red sauce was a straightforward affair - no meat, etc. - just very fresh, simple tomato sauce.

The spaghetti with black squid was as advertised - a plate of spaghetti covered with chunks of squid and a thick, rich, salty ink-based sauce. In addition to being a delightful flavor - a heady richness that is hard to find elsewhere in nature - it turned every diner's teeth and lips black. The couple next to us was on their honeymoon and couldn’t resist taking photos of each other with black mouths.

We probably should have stopped there. The two pasta dishes really shined, but the John Dory was a tremendous flop. It arrived in a heavy egg batter, fried and garnished with lemon. Maybe the waited mistook us for Brits, but this fish belonged wrapped in newsprint on the banks of the Thames, not on a plate in a restaurant in Venice. Inside, the fish was fresh and expertly cooked, but it was about as out of place as if he had recommended the cheeseburger.

We skipped dessert and stopped for some gelato on our way home - sad to say goodbye to Venice, but also eager for the sights and flavors of Tuscany.

Tabaq Bistro (DC - U Street)

2005-10-25T20:36:00.000-05:00

U Street has always had great jazz, a handful of popular Ethiopian restaurants and that venerable institution, Ben's Chili Bowl. However, amid the home furnishing stores, bohemian boutiques and restaurant chains that have recently moved in, there is a conspicuous dearth of real food.

Coppi's is a horrible rip-off, Local 16 is a de facto Georgetown Student Union, Chi Cha is for drinking, not eating and Cake Love is a joke.

[Seriously, Cake Love turns out some of the driest, most flavorless cake I have ever tasted in my life - and don't think that hiding it under a deluge of sickeningly sweet icing will work. The exorbitant prices add insult to injury. I know we all love the story line - successful lawyer quits to make cake and help revitalize an urban neighborhood (*tear*) - but it is all sizzle and no steak. NOTE: if a Vegan bakery six blocks away can churn out better pastries than you without the benefit of dairy or butter, shouldn't you hang it up?]

But I digress.

Given my poor view of all the aforementioned U Street establishments, it was with great hesitation that I finally approached Tabaq. Like so many DC failures, it promised a bar/lounge area coupled with a dining room that featured exotic regional food. I had visions of that pair of purgatorial weigh stations in Georgetown, Mie n Yu and Cilantro, where bad food, loud music, poor service and high prices form a toxic cocktail. Lucky for Tabaq's backers, their new venture is closer to IndeBleu and Zaytinya than to these bottom feeders.

I have been to Tabaq twice since it opened this fall and am happy to report that we finally have something to cheer about on the U Street corridor.

Tabaq takes up an entire row house on U, between 13th and 14th streets. The basement houses a lounge, the first floor combines a bar and a banquet that run the entire length of the building and the roof hosts a smaller bar and dining area, encapsulated in glass and offering splendid panoramic views of downtown DC.

The menu is advertised as "Turkish" but you will recognize most of it as being generically Mediterranean: Stuffed grape leaves, hummus, babaganoush, lamb chops, etc.

Every meal at Tabaq starts ff with amazing rye bread knots and a green dipping sauce. The sauce is primarily olive oil, seasoned with garlic and herbs. The bread itself is like a big soft, sourdough pretzel seasoned with rye seeds and covered in kosher salt. Truly outstanding.

On multiple trips to Tabaq with parties of six or more, I have sampled most of the menu, which is comprised primarily of small plates and designed for people to share multiple dishes.

Favorites include:
- eggplant salad (fried eggplant tossed with orange)
- lamb chops (with roasted red pepper puree and pomegranate reduction)
- Aegean pide (like a sun dried tomato based pizza)
- salmon pide (smoked salmon and caper based white pizza)
- grilled tuna (with arugula, caramelized onion and pomegranate dressing)
- black mission fig tart (simple expression of the fig's natural sweetness)

The rare "misses" on the menu include:
- puff shrimp (Turkish take on seafood Newburgh)
- calamari (a wide frisbee of squid pressed between layers of shredded wheat)

This far ranging menu is held together by a few common ingredients that run through most dishes: roasted red peppers and pomegranate. They appear some places as decoration, others as a main ingredient, but the result is little hints and clues that help your palate - however sub-consciously - tie all of the varied dishes together.

I recommend you go now, while the weather is cool and before the roof top scene starts to look like Lauriol Plaza.

The Iron Gate (DC - DuPont)

2005-09-23T19:48:00.000-05:00

A variety of unflattering and often contradictory reviews had kept The Iron Gate low on my list of restaurants to try. Finally, with the first wave of cool autumnal air bringing relief from the heat and humidity that come with living in a swamp, I decided to give it a try.

The Iron Gate is tucked in just South and East of DuPont Circle and from the outside, looks like a brightly lit alley way. At the end of the alley, you turn right, and the space opens up to reveal a gorgeous little private garden nestled beneath a canopy of grape vines and wisteria. Trickling fountains, stained glass lanterns and votive candles complete the setting, which completely transports diners from the hustle and bustle of city living.

We studied the menu while we enjoyed bread and the house "butter" - a captivating mixture of chick peas, olives, sun dried tomatoes, fresh basil and capers. I could have eaten a bowl of this alone as a main course. What would ordinarily be bland hummus was brought to life with the inclusion of the deep sweetness of the sun dried tomatoes, the bite of the green olives, the metallic tartness of the capers and the mouth cleaning freshness of the basil.

The menu is an eclectic mix of Mediterranean, Continental and Latin influences. For example, how often are stuffed grape leaves, paté and gazpacho listed together as appetizer options?

We sampled the grape leaves, hummus, paté and gazpacho before diving into entrees that included seared tuna, lamb shank, Greek salad and "Cuban style" pork.

The grape leaves and hummus were neither here nor there - I have had both better and worse. The gazpacho was a little too thin for my taste, but was passable. The best thing that I can say about it is that it was NOT just tomato salsa run through a blender. Too many restaurants (and I blame the average American palate more than the chefs on the line) think gazpacho should be an overpoweringly strong mix of garlic and jalapeno. Then again, a light, refreshing, bland, cold soup probably doesn't sell that well (when was the last time you saw a restaurant 86 its vichyssoise?). The paté was served with traditional garnish (cornichon, toast, etc.) and was surprisingly good, but served too cold.

For entrees, I didn't really sample the Greek salad or the lamb shank, but the tuna and the "Cuban style" pork were both fairly good. The tuna arrived seared and still translucent in the center. It was lightly seasoned with olive oil and generally left to its own devices.

The "Cuban style" pork (previously recommended to me as a house specialty) was more accurately the "garlic" pork. An otherwise tough cut of pork was forced into submission by a long braising process that involved a lot of salt and several knobs of garlic. It was a unique dish that I enjoyed, but is not for the timid or weak of stomach.

I think you will find me back at the Iron Gate when the weather warms up again this spring. It is such a lovely setting that I will give its eclectic, mediocre food a pass. I will be the guy with a chilled bottle of wine, a basket of bread and a bowl of the house "butter."

Jammin' Joe's Bar-B-Que (VA - New Baltimore)

2005-09-20T19:47:00.000-05:00

Tucked away on the side of Route 29, a scant seven miles south of Route 66, is some outstanding Bar-B-Que. There, amid children's jungle gyms and storage sheds, sits a trailer and two large smokers, humbly turning out delicious pork, chicken and trimmings.

At first, Jammin' Joe's flew under the radar screen - kept afloat primarily by the New Baltimore Fire Department and a few locals looking to outsource their Sunday dinners. I have been stopping at Jammin' Joe's for years and it has been a pleasure to watch them grow, but the secret is now out.

For a roadside Bar-B-Que stand, the menu is a bit confusing. It consists of just ribs, chicken, pulled pork sandwiches and trimmings (baked beans, cole slaw, potato salad, etc.), but in a dizzying array of combinations and permutations.

Do I want the pulled pork sandwich for $6.95 and a side of beans for $1.95, or should I just get the pulled pork sandwich platter - which comes with two sides - for just $8.95?

If I got the 1/2 chicken and pulled pork sandwich platter (with two sides) for $10.95, would that be enough food for my wife and I?

Put away your Microeconomics textbooks, stop trying to break the pricing and just order whatever you think you can eat. Then order some of the baked beans as well - they're amazing.

I have never had Joe's ribs, but everything else is as authentic as it comes.

The pulled pork is tender, juicy and just a little bit tangy - not at all to be confused with that briny Carolina stuff. Order it as a platter or as a sandwich, but please, if you order it as a sandwich, get the cole slaw ON it - you are, after all, in the Commonwealth now, so try to act the part.

Joe's chicken is excellent as well. He uses real wood and slow cooks them, applying the sauce close enough to the end that he doesn't burn it all off. Inside, the meat is perfectly pink and moist (you will, occasionally see the "ring" that comes from proper BBQ technique). For those of you looking to save your arteries, the chicken is cooked skin-on, but it pulls away easily.

Finally, the crown jewel of Jammin' Joe's, the baked beans. I feel somewhat guilty devoting so much time to a side dish, but these are some of the best and most unique baked beans I have ever had. They are a combination of kidney, black eye and lima beans, all swimming with chunks of bacon in Joe's great sauce. I don't know if they make them in small batches, or just bring them up to temperature in small batches, but somehow, every time I have had them, the various types of beans are all cooked perfectly - like al dente pasta - not too hard, but not turned to mush yet either.

So the next time your travels take you down Route 29, remember to set your odometer as you get off Route 66 - Joes is just seven miles ahead, on the right.

Soon enough, you will be just like me - making excuses to head down that way on the weekends.

Thorton River Grille (VA - Sperryville)

2005-09-18T18:46:00.000-05:00

On a recent field trip to Sperryville, VA, I stopped into the Thornton River Grille for lunch.

Normally I grab a sandwich at Sunnyside Farms or try to hold out for some Bar-B-Que on the way back up Route 29, but I was swayed by how enthusiastic some of the locals were about Thornton River Grille.

The restaurant sits at the end of a row of buildings that date back to the early 1800s and have all been completely restored in the past three years. The dining room itself is a simple arrangement, with a dozen of so tables arranged in front of an open kitchen and another few seats at a bar just right of the grill.

This simple veneer completely belies the fantastic food that comes out of that kitchen.

On this Saturday afternoon, we ordered a hamburger and the spicy chicken salad.

The burger is amongst the best around. The Thornton River Grill butchers its own meat and the freshness is very apparent in the quality of the burger. We ordered it rare and it arrived red in the center, soaking the bottom bun with jus as we ate.

The burger was topped with sun dried tomato, avocado and jack cheese. The sun dried tomato is a stroke of genius. Used in lieu of ketchup, the sun dried tomato delivers a potent, concentrated tomato essence without altering the overall consistency or mouth feel of the burger. To get that much tomato flavor with ketchup, you would have to dip the burger in the stuff between bites.

The spicy chicken salad consisted of a blackened chicken breast topped with pepper jack cheese and apple wood smoked bacon with a side of salsa, riding atop an extraordinarily fresh bed of mixed greens tossed in a spicy ranch dressing. This isn't the salad your cardiologist approved, but it is terrific nonetheless.

The warmth of the chicken and melted cheese is tempered by the coolness of salsa, the heat of the blackening seasoning and pepper jack is tempered by the ranch dressing and the dish finishes cleanly courtesy of the bitterness of the arugula mixed in with the greens. The bacon is a completely gratuitous, but welcome addition to the dish.

The Thornton River Grill deserves a spot in your starting rotation as you head out this fall to enjoy the foliage, hike Old Rag and pick apples.

Coppi's Organic (DC - U Street)

2005-09-13T21:00:00.000-05:00

Monday evening, we decided to stroll down U Street and see what the fuss and fanfare around the "U Street Corridor Revitalization" was all about.

We dropped in on Coppi's Organic, as much out of hunger as out of the fear that if we walked any farther, we would wind up in Ben's Chili Bowl (and neither of us had packed our statins).

Upon crossing the threshold, you are transported to the old country. The dim lighting, cramped banquettes, black and white cycling photos and wood-fired oven centerpiece make you forget about whatever it was that was going on outside this lovely trattoria.

We settled into our table (we had our run of the place - there were only six tables seated at 8:00), and were about to begin counting our blessings that a gem like this had opened close enough to home to become our "local," when we caught a glimpse of the prices on the menu.

The gnocchi entree was $26. I'm sorry, waiter, I just wanted a plate of potato dumplings, I didn't want to buy the entire bushel of potatoes.

Any reader of these pages knows that I am not afraid to pay up for good food. A disproportionate amount of my household income eventually finds its way down my throat. But I know a rip-off when I see one and this smelled just like it.

My wife eventually talked me down.

The waiter came by to take a drink order while we perused the menu. We ordered a bottle of water and two glasses of Primitivo.

Ten minutes later, we ordered two brick oven pizzas and inquired as to the status of our water and wine.

The waiter returned a few minutes later with some focaccia, olive oil and our glasses of wine. Still no water.

We stopped another waiter on his way by and asked for water - whatever he had - the bottle we had ordered or even a glass of tap - no response.

Only after our pizzas arrived did they manage to bring out our water, at which point they brought both the bottle of water and glasses of tap water.

The first pizza was the crimini mushroom, basil and proscuitto pizza. This was quite good. The bite of fresh basil and rich, fatty saltiness of the proscuitto completely drowned out any mushroom flavor, but it was good nonetheless. Perhaps blindly wasting ingredients on dishes where they will not be tasted is part of what is driving up Coppi's food cost and leading to their nosebleed pricing?

The second pizza was a complicated combination of artichoke heart, roasted red pepper, grilled eggplant and crimini mushroom. This "tapenade on a crust" combination was pleasant, but the red peppers dominated everything else. At first bite, you got the salty undertones of the cheese and later the uber-sweet finish of the roasted red peppers, with little room for anything else.

These were passable pizzas. The clumsiness with which the recipes were concocted was more than made up for in the freshness of the ingredients and the quality of the crust. The soft, pillowy crust may well be the best pizza crust I've had in DC. Then again, I prefer my crust barely golden brown - what most would consider underdone.

When the bill came, we had paid $60 for two small pizzas, two glasses of cheap Primitivo and a bottle of water. This is completely ridiculous.

For the record, Coppi's is charging roughly TWICE as much as 2 Amy's for food that is far inferior.

If Coppi's can get away with charging those prices, for that food, on 14th and U Street, I feel much more secure about the value of my real estate, but I won't be back to eat there again.

Jim's Steaks (PA - Philadelphia, South Street)

2005-09-12T21:28:00.000-05:00

As the wedding neared and more friends arrived in town on Saturday, we regaled them with our tales of cheese steak glory the prior evening at Pat's King of Steaks. Encouraged by our success, but wanting to test the hypothesis that Pat's was the definitive cheese steak, we made a sport of asking everyone who would listen where their favorite cheese steak came from.

We soon realized that this was the same as asking people in Baltimore where to go for crabs. Everyone has their own waterman or dive bar that they think serves up the best crabs, but nobody will send a tourist there, so everyone says, "Obrycki's," or, "Bo Brooks."

After a deafening chorus of, "Pat's," and, "Geno's," someone finally said, "Jim's." Everyone wheeled on them and asked, "Where?" and, "Why?"

Before long, we hatched a plan to do a brief walking tour of the area around the old State House culminating on South Street at Jim's. That would give us exactly one hour to run back to the hotel, shower and change before the wedding. The girls protested slightly, so we built in some shopping time on South Street as a concession and struck a deal.

When we arrived at Jim's, there was a line out the front door and around the corner. We quickly joined the queue and positioned ourselves under the grill exhaust, where we stood under a waterfall of air perfumed with fry grease, beef fat and caramelizing onions.

After a half an hour, we had wound our way to the front of the line, where we were met by the jovial line cooks. Unlike the angry, gruff woman at Pat's, these guys were joking, having fun, teasing the customers and still cranking out tons of cheese steaks.

The second major difference between Pat's and Jim's is that almost half of the customers at Jim's ordered Provolone, not Wiz. To melt the Provolone, the guys at Jim's lay the cheese on top of the steak, while it is still on the griddle and then lay the roll on top of it, open-faced. With a deft flick of the wrist, they slide a spatula underneath and flip the entire concoction upside down and onto your plate.

Having had the benefit of watching countless steaks made before my eyes while I waited in line, I knew why Provolone was so popular - Jim's is stingy with the Wiz.

With that in mind, while my wife ordered a "wiz wit," I ordered a, "double wiz wit." All of my friends stared back in confusion, as if, "double wiz wit," were Glossolalia.

We collected our steaks, ordered beers (the third major difference between Pat's and Jim's) and headed upstairs to feast.

Technically speaking, Jim's steaks were nearly identical to Pat's. The only major difference is that at Jim's, they slice the cheese steaks in half, which makes them slightly more manageable that at Pat's. Jim's may also be slightly larger than Pat's, but the difference is negligible.

If you compare wiz wit to wiz wit, Pat's is slightly better, owing to a better ratio of cheese to meat and bread and the fact that their rolls were a bit fresher. Jim's miserly wiz portions and slightly stale bread were big strikes against it. This put my wife squarely in the Pat's camp.

However, if you compare Jim's double wiz wit to Pat's wiz wit, I think you will find that Jim's comes out on top. The melted wiz, fat and jus stream out of the sandwich, roll across the palm of your hand and pool in the wrapper. Towards the end of each half, you can drag the end of the roll through the pooled liquid like a poor man's French dip. By contrast, without the double wiz, Jim's steaks can be a little dry.

I also think the friendly service and liquor license at Jim's help put it on top. Let's face it - cheese steaks were meant to be enjoyed with a beer, not a diet coke.

We emerged from Jim's, fat, happy and realizing that in addition to showering, we needed to burn our clothes because they would forever reek of onions.

So, there you have it - a split decision. I vote for a double wiz wit at Jim's, while my wife votes for the straight up wiz wit at Pat's.

We will demand a recount in December when we return to the City of Brotherly Love for the Army / Navy football game.

Pat's King of Steaks (PA - South Philadelphia)

2005-09-12T19:27:00.000-05:00

We were headed to Philadelphia for a wedding and figured we would sneak into town a night early for dinner at Morimoto. At the last minute, my wife suggested that instead of dropping a few hundred dollars on adding another restaurant to our trophy collection, we ought to go find an authentic Philly Cheese steak.

Neither of us had ever had one and I was excited at the prospects of trading another boring night of four star dining for some real culinary adventure.

My wife had done some advance research with a colleague from Philadelphia and I scoured her notes on the train - a jumbled mix of words and addresses with phrases like, "Pat's - claims to be the original," followed by, "order wiz wit," and finally, "cash only - don't forget Geno."

Confused by the notes, which read like a cross between the scripts from A Beautiful Mind and Goodfellas, I began looking for a real live Kurtz the moment we arrived at 30th Street Station. We were in search of THE quintessential Philly Cheese steak and didn't have time to waste on pretenders.

I began with the cab driver. He claimed that Pat's was the best, but confessed that he didn't eat cheese steaks that often. The bellhop at our hotel also suggested Pat's. The hostess at the check-in desk suggested Geno's, but added that, "I really like their French fries," which completely discredited her.

Upstairs, in our room, we ripped through guide books, scrutinized ads in the yellow pages, read tea leaves and contemplated enlisting the services of an Augur before journeying forth into the darkness.

With the power of popular opinion behind Pat's, we hopped in a cab and barked out Pat's coordinates. We knew that if we didn't like the looks of the place, we could always go to Geno's instead - they are located across the street from each other.

As the cab drew closer, the horizon brightened - aided by the hundreds of neon lights dancing above Geno's and the pale glow of the countless florescent tubes illuminating the outdoor seating at both establishments. I felt like I had been had.

This glow-in-the-dark intersection looked like South of the Border dropped in the middle of South Philly. This had tourist trap written all over it.

I surveyed the outside of the two establishments, and as I rounded the corner next to Pat's, that sinking feeling of doubt in the pit of my stomach was replaced by hunger as a wave of caramelizing onions washed across my face.

I grabbed my wife's hand and charged to the counter.

The long line at Pat's gave me time to consider my order. I remembered reading the words, "wiz wit," on the train and now began to understand their previously cryptic meaning.

"Wiz," refers to Cheez Wiz - the preferred dairy accompaniment to a proper Philly Cheese steak. The menu offered Provolone and American as possible alternatives, but it was authenticity we were chasing, so "Wiz" it was.

The "Wit," portion of the cipher referred to whether or not you wanted onions. In Philly, nobody orders, "with onions." Instead, they bark, "wit," which causes any cheese steak jockey worth his or her salt to add onions to your "steak wiz."

After practicing this new language over and over in my head, I approached the Charon-esque woman behind the counter and recited an overly rehearsed and somewhat canned request for, "two wiz wit." She nodded in understanding and wheeled around to begin assembling the cheese steaks.

Next to her was a pile of sub rolls, a vat of warm Cheez Wiz and a griddle that had to measure at least six feet long. Piled high on either side of the griddle were towers of raw steak and sliced onion. In between these two towers was a veritable Death Valley of caramelizing onions and frying steaks. The fat pouring out of the steaks had pooled in the center and the result was that the onions and raw steak more or less braised in the runoff - rather than frying on a clean griddle.

Charon grabbed a sub roll, slathered it with Cheez Wiz and then stuffed a mound of steak and onions into it. She repeated this process and thrust the two creations back at me through the window.

Buoyed by my mastery of the Philly lexicon and perceiving more of a rapport than I had actually established, I then said, "thanks - we also need an order of fries and two diet cokes." She stared back at me blankly, shot out her open palm and said, "$9.80." I said, "What about the fries and the drink?" She barked back, "next window - $9.80 for the steaks."

Completely crest-fallen, I paid and sulked to the next window to collect my fries and sodas. Once I paid the cashier at that window (I'm still not sure why they make it two transactions), we grabbed a seat and began to tuck in.

I was at first surprised by the size of Pat's cheese steaks. Pat's steaks are only about three inches wide and about seven inches long. These were not the monstrous, foot long, six inch wide imposters you sometimes encounter elsewhere. At these dimensions, they more closely resemble a French baguette sandwich than anything that Subway or Quizno's can churn out.

Each bite revealed salty Cheez Wiz and tender bits of steak, finished by the clean sweetness of the onions. The liberal amounts of fat and jus melted into the bread, converting an otherwise average white loaf into a sort of chewy, beef flavored bread pudding.

Pat's is the real deal. After years of churning out good cheese steaks, they have perfected the ratio of bread to meat to cheese and onion. This ensures that every bite of your Pat's cheese steak will include equal portions of all of the ingredients.

We mopped up the last of the melted Cheez Wiz and jus and sat back, basking in the afterglow, convinced that we had found, "the one."

Rocklands (DC - Georgetown)

2005-09-10T20:26:00.000-05:00

Question: What to do when you have a dozen friends coming over on a weeknight, but you get home too late to cook for them?

Answer: Rocklands BBQ

A few weeks ago, my wife and I were getting ready for bed, when we realized that she had a dozen friends coming over for "book club" the following evening and we hadn't done a thing to prepare for it. After a few moments of frenzied recipe review, it came to me - we would outsource our cooking to Rocklands.

The next evening, she called in the order when I was on my way home from work and 30 minutes later, they had a big order waiting for me. Ten more minutes later, the girls were dining on ribs, BBQ chicken, cole slaw, potato salad and everyone's favorite, the macaroni and cheese.

I have always been a casual admirer of Rocklands - eaten in a few times - carried out occasionally for a quick weeknight dinner - but this was the first time that they had come to my rescue in a catering emergency.

As always, they were up to the task. I walked in, past the long line of people waiting to place orders, gave them my name, swiped my credit card and then they helped me to my car with a bread rack full of food.

At Rocklands, they slow cook the meat over hickory and then bring it up to temperature later, after you place your order. This ensures that your order is hot, but also still tender and juicy. They also go to the trouble of splitting the ribs and breaking the whole chickens into individual serving sizes before wrapping them up for you.

[NOTE: The one drawback of their reheating approach is that they tend to mop on a lot of sauce and apply high heat when they are bringing the meat up to temperature. What this gains in terms of preserving the texture of the meat, it loses by burning the sauce. Too often the overwhelming initial impression from Rocklands chicken and ribs is that of charcoal. If they laid off the sauce until after firing the meat, then mopped it on hot, they would get the same result, without the charring.]

With respect to side orders, I am partial to the applesauce, braised collards (with just a bit of bacon tossed in) and Texas corn pudding, but on this particular evening, the macaroni and cheese prevailed.

This is a sinfully rich, creamy version of the classic dish, made with large shells and what appears to be Velveeta. During the cooking process, some of the cheese on top browns. This is later broken up and arrives on your plate as incorporated crunchy, salty morsels. I could eat a pint of this stuff on my own if I had no fear of heart disease.

Next time you are in a pinch, expand your horizons (and your waist line) with some help from the guys at Rocklands.

Mike's (MD - Edgewater)

2005-09-07T20:23:00.000-05:00

We stopped into Mike's on Labor Day because we were just too knackered from our weekend pig roast to actually steam our own crabs. Mike's is one of our favorite crab haunts - fast, friendly, no fuss, beautiful waterfront setting and always great steamed crabs.

Much to our surprise, they were completely sold out of crabs - at 6:00 on Labor Day.

It took a minute for it to sink in, but then I resigned myself to actually reading their menu. After dozens of trips to Mike's, I had never bothered to glance at the thing. Typically it is, "a few dozen of the largest you have, onion rings, fries and a pitcher of whatever's coldest."

We ordered a pound of steamed shrimp to pick over while we mulled over the choices. The shrimp were good - not great - but I have certainly had far worse. They were smallish - about the size of your pinkie finger - but well seasoned and tender. Too often steamed shrimp come out the consistency of those pink rubber erasers, but thankfully, this was not the case at Mike's.

Consensus at the table seemed to be to stay in the crab theme, so it was crab cake and soft shell crab sandwiches all around.

The crab cakes were massive - the size of softballs - and packed with some of the biggest chunks of jumbo lump I have ever seen. They were also very light on filler - mostly just crab meat and some binder - nary a bread crumb to be seen - and broiled to a golden brown perfection.

Unfortunately, they were also amongst the worst tasting crabcakes I have ever had.

Behind this Potemkin village of size, color and texture was a bland mound of mush that was almost completely devoid of any flavor at all. Quite honestly, I don't know how they pulled this off. I couldn’t even taste the crab meat itself. When crab cakes go wrong, it is usually lesser quality meat, too much filler/binder, too much seasoning, or God forbid, the inclusion of green peppers.

Never before have I have a crab cake LOOK so perfect and taste so wrong. My only guess is that they used some combination of frozen lump crab meat and forgot to season the binder at all. This was a colossal disappointment.

The soft shell crab sandwiches that half of our party had ordered were outstanding. Two soft shell crabs, very lightly dredged and sautéed, each measuring between five and six inches across arrived between perfectly fresh wonder bread.

These were tender, juicy crabs exploding with flavor and freshness and served on bread so soft that it stuck to your teeth as you bit into it. Fortunately, the portions were large enough that they shared with those of us who had unwisely chosen the crab cakes.

The silver lining in this otherwise uneven trip to Mike's is that everyone had plenty of room left for dessert. At Mike's, they serve ice cream, pies, etc. but the real draw is their "nutty buddy cone."

These mammoth ice cream cones feature a sugar cone, filled with vanilla soft serve ice cream, dipped in chocolate and then rolled in peanuts. They measure over ten inches from bottom to top and are so large that they now arrive on their side, in bowls, with spoons. Whatever you do, don't pass these up.

I would still like to get another round of steamed crabs under my belt before they stop running this season. Hopefully Mike's won't be sold out next time, because I would hate to have to brave the line of luxury cars with Baltimore area private school window decals over at Cantler's.

Sweet Licks (DC - DuPont)

2005-09-04T22:03:00.000-05:00

This appropriately named, basement level ice cream parlor is a neighborhood favorite.

The quirky combination of soft serve frozen yogurt, milkshakes, pastries, dog treats, coffee drinks and unique flavors of hand dipped ice cream, while dizzying at first blush, offers a bit of something for everyone.

On a typical night you can find - at the same table - someone on the Atkins diet enjoying low-carb frozen yogurt, someone who is lactose intolerant enjoying sorbet, a dog quietly mooching on a biscuit and a couple diving into a sinfully sweet banana split.

My favorite flavors are the white chocolate blueberry (white chocolate ice cream with blueberries) and mango sorbet (some of the best around).

The proximity to Hank's makes it a no-brainer after a meal there and the tables outside make for great people watching.

So stop by the next time you are in the neighborhood – even if your friends snicker at the name.

Hank's Oyster Bar (DC - DuPont)

2005-09-04T18:52:00.000-05:00

We stopped into Hank's Thursday night for a casual dinner with some friends.

You have no idea how nice it is to be able to say this. 14th Street has become a culinary wasteland of bar food and ethnic takeout joints against which Hank's is the sole beacon of hope for those seeking a "neighborhood" restaurant.

Our party of four began with a light-hearted bottle of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, an order of fried oysters and a dozen oysters on the half shell.

I have showered praise upon Chef Leeds' fired oysters elsewhere and these were more of the same. Light, crispy, crunchy shells just barely able to contain the soft, moist oyster.

The half shells were good as well - served at the peak of freshness and offering a good variety of both species and geography. If you closed your eyes (and swapped that foofy wine for a bottle of Dixie or Abita) you could almost feel like you were sitting in Casamento's.

For entrees, my wife and I ordered the seared white tuna with peach salsa and sautéed soft shell crabs with citrus buerre blanc as well as a side order of sautéed spinach. Everything was outstanding.

The white tuna was a massive cube of fish that more closely resembled filet mignon. It had been seared on all six sides and was still just barely above room temperature on the inside - exactly how my wife had requested it. The accompanying peach salsa was a simple mix of fresh peaches, tomatoes and lemon juice that paired very well with the tuna.

The soft shell crabs were excellent as well. They were simply sautéed and then dressed with a citrus butter. The acidity in the citrus helped cut the sweetness in the crab, which is why this has become a classic pairing.

The sautéed spinach is straight out of Grammercy Tavern - high heat, toss the spinach with a few cloves of garlic, remove from the heat before it wilts and dress with sea salt and lemon juice. Perfect. Michael Romano would be proud.

Chef Leeds still does not serve dessert at Hank's, so after we mopped up the last of the citrus butter and peach salsa, we settled up and headed up the street for dessert at Sweet Licks.

Hank's continues to deliver. I can hardly wait to see what Chef Leeds does with clam chowder, oyster stew and cioppino, now that the weather is turning cooler.

Extra Virgin (VA - Arlington)

2005-08-26T20:33:00.000-05:00

Chef Daniele Catalani, alumnus of Galileo restaurant in DC, has opened Extra Virgin amongst the bustling oasis of restaurants that have cropped up on South 28th Street in Arlington/Shirlington.

The sleek, modern, night club feel of the restaurant is a fitting setting for Catalani's progressive and imaginative brand of Italian cooking. Unfortunately for him, not since Redskins owner Dan Snyder dismissed coach Marty Schottenheimer has the DC area witnessed such a dysfunctional marriage of front office and back office.

While Catalani's cooking is excellent - and at times brilliant - the wait staff possesses a dangerous combination of carelessness and indifference. Specials were read off a list (with Italian pronunciations botched at every opportunity), routine questions about the preparation of several dishes elicited blank stares, we were informed that certain dishes had been "86ed" only AFTER ordering them, water glasses went unfilled and dishes arrived several minutes apart - often cold.

Catalani has managed to hire a front office that is even worse than that at his alma mater, Galileo - no small feat considering their notoriously rude and inattentive dining room staff.

We began our meal at the bar with the restaurant's signature beverage: the Extra Virgin Dirty Martini. This martini is not dirty, it is filthy. The bartenders keep squeeze bottle of olive juice behind the bar and gush the contents liberally into each and every shaker. The default is vodka but they were more than happy to customize mine by substituting gin.

[Note: I consider it another sure sign of the Apocalypse that vodka has become the default ingredient in traditionally gin-based drinks. Forget the cold war - when I have to opt out of vodka to specify that I want my martini or gimlet made with GIN, the Russians have already won.]

The murky liquid is dispensed into an oversized martini glass and accompanied by six enormous green olives - each stuffed with gorgonzola. Whoever thought of this should be beatified.

People at the bar struggle with how exactly to eat the olives - Emily Post never really laid down rules for dropping cheese stuffed olives into a vat of vodka [sic] or gin - but the consensus seems to be to gently roll them into the martini glass and after a few sips, fish it out with a cocktail straw, then repeat.

Sure, the whole thing costs $14, but the combination of flavors is incredible. The meaty, herbal tartness of the olives yields to the rich, creamy, spicy gorgonzola and the generous soaking of alcohol clears the palate.

Once our party of four made it to our table, we dove into the bread basket as we perused the menus. I don't know where Catalani is getting his bread, but it is excellent. Generally speaking, DC is in dire need of quality baked goods, but at Extra Virgin, you will find classic Italian bread - thick crusty stuff that is soft and pillowy in the middle and not, as Dante's compatriots in the Inferno complain, "salted" at all.

They also served a fantastic caramelized tomato focaccia and a less well received sun dried tomato flat bread.

For starters, we had tuna carpaccio on white beans salad, a classic Caesar salad, fried calamari and a salad of fresh mozzarella, tomato and balsamic. All were very solid, with the calamari and the tuna as the most obvious standouts.

The tuna arrived as lightly seared strips - still rare and jewel-like in the center - astride a mound of white beans. The beans were tossed in olive oil, maybe a little bit of lemon juice and very fine ground black pepper and the whole dish received a dash of sea salt. This was simple, elegant cuisine that let the quality of the ingredients speak for themselves.

The calamari were very lightly breaded and fried to perfection - the tender, delightful morsels that all calamari strives to become - not the usual, chewy, leathery stuff. The accompanying red pepper remoulade was a nice pairing and was light and airy.

The Caesar salad was pretty standard - better than average dressing (clearly made on the premises, with anchovy) over chunks of romaine, a handful of pecorino and served in something reminiscent of a tortilla shell. Weird.

For main courses, we had porcini risotto with truffle oil, fresh crab meat ravioli with yellow pepper coulis, strozzapretti with tomato and pork sausage, and a NY Strip steak.

The risotto and the ravioli arrived first, followed approximately three minutes later by the steak and the strozzapretti. This allowed the risotto to cool and develop a nice thick skin and provided the ravioli the opportunity to cool down to room temperature. Disgraceful.

Despite the service gaff, the food was quite good. Everyone at the table liked the risotto the best, and while I agree that it was good, the truffle oil was unidentifiable.

The ravioli got my vote as best dish simply because I am a slave to seasonal ingredients. Blue crab stuffed ravioli served in a roasted yellow pepper coulis - it doesn't get any simpler than that - and on the banks of the Potomac in August, it doesn't get any fresher either. The only critique of the dish is that it was almost too sweet. The sweetness in the crab meat played off the sugar in the yellow pepper coulis and was almost too much.

The strozzapretti were also very good. While I admire Catalani's attempt to serve lesser known pastas, this delightful variety lost something in both the waiter's inability to pronounce it and his difficulty in explaining what the hell it is.

[The name strozzapretti translates as "Priest Strangler" presumably after a particularly gluttonous priest who ate too many of these. The pasta itself is a long, skinny dumpling, with a slight twist to it - like a cross between a thick cavatelli and rotini.]

Anyway, the dumpling-like consistency of the pasta paired beautifully with the hearty meatiness of the pork sausage and red sauce. This dish also benefited greatly by being one of the only two that were served warm.

The steak was awful. Over-cooked and served with a sad looking roasted tomato and some potatoes. I have already spent more time describing it than it is worth.

Somewhat shell-shocked by the uneven performance, we cut our losses and skipped dessert.

I wish Chef Catalani luck in turning this project around. His cooking is certainly worthy of a better supporting cast.

Perhaps he should skip the strozzapretti and strangle his wait staff instead.

Max's Best Homemade Ice Cream (DC - Georgetown)

2005-08-22T21:12:00.000-05:00

The name pretty much says it all at this Cleveland Park institution: Max's Best Homemade Ice Cream.

For decades, the always upbeat and tireless Max and his wife have been serving DC residents over 150 flavors of homemade ice cream.

Max's flavors all start with real eggs and cream and from there are transformed into everything from run of the mill chocolate, vanilla and strawberry to more exotic ice creams like cinnamon, gingerbread, pumpkin spice and even one called "Mozambique" - a wild blend of nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves.

On a typical summer night, the place is packed with people streaming in from the neighborhood as well as those who have skipped dessert at the dozen or so restaurants that line this strip of Wisconsin Avenue, in favor of a visit to Max's.

Get it while it lasts - the first hints of crisp fall air are moving in and Max typically closes up shop for the winter.

2 Amys (DC - Cleveland Park)

2005-08-22T21:09:00.000-05:00

Another night, another great meal at 2 Amy's. The lines out front don't lie.

This time, we dined at a table near the bar in the back. We ordered, a margherita pizza, the roasted eggplant (special) and a pizza with caramelized tomato, chives, roe and a fresh cracked egg (special).

The margherita, was good, as always, but the two specials blew us away.

The roasted eggplant was actually a whole eggplant, tossed in the wood-fired oven and roasted until it was gooey. It was then plated, split with a knife and covered in pesto. The bitterness of the eggplant played off the sweet basil and spicy garlic in a dish that was pure summer. I don't think I can reproduce this in an oven, but I am very tempted to grab a few eggplants at the farmer's market and toss them in my smoker for the afternoon.

The special pizza was by far one of the oddest things I have ever put in my mouth. The caramelized tomatoes and roe gave the pizza an overall burnt yellow color, with flashes of green from the handful of diced chives that were thrown on top. Then, all by itself, sitting in the middle of the pie, sat a large, fried egg (sunnyside up). They literally prepared the pizza, cracked an egg on it and then tossed it in the wood fired oven. The super-sweet tomatoes played off the salty roe and the earthy egg flavor in a really amazing, fresh pizza.

The waiter told us that they do a similar trick in the winter with a grana, truffle oil and fresh egg pizza. I can't wait for that to come around!

Annapolis Ice Cream Company (MD - Annapolis)

2005-08-22T21:01:00.000-05:00

You have to admire the cajones on someone who decides to open an ice cream parlor on Main Street in Annapolis, considering the town already boasts a Ben & Jerry's, and several local confectioners within 50 yards of their storefront. Not to mention the fact that around the corner sits that venerable Annapolis ice cream institution, Storm Brothers.

Needless to say, it was with much cynicism and trepidation that I walked into the Annapolis Ice Cream Company.

The layout is copied exactly from Storm Brothers, with a few tables up front, a counter down the left side, and a line that snakes around and out the door. It is brighter, more updated and even boasts a flat screen display of "today's flavors" but it is more or less your generic ice cream parlor layout.

The difference is in their ice cream. They have more creative and better prepared flavors than anyone around. I have been twice in the last month and my favorites so far are Apple Pie, Blackberry Cobbler and Chocolate Mint Chip.

Apple pie is their hallmark flavor. Nowhere else is it more apparent that the ice cream you are eating was hand crafted on the premises that day. They literally take a fresh baked apple pie and blend it into vanilla ice cream. The result is that each bite contains bits of apple pie filling and chunks of pie crust that is so fresh, it is still crunchy. Go early - this one tends to sell out towards the end of the night.

Blackberry cobbler is in the same spirit as the apple pie - fresh blackberry cobbler blended into ice cream.

Chocolate mint chip sounds pedestrian, and is anything but. It is actually chunks of peppermint patty, blended into rich, dark chocolate ice cream. This is a unique and surprising "inside out" take on the traditional mint chocolate chip.

I'm sold. After years of believing the only proper way to end a meal in Annapolis was with a walk to Storm Brothers, I plan to change tack and head up Main street instead.

Boatyard Bar & Grill (MD - Eastport)

2005-08-22T20:57:00.000-05:00

In a part of the World that caters primarily to tourists and lobbyists, the Boatyard has a refreshing, "locals only," feel to it. Unlike many other restaurants on that side of the Spa Creek bridge that seem to have zip code envy at their neighbors across the creek, the Boatyard proudly stands as a place by Eastporters, for Eastporters.

Their motto says it all: "Where local sailors, fisherman and those who love the Chesapeake Bay come to relax and enjoy pint drinks and great food."

Forget the image of people in topsiders and Hawaiian shirts - this crowd is sun bleached red Mount Gay Regatta hats, shirts with the name of your boat on the chest, a table for eight occupied by people wearing shirts emblazoned with the label "crew" and on a recent Saturday evening, a slightly intoxicated girl with a red "port" sticker on her left breast and a green "starboard" sticker on her right breast.

People flock here for the casual "come as you are" atmosphere, great food, and cold drinks.

[With respect to the drinks, I can honestly say that the Boatyard serves the coldest beer in Annapolis. In fact, I haven't had beer this cold since I moved out of my fraternity house - and our taps were in the basement, in New Hampshire, with a boiler that was almost always on the fritz in the dead of winter.]

On recent visits, I have sampled the crab dip, burgers, crab cakes, calamari, the turkey club and the blue crab sandwich. All are very good, but the crab dip deserves special mention.

This is the best crab dip around. Period. This is jump blue crab, parmesan cheese, spinach and onions combined and tossed in the broiler. Lots of places serve a similar sounding dish, but too often they are just cream cheese with a few odd chunks of crab meat. The Boatyard version is mostly crab meat, spinach and onions, with just enough cheese to hold it all together. The inclusion of onions - which caramelize in the broiler - adds body that is lacking in other, lesser, versions of the dish.

The dish is so good that they also offer it as the "Blue Crab Sandwich" - an open faced creation consisting of bread piled high with the aforementioned crab dip and topped with tomato slices and cheddar cheese before heading into the broiler. Decadent.

The turkey club is another stand out. It consists of smoked turkey piled high on challah and topped with bacon, lettuce, tomato, avocado slices and a spicy red pepper mayonnaise. The result is a delicious sandwich that is so thick it almost requires fork and knife eating.

The burgers and crab cakes are also terrific. The burgers are thick, fresh and cooked to order - a rarity in today’s e-coli panic stricken restaurant world. Last Saturday my wife ordered hers rare and it was actually served red in the center. The crab cakes are exactly what you would expect - all jumbo lump crab, no filler, perfumed with Old Bay and cooked to a beautiful golden brown - crispy on the outside and juicy in the center.

Most people have trouble deciding between the burger and the crab cake, so you will frequently see couples get one of each and split them. I wonder if there is a way for the Boatyard to order tiny rolls and offer a Chesapeake surf and turf - 1/2 burger and 1/2 crab cake sandwich?

I have long said that the best food in Annapolis is outside of Annapolis and the Boatyard Bar & Grill in Eastport is case in point.

Bardeo (DC - Cleveland Park)

2005-08-21T21:11:00.000-05:00

We grabbed a cramped little four-top next to the bar last Wednesday for a casual dinner.

Bardeo (the less formal of the Ardeo/Bardeo duplex) is a dark, sleek, minimalist bar with tables scattered in front and down one side and an open kitchen in the back.

The menu is a bit of a departure from normal as well - four pages in all, with one each devoted to wine flights, wines by the glass, small plates and cheeses. There is a more extensive list of wine bottles and a separate dessert menu as well.

The food part of the menu is built around the wine and has a decidedly "Mediterranean meets California" tone to it. Dishes like grilled prawns over white beans echo the Mediterranean, while a salad of mixed greens with goat cheese and walnuts is as California as they come. Each dish is paired with a suggested wine and the wines themselves, hailing from all over the globe, range from $7.00 to $10.00 a glass. So far, so good.

We ordered eight small plates between the four of us and were then presented with a basket of bread and paté to enjoy with our wine.

The bread was your generic trucked in from the restaurant supply company type of stuff, but the paté was really what had our attention. It was a small ramekin of what I believe was chicken liver paté (not rich enough to be goose, not at all nutty or gamey - mostly seasoned with black pepper). Bardeo serves this alongside butter on every table.

I can honestly say that I have never seen this before. Olive oil, tapenade, designer butters - those are all old hat - but never have I seen paté. If it had been better, I would have been more impressed, but to foist a dollop of mediocre paté on all of your diners, seems a bit over-the-top. Anyway, let this serve as a formal warning to vegetarians.

Our waitress was very helpful and accommodating of several special requests we had. She was also very patient in her coordination of four different diners drinking several different wines by the glass, all at different paces. Unfortunately for her, the kitchen wasn't giving her any help.

We had just about taken our second bite of our first courses, when the second courses arrived. So much for savoring and sharing - let alone wine pairing. Not to mention the fact that the table was already very cramped with bread, paté, wine glasses, water glasses, etc.

Their solution was to spin the rectangular plates 90 degrees and line them up side-by-side in front of each of us like some crazy haute TV dinner (veggies in the rectangle on the left, meat in the rectangle on the right). What is the hurry? Did they honestly think that at 9:00 on a Wednesday night, they were going to get an extra turn of our table? Not likely.

The food itself was mixed. Some dishes were very good, others were fair. Winners included the warm asparagus salad, grilled prawns and braised beef panini. Losers included the crispy goat cheese salad and grilled tuna.

The warm asparagus salad was a pile of steamed asparagus, topped with a summer hash of leeks, mushrooms and hazelnuts. This was both visually appealing and a creative mix of textures and flavors, with the hazelnuts and the leeks punctuating a dish that would otherwise have been bland.

The grilled prawns were the best dish, by far. They were served astride a pile of cannellini beans, tossed in basil and chili oil. The smoky prawns played off the creamy beans and sweet basil well, with the chili oil providing a kick at the end of each bite.

The braised beef panini was quite good as well. It was a pile of red wine braised brisket, served on sourdough with caramelized onions and blue cheese. The flavors all worked well together, even if this dish seemed a little heavy for the summer. If it is still on the menu when the temperature drops below 60 degrees, I will try it again with a glass of Rhone.

The crispy goat cheese salad was a bust. Friseé, beets, walnuts and goat cheese can be a delightful starter - especially at this time of year, when beets abound. Unfortunately, the Bardeo version pits wilted friseé with canned beets and a golf ball sized mound of fried goat cheese in a bizarre, hybrid California cuisine / fast food nation dish. Do you want fries with that?

Likewise, the grilled tuna steak was full of promise, but failed to deliver. It was advertised with beluga lentils, celery, radish and truffle vinaigrette - what could be better? Well, for starters, the tuna "steak" is actually a half inch thick piece of tuna that had been cooked within an inch of its life. It wasn't burned, but it had both the consistency and the flavor of canned tuna. Try as they might, the rest of the preparation couldn't get over the hurdle set by the murdered piece of fish.

For desserts, we decided to cut our losses, get away from the smoke in the bar and walk down the street for some ice cream, though a few of the selections were tempting.

I might try Ardeo next time, to see if that side of the house is doing a better job of metering the pace of the meal, but to be honest, I have gone from wondering why it took me two years of living in DC to try Bardeo to wondering if I will be back again in the next two.

Lauriol Plaza (DC - DuPont)

2005-08-21T20:25:00.000-05:00

Hi. My name is Kevin and I am addicted to Lauriol Plaza.

This Mexican restaurant has been pleasing crowds since long before it moved to its "new" location on the corner of 18th and T Streets. The new digs are three cavernous, post-modern levels that include outdoor dining (patio and rooftop), two bars (downstairs and rooftop) and everything from private two-tops to booths that easily seat parties of ten.

Lauriol Plaza (also known to junkies by its street name, "L.P.") doesn't take reservations and manages its seating on a first come, first served basis. Once you arrive, check in with the hostess and if you are lucky, the wait will only be thirty minutes. If you are unlucky, the wait will be 45 minutes or more before you can even get a pager (you know, those little flashing, vibrating plastic coasters that people tend to stare at with talismanic awe in fear that if they look away, they will somehow miss it going off) and then another 30 or so minutes to get a table.

In the meantime, head to the bar for a pitcher of their tasty (but lethal) frozen margaritas. They also have a fine selection of tequilas, Mexican beers, wine, etc. but it is the pitchers of frozen margaritas that find me waking up at three o'clock in the morning, fully dressed, face down on my dog's bed, still clutching my house keys.

[As a public service announcement to un-itiated girls who are just in town for the summer while interning for a Congressman from a Midwestern state: Those neat looking pitchers with red and green layers are called "Swirl" margaritas. Say it with me, S-W-I-R-L. Now you know and you don't have to keep stopping me to ask, while my pitcher melts on the way back to the rest of my party]

On a typical summer evening, the crowd erupts from the front doors and becomes a full rolling, tequila fueled, street party. Everyone from yuppies just getting off work, to couples out on a date (bad call - really bad call) to summer interns that have been there for hours and the occasional bachelor and bachelorette parties, crowds around 18th Street, alternating between drink in hand and basket of tortilla chips. Gay and straight, black, white and brown, business suits and torn chinos, three inch stiletto heels and flip flops, super models and average joes, all combine in a come-as-you-are patchwork quilt that would puzzle most red state residents.

Traffic on 18th Street grinds to a halt as one lane is used for parked cars, the next lane winds around the block to the free valet service (an added bonus for the Bridges & Parkways crowd) and a third lane of taxis deposits passengers. The din of the masses can be heard from blocks away, as can the occasional punctuated cheers of joy when someone's pager finally goes off.

I am convinced that this scene is the very essence of why people keep coming back to LP. The food is good - some of it is very good, some of it less so - but the wait staff is barely competent, the hostess-by-committee approach is dreadful, the hostesses themselves are at best indifferent and at worst, downright rude. Add to that an estimated average wait of 45 minutes to get a table, and the massive lines at the bar and by any conventional metric, this place should have closed its doors long ago.

No, it is definitely the scene that keeps packing them in. Location doesn't hurt either. Many people use this as a jumping off point for a night out in Adams Morgan. If your party is larger than four people, you can get in two hours of drinking before you finally get a table, knock back a few pitchers with dinner and then head straight up 18th street with the pump fully primed, so to speak.

Anyway, I am at LP nearly once a week, but am finally getting around to writing it up here.

We stopped in last Sunday with a friend from out of town. We put our name in, got the standard "30 minutes" warning, took our pager and headed for the bar. We had just about finished our first round when the pager went off. We got to our table and promptly ordered a bowl of chili con queso while we perused our menus.

[This is my second piece of advice for the un-ititiated. Whatever you do, order some chili con queso - and do so as soon as you sit down - don't wait to order it with everything else, or it will all arrive at your table at the same time.]

This is a little slice of heaven on Earth. It is a bowl (or cup for those of you not currently on statins and living, "a better life through pharmacology") of creamy, spicy, melted cheese. Think of it as a white tablecloth version of tossing a brick of velveta and a jar of spicy salsa in the microwave during halftime of the big football game.

For bonus points, request that your server bring you a pile of freshly made soft flour tortillas to use as a conduit for the cheese.

[NOTE - when ordering your tortillas, it is imperative that you make the universal sign for tortillas. Begin by placing both hands in front of you with palms facing each other and thumbs extended (like you are lifting a gallon of ice cream), then, leave your left hand as is and begin to draw counter-clockwise circles with the first two fingers on your right hand as though you are stirring the aforementioned gallon of ice cream with your two fingers. This sounds silly, but the one time I didn't perform this charade, I never got my tortillas.]

The menu is a strange pan-Latin mix of old and new world dishes. The fajitas and enchiladas appear on the same menu as El Salvadorian ropa vieja, authentic Spanish bistec al pobre, and some Caribbean inspired dishes with fried plantains and fruit chutney. The only glaring gap in the menu is a good mole. Then again, a good mole is a glaring gap in every menu in DC.

For entrees, we ordered a shrimp quesadilla and Monterey salads. Generally speaking, the appetizer portions of the quesadilla are large enough to make a meal of, especially when combined with several margaritas, chips and queso. Be sure to check the specials list for seasonal quesadillas - the crab quesadilla, in particular, is outstanding - with big chunks of blue crab smothered in cheese and sandwiched between layers of fresh tortilla.

On this evening, the shrimp quesadilla was very good. The cheese was evenly melted, the shrimp warm and the tortilla was slightly crispy on the outside, but not burned - just crisp enough that it never got soggy on the plate.

Now, before you think I've gone soft, the Monterey salad is really a salad only in presentation. It is a Fred Flintstone sized platter of romaine lettuce, black beans, corn, roasted peanuts, tomatoes, cucumbers, tortilla strips and grated cheese topped with a grilled chicken breast. As I said, this is, "the salad that eats like a meal." The dressing is a thick mix of peanut and red chili peppers that is both sweet and spicy. You may want to ask for it on the side, as they tend to be a little heavy-handed with the dressing. I'm sure this salad packs the same stratospheric calorie count as a Big Mac, but you feel better about yourself afterwards.

See you next week - same place, same time. Who's ready for another round?

Old Ebbitt Grill (DC - Downtown)

2005-08-19T21:23:00.000-05:00

We grabbed a quick dinner with some friends Thursday night at that venerable DC institution, The Old Ebbitt Grill (also known more affectionately as, "The Ebbitt").

On any given night, you will see members of Congress packed into booths next to tourists from the Midwest, while young professionals pack the bars (yes, there are three bars) three and four deep. And why not? The Ebbitt has a little bit of something for everyone.

The menu is classic American fare: steaks, burgers, grilled fish, etc. combined with a top notch raw bar (be sure to check out their nightly oyster specials, the mammoth "Walrus platter" and do NOT miss their annual bacchanal, dubbed "Oyster Riot" - two nights in November where it is rumored that 2,000 people suck down 42,000 oysters).

Add to that a well thought out and lengthy list of reasonably-priced wines, some sinful desserts and an address just across the street from the White House and it is no wonder that this is the highest grossing restaurant in DC.

On this particular night, we started with a crab and artichoke dip. This is a steaming plate of cream cheese, artichoke hearts and blue crab, covered in parmesan and baked until golden brown. What's not to like? Smother it on the sliced baguette and you have a creamy/crunchy mouthful sure to warm even the most hardened politician's heart.

For dinner, we ordered the petit filet béarnaise and the grilled sockeye salmon. The filet is an odd concoction that has become a staple at the Ebbitt. It consists of two tiny filets resting on a bed of sprouts astride an English muffin and covered in béarnaise sauce. It is an eggs benedict-inspired dish that works very well (and is perhaps the only entree I have ever heard my wife order in more than six years of dining at the Ebbitt).

The sockeye was outstanding as well. It was grilled perfectly - cool in the center, per my request - and served on a bed of mixed vegetables (summer squash, cherry tomatoes, asparagus and fingerling potatoes). This was a no frills dish that let the freshness of the sockeye and the peaking local produce speak for themselves.

For dessert we had the bourbon walnut pie. This is a chocolate chip cookie dough crust filled with a mixture of chocolate, walnuts and bourbon, topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. This was an amazingly sweet, rich and completely decadent concoction.

Just business as usual at the Ebbitt. Ninety-one days until Oyster Riot and counting. . .

Ireland's Four Courts (VA - Arlington)

2005-08-15T13:21:00.000-05:00

We stopped in to Ireland's Four Courts last Wednesday, and were lucky enough to grab a table outside. We were there to meet a friend for a few pints, but when the friend called to say he was running late, we decided to order a bite.

I have always been a fan of this pub. When you strip away all the gold runes and Celtic ornamentation, you have a more or less neighborhood joint with friendly wait staff and live music that is always packed. In short, good craig.

Ireland's Four Courts also serves up some pretty decent food. On previous visits, I have enjoyed the potato leek soup, the St. James Gate mussels, the Irish stew and countless other dishes. Michelin isn't going to give these guys a star anytime soon, but it is "pub grub" of the highest order.

On this particular night, we had blackened chicken Caesar salads, which were mediocre (dry chicken, lettuce was rinsed, but not dried, etc.). It serves me right for ordering a Mexican salad in an Irish pub. Next time I will stick to their power alley of "traditional" fare.

Long after those salad plates were cleared, we lingered at our table, quaffing the black stuff and catching up with an old friend, which is precisely why you go to Ireland's Four Courts in the first place.

B. Smith's (DC - Union Station)

2005-08-12T19:20:00.000-05:00

Last Wednesday I stopped into B. Smith's for a working lunch. I am embarrassed to say that I let two years of living in DC go by before I finally made it here. Shame on me.

The restaurant is nestled into the East gallery of Union Station, in a beautifully decorated American art nouveau dining room with soaring vaulted ceilings. The result is a very comfortable and surprisingly quiet dining room.

Before you even glance at your menu, it is clear that you are in for some serious Southern cooking. The bread basket that awaits you offers selections ranging from a delicate, sweet corn bread muffin to a rustic, buttery, stick-to-your-ribs green onion and cheddar short bread. Try to avoid the temptation to make a meal of bread alone and leave some room for the main event.

Our party selected the turkey pannini, the vegetarian BBQ ribs and the intimidatingly-named "swamp thang."

The pannini was the only real dud in the bunch. To be fair, a sliced turkey pannini doesn't really belong n this heavily Southern menu, but I think it is the kitchen's attempt to appeal to health-conscious diners. In any event, it was very dry and the buttered bread negated any healthy intentions.

I didn't get to sample the vegetarian BBQ ribs, but they looked delicious and got high marks. B. Smiths accomplishes "vegetarian ribs" by pressing tofu into long rectangles that resemble ribs and then coating them in BBQ sauce and grilling them (imagine if McDonald's "McRib" were comprised of high quality soy protein instead of meat turned away from the hot dog factory). This would have been a far better choice than the turkey - especially if you opted to substitute fresh fruit for the spicy fries that come with the dish.

By far the best dish at the table was the famed "swamp thang." This is a pile of wilted greens (collard and mustard greens, primarily) covered in a mixture of sautéed shrimp and scallops and dressed with a mustard cream sauce. This sounds decadent - especially for a mid-day meal - but it isn't. The seafood was cooked to perfection - the scallops were tender and the shrimp were yanked from the pan just before they began to become rubbery.

The sauce itself was surprisingly light for a cream-based sauce. I was expecting that heavy stuff that typically accompanies boudin in New Orleans, but this was thin and not at all overpowering. The greens added a bit of bite to the dish, with their bitterness cutting through the mouth coating qualities of the cream sauce.

The next time you are in the mood for some serious Southern grub, head on over to Union Station. Fo'shiggity.

Logan Tavern (DC - Logan)

2005-08-11T20:49:00.000-05:00

Last Sunday, I stopped into Logan Tavern for brunch. I have been to Logan Tavern dozens of times - brunch, dinner, post-theater - but I have never gotten around to writing it up.

A testament to the burgeoning popularity of this 14th Street corridor eatery, there was a 30 minute wait for a table of four at 11:00. We put our names on the list and elbowed some space at the bar.

My favorite part about brunch at Logan Tavern is the "choose your own adventure" approach to ordering a Bloody Mary. Here they have devoted the entire back page of the menu to that beloved hair-of-the-dog staple and in so doing, made it the primary focus of the meal.

You begin by choosing an alcohol (gin, tequila, six or so types of vodka, etc.) and then move on to your choice of mixer (tomato juice, spicy, extra spicy, etc.). Upon this foundation, you are then free to build your beverage with selections from a myriad of condiment choices (Tabasco, clam juice, wasabi, etc.) and garnishes (lime, lemon, celery, etc.). For an additional charge, you can even add crab meat or shrimp cocktail. Whatever you concoct, it arrives in a pint glass rimmed with crab seasoning.

Some critics think this is too gimmicky and other purists make claims like, "if it is made of gin, it is a Red Snapper, not a Bloody Mary. . . with tequila it becomes a Bloody Maria." Save your semantics for Cambridge and New Haven.

Others, like my father, curmudgeonly complain, "I just want a plain Bloody Mary." Any of the bar tenders or wait staff will be happy to select one for you.

By the time we had grabbed our drinks and settled up, they were ready to seat us. We attacked the bowl of raisin multigrain and rustic sourdough bread while we perused the menu, which is a mix of breakfast and lunch - with more of the latter.

Our party ordered a chopped salad, a smoked salmon frittata, an omelet and eggs benedict. I only sampled the smoked salmon frittata and the chopped salad, but found both to be sub-par. I have never had the chopped salad at Logan Tavern before, but have had the smoked salmon frittata countless times and on every other occasion, been happy. Chalk it up to a "bad day" in the kitchen.

The salad was a blast of vinegar that drowned out every other ingredient - reducing them to textures, more than flavors.

The frittata looked promising - and they even entertained my request that it be made with egg whites - but it was a lumpy mess. All of the salmon was on one side, there was a mountain of capers in the middle and closest to me on the plate was an ice cream scoop sized mound of cream cheese. When incorporated in the eggs, these three ingredients are fantastic, but this presentation left a lot to be desired.

Next time I will specify that, like my Bloody Mary, I would like my frittata stirred, not shaken.

Merkado Kitchen (DC - Logan)

2005-08-11T19:13:00.000-05:00

I stopped into Merkado last Tuesday. Being that it is August and most of DC is either at the beach or spending time with their constituents back home, we were seated immediately.

We decided to make a meal out of a mélange of starters, including:

- Raw "Ahi Tuna Crudo" on Boniato Frita, Wasabi Crema & Caviar
- Seared White Tuna Sashimi in Miso-Sake Reduction & Truffles
- Wonton Skins w/ Sesame Ground Beef, Manchego Cheese & Wasabi Crema
- Shrimp Tempura w/ Seaweed Salad & Tobiko Remoulade
- Tortilla Sopa w/ Adobo Chicken & Fresh Udon Noodles

The two tuna dishes and the wonton skin nachos are old favorites that I have chronicled elsewhere in these pages. All three were solid, with the nachos batter than on previous visits (more meat, fresher, etc.) but the tuna dishes perhaps a little bit shy of previous versions (a little too much tobiko in the Ahi Crudo and the White Tuna was a little beyond seared on this particular evening).

It is important to note here that chef Kim was not present in the kitchen this evening.

The Shrimp Tempura were good, but not my favorite. I was expecting classic, crunchy, flaky tempura, but instead got shrimp that more closely resembled a corn dog - very heavy, thick, chewy batter. The remoulade was a delightful pairing, but I had real trouble getting past the dutch funnel cake-esque shrimp "tempura."

Conversely, the tortilla sopa might be my new favorite dish in the neighborhood. This dark, spicy bowl of broth, adobo seasoned chicken and udon noodles, garnished with tortilla strips, is serious comfort food. The smoky richness of the broth washes away the stress of the work day and the delightfully moist chicken permeated by adobo punctuates the end notes with a combination of garlic and black pepper. The udon noodles are fun to slurp and offer some chewy body to this East meets West dish.

I am a little concerned about the kitchen faltering in Kim's absence (the two tuna dishes and the shrimp), but if you can't get away with some slack on a Tuesday night in August, when can you?

Once the cold weather sets in, I will be calling the kitchen and begging them to allow me to "carry out" quarts of that tortilla sopa.

The Oceanaire Seafood Room (DC - Downtown)

2005-08-10T19:48:00.000-05:00

This is one restaurant that should not participate in Restaurant Week.

We have dined at Oceanaire dozens of times and never had a bad experience but Saturday night we were met with an obnoxious waiter and table scraps cuisine.

Oceanaire ran their normal menu, with a tiny block of 8-point font in the lower right hand corner denoting the Restaurant Week selections as follows:

Starters
- Caesar salad
- Mixed greens salad
- New England clam chowder

Entrees
- Grilled salmon in raspberry vinaigrette
- Dover sole in herb butter
- Grilled scallops

Desserts
- Chocolate bread pudding
- Seasonal berries in zabaglione
- Peach melba

The starters looked paltry, the entrees fair and the desserts seemed relatively promising. Between the five of us, we sampled all of it. We also added side orders of hash browns and sautéed spinach.

As we were perusing the menu, one of our party asked the waiter, "how are the scallops?" He exhaled sharply and replied, "its Restaurant Week," as if to say, "do you really think we would put anything halfway decent on THAT menu?"

Forget for a moment, the collective net worth of the people seated at our table, the tens of thousands of dollars of corporate entertaining our party does (or, should I say, used to do) at Oceanairre each year, or even the hundreds of dollars of wine we consumed that evening. You should never, ever make anyone in you dining room feel like anything less than the most honored guest.

Whether they are dropping a few grand on a blowout celebratory dinner or whether they saved up for months to be able to afford the $30.05 Restaurant Week menu, every guest should be treated equally well. As she said in Pretty Woman, "Big Mistake. Huge."

The meal went downhill from there.

The Caesar salad was limp (made ahead of time) and despite asking if I would like anchovies, they neglected to bring them out. The clam chowder was actually pretty good, but what the hell are they doing serving it in Washington, DC in August?

The salmon was clearly the ass-end of the filet, weighing in at nearly one centimeter in thickness; it was obvious that the choicest cuts went to the patrons who opted for the regular menu. The raspberry vinaigrette was too tart and really a distraction from the fish. The sole was also a let down, as one of our party suggested, "I sure would like some fish with this butter." The scallops seemed fine, even if they might have been punches. The hash browns and spinach were good, but I'm not going to give them much credit for that.

Dessert was a relative high point (or perhaps the wine and the good company had turned the mood around). The chocolate bread pudding was great - though about as in tune with the season as the clam chowder. The fresh berries in zabligione were refreshing - even if they looked silly served in an escargot dish. I didn't sample the peach melba, but the presentation was grand - in a tall glass dish - and there were no complaints.

It is unfair for diners to judge a restaurant by Restaurant Week alone, but it is equally unfair for a restaurant to judge its patrons by Restaurant Week alone.

Oceanaire ought to know better.

It is a shame we won't be dining or entertaining our corporate clients there ever again.

Raku - (DC - DuPont)

2005-08-09T21:47:00.000-05:00

We stopped in for dinner at Raku Friday night with a few friends. It was a welcome blast of spontaneity amid the predictable order of Restaurant Week.

Raku is a mad house. Everything there is in a state of chaos.

From getting a table (no reservations, no call ahead, none of the 2-3 people keeping "the list" talk to each other, etc.) to getting your food (mains arrive before starters, hot and cold arrive together, one diner gets all of their order while another gets nothing, etc.) you are never quite sure what is going to happen. Then again, that is part of the fun.

The menu is billed as "Asian tapas." My disdain for anything smaller than an entree being referred to as "tapas" is well documented elsewhere, so I will spare you the rant here. That said, they have a selection of sushi as well as noodle dishes, small plates and entrees representing a panoply of Asian influences - Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Thai, etc.

Our party of four ordered sushi, spicy green beans, Dan Dan and vegetable spring rolls. The waiter was polite enough to handicap the likelihood of receiving each dish as we ordered it. For example, an order of stir fried chicken was met with a disapproving wag of the finger and the disclaimer, "the stir fry station is jammed - if you order that, it will come out last."

[It is worth noting here that food at Raku goes in on one ticket and arrives whenever it gets cooked. Nobody is behind the scenes expediting and orchestrating the timely arrival of each of your dishes. It gets cooked when the chef gets to it and promptly arrives on your table irrespective of the status of anything else you ordered.]

On this occasion, the spring rolls came out first, followed by the simultaneous arrival of the string beans and Dan Dan. This left one of our party with their starter, one of our party with their entire meal and two of our party with a beer in hand. All around, uninitiated diners complained about this haphazard service. Don't bother. Embrace the chaos and go with the flow.

Eventually our sushi arrived and everyone was happy. The Dan Dan was a little greasy, but altogether very good (though probably a poor choice for when it is 90 degrees and humid outside - and 88 degrees and humid inside). The green beans were excellent, as always - then again, it is hard to screw up green beans and chili peppers in a wok. The sushi was good as well - there is certainly better sushi in DC, but this was passable.

That, in a nutshell, is Raku - a complete lack of order, solid (though not exceptional) Asian food, and lots of confused diners placating themselves with alcohol. The mix is equal parts train station, beer hall and Chinatown.

If you go to Raku, bring your patience, some good friends and a designated driver.

Colvin Run Tavern (VA - Tysons)

2005-08-08T20:02:00.000-05:00

Many restaurateurs grudgingly participate in Restaurant Week. They view it as something they have to do (for fear of bad press) or worse, they use it as a loss leader to get traffic into their restaurants in hopes of up-selling guests to pricier regular menu selections or higher margin alcohol sales.

Chef Kinkead does none of the above. He embraces Restaurant Week and uses it as a showcase to win over new diners.

Rather than hand his diners the regular menu with a Restaurant Week insert that makes them feel like second-class citizens, Kinkead winnowed down his usual menu to a half dozen each of starters, mains and desserts and presented that as the ONLY menu option.

After making our selections, we received the chef's amusee of chilled melon soup and mint chiffonade. This was summer in a cup.

Starters included heirloom tomatoes with idiazabal cheese, pesto and balsamic vinegar and a plate of yellow fin tuna tartare with crispy yucca, yuzu lime vinaigrette and guacamole.

The heirloom tomatoes were brilliant and were a classic pairing with the basil pesto and balsamic. The use of idiazabal in lieu of the traditional capresse accompaniment, mozzarella, lent a bit of spine to the dish and stood up against the acidity of the balsamic.

The tuna was gloriously fresh and when accompanied by the yuzu lime vinaigrette made for a sort of short order seviche. The guacamole mellowed out the zing of the citrus and the salted yucca crisps both added some crunch to the dish and served as a good backstop for the fork for those who wanted to get some of each flavor in each bite.

For main courses, we had grilled salmon and braised short ribs. The salmon was perfectly cooked (for me at least), with a cool pink center, and served astride a parsnip puree with a bit of herb butter. Not the most creative dish, but very solid.

The braised short ribs arrived with some wilted greens, pan jus and what looked like long potato fritters (a cross between a French fry and a churro). The ribs themselves were sticky-sweet, like the ribs you get as take-out from a Chinese restaurant (you know, the ones in the foil bag), boneless, and melted in our mouths. The fritters were a good - albeit bizarre - accompaniment and the wilted greens did an admirable job of cutting the richness of the meat and glaze.

For dessert, one of us ordered the cheese course and the other ordered the white peach cobbler with caramel ice cream. The cheese course consisted of brie, a hard cow's milk cheese (maybe cheddar - very sharp) and a soft, almost runny, blue. These were served with champagne grapes and some raisin and walnut bread. All three were excellent and I found both the portions and the presentation to be generous - especially in light of Restaurant Week.

The peach cobbler was excellent. This dish was fresh peaches in a ramekin with butter and a cinnamon crust - very little, if any, sugar added. The result was a not too sweet expression of the peach itself, with the bulk of the sweetness coming from the caramel ice cream sitting next to it. The combination worked beautifully.

While none of these dishes were the most creative, they were all well prepared and honest expressions of what is peaking in DC right now - tomatoes, peaches, melons, basil and mint.

Kudos to chef Kinkead for bringing his "A game" even during Restaurant Week.

Oakville Grille (MD - Bethesda)

2005-08-07T21:47:00.000-05:00

I had high hopes for Oakville. I have been a fan of the owner's Mendocino Grille in DC for years and hoped that this would be more of the same, in a suburban setting. First impressions were good.

The swanky leather booths and funky light fixtures belied the predominantly octogenarian clientele. Additionally, many of the entrees and the extensive selection of wines by the glass were reminiscent of Mendocino Grille.

Our waiter was very helpful, especially with respect to our wine selection. I noticed an anomaly in their wine list - one of my wife's favorite wines was available by the glass, but not by the bottle. The waiter understood our plight and was able to arrange a price and bring us our own bottle for the table.

[I have no idea why it wouldn't just be on both lists to start with, but kudos to the waiter for thinking on his feet and being accommodating.]

We opted for the three course, $30.05 Restaurant Week menu and the wheels more or less fell off the train.

The grilled scallops with roasted beets and herb butter was the "weekly special" on the regular menu as well as one of the three entree selections on the Restaurant Week menu (and who doesn't love eating scallops that were purchased in bulk at the beginning of the week?).

At 7:00 on Wednesday, they were "out" of scallops. I don't mean to be rude, but if you are out of them at 7:00 on Wednesday, and they were your "weekly special," then what you are telling me is that you were never really "in" them at all.

Unless the Ladies Who Lunch created a mad run on scallops that afternoon, how about re-printing your menu? If it is too much trouble to reprint the regular menu, you could at least run to Kinko's and re-print that shockingly bright yellow Restaurant Week menu. Their solution was to offer up rockfish in the same preparation (more on this later).

Starters were fair. Our trio consisted of one green salad (with champagne vinaigrette, teardrop tomatoes and spiced pecans), one arugula salad (with Bosc pears and gorgonzola) and one chicken kataifi (a mixture of chicken and currants rolled into a phyllo crust).

The salads would have benefited greatly from being served on cool (or at least room temperature) plates. As they were, the hot plates more or less wilted the greens.

The chicken dish, unpronounceable as it was, was a surprising highlight. The chicken and currants were a lovely, though somewhat heavy for a starter, pairing with the crispy phyllo shell.

Entrees featured two orders of grilled salmon with wild rice, mango and cilantro crème fraiche and one order of the rockfish "special." The salmon was actually pretty good. It was seared on the outside and rare in the middle - just as it had been requested. The cilantro in the crème fraiche was there visually, but didn't lend much flavor to the dish, so the mango dominated. The combination of long grain rice, mango and salmon was a bit odd for mouth-feel, but then again long grain rice always feels a bit like eating mulch.

The rockfish was an altogether different story. The herb butter combined with the juice from the roasted beets to create a horrifyingly bright pink and yellow starburst pattern on the plate. The only other way I can imagine this color occurring in nature is if someone unloaded a shotgun into a case of pink highlighters.

Amid all this fanfare, the rockfish just sort of sat there - small, limp and looking completely out of place. Once you got past the presentation, the flavors were good enough, but that sad little rockfish never really had a chance. It was only around a centimeter thick, so it was probably a bit overcooked before it had a chance to sit on the hot plate, where it had the opportunity to cook more while waiting for the beet juice to break the herb butter.

Desserts were a bit of a debacle as well. The Restaurant Week menu offered the choice of crème brulee with seasonal berries or a chocolate angel food cake with caramel sauce. We all ordered the angel food cake and were told that they were, predictably, "out" of that choice.

Thanks to some more fancy footwork on the part of our waiter, we were than offered whatever we wanted from the a la carte menu. We selected a carrot cake and a trio of sorbet (strawberry, raspberry and mango).

The desserts were actually very good. The carrot cake was moist, but a little heavy handed with the cream cheese. The sorbets were a little mixed. The mango was excellent, but the raspberry was a little icy and the strawberry a bit bland. The portions were huge. The carrot cake was close to a three inch cube and the sorbet trio was actually three ice cream scoops of sorbet (not the tiny melon balls you typically see).

Restaurant Week is a terrible time to judge any restaurant, because of the above average demands on the kitchen and wait staff as well as the need to do so much merchandising to get under the $30.05 price tag.

That said, even during Restaurant Week, good restaurants still find a way to shine. Oakville did not.

CityZen - (DC - Southwest)

2005-08-01T19:43:00.000-05:00

From the moment you sit down at CityZen, it is clear that Chef Eric Ziebold apprenticed under Thomas Keller. The sleek, minimalist decor and menu descriptions send a clear message that the food is the center of attention.

I don't want to focus too much on chef Ziebold's former employer - and he himself is no doubt eager to come out from under that shadow - but the menu here adheres to the same philosophy of simplicity, honesty and emphasis on serving whatever is local and in-season that has been the hallmark of cooking at The French Laundry for years.

We were seated at the table nearest the kitchen, which suited us perfectly. Several couples (no doubt Capitol Hill types looking to conceal extra-marital affairs) shied away from the seats around us, opting for more intimate surroundings elsewhere in the dining room. We were then offered a drink while we perused the wine list.

The wine list is exorbitantly expensive.

The most egregious example I noticed was a 2001 Chateau Montelena Chardonnay, listed at $118. This is one of my favorite white wines (and heir of the former winner of the 1975 Paris tasting), but it retails for a small fraction of this price. I bought a bunch last year for around $26 per bottle (after case discounts). If the sommelier really thinks that this is a reasonable price, I have some in my cellar that I would love to sell him. Maybe we can barter two of my bottles for two of CityZen's tasting dinners?

I am well aware that restaurants make their money on alcohol sales and I have grudgingly come to expect a solid 100% markup to retail pricing on most wine lists. Rather than bring my own wine and pay corkage fees, I view paying these nosebleed prices as a sort of "charitable contribution" in support of my favorite restaurants. I also understand the economic arguments around the higher prices (storage and shrinkage costs, the 80/20 rule around inventory turns, etc.) but this list was absurd.

I hate to harp on it, because the rest of the evening was delightful, but as they say, "first impressions are everything." Letting me stew over this, "too far off-market to be taken seriously," wine list for ten minutes before seeing the food menu was perhaps not the right tone to set.

After realizing that two splits of wine and a glass of champagne each would easily cost us $140, we opted instead to have glasses of wine paired with each course of the tasting menu (at $70 per person).

The canapé consisted of a mushroom fritter with truffle oil. This was two bites of warm, gooey, mushroom essence accompanied by a stripe of truffle oil and mushroom pureé that is lick-the-plate good.

This was followed by an amusé of big eye tuna sashimi with cucumber and dill. The tuna was nearly translucent and an excellent match with the cucumber, yogurt and dill (imagine tuna sashimi on top of raita).

The first course was soft-shell crab with sesame vinaigrette and pickled rhubarb. The crab was lightly sautéed to perfection and artfully presented, split in half with one of the halves plated vertically like a sail rising out of the middle of the dish. The sesame vinaigrette was a little swath at the bottom of the dish and the pickled rhubarb was tucked off to the side under a bundle of wilted greens.

Having grown up in Baltimore, I have been eating soft-shell crabs my whole life and this was as good as any I had ever had. I can't be sure, but I suspect chef Ziebold may brine his soft shells before cooking them. Maybe I am wrong, but his preparation was sweeter than most and devoid of that overly heavy, fatty mustard flavor that often overtakes soft shells. In addition, when combined in one bite, the mellow nutty flavor of the sesame vinaigrette complemented the crab nicely, with the sweet-tartness of the pickled rhubarb rounding out the dish.

This was paired with a Willamette Valley Riesling that was off-dry and yeasty, almost like a very mellow sake. The pairing worked well (I have heard some people say that, while beer is the official beverage accompaniment to crabs, sake is the best wine pairing they can come up with).

The second course consisted of seared black bass with summer squash and basil pistou. This was a beautifully seared, skin-on piece of black bass sprinkled with sea salt and served astride a pile of yellow and green summer squash brunoise. The fish was crispy on one side and delightfully moist throughout. The dish was then finished tableside with a crisp, clean, basil pistou that tasted like a liquid concentrate version of the freshest summer basil. The combination worked perfectly.

This course was paired with an Austrian Grüner Veltliner that was light and crisp. The wine's herb notes played well off the basil and it was acidic enough for a clean finish.

From there, we moved to a third course of seared foie gras with pepper shortbread and plum soup. The foie was delicately seared on the outside and more or less medium rare (pink) on the inside. It was plated on top of a piece of peppered shortbread and surrounded by a lagoon of light pink, chilled plum soup. This dish couldn't have been simpler, but the cacophony of flavors and textures was amazing: Warm, soft, fatty, gamey foie combined with crunchy, peppery shortbread and cold, sweet plum.

This was paired with a Patz & Hall Pinot Noir from California (I don't remember which of their four Pinot bottlings it was). I was initially suspicious, having grown accustomed to dessert wines with my foie, but instead, in this dish the plum soup provided the sweetness and the plum notes in the Pinot tied the two together. Very well done.

The fourth course was beef with English peas and mushrooms over melted spring onions and veal reduction. This was served along with a box of miniature Parker House rolls. Here again, chez Ziebold allowed summer's bounty to flourish with a minimum of human intervention. The spring onions, peas and mushrooms played well together and were a lovely accompaniment to the beef.

At first, I thought that the veal reduction was a mistake - a rare instance of an "extra" ingredient in a menu that features no more than 3-4 flavors and textures per dish. Once I dredged one of those delightfully chewy, doughy Parker House rolls though the veal reduction and beef jus, I was sold.

This course was served with a South African Syrah that marked another good pairing. The musty nose echoed the mushrooms, the sweetness in the Syrah picked up the spring onions and the spicy backbone packed enough tannin to stand up to the beef.

The chef then served a watermelon sorbet as a palette cleanser. It arrived at our table as a ball of light pink sorbet floating in a tiny dessert wine glass full of a slightly anise flavored aperitif. The watermelon and anise flavors combined surprisingly well and the presentation was a triumph of both form and function.

The cheese course offered the opportunity to select three or four cheeses from a grouping of roughly twelve cheeses organized horizontally by type of milk (cow, goat, sheep, etc.) and from front to back in order of firmness. These selections were accompanied by bread, some spicy toasted almonds and a tandem of fresh peach and pear puree.

Everything was delicious, but the server's knowledge was a bit disappointing. When my wife asked him to describe some of the differences between the goat cheeses, he replied, "good question - nobody has ever asked me that" (further lowering my estimation of the average Washington restaurant-goer). He then proceeded to say, "This one is spicy, this one is nutty and this one is grassy." Really? Thanks.

I will be the first to admit that the pageantry around selecting and describing cheeses is quickly becoming as obnoxious as that of selecting wines (I am certain that we are not far from the day that we get to slice off a piece of rind and inspect it, then take a tiny taste of the cheese before declaring it acceptable for the rest of our party, the way we currently scrutinize corks and swill and slurp wine in a show of faux expertise and self-import), but give me at least a little information. I'm not asking about the terroir, what the shepherd's name was, which hamlet in France the cheese is named after, what temperature they maintain in the cheese cave, or which bacteria gave the cheese its flavor, but please give me a little more than, "spicy, nutty and grassy."

We continued to sip the Syrah throughout the cheese course.

Dessert consisted of a Valhrona chocolate soufflé and cafe con leche ice cream with coffee granita. This was accomplished by serving an individual soufflé on the left side and a scoop of ice cream on the right, topped with granita.

The soufflé was a simple, clean, perfect execution of a classic. No frills, no theatrics, none of that phony, "I'm going to finish it tableside by pouring crème amglaise in the center so that you don't realize I made it ahead of time and just reheated it for you," nonsense.

The same can be said of the ice cream. On its own, it was sinfully sweet frozen custard with the faintest hints of coffee. When combined with the coffee granita, you had the whole package - like drinking an iced cafe con leche. My wife may, or may not, have taken the last remnants of her cafe con leche and poured them into the last of the chocolate soufflé to create an haute mocha latte of sorts. What can I say, we're Philistines.

The dessert was paired with a 2000 Vintage Port from the Douro (they had decanted it, so I missed the producer's name). This was a relatively young port, full of fruit and life and willing to pair with these desserts in a way that older, dowdy ports can not.

We rounded out the meal, savoring the last of the port, with a plate of mignardises. There was a raspberry gelee, an almond tuille and several chocolates. All were excellent (especially the diamond-shaped ones comprised of soft chocolate and hazelnut brittle) and a great way to finish a fantastic meal.

Chef Ziebold is a dynamo in the kitchen. In a World where many chefs are absentee landlords who lend little more than their names and recipes to their restaurants, Ziebold is everywhere and doing everything.

Saturday night, I saw him do everything from cook and plate starters himself, to plating desserts, expediting orders, and in one instance, when all of his servers were occupied, I saw him walk a course out to the dining room to avoid having it die on the line. Towards the end of the night, I even saw him take advantage of a lull in orders to make plates of snacks for the guys (and gal) on the line.

Here is a guy busting his hump and really pouring everything he has into his restaurant.

Once Ziebold straightens out the front of the house (you know, hand out a few copies of the Cheese Primer and fix that ridiculous wine list), CityZen will really be something special.

In the meantime, you can find me enjoying his fantastic cooking and appreciating his hard work from the table closest to the kitchen - perhaps ignoring the cheese steward and paying corkage fees.

Chicago Dining - TRU

2005-08-01T19:20:00.000-05:00

Last Saturday night, six of us shared the kitchen table at TRU. There was unanimous consent that this was one of the finest meals any of us had ever had, with everyone either giving it the top spot, or at least admitting that it deserved to be on equal footing with a meal had years ago at The French Laundry.

Set aside as a room within a room, the kitchen table is a climate controlled room with windows that look out on all the action on the lines as well as in the pastry kitchen. As much as I like sitting in kitchens where I feel like I am sweating it out with the chefs, I think Chef Tramonto has it right by allowing us to see everything, but not feel it.

We began the evening with the chef's amuse, a plate of four selections that included: a salad of haricots verts, a spoon of squash panna cotta with chili oil, salmon sashimi, and a spoon of apple plum soup.

The salad was a very simple combination of haricots verts and baby asparagus tossed in a light vinaigrette. The squash panna cotta may have been my favorite of the bunch. It was a thick, rich, mouth-coating concoction with a few drops of hot chili oil suspended in the middle. The result is a cool, creamy squash flavor that is hot on the finish because of the oil. The wild salmon was fatty and delicious and melted in your mouth. The spoon of cold, apple-plum soup rounded out the quartet and also served as an excellent palate cleanser to set up for the next course.

The second course was the chef's now legendary Golden Osetra caviar staircase. If the amuse were a study in sourcing the freshest ingredients and preparing them simply in order to let them shine, the caviar course was our first taste of chef Tramonto's artistic side.

The "staircase" is a series of eight glass slabs fixed around a central axis, with each containing a different type of caviar or garniture. On this particular evening, from top to bottom, we had golden osetra, osetra, salmon roe, wasabi infused whitefish roe, egg whites, egg yolks, onion and capers. In addition, each diner was served a plate of toast points and crème fraiche with chives. This was both visually appealing and delicious. It was really fun to have the "horizontal" of different caviars in front of you and to discuss them all with each other as we sampled each one up and down the staircase.

Up until this point, our dining experience was excellent. Everyone was impressed with the food - both the ingredient and the preparation - and the service was beyond reproach. As with many other high-end restaurants, plates were presented and cleared in unison, dishes were carefully explained, and glasses remained full as if by some invisible hand.

With the presentation of the third course, chef Tramonto crossed the Rubicon.

Our server began laying out serving pieces for each of the six of us and eyebrows began to rise when many of the utensils did not match. We were about to say something, when he returned with different wine glasses and different bottles of wine for each of us.

It was then that we realized that he intended to serve each of the six of us a different dish - and pair it with a different wine.

"P" had a duo of fish tartare, avocado salsa, seaweed salad, potato gaufrette
"R" had an octopus carpaccio, teardrop tomatoes, micro arugula and olive vinaigrette
"M" had a chilled peeky toe crab salad, plantain puree, cilantro lime vinaigrette
"S" had the chef's sushi plate, soy reduction and wasabi
"K" had seared yellow fin tuna, tapenade, potato confit, carmellini beans and shaved radish
And I had the deconstructed Wagyu beef tartare, caper berries, white anchovy, quail egg, consommé gelee

All of these were excellent, but my Wagyu beef tartare was head and shoulders above the rest. The beef itself was a bright red and well marbled and served in a tower topped with a raw quail egg yolk and white anchovies. The caper berries and a wide swath of black truffle vinaigrette completed the dish. All of these very strong flavors competed for attention, but were in perfect harmony when combined in one bite. The consommé gelee was a bit out of place. It offered a bit of artistic flare (several translucent cubes off to the bottom left of the composition) as well as displayed the kitchen's technical skills (ask anyone who has ever tried to siphon consommé how much fun it can be to prepare), but just sort of sat there, staring at the rest of the dish.

Still glowing from the revelation of the third course, we noticed that we were all presented with the same utensils for the fourth course. Oh well. You can't really expect the chef to serve six different tasting menus at the same table, but it was fun for one course.

Then, several of us received very different wine glasses - and a stunning array of mismatched wines: Sauternes, Tokaji Azu, Berenauslesse, etc. As the next course arrived, we realized that each of the six of us was being served a different preparation of foie gras, with a wine paired accordingly.

"P" had seared foie gras with coconut emulsion and roasted pineapple
"R" had seared foie gras with brioche French toast, banana chutney and chocolate sauce
"M" had seared foie gras with steel-cut oats, blueberry compote and aged maple syrup
"S" had seared foie gras with vanilla-apple puree, apple macadamia nut salad and caramelized emulsion
"K" had seared foie gras with peach and basil marmalade, fried tarragon and duck jus
I had seared foie gras with spring berries and braised red cabbage

All of these were very good - and some were exceptional, both for their creativity and for their successful combination of flavors.

The foie gras, brioche and chocolate sauce was brilliant. The seared foie melted into the chewy brioche and the gamey, nutty flavor of the foie married perfectly with the chocolate sauce. I don't know why I had never seen chocolate paired with foie before (other than the fact that it is completely and utterly, over-the-top, decadent), but more chefs ought to try it.

The steel-cut oats, berries and maple syrup was another excellent pairing with the foie. When considered at the same table with the brioche/foie pairing, the foie with peach marmalade and the foie with vanilla, apples and caramel, I began to think: foie gras - it’s not just for breakfast anymore.

As we sat licking that wonderful combination of foie butter and residual sugar off our lips, our waiter returned with the soup course. Once again, chef Tramonto seemed hell-bent on blowing our minds. Each of us received a different "capuccino style" soup, served in mis-matched Versace coffee cups.

"P" had porcini mushroom
"R" had lobster bisque, served with a spoonful of lobster meat
"M" had corn chowder
"S" had potato leek, with a fin of crispy bacon protruding from inside the cup
"K" had cream of asparagus
I had curried cauliflower

Again, there was not a dud in the entire lineup. Each soup was unique, true to its "form" and provided a nice intermezzo before the arrival of the main courses.

By now, we realized that we were truly experiencing a remarkable meal. We gave up trying to guess at what might be served next and completely surrendered to chef Tramonto's genius.

By the arrival of the sixth course, we had grown accustomed to having a variety of different utensils and wines on the table and just sat back and marveled at the breadth of dishes we were witnessing.

"P" had hamachi with baby bok choy, bamboo rice and ginger cream sauce
"R" had roasted Columbia river sturgeon with braised oxtail and spiced carrot puree
"M" had grilled dourade with English pea spaetzle and foie gras consommé
"S" had grilled swordfish with escargot, fingerling potatoes, olives, white anchovy and herb-butter emulsion
"K" had roasted wild Alaskan salmon with squash puree and potato gnocchi
I had roasted halibut with Israeli couscous, marcona almonds and lemon confit

Each time a course came out, we would take a few bites and then begin passing them wildly back and forth.

The sturgeon with oxtail and carrot puree was a heavy, solid presentation that played up the oily, fishy flavor of the sturgeon, rather than dance around it. The dourade with English pea spaetzle was a very simple dish that screamed "summer." The Alaskan salmon with squash puree and gnocchi was terrific comfort food, with the fat of the salmon mixing with the sweetness of the squash and the chewy, doughy potato gnocchi.

Once again, I was partial to my dish, the halibut. It was finished tableside with a tomato broth that played off the lemon confit and added just enough acidic bite to make the halibut come to life. I ended up essentially licking the bowl clean.

As a reminder, it is worth noting that by now, we had been served four amuse, four caviar, six different starters (one each), six different foie gras (one each), six different soups (one each) and six different fish courses (one each).

Nearing the end of this culinary marathon, we had to dig deep and prepare ourselves for the seventh course.

"P" had Millbrook farms venison saddle with summer fruits and vegetables and red wine-pepper sauce
"R" had roasted squab with lemongrass-sunchoke puree, chanterelles and ginger-foie gras sauce
"M" had espresso-roasted quail with salad of hazelnuts, cippolini onions and figs with sauce aigre-doux
"S" had assiete of pork: loin and bread stuffing , rillettes and great northern beans
"K" had Elysian fields lamb saddle with marmalade of peas, pearl onions, lettuce and merguez sausage
I had braised beef short ribs with Thumbelina carrots, parsnip puree and natural jus

As we get farther into this meal (and the subsequent wine pairings), it is harder to remember every detail, but there were a few standouts here as well.

The venison with red wine, pepper sauce was outstanding. The venison was tender, served very red in the center and married well with the red wine and pepper flavors - a classic combination.

The squab was an intricate combination that married the gamey squab with classic accompaniments. We have all seen squab served with mashed potatoes, chanterelles and foie sauce (or some other rich gravy). Chef Tramonto has taken this classic and contorted it, by using sunchoke puree (Jerusalem artichokes) in lieu of potatoes and perfuming them with lemongrass. The trick is taken a step farther by flavoring the foie sauce with ginger. The result is a decidedly southeast Asian twist on a northern hemisphere dish.

The espresso roasted quail with hazelnuts, cippolini and figs worked very well, with the aigre-doux reinforcing the juxtaposition between the cippolini and the figs. The lamb with "marmalade of peas" was another great expression of summer's bounty. Finally, the short ribs on parsnip puree were heaven on a plate - there is a reason he did not serve that dish to the same person who had the Alaskan salmon with squash puree and potato gnocchi in the prior course.

For the cheese course, they wheeled in a trolley with dozens of cheeses and breads to choose from and offered each of us a selection of three. Realizing that we were all dangerously full, we opted to select nine or so from the group and each try just a taste of them all.

I remember a very ripe Livarot (aren't they all) and an exceptional Spanish blue, but to be perfectly honest, by this point, we were all a little flush and mouths began to hang open out of near exhaustion.

After a little breather, the dessert courses began to arrive. That's right - I said dessert courses, in the plural.

Like the grand finale at the end of a fireworks display, the pastry kitchen unleashed a torrent of sweet confections that built to one, final crescendo of the evening.

Each of us was served a two-part dessert, with ice cream and berries on the left and pots de crème on the right. As I recall, the men received vanilla ice cream with a coffee/caramel pot d'crème and the women received a cinnamon ice cream with a deliciously dark, chocolate pot d'crème (again, apologies for foggy details, I was quite literally at my mental and physical limits at this point - and poised to go straight past them).

Just as we were tucking into these, each of us received an individual soufflé, either blueberry or a sort of "smores" soufflé (chocolate soufflé with melted marshmallow on top and a tiny graham cracker garnish). Each soufflé matched the other dessert courses, was perfectly prepared, and completely unnecessary.

As we rounded the corner and began to push away our various dessert plates, we were served miniature root beer floats. Picture an old fashioned shot glass, with the tiniest scoop of vanilla ice cream floating in a thick, syrupy root beer, with a miniature straw sticking out of it. It was a little silly, but delicious and the little bit of carbonation helped to wash away the sweetness of the other desserts.

As we sat, alternately moaning and sipping coffee, they wheeled in the trolley of mignardises and lollipops. This was a collection of a dozen or so small cookies, lollipops and other confections (somehow, candied grapefruit wound up on my plate). A few of us made selections, if for no reason other than to be polite.

Finally, in one last attempt to ensure us all a trip directly to Dante's third circle, we were presented with a selection of chocolates.

These came around the table on a three-tiered silver serving plate and we were each encouraged to make selections. All of these were made in-house and ran the gamut in terms of the variety of colors and flavor combinations.

There was a white chocolate streaked with purple, which had been infused with lavender. There was another streaked with orange that was orange-flavored and another, with red stripes, that was imbued with chili pepper. Those were the only three that I could force down - more out of curiosity than anything else - but there were eight or nine different flavors to choose from.

At the end of the meal, we were presented with menus commemorating the evening and as we trundled out the front door, each of us was given a package of Cannelés (like a vanilla and rum scented, miniature French cruller from Dunkin' Donuts).

The inscription described the laborious process of making these delightful, ancient cakes from Bordeaux, and suggested that we consume them the next morning, "so that the memory of tonight's meal may linger."

Chicago Dining - Charlie Trotter's

2005-07-30T11:48:00.000-05:00

Charlie Trotter's is the first restaurant anyone thinks of when they think of Chicago dining. Chef Trotter has been at the vanguard of the Chicago food scene since long before he achieved household name status.

That said, many of the food cognoscenti warned me before my recent visit that chef Trotter, "has lost his touch," and worse still, they suggested that the restaurant is, "living on reputation alone." Nevertheless, I had two nights in Chicago and I just couldn't imagine passing through without having a meal at Trotter's any more than I could imagine visiting Rome and not touring St. Peter's.

Our party of six decided to more or less split the menus, with half choosing the Grand Menu and the rest choosing the Vegetable Menu, so as to maximize the tasting opportunities.

Amuse consisted of a more or less bland vegetarian maki on the one menu and tuna sashimi on the other. Both were beautifully presented and fresh, but otherwise uninspiring.

At about this time, one of our party who wasn't drinking asked for a Sprite. The waiter didn't miss a beat, but returned from the wine cellar with a bottle of "Amé," a slightly sparkling spiced fruit drink. As he poured it, he explained, "I think you will find that this goes much better with your meal." A little pretentious (what if she had really wanted a Sprite?), but the Amé was something new and interesting, and he was right - it paired much better than a thick, syrupy Sprite would have. He later swapped out the white Amé for a blush version as we moved into the meat courses (I didn't try either, but everyone else gave it high marks and I am told that Whole Foods carries it).

I should take this moment to mention that from the moment we arrived, the service was impeccable. Dishes arrived and were cleared in unison and servers were very knowledgeable about the ingredients and technique (at one point, someone at our table asked about how they make the "foam" on one of the dishes and the waiter launched into a lengthy explanation of emulsified sauces, proteins, suspended fats and immersion blenders). They also tolerated an endless stream of, "I think I taste X in this dish - am I right?" and dutifully returned from the kitchen with the answer any time that they didn't know it off the top of their head.

First courses consisted of a roasted hearts of palm with organic fennel and sheep's milk ricotta for the vegetable menu and a terrine of skate wing with artichoke, pickled grapefruit and cilantro oil for the grand menu.

The Hearts of palm paired nicely with the fennel, but like many of the vegetable selections, the dish was not terribly visually appealing and was fairly bland (in referring to the vegetable menu afterwards, we describe courses as the yellow course, the green course, the red course, and so on). The terrine was actually skate wing and fresh water eel, which offered an interesting juxtaposition of textures and married well with both the cilantro oil and oddly enough, the grapefruit.

Second courses consisted of a wild asparagus soufflé with fava beans and summer truffles on the one hand and Japanese hamachi with Indian pickle, Thai eggplant and lemongrass curry emulsion on the other.

The asparagus soufflé was the zenith of the vegetable menu. It was at once light and fluffy, full of concentrated asparagus flavor and finished with a bit of pistachio for texture (and to maintain the overall "shades of green" appearance of the dish). Paired with the truffles, it was earthy and rich and a completely pleasant surprise.

Similarly, the hamachi was a delightful combination of flavors. The fish itself was a bit over-cooked, but the combination of lemongrass curry emulsion (thick, rich) with the pickles (tart, refreshing) was outstanding. This was one of the best flavor pairings of the evening.

Third courses consisted of vegetable cannelloni with farro, kohlrabi and red wine emulsion (the "red course" for those on the vegetable menu) and Berkshire pork with braised salsify and chanterelle mushrooms.

The cannelloni weren't pasta at all. Instead, the chef used thinly sliced root vegetables (think of running a carrot lengthwise down a mandoline). He then wrapped these around a mixture of farro and kohlrabi and served them in a bath of red wine emulsion.

I know that farro is very "in" right now - it is hard to find (snob appeal), harder still to prepare (kitchen purist appeal) and it was supposedly used to feed the Roman legions (Classics department appeal?), but why serve it here? I mean really, take a step back - Trotter actually served a grain stuffed inside a vegetable as the pasta course.

Todd English is really quite good at this whole deconstructionist method of cooking, but for Trotter it simply did not work at all. The root veggies were not tender enough to easily manipulate with a fork, so that as you cut into them, they sprung open and expelled their stuffing. The sauce, however, was delightful. Next time, they should try serving the farro and root veggies (diced) in the same sauce for a sort of haute minestrone.

The Berkshire pork, on the other hand, was probably the best course of the evening. It consisted of pork tenderloin rubbed with cardamom, pork stuffed tortellini and a bit of braised pork belly. All three were excellent and I very much enjoy this sort of "Iron Chef" presentation - the same base ingredient prepared multiple ways.

The tenderloin was the most tender and flavorful I have ever had (later in the evening, in the kitchen, one of the line cooks confessed that the piglet had been alive not 18 hours prior, so that explains that), with the spice rub drawing out the flavors as opposed to competing with them. The tortellini were stuffed with ground pork - maybe a little confit - and were served naked. Finally, the braised pork belly was a rich and concentrated, melt-in-your-mouth, ooze resting atop a stack of salsify. Yum.

The fourth course was taro root cake with black trumpet mushrooms, braised Italian kale and orange lentil puree (which I later dubbed the, "black course") on the vegetable side and grilled Texas Wagyu beef with lobster mushrooms and red pepper/black cardamom puree for the rest of us.

The taro root cake was served at the extreme left of a large platter, with mushrooms and kale strewn about and a mysterious black orb off to the far right. As each diner poked at the object with their forks, they began to speculate wildly at what it could possibly be. It yielded a bright yellow gooey substance and tasted like someone had rolled an egg yolk in dirt (credit my wife with the description).

We asked the waitress what on Earth it was and she cheerily replied, "that is our six hour poached egg, rolled in dehydrated mushrooms.”

I will pause to let that sink in.

Like Yorick breaking the tension between murders in Hamlet, the egg - which was bizarre both in preparation and in presentation - reduced our table to giggles for the rest of the evening. As my wife said, "this must be what they meant when we heard that Trotter will do weird things, just for the sake of being weird." We never completely recovered from this incident.

The Wagyu beef was cooked to perfection, but like many high-end steer, it was more texture than flavor - if that makes any sense (i.e. unlike the truly sublime Mishima beef, the Wagyu lacked the fat required for real flavor). Nevertheless, it was excellent with the mushrooms and red pepper puree.

Our party had nearly recovered from the poached egg incident, when the sorbet course arrived. It consisted of rhubarb sorbet with sweet fennel, gooseberries and chervil for the vegetable menu and cantaloupe sorbet with yuzu and upland cress on the other. I actually thought that both were brilliant, but most of our table took the presence of fennel and chervil in their rhubarb sorbet and bacon and yuzu in their cantaloupe sorbet to be a continuation of the, "weird for the sake of being weird," theme.

The sweetness of the rhubarb sorbet played off the tartness of the gooseberries and the anise notes of the fennel cleared off the palate as well as providing a bit of crunch to the mouth-feel. The cantaloupe sorbet paired with bits of bacon was like a sweet, liquid concentrate version of jamon y melon and the upland cress and yuzu combined to close the dish nicely as a palate cleanser.

Dessert marked the first service gaff of the evening. We were supposed to be served raw Tahitian vanilla bean ice cream with red and black raspberries on the vegetable menu and New Zealand passion fruit with crystallized carrot and buffalo yogurt/white pepper sorbet on the other. Instead, all six of us received the same dessert, with the passion fruit and buffalo yogurt / white pepper sorbet on the left side and a layered "chocolate crepe" cake and lemongrass sorbet on the right.

The chocolate crepe was amazingly rich and, though we were initially skeptical, proved to be an out-of-this-World pairing with the lemongrass sorbet. The passion fruit bit was like a light, sweet pound cake covered in a passion fruit syrup that paired nicely with the buffalo yogurt / white pepper sorbet (the uber-sweetness of the syrup and cake was mellowed out by the heavy, dull, spice of the sorbet).

Then, there was the crystallized carrot.

Like the misplaced poached egg before it, the presence of a baby carrot alongside the passion fruit dessert (not incorporated in it, mind you) was too odd to be taken seriously. The table again erupted into uncontrollable laughter.

At this time, the wait staff realized the dessert gaff and promptly brought out three of the raw Tahitian vanilla bean ice cream with red and black raspberries dishes that were originally supposed to come with the vegetable menu. Extra dessert? No complaints here.

Full from the three hours of eating, capped by multiple desserts, we recovered again from our bouts of laughter long enough to order coffee and begin perusing the selection of mignardises. Each person at our table received a miniature bento box containing four mignardises. As each of us began to sample, they were met with choruses of "ooohs," "ahhhhs," and "what the hell is this?!?!"

The most obvious selection was the Hershey's kiss covered in gold flakes and served atop a sweet, lavender perfumed cookie. The lavender and chocolate paired nicely, but was overshadowed by the remaining three selections.

My wife had the misfortune of biting into what looked like a red cookie topped with jelly. Instead, she found a sweet red pepper salsa with rosemary topping. Huh?

Then, several of us tried the other cookie that appeared to be topped with strawberry preserves. It turned out to be strawberry and rhubarb compote - and would have been very nice - were it not for the presence of a caramelized onion underneath it. This was so surreal, that it took the six of us alternately sampling and discussing to arrive at the conclusion that there was, indeed, an onion there.

At this point, the rest of the table dismissed the remaining mignardises.

I alone forged on through the last offering and came away determining that it was a cookie topped with pineapple and baby basil. They were fun together, but not exactly the flavors I would choose to end the meal with.

Everyone else at the table was too afraid to try it at this point, reeling from the combination of poached egg, fennel in the sorbet, baby carrot in the passion fruit and onion in the strawberry rhubarb.

Overall, the meal was at times brilliant, at times just fair and at times, truly bizarre.

Sorry Charlie - you're living on reputation alone.

Chicago Dining - Pompei

2005-07-25T22:19:00.000-05:00

This come-as-you-are group of casual Italian eateries in Chicago offers quality, authentic favorites at prices that won't break the bank.

The menu is standard Italian fare, consisting of pizza, salads, pastas, Italian sandwiches and pizza strudel (like calzone, but without that "chile relleno effect" - where the entire thing explodes melted cheese onto your plate at the first pass of the knife). Everything is made fresh on the premises, and if you don't believe it, just past the cash register there is a booth where you can watch them roll out sheets of pasta and cut fresh ravioli.

We ordered just shy of "one of everything" - Pizza Pompei, Pizza chicken Luigi, a side order of meatballs, gnocchi, ravioli in a smoked tomato cream sauce, ravioli with lemon and roasted peppers, chopped chicken salad, chicken parmigiana stuffed pizza, stuffed pizza pompei italiano, tiramisu, cheesecake, chocolate cake and bread pudding. There wasn't a dud in the bunch.

The pastas were clearly fresh and a little al dente (the way they are supposed to be - as opposed to the over-cooked arts and crafts paste that many places serve). From the spicy marinara on the gnocchi to the hearty meat sauce on the meatballs to the balanced smoked tomato cream sauce, each sauce was as unique as it was well prepared.

My favorites were the ravioli and the pizza Pompei. The ravioli are served in a pink smoked tomato and cream sauce that is both sweet and spicy and had people at our table lapping it up with a spoon long after the last ravioli had been eaten. The pizza Pompei is an unusual creation consisting of a thin crust pizza topped with a mixture of chopped tomatoes, bread crumbs, olives and Parmesan cheese, which has the mouth-feel of a thick crust pizza, without the ball of lead in your stomach feeling.

The desserts were all solid as well, but the standouts were the tiramisu and the bread pudding. The tiramisu managed to get my Father-in-law's approval - no small feat considering the man interrogates any waiter who tries to peddle tiramisu with an "is it fresh?" line of questioning. The bread pudding is, quite simply, to die for. Not since the food tents at Jazz Fest (you know - the white chocolate bread pudding next to the Cafe du Monde stand) have I had such good bread pudding. It arrives topped with cinnamon and sugar and with a side of caramel sauce and whipped cream and leaves you feeling warm all over, the way a good bread pudding should.

Whether you eat-in, take out, or have them cater your next corporate function, check out Pompei for a taste of things the way "Mama" used to make them.

Chicago Dining - The Signature Room

2005-07-24T21:20:00.000-05:00

I recently wrapped up a weekend visit to Chicago with Sunday brunch at The Signature Room - located on the 95th floor of the John Hancock building.

This is a no frills, stick to the basics spread of food that is at best, average. We have all seen this layout hundreds of times - pastries and "bagels" followed by breakfast potatoes, sausage, bacon and eggs benedict in chaffing dishes, followed by (turn the corner) an omelet station and a raw bar (oysters, Alaskan crab claws, mussels and shrimp cocktail) followed by poached and smoked salmon (two different dishes). The other side of the room features a carving station (ham and sirloin) followed by a dessert station and then (down the ramp) a row of food leftover from the previous night's dinner service (lobster bisque, chicken Parmesan, steamed asparagus, rice pilaf, etc. - you get the idea) and finally, an un-inventive selection of fruits (the holy trinity of Board meeting breakfasts: sliced honeydew, cantaloupe and pineapple) and cheeses (mostly sliced cheddar, jack, mass produced blue, etc. - we're talking cheeses that arrive in plastic shrink wrap, not rolled in ash or grape leaves).

How on Earth did I select this as the keystone to cap off an otherwise amazing weekend of eating in Chicago? Two words: the view.

The Signature Room gets away with serving this college cafeteria quality brunch because the setting is completely breath-taking. From the 95th floor of the John Hancock building, you have a panoramic view of all of Chicago. On more than one occasion, people at our table set down their forks to go stare out the windows and take it all in.

And perhaps I am being unfairly harsh - it could have been worse (and I did manage to choke down everything on my plate - on all three passes of the buffet). For example, the eggs on the benedict were soft (a rarity in operations like this) and several of our party bravely partook in the raw oysters with no signs of food poisoning.

All-in, it is probably worth a trip. Even at nearly $60 per person, it is worth putting up with the lovely crowds that all-you-can-eat buffets tend to draw (yes sir, you did step on my wife's foot just before you elbowed me in the ribs in a dive to grab another fist-full of shrimp cocktail) in order to take in the scenery - or you can buy a ticket to the observatory and do your eating elsewhere.

2 Amys (DC - Cleveland Park)

2005-07-21T22:15:00.000-05:00

Since moving to DC, I had heard the buzz about this being, "the best pizza in DC," but having moved here from Manhattan, where great pizza can be had on most street corners for $2.50 a slice, I somehow never managed to make 2 Amys a priority.

I finally broke down last night and stopped by for some take out pizza on my way home. As I had been warned, it looked like the opening night of a big movie - cars double parked out front, crowds lining the sidewalk - everything but a red carpet. Just 15 minutes after placing my order, I was on my way with a D.O.C. Margherita pizza and a somewhat lesser-born daily special comprised of chanterelle mushrooms, toasted pine nuts, tomato paste and grana (as in grana padano, the cheese).

[N.B. 2 Amys has gone through the trouble of being certified by the Verace Pizza Napoletana, which alone can declare whether or not a Neapolitan pizza is denominazione di orgine controllata (or D.O.C.). As such, they offer both D.O.C. and non-conforming pizzas.]

I know better than to get into an argument here about deep dish versus thin crust versus Sicilian, versus brick oven, versus New York style pizza - everyone has their preferences. All I am saying is that for what they are (Neapolitan pizza), the two pies I picked up from 2 Amys were perfect.

The light, chewy crusts stood on their own, rather than just being a conduit for tomato sauce and cheese. With respect to toppings, the Margherita was a classic interpretation with a little bit of tomato sauce, several large medallions of mozzarella and wilted basil leaves - a very capable standard bearer. The special pizza (chanterelles, tomato paste, pine nuts and grana) was a surprise hit. A wonderful combination of textures and flavors - a melody where the earthy chanterelles played the middle notes to the alto of the grana and the tenor of the pine nuts.

At $26 for two people, this was a bit grander than your average take out pizza night, but then again, last I checked, Domino’s doesn't deliver chanterelles and grana.

Heritage India (DC - DuPont)

2005-07-10T20:41:00.000-05:00

I have been enjoying the food at Heritage India's DuPont Circle location ever since it opened. The two-sided menu (labeled "Traditional" and "Contemporary") has always been an interesting gimmick - if for no reason other than the excitement it creates in the dining room when someone inevitably knocks over a water glass while trying to flip over these billboards.

Normally I am a straight-down-the-middle Chicken Chaat, Lamb Vindaloo, Nan and Raita guy. All of which are excellent, by the way. After a few meals at Heritage, I began dipping my toe in the "Contemporary" waters with the highly theatrical "Golgappas" - little pockets of dough (think of papadams in the shape of a tiny bowl) filled with potato and a sweet/hot tamarind-based sauce, each resting on its own spoon. The dish is finished tableside, as your server pours a bowl of "spicy water" into each pocket and encourages you to eat them each "in one bite." The result is a crunch of shell followed by a torrent of spicy water, which subsides to reveal the delicious sweet/hot potato mixture within. But I digress.

Saturday night, we mixed it up a bit and ordered exclusively from the "Contemporary" side of the menu. The result is similar to tapas, though I am loathe to use that term.

[NB: unless you are in a smoky bar, swishing warm Cruzcampo back and forth in your mouth to choke down that bite of hard bread and rotting ham you just took - and wiping the crumbs on the floor - it isn't "tapas," OK? It might be very good, but it is "small plates," "bites," or even "mezze," but not tapas, please.]

We tried Channa, the aforementioned Golgappas, Calamari in a delightful tomato-based sauce, Lentil dumplings, Baba Ganoush (I know - weird, right?), Cauliflower Pakora, Smoked Mozzarella (really), Meat Samosas, Raita and a flurry of breads (including a Parmesan Naan). Everyone took a bite or two, then passed the dish and by the end, we were (rather, I was) lunging across the table to soak up the last bits of sauce with whatever scrap of naan I could find as a conduit.

Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and it was really a blast to witness people trying such a dizzying array of flavors and textures in such a short period of time. They've got Benetton advertisements beaten by a mile.

Merkado Kitchen (DC - Logan)

2005-07-09T10:40:00.000-05:00

Kudos to owner David Winer for luring Chef Edward Kim to DC. I was a big fan of Kim's cooking at Soigne in Baltimore and am happy to be able to sample his food a bit closer to home.

While little of Kim's menu from Soigne has survived the move, the one dish that has - and the one dish that my wife can't imagine living without - is the "Seared White Tuna Sashimi in Miso-Sake Reduction & Truffles." The delicate seared crust on the tuna yields to a melt-in-your-mouth piece of fish that you would swear was swimming while you were waiting at the bar for your table. The Miso-Sake reduction is a sweet/tart accompaniment that is reminiscent of the version that Chef Nobu Matsuhisa uses in his famous Black Cod with Miso. The truffles lie on top of the dish and hang - both in the air and on the palate - like the haze over the Potomac on a summer morning. If Michelin rated individual dishes, this one would garner three stars - well worth a trip.

A similarly stunning dish is the "Raw Ahi Tuna Crudo on Boniato Frita, Wasabi Crema & Caviar." This dish borrows a bit from the classic French steak tartare preparation, with an Asian twist. Raw bits of delightfully fresh, translucent tuna are tossed with (my best guess) capers, scallions, jalapenos, cilantro, sesame oil and a bit of ginger, before being formed into a little tower and topped with a delicate wasabi creme fraiche and a bit of bright red roe. The boniato is less of a bed for the tuna and more of a hedge around it that the uninitiated will mistake for shoestring sweet potatoes. Like the aforementioned Seared White Tuna, this dish is incredibly rich, so plan to share.

While it doesn't quite fit with the refined, exacting attention to detail of the two tuna dishes mentioned above, Kim's nachos are outstanding. I am particularly partial to the Wonton Skins with Sesame Ground Beef, Manchego Cheese and Wasabi Crema. The wontons are an admirable stand-in for the traditional corn tortillas and the marriage of the ethereal spice of the sesame beef to the tartness of the manchego and the hot/cold of the wasabi crema comes close to delivering the "nirvana" promised in the menu.

The remainder of the menu is a kaleidoscope of Latin, Asian and French influences - more often than not competing for attention within the same dish. Some of the early favorites amongst neighboring diners appear to be the nachos, big bowls of noodles, grilled fish entrees and desserts.

All-in, this is a loud, no frills dining room / bar scene that is sure to be a crowd pleaser. Whether you are sampling Kim's finer plates over a nice bottle of wine before heading to a show at the Studio Theater, or downing a plate of nachos with friends over mojitos late at night, Merkado delivers.

Coastal Flats (VA - Fairfax)

2005-07-05T19:14:00.000-05:00

I grabbed lunch this afternoon at Coastal Flats (11901 Grand Commons Ave, Fairfax, VA). This massive, several hundred seat, booths only restaurant is very much in the style of Macaroni Grill and the other "big box" dinning halls that punctuate the suburban landscape.

Much to my surprise, the service was attentive and well informed, the menu was creative and the food was very good. I ordered a hickory grilled salmon - rare - which was served over a coarse grain mustard sauce and alongside a bed of light, airy "cauliflower mash." The salmon was exactly as I had ordered it - crispy on the outside and rare (nearly raw) on the inside - and full of hickory smoke flavor. The delicate mustard sauce was a terrific compliment to the salmon - not at all the heavy cream concoctions that many places smother their fish in to mask inferior quality.

At around $15 an entree, I think it is reasonable priced (i.e. not a bargain, but certainly not a splurge either). I also loved the bread. They serve a mix of sour dough, raisin and jalapeno cheese bread alongside some sinful southern "fry bread." Delicious.

Two cautionary notes: 1) it can get very loud in the dining room, so this might not be the ideal place for a quiet business lunch and 2) Coastal flats is very popular, so it may be tough to get a table - the place was packed at 1:00 on the Tuesday after July 4.

China Garden (VA - Arlington)

2005-07-04T16:15:00.000-05:00

I stopped into China Garden (1100 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, VA) on Sunday for my bi-weekly Dim Sum fix. As usual, I arrived at 11:30, sharp, only to find that they had opened the doors earlier than the posted time to accommodate two buses of tourists. I approached one of the two unpleasant ladies who guard the seating chart like Scylla and Charybdis, and was promptly rebuked for not having my entire party of six present. So far, so good - just another relaxing Sunday brunch at China Garden.

As the lobby filled up with would-be diners, it eventually took us twenty minutes to get a table. Once seated, we were treated to the gruff indifference from the wait staff that we have come to expect. Tea, water and chopsticks are easy to come by, but everything else is a struggle.

Un-pleasantries aside, as the carts of steamed and fried dumplings and other small bites rode by, we sampled freely. We enjoyed wave after wave of shrimp, pork, vegetarian, shark fin, shrimp and pork and combination dumplings, followed by BBQ beef bao, turnip cakes, fried scallion cakes, taro cakes, fried whole shrimp and shrimp stuffed eggplant. We even managed to coax an order of Chinese broccoli in oyster sauce out of one of the waiters (no small feat considering that on a previous trip, I ordered the same broccoli from four different members of the wait staff and came up empty handed).

At the end of the meal, we gave up looking for the delicious fried sesame balls and almond Jell-O on the passing carts and began the arduous practice of ordering them directly. After several failed attempts, the management realized that we weren't bluffing - and that they were not getting their table back until we got the desserts - and tracked some down for us.

$32 per couple later, we re-emerged fat, happy and triumphant.

It is unfortunate that the best Dim Sum in Washington, DC isn't in the District - it is at China Garden in Arlington, VA. It is equally unfortunate that the seating process lacks the decorum of even a rugby scrum and that the customer service at China Garden is the envy of passport agencies everywhere.

That said, I keep going back for more - and I am not alone - by 12:30, the entire mezzanine lobby looks like a Soviet era bread line. At the end of the day, the food is good enough that it is worth braving the rest of the experience. Besides, you feel a little less gluttonous having had to work a little to earn it.

Hank's Oyster Bar (DC - DuPont)

2005-06-29T22:00:00.000-05:00

As a devoted fan of Jamie Leeds' honest, true-to-the-season cooking at 15Ria, I have been eagerly awaiting the opening of her new restaurant, Hank's Oyster Bar (1624 Q Street, NW). Last Sunday, I finally had a chance to check out her new digs and it was everything I had been hoping for. The menu is a simple, seafood-forward offering that would please any tidewater denizen.

My wife and I were immediately drawn to the Fried Oyster Po'Boy and the Lobster Roll (I know, nothing like a light Sunday brunch to get the day started). Having sampled Chef Leeds' frying prowess at 15Ria (especially her fried calamari and her buttermilk and blue cheese battered onion rings), we knew the Po'Boy would deliver. At the same time, we approached the Lobster Roll with the sort of skepticism that a Marylander might have for an out-of-state crabcake - doubting she could pull it off, but willing to give it a go.

When the food arrived, we were both immediately taken aback by the rolls - in lieu of the sub rolls that most places try to pass off, Hank's served both sandwiches on authentic, New England style split rolls (those rectangular looking hot dog rolls). The bread was glistening with butter and a delightful golden brown from having all four sides spend time on the griddle. That trick lent instant credibility to the Lobster Roll, but called the Fried Oyster Po'Boy into question. After a few bites of each, we were convinced.

The Lobster Roll is very much in the spirit of Maine's finest. A mound of sweet lobster meat chunks with just enough mayonnaise to hold them together, wrapped in a salty, buttery, crunchy on the outside and doughy on the inside roll. An amazing juxtaposition of warm and cool, hard and soft and sweet and salty. Hank's isn't the best Lobster Roll I have ever had - nor at $17 is it the cheapest - but when you are jonesing for that uniquely Maine treat, and are stuck in the District, you would be hard pressed to do any better.

The Fried Oyster Po'Boy was similarly enjoyable. While my friends from Naw'lins would never recognize the half dozen fried oysters tucked into a roll as a "Po'Boy," if they closed their eyes, they would be forced to admit that it measured up. The oysters are ever so slightly fried, so as to achieve a light, crispy outside that belies the juicy center. The sensation is a brief crunch on your teeth followed by a rush of warm oyster. Married with a dollop of tartar sauce and the aforementioned split rolls, it is truly outstanding. At just $10, the Po'Boy is also far less of a guilty pleasure than the Lobster Roll.

Tim's II (VA - King George)

2005-06-26T09:04:00.000-05:00

Last week I had the opportunity to sample my first crabs of the season at Tim's II in King George, VA. Tim's is a short ride down the Potomac from DC and well worth the trip. Most patrons arrive by boat and either pull into the dock or, if they arrive at low tide when there are only about two feet of water, drop anchor and await Tim's complimentary shuttle service to the restaurant.

We played it straight down the middle - a pound and a half of steamed shrimp and a dozen large crabs - no soup, sandwiches, corn on the cob, fries or onion rings to get in the way. The shrimp were outstanding. Spicy, succulent morsels - each about the size of your thumb - cooked to perfection - tender and juicy and not at all chewy.

The crabs were somewhat of a disappointment. The preparation was flawless - just the right amount of spice, crabs steamed just long enough to free the meat from the shells - but the crabs were very light.

[For those of you who are not regular consumers of these delightful crustaceans, they are sold by size - medium, large, extra large, and jumbo - which refers primarily to the size of the crabs "from point to point" - meaning the distance across the widest part of the crab's back. Equally as important, though never quoted in the initial order, is how "heavy" or "light" the crabs are. Heavier crabs have more meat than lighter crabs, so it is possible for a "heavy" medium to have more meat in it than a "light" large, only you pay more to get the large order.]

The waitress must have known we were less than thrilled, because when we ordered another half dozen large, she brought out some behemoths - definitely jumbo and very heavy. These were prepared every bit as well as the first batch, but far more rewarding to pick.

If you find yourself on the Potomac this summer, stop by Tim's II - you won't be disappointed.

London Dining - St. John

2004-11-30T09:06:00.000-05:00

The following is a summary of my culinary adventures in London last November (2004). There are scattered travel, site seeing and theatre notes as well, but mostly it is all about the food.

St. John
We arrived a few minutes late for our reservation (had to finish that St. Peters ale across the street) which was no problem. Our party of four was seated in the dining room, with a clear view of the kitchen. From the minute I walked in, I liked the place. The space is somewhat industrial - high ceilings, poured concrete floors downstairs, wide plank wooden floors in the dining room, stark white walls - and you have the feeling that you are sitting in a cafeteria - which I love - give me good food, setting be damned! I am perfectly content to leave the high profile interior decorators alone to woo food critics and their ilk. One slightly offsetting initial reaction was the smell. St. John smells a bit like a butcher's shop - which is befitting the neighborhood and the menu - and didn't bother me in the slightest - but one of our party mentioned it several times.

For starters our party had pickled herring, potted mallard and venison heart. All three were amazing. The pickled herring was some of the best I had ever tasted - sweet and briny, without losing any of the underlying herring flavor or texture. The potted mallard was very like a duck confit - chunks of mallard blended with what the waitress described as pork fat - and served with toast points and cornichon - outstanding. To be honest, the venison heart was the best of all. I was a little squeamish ordering it - but had faith in Fergus. The meat was very tender and served in thin slices au jus with some candied walnuts. Everyone at the table tried it and all of them - at least momentarily - suspended any doubts that had about offal.

For mains, we had tripe & chips, teal and braised cabbage and the pheasant & trotter stew. There were several other dishes we wanted to try, all of which were sold out (lamb neck, veal shin and snails/sausage/chickpeas among them). The teal was rather small and therefore rather difficult to eat, but the meat was magnificent - quite unlike any I had ever had. The flavor was clearly fowl, but the texture was like tenderloin - dense muscle with no marbling at all. The tripe and chips surprised a lot of us as well. Had we not known it was tripe, many would have easily mistaken it for some of the best fried squid they had ever tasted - moist, slightly sweet - not at all chewy - and with a very light, crispy batter.

The pheasant and trotter stew was a sight to behold - a massive bowl covered in dough, pulled straight out of the oven with a shin bone smokestack sticking out (I thought it was just whimsical presentation until I realized that the convection currents in the hot liquid actually pulled a lot of the marrow flavor into the stew - very smart). At first cut, the stew itself seemed very thin and runny (I managed to drop a piece of crust into the bowl and splash not only myself, but another of our party sitting across the table), but once you broke up the crust and floated it in the stew, the whole dish took on a thick, porridge consistency. The flavor of the marrow came through, as did the pheasant. The trotters themselves appeared in the dish as diced bits - no bones - and may actually have been smoked slightly before going into the stew (think of the fatty bits at the end of a ham hock). A very simple and very British dish - perfect for warming you up on a chilly night. We drank Bourgogne throughout the meal, which seemed to work well - nobody was in the mood for a white wine after the St. Peters and we were all a little concerned that anything with more backbone would drown out Fergus' delicate seasoning.

Unlike J. Sheekey - where dessert was a bit of a let down (though, I managed to choke it all down - and may have licked the plate), at St. John, I thought the desserts excelled. We had a sticky prune pudding and an apple cake served with jersey cream. You definitely knew which country you were in. The pudding was delightful - warm and gooey, spicy, and served with a little pitcher of whole cream to cut the sweetness. The apple cake was served warm and the jersey cream - while artery clogging - was a delightful pairing (like smothering clotted cream on a slice of warm apple tart). The bill came out to around 70 pounds per couple (45 per couple food cost) - which we all thought was a terrific bargain.

So, all-in, St. John delivered, as promised. I think too many critics (and we were guilty of this at first as well) focus on the novelty of serving "nose to tail" cuisine. We are all jaded and accustomed to restaurants that have good ratings because of their "hook," so at first glance, it is easy to assume that Fergus is doing something that is different, not necessarily better. All of those critics are wrong. While the offal is very much in your face (many of the uninitiated - myself included - will be hard pressed to decipher the menu that includes things like "bath chap," "teal," etc.) - the wait staff is very friendly and helpful and can walk you through the menu. If you still aren't a believer, there are many more pedestrian dishes on the menu as well. The bottom line is that, offal aside, Fergus is serving very fresh ingredients, of the highest quality, expertly prepared (and quintessentially British), in a no frills setting and at reasonable prices. For that alone, it would be worth a trip across the pond - leave the formal French service, renowned interior decorators, celebrities and supermodels to the Zagats crowd.

London Dining - Harrods / Yo! Sushi / Jerusalem Tavern

2004-11-30T09:03:00.000-05:00

The following is a summary of my culinary adventures in London last November (2004). There are scattered travel, site seeing and theatre notes as well, but mostly it is all about the food.

Harrods
We spent the morning wandering around Knightsbridge and getting lost in Harrods. Speaking of Harrods, what in the hell is a Krispy Kreme stall doing in the food halls at Harrods? I know, I need some rare teas, a bit of caviar, some jamon serrano and oh yes - one of your original honey glazed?!?!?!?! What a disappointment - sometimes I am embarrassed to be a colonist.We had an unremarkable lunch at the Knightsbridge Cafe (I think I consumed more second hand smoke than food) - though, oddly enough, they had a dressing on their salads that was a pretty strict adherence to a traditional vinaigrette. I wouldn't travel over there for some salad dressing, it was just funny to have something like that sitting next to a toasted ham & cheese sandwich. We skipped tea (sadly) in favor of a light snack at Yo! Sushi.

Yo! Sushi
What can I say? This chain is popping up all over the place - and for good reason. What it lacks in terms of variety and quality, it more than makes up for in convenience and fun. For those that haven't been, you sit at a counter, like a 50s style American diner. In front of you is a water tap and embedded in the counter is a well containing pickled ginger, wasabi and soy sauce. All of the sushi parades by you in individual containers that continuously flow along the bar on a conveyer belt. We tried some salmon and tuna sashimi as well as a variety of rolls, some fish balls, and udon noodles. The tuna sashimi was a little suspect, but everything else was passable (remember, this is take out or "fast food" caliber sushi). We had more fun scoping out the dishes as the shuttled around the bar than we did eating the food, but I guess that is why you go to Yo!. All-in, it came to about 10 pounds per person, which is expensive for what it is, but in London, it costs you nearly that much to cross the street, so go figure. BTW - the one pound per person charge for water (still or sparkling) is a bit excessive, don't you think?

From Yo!, we headed to the Silver Vaults. I don't know how I missed this little treasure when I was living in London, but the Silver Vaults are a very unique experience. I am a little hazy on the history here, but the current version is in the middle of the legal district, where approximately 40 silver merchants have set up shop in the old vaults. Some specialize in serving pieces, others in flatware, etc. Anything and everything you could ever want to find in sterling silver is available for purchase there. It was a very interesting diversion. From there, we wandered through the old diamond district and made our way to the Jerusalem Tavern.

Jerusalem Tavern
Thank you again to those that made this recommendation. The tavern is very small - two tables up front, four stools at the bar, one table on a riser and two more tables in back. When we walked in (with Harrod's bags in hand) we felt like complete outsiders (anyone remember that scene from the Blue Oyster Bar in Police Academy?) but after a few pints of St. Peters, we got it all worked out. Jerusalem Tavern serves St. Peters ales - which are unlike anything I have had before. I tried both the Cream Stout and the Spiced Ale.

The Cream Stout was served cold and nearly flat, was dark as night, and was a great combination of chocolate nose, with a creamy/chewy mouth feel and a slightly sweet but clean finish (warm on the way down too, at 6.5% alcohol). The Spiced Ale was also very dark and smelled like a winter pie - all cinnamon and allspice. The finish on this one was somewhat more bitter and tighter than the cream stout - I didn't get a chance to ask the bartender, but it tasted something like juniper berries on the finish. All-in, a great place to get in out of the cold - and a perfect recommendation for a drink before dinner at St. John.

London Dining - Hakkasan / F&M / Three Greyhounds / Golden Dragon

2004-11-30T09:00:00.000-05:00

The following is a summary of my culinary adventures in London last November (2004). There are scattered travel, site seeing and theatre notes as well, but mostly it is all about the food.

Hakkasan
We went to Hakkasan for lunch (though we skipped breakfast, so it was technically a dim sum brunch). Hakkasan Very cool lounge scene - thank you to everyone who recommended that we make it here for lunch, not dinner. I can see how this setting would easily devolve into a velvet rope nightmare after dark. We ordered chive dumplings, Har Gau, pork shumai, Singapore vermicelli, Chinese broccoli in oyster sauce and chrysanthemum tea - all of which managed to both adhere to our traditional notions of what they should be while exceeding any we had ever had before (if that makes any sense). The chive dumplings were unique - with the actual dumpling wrapper incorporating the chives, as opposed to the filling (picture a green dumpling). The Har Gau was another standout - we could easily have eaten 2-3 orders of these they were so good. The dumplings in particular stand out not only because the ingredients were so fresh, but also because you could identify all of the individual components. Rather than being a grey ball of pork-tasting meat, at Hakkasan, you can identify individual peanuts, bean sprouts, etc. The service was attentive without being too overly burdensome and the total bill of 37.50 pounds, while steep, was very worth it. NB - the bathrooms are an adventure. From there we headed out for more shopping and spent a good bit of time on Jermynn Street before dropping into Fortnam & Mason for tea.

F&M
Mind you, we opted to order a pot of tea with a side of scones from the restaurant on the ground floor as opposed to the 19.95 pounds per person variety of tea that was being served upstairs. An average pot of tea with scones that I believe came from a frozen package, but I doubt the tourists who were just so delighted that "the Queen shops here" even noticed. Skip it - I would go back to Liberty any day. From there we did some more walking / window shopping through SoHo and then wound up at the Three Greyhounds pub for a few pints before we went to see The Woman in White (quite good show actually, despite a score that is somewhat less than original - as my wife said, "if you liked Sunset Boulevard, you'll love Woman in White - you already know the songs").

Three Greyhounds
We drank at Three Greyhounds, but I was dying to order a bit of their Colcannon - it smelled absolutely divine. Not sure if anyone knows about this pub - it is tiny and seemed remarkably free of tourists, especially given its proximity to so many theatres, etc. After the show (BTW - when did they stop selling Magnum bars in the theatre? I had been looking forward to that post-intermission guilty pleasure all during the first act and absolutely could not find one anywhere), we decided to wander into Chinatown, with no particular destination in mind. After passing a bunch of old favorites, we finally settled into Golden Dragon - for no reason other than it was still open (it was 11:30 on a Monday night).

Golden Dragon
Lots of post-theatre folks here, lots of cigarette smoke and quintessential china town decor, but it reminded me of just how good your average Chinese restaurant in London can be. Seriously, I had forgotten how bad the stuff is in the States. We had a hot & sour soup, a wonton soup and a kung pao chicken - how generic can you get? It didn't matter - all were quite good, and at that hour of the night, completely fit the bill. Still, nothing to write to Michelin about. After dinner, we raced across the street (Gerrard) to the little Chinese bakery (I forgot the name), where we caught the owner just as he was about to close and persuaded him to sell us some sesame balls. We devoured the gooey, greasy, lotus root filled dough balls as soon as we got into our taxi and loved every artery clogging moment of it. You should definitely check this place out - those sesame balls are addictive!

London Dining - Liberty / Gordon's / J. Sheekey

2004-11-30T08:56:00.000-05:00

The following is a summary of my culinary adventures in London last November (2004). There are scattered travel, site seeing and theatre notes as well, but mostly it is all about the food.

Liberty
We had a fairly standard tea (pot of tea, egg & cress, cucumber & cream cheese and salmon sandwiches followed by clotted cream and scones) all of which was quite good. The setting was very warm and comfortable as well. I can't say I recommend it as a culinary destination, but if you find yourself out and about in the Regent Street area, it is a very nice place to go and escape from the throngs of pushy tourists et. al. From there we continued shopping and ultimately retreated to Gordon's wine bar.

Gordon's
Gordon's is a lovely wine cellar turned bar just up from Trafalgar Square (I believe). The newspaper articles on the wall described it as "Dickensonian" which it may well be, but I prefer to describe it as equal parts wine cellar, pub, fraternity party and brothel (in other words, I loved it). We ordered an unremarkable bottle of Bourgogne, stepped past the crowded bar and over the couples in various states of passion and found a quiet corner to enjoy the bottle. From there, we headed to J. Sheekey for dinner.

J. Sheekey
Our party of four ordered a variety of starters and mains and shared them all. Starters included lobster bisque, cress soup and roasted squid and padron peppers. I was unable to obtain a taste of the bisque - which attests to how good it was - and the cress soup was a deliciously simple preparation, with the bitterness of the cress tempered by crème fraiche (the smoked salmon on a blini on the side was a nice touch). By far the best dish was the squid/padron peppers starter. Picture a cazuela of hot olive oil and garlic and then toss in raw baby squid and padron peppers - the result was melt-in-your-mouth tender squid and "pinch me, I think I am in Madrid" pimientos del padron. My love of Spanish food is documented elsewhere on these pages, so I admit to a sampling bias, but this dish really sent me. We drank a semi-sweet Vouvray throughout the meal, which was a bit too little for the squid, but then again, it was ordered with the main event in mind.

For main courses, our party shared the Dover sole, grilled prawns and prawn/monkfish curry. I ordered the curry - which sounds like an oddball choice - but in the end it was a coin toss between that and the fish and chips. Anyway, the Dover sole was as good as its billing. It managed to be tender and juicy without being overly oily and despite my initial doubts, paired well with a dab of béarnaise sauce (I was worried that the fish would be rendered as little more than a conduit for the béarnaise, but was happy to be proved wrong). My curry was very good as well. The monkfish and prawns were cooked to perfection and the curry was a slightly sweet version that really accentuated the monkfish and helped complete the trick that monkfish often plays - that of masquerading on the palate as lobster. The dish was served with rice that was beautifully perfumed with cardamom and saffron. The big surprise here was the grilled prawns. These langoustine-sized monsters were dished up 7 to a plate and served with a sweet/sour chutney that was a nice compliment to the smokey/salty meat.

We finished with a honeycomb ice cream and an apple crisp, both of which were very good, but suffered somewhat from being the second act to so many wonderful fish dishes.

London Dining - Borough Market / New Tayabs

2004-11-29T19:40:00.000-05:00

The following is a summary of my culinary adventures in London last November (2004). There are scattered travel, site seeing and theatre notes as well, but mostly it is all about the food.

Borough Market
Unbelievable. I was blown away by the variety and quality of offerings. In addition to the tid bits we sampled from the stalls, we purchased a ham & cheese coissant (brilliant - would have been better had we been patient enough to take it home and warm it, but we had been up all night and needed something in our belly). We followed that with a coriander pancake stuffed with chicken curry which was delightful. The little Indian woman who was selling them claimed to have been up at 2AM making them - and I absolutely believe her. Next we picked up some blueberry cookies from a woman who also had a deep dish blueberry pie that looked completely sinful, but impracticle for munching on the go. Finally, we finished off a visit to Neals Yard and one of the highly touted cheese toasties. Wow. I had been made fun of all morning by our hosts who hadn't heard of said toastie and thought my quest for it somewhat quixotic. One bite of the crunchy, creamy, cheesey slice of heaven and they all stopped asking questions. In fact, one of our party asked - what other recommendations did your friends make?

We grabbed a pint in a pub afterwards and shared some chips and bangers and mash. Nothing notable here, but good comfort food when it is in the 30s and rainy outside.

New Tayabs
Our party of three arrived around 7:00 and were seated immediately in the "garden" room next door. At first we were slightly put off (and cold) but in the end I would highly recommend sitting out there - it was much cooler and less smokey, plus, you don't have throngs of people waiting to get a table looking over your shoulder.We began with meat samosas, the lamb chops and a fish masala, all of which were excellent, but rendered the Sauvignon Blanc we brought with us about as flavorful as tap water. The samosas were a brilliant juxtaposition of crispy outer layer and doughy inner layer and the meat filling was an earthy cinnamon/allspice/lamb blend. The lamb chops were coated in a deliciously spicy layer, albeit slightly tough. My favorite was the fish masala, which was took on a remarkable depth that belied the initial spicy outer layer. For mains, we ordered various chick pea, lamb, and chicken dishes (I forget all of the names - we opted to order multiple "small" portions to maximize the variety). All of the choices were excellent, but the stand-out was the lamb bhuna. While incendiary, it possessed multiple layers of flavor that made each bite more enjoyable than the previous one (somewhat akin to the feeling one gets when eating a really good Mexican mole). We uncorked an Australian Chardonnay to pair with these dishes - it fared much better than the Sauv. Blanc. We finished with mango lassi which were terrific, but HUGE. Seriously, we could have ordered just one of them and three straws! All-in, the bill came to just slightly over 10 pounds per person - and it would have been a bargain at 2-3x that price.