Saveur India, Bethesda, MD

Posted on June 22, 2011 by Don

I was last at Saveur India a couple of years ago, and really enjoyed my meal. This time around, I only stopped in for a snack, but also found a little pot of gold.

Samosas ($4.50) are good here, and seemingly made in-house. The unassuming menu description of ‘spiced potato and peas stuffed in pastry shells, served with tamarind chutney,’ might cause you to overlook them, but you shouldn’t – if you like samosas, then you’ll really like these.

I ordered the Kulfi ($4.95) because the menu said it was made with “home made” Pista ice cream and mango sauce, and I was a little skeptical; I shouldn’t have been. This was an elegant, finesse-based ice cream that caught me off-guard by how good it was. While the mango sauce alone isn’t anything special, it quickly becomes that way once the pistachio ice cream begins to melt into it. One member at our table, from India, said that this type of light, ice-milkish type of kulfi with tiny little ice crystals in it (from freezing (*)) reminds her very much of what she used to find at vendor stands in Delhi.

(*) After writing this, I now realize how silly it sounds. “Uh, no, Don, really? Ice crystals occurred from freezing?”

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Pupatella, Arlington, VA

Posted on June 21, 2011 by Don

(See the May 26, 2011 Review here.)

A family of four enjoyed a full dinner sitting right in front of Enzo Algarme, with both a seven-year-old girl and an eleven-year-old boy entranced by the pizzas being made right before their eyes.

We started with my usual 2009 Case Ibidini Insolia ($15 with purchase of two pizzas) just because it’s hard not to at the price, plus a bottle of Boylan’s Root Beer ($2.50).

At my urging, we got two orders of the Fried Zucchini Blossoms ($8.00), and the consensus was that they were fantastic. But I’ve had them three times now, and I’m still trying to recreate that “first time” when they were fried to perfection, giving the perception of being completely oil-free – it’s the difference between being great, and OMFG great. (This is what happens when the initial bar is set high.)

Panzarotti ($8.00) is an order of two weighty potato croquettes, laced liberally with mozzarella and flecks of prosciutto. They are an ample appetizer, and unless you’re really hungry going into the meal, one order is plenty for two people. Like the zucchini blossoms, it’s easy to overlook these and dive right into the pizzas, but these are delicious croquettes, salted assertively but not overly so, with just a hint of nutmeg lending a (false) perception of lightness.

All four pizzas used the same dough and were perfectly cooked, so deciding between them was entirely a matter of topping combinations. A Bimbi ($8.50) is nominally called a “kid’s pizza,” but is the same size as the others. It’s the entry-level cheese pizza here, with only San Marzano tomato sauce and mozzarella, and is not limited to children (you could construct your own from the a la carte list for the exact same price). A Pepperoni ($9.50) is a basic pizza ($7.00) plus fresh mozzarella ($1.50) plus beef pepperoni ($1.00), and if you like pepperoni pizzas, there’s nothing here not to like.

As much as I rave about these pizzas, the Eggplant ($10.00) just isn’t my favorite combination here. It has grilled eggplant, roasted red peppers, and fontina, and although it sounds appealing to me on paper, it’s a very eggplant-centric presentation, which in turn highlights the tomato sauce, and the relative dearth of fontina just leaves me a little unsatisfied. However, my pizza of Prosciutto Arugula ($12.00) with Prosciutto di Parma, beautiful, vibrant-green baby arugula, fresh mozzarella, and parmesan more than sated my most primal desires. Some pizzerias serve multi-inch mounds of arugula on these pizzas, but Pupatella’s is a restrained version that extracts the most out of each leaf.

—

“Would you maybe like to try something else?” Anastasiya asked me on a subsequent visit when I began to order a glass of the 2009 Case Ibidini Insolia. Shamed, I realized that I’d probably been robotic to a fault when it comes to ordering this wine.

“Sure,” I said.

“Do you want to try a Sauvignon Blanc?”

I nodded my head. “Yeah, that sounds good.” (And it did.)

“Have you seen our patio?”

“HUH?”

Yes, friends. If you haven’t found it by now, Pupatella has a delightful little patio out back that opened in mid-June. I took a seat closest to the back door, and sipped my glass of 2010 Sunday Mountain Sauvignon Blanc ($5) while I sunk into my (little hard plastic) chair, looking around at the small, colorful, artistic touches (someone at Pupatella has a knack for modern design and subtle use of color), the whole patio having a very “cool” feel because of the giant green trees surrounding it.

The Sauvignon Blanc was perfect with a special Marinated Seafood Salad ($5), made with octopus, squid, mussels and clams. I’m a notoriously slow eater when I’m enjoying a glass of wine, so my buzzer went off midway through my salad and disrupted me from my mini-trance state.

I switched over to a glass of Barbera with a special white pizza of Fresh Figs, Prosciutto di Parma, and Fresh Smoked Mozzarella ($14), and became absolutely stuffed towards the end of the meal, but finished every bite regardless.

—

And the next night I was back again. My young dining companion had just flown in from Orlando, and was travel-weary, Disneyworld-drained, and not wanting a big production. I knew that the fig pizza would work with these parameters, and I was right – “this is the perfect food for me tonight,” he said, as we sat in the exact same table where I’d been the night before.

And I wanted another glass of that Sauvignon Blanc. “We have the rest of the bottle left from last night,” Anastasiya said.

“Great – just subtract $5 for the glass and I’ll take it,” I chirped (it was $15 ($30 minus the $10 two-pizza discount, minus $5 for the glass the night before)). And as good as this Sauvignon Blanc was with the seafood salad, it was just as good with another order of Panzarotti, fried just as well as before. I cannot imagine anyone not enjoying these Panzarotti, and you should get them.

I ordered the “other” special white pizza available that evening: the Cotecotto ($11) made with sausage, ricotta, and red onion. This particular pizza goes on my “like but didn’t love” list because it came across as extremely herbaceous (to the point of having a dried bitterness in the finish) and oniony.  To be fair, this pizza needed a red wine to cut through it, and since I bought the bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, I wasn’t going to go there. One nice thing about Pupatella is that they’ll cheerfully package any unfinished bottle of wine for you to take home, so don’t hesitate to spring for a full bottle (especially with the $10, two-pizza discount).

With most restaurants like Pupatella, I’d be urging diners to “go now, because it’s never going to get any better than it is.” But so far, remarkably, that advice would prove to be wrong. Enzo has worked every single time I’ve ever been in, and has had a direct hand in making every single pizza I’ve ever had here. If you look around, you’ll see that Pupatella is growing, yes, but they’re reinvesting money back into the restaurant: the patio is a fantastic addition, they have a new soft drink cooler, their wine list is expanding, and they’re beginning to take some risks (the marinated seafood salad, for example). I suppose there will come a day when Enzo drops from fatigue, or when a second Pupatella opens, and maybe that’s the time when the quality here will retreat from its highest highs, but from everything I see so far, this restaurant is continuing to improve, and we’ve yet to see it at its peak.

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Hee Been, Annandale, VA

Posted on June 20, 2011 by Don

(Hee Been may be officially in Alexandria, but anything on Route 236 west of I-395 gets rolled into Annandale in my book.)

I’m not sure whether or not Hee Been is the largest Korean restaurant in the DC area (I’d be interested in a square footage comparison between Hee Been and Ega), but it must surely have the largest dinner buffet. Il Mee’s is large, but manages to be compact; Hee Been’s is vast and sprawling, and it’s very possible to go through an entire meal without noticing every station.

I’ve had the 22-ounce can of Sapporo at various points in my life, but I don’t ever recall paying double-digits for it (it’s $10.50 here). Does this not seem expensive? My young dining companion had his Diet Coke ($1.99 with endless refills from a gentleman walking around with a pitcher).

Our server waved the green flag for the Dinner Buffet ($27.95 Fri-Sun, $25.95 Mon-Thu, children 3(?!)-8 half-price), and it was off to the races. You can load up on salad and sushi here (and if you cared about a balanced meal, you probably would), but other than a share-plate of banchan, we skipped the cold vegetables and dove into the meat of things.

I highly recommend getting a bowl of soup. Just point to the one you want, and a server will boil it for you and bring it to the table – I’m not quite sure how they manage this system in a full restaurant, but it worked well enough for us.

Against the side of the wall sits the pot of gold: a single station of meat, meat, and more meat. There’s raw, bone-in steak (which they take back to the kitchen and cook for you – it arrives marinated in something that tastes a lot like A-1), and there are about ten huge trays filled with raw, sliced meats. Numerous types of beef including marinated and non-marinated galbi and bulgogi, short ribs, pork tenderloin, raw pork belly (oversized strips of bacon), marinated chicken, shrimp, and even marinated squid.

Yes, I know, it’s quantity over quality, but now that Chung Dai Kam (the only charcoal Korean barbecue that I knew of in the area) has closed, you should at least consider the buffet at Hee Been the next time you want to go running off to Honey Pig. I like the vibrant atmosphere at Honey Pig (and the owner was very nice to my son once which I haven’t forgotten), but Hee Been can satisfy everyone from an elderly grandparent to the all-state high school football player. One thing’s for sure: if you leave hungry, it’s your own fault!

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Diya, Tysons Corner, VA

Posted on June 17, 2011 by Don

If someone were to ask, “What’s the biggest Indian restaurant in the DC area?” then “Bombay Club” would be a pretty good guess, but that’s only if they haven’t been to Diya.

Diya sits on the Vienna side of Tysons Corner, on Chain Bridge Road in the old Hunan Lion space (which is easily remembered by being “that building with the giant cement circle out front” – affectionately known as The Toilet Bowl Building (Google it if you don’t believe me)).

And it is huge, with the capacity to handle 400 guests. Not only is it huge, it has become incredibly popular with the Indian-American happy-hour crowd – on this Friday afternoon, there were 50-100 people gathered in the bar area, and overflowing into the front patio.

It was a gorgeous afternoon, and I couldn’t see sitting in an empty, air-conditioned restaurant, so my young dining companion and I took a seat at an empty, roped-off seating area inside the patio, located outside the front door in the building’s courtyard.

Service was initially friendly and attentive (this was just before the bar area became overrun), and we started with a Mango Lassi ($3.00) and a Godfather ($9.00 for a 22-ounce can). If you’re not familiar with Godfather, it’s an Indian export, with a deceptively high ABV and a good, malty backbone. The lassi sorely lacked yogurt (mango pulp can only you take you so far, unless it’s really, really good mango pulp, and this wasn’t). We were brought out some Papadam, and a presentation of three chutneys which were all much better than the norm (the tamarind, for example, was thinner, less sweet, and less plum-sauce like than many versions you’ll find).

When the appetizers arrived, I was hopeful that I’d found a sleeper of a restaurant because they were also both very good. Aloo Dilnazar ($8.00) is one of only a few items on the menu that’s noted as a “House Specialty,” and you should order it. This is a stuffed potato, the potato itself halved, then hollowed a bit to make room for cheese, spinach, and house spices, the whole thing grilled in the tandoor. Mint Paneer Pakora ($7.00) is called a “cottage cheese sandwich,” with a layer of mint, battered in chickpea flour and spices, then deep-fried. You get seven pieces of this, and it’s wonderful.

Unfortunately, this is the point at which the meal pretty much fell off a cliff. The bar area became crowded, with the staff getting busy elsewhere, and the entree portion of the meal just didn’t live up to the restaurant’s initial promise.

Tandoori Machali ($18.00) was served in a hot, iron dish (promising!), but the salmon itself was so viciously salty that both of us struggled to eat it. If it was only the salmon (or, really, the dry rub of the salmon) that was salty, then that could have been neutralized by the basmati rice and naan (and raita which we should have ordered); but my Murchi Wala Gosh ($16.00) was saltier still, and unlike the dry salmon, its goat meat was simmered in a thick curry sauce from which there was no escape. The freshly cooked naan was so nastily glistening that I commented how the cook must have used a fire hose instead of a brush.

After a point, I realized I’d have to become pro-active to get the check, so I went inside and poked (not literally poked) the manager. A dinner that started off with a bang ended with a fizzle, and I just can’t see rolling the dice on a second meal here anytime soon. That having been said, if I were from India and missing my homeland, I might strongly consider coming here for Friday happy hour – it’s quite a bustling scene.

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Freddy’s Lobster and Clams, Bethesda, MD

Posted on June 16, 2011 by Don

(See the May 17, 2011 Review here.)

Did you go to donrockwell.com Discount Day at Freddy’s Lobster and Clams?

If not, you missed not only the $5 drink special, not only 15% off your entire check, but also Gillian Clark’s fried chicken. This was enough to get me back in.

And the first thing I did was ask Chris Cunningham for the $5 drink, his take on a Bay Breeze, while my young dining companion – bellied up to the bar next to me – had his Raspberry Tea ($2.00).

It was a given that we were ordering two Fried Chicken Dinners ($13 each), but temptation penetrated, and I also had to try a pound of Steamed Clams ($15).

The clams were incredible – a bowlful of spanking fresh Ipswich clams (as fresh as you’ll find in these parts, I guarantee you), and they really didn’t need any drawn butter or clam juice (but came with them anyway). If you like steamed clams, think you might like steamed clams, or even if you think you don’t like clams, get these – they are truly special (there’s a natural sweetness to them).

I’ve had Gillian’s chicken a Gazillian times – I had her incredible Lilliputian Fried Chicken at Colorado Kitchen, and I had the chicken at General Store and Post Office Tavern. She can fry rings (no pun intended) around anyone, and I hold her up on a pedestal when it comes to the underrated art of frying – either pan frying or deep frying.

She was at Freddy’s, looking fit, trim, and happy as a, well, clam. Matt used to come up to her belt line, but he is officially taller than her now (by a fair margin, actually).

Okay, I’m dancing around saying that I didn’t love the chicken, and I hope Gillian takes it as a compliment that I didn’t. The beer-battered recipe at Freddy’s is not hers (although I believe she batters the chicken), and the deep fryer takes this batter, and imparts a thickness, a heaviness, that just didn’t appeal to me. I thought this would be a no-brainer thing to order, but I was surprised to find that I merely “liked” it; didn’t love it. Still, let’s remove the external factors and remember that $13 here buys a pretty darned good three-piece, dark meat chicken dinner with fries and homemade cole slaw.

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Adour, St. Regis Hotel, Downtown

Posted on June 14, 2011 by Don

I couldn’t get ahold of Adour on the phone, so I decided to take my chances and try for a walk-in reservation. When I got there, I was told they were fully booked, so decided to sit at the bar outside. Although my bartender (who has worked this bar for many years) told me I could order off of Adour’s regular menu, something just didn’t seem right about having such lavish cuisine at such a clubby bar, so I decided to order one small course, and then to return another time for a more complete experience.

I ordered a glass of 2009 La Source Sauvignon Blanc ($11, imported by Laurent Givry of Elite Wines) to have with my Bayaldi (Signature Cookpot) of Mediterranean Vegetables ($16).

At this point, I need to stop and go back to 2010 when I was invited by Alain Ducasse’s publicist to join the chef for dinner at Adour. I almost always turn down media events, but this one I couldn’t pass up. The evening of the dinner, I arrived at the hotel, figuring the entire dining room would be closed off for hundreds of journalists; yet, I was the first one there, and was told that the dinner was to be held at a single table in one of the back rooms. Oops!

So here I was, sitting right across from Alain Ducasse himself, at a table with about ten other people. I’m not one to be starstruck, but Ducasse is arguably the most famous chef in the world, and here I was getting a chance to practice my French with the gentleman (and a gentleman he was, too). This was a dinner to promote Ducasse’s “signature cookpots” – lidded, ceramic vessels in which you cook the food and then serve it. And, although I never said anything at the time, I thought the cookpot courses we had on this evening were easily the weak links in the meal (I believe M. Ducasse might have thought so as well, as he politely excused himself and seemed to storm back to the kitchen after a couple of the items were served). It was a lovely meal, but quite frankly I didn’t think it was up to Adour’s standards – I was curious to try another cookpot dish now that it’s 2011, and the kitchen staff has more experience using them.

As I sipped my wine in the bar, Adour’s General Manager, Shaun Sleeper, came out to the bar and said hello – he had recognized me when I went up to the reservation stand and asked for a table (well, I tried to remain anonymous). He said the restaurant had just had a cancellation, and that a two-top had opened up. Would I like it? You bet!

So I was shown to a table in the back, and the restaurant was indeed quickly filling up. I felt like something “different” on this evening, and so I ordered a Vegetarian Tasting Menu ($65 for 5 courses), and turned myself over to the kitchen – and also to the wonderful rising-star sommelier Brent Kroll for wine pairings.

Between the dazzling kitchen work of Chef Julien Jouhannaud and Pastry Chef Fabrice Bendano, both of whom came out and introduced themselves after dinner, this was an evening to remember, and Adour gets elevated back to the highest level in the donrockwell.com Dining Guide. Yes, you can argue that since I was recognized, I got special attention, but I was also known during the meal with M. Ducasse, and I found that meal – other than the company – somewhat disappointing, and I felt compelled to (at least temporarily) downgrade Adour in the Dining Guide (which I did); I’m glad it’s now back at the top.

The meal went like this (after a little amuse-gueule, of course):

Chilled Heirloom Tomatoes Gazpacho with Compressed watermelon, basil, and fresh almonds (if you’ve never had fresh almonds, they are eye-opening)

Path Valley Rainbow Beet Salad with Goat Cheese Cream and Candied Walnuts

Signature Risotto with Porcini Mushrooms (an absolutely moan-inducing risotto based on the dish they serve at Louis XV in Monaco)

Poached Green Asparagus with Creamy Oregon Morel Mushrooms and Slow-Cooked Egg

Strawberry Composition with Marmalade, Jus, and Mint Ice Cream (an astounding dessert that shows off the talents of this brilliant pastry chef)

And of course, some mignardises along with the bad news.

Brent really showed creativity with the wine pairings (without going over the top, as so many young sommeliers do). He took chances, but stayed well within the bounds of good taste and normalcy. A side note about Brent: he’s one person in this town that I’ve never heard a single bad thing about (there are many petty things said about people in this town behind their backs, so don’t discount this as being insignificant).

Finally, I’d also like to mention an “extra” course that was inserted between the risotto and the asparagus: Shaun brought me out that cookpot of bayaldi, as a gift from the kitchen, and I have but one word that best describes it:

Wow. If you’ve seen the movie Ratatouille (and who hasn’t?), you’ll remember that the ratatouille presented to Anton Ego wasn’t a true ratatouille (which is long-cooked, and something of a stew); it was, in fact, a bayaldi which is a variation of ratatouille (and looks something like this), and it’s this same dish which is currently being served at Adour in the signature cookpot. For $16 off of the a la carte menu, you can go grab a seat at the bar outside of Adour, have a single glass of that $11 Sauvignon Blanc, and experience for yourself the same capitulation that made Anton Ego gasp and drop his pen.

This dish is lights-out good!

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Estadio, Logan Circle

Posted on June 12, 2011 by Don

(See the February 23, 2001 Review here.)

I have a feeling this could result in a six-foot, six-inch foot in the arse, so I’m going out to Home Depot today and purchasing some Mark-B-Gone.

After a trade wine tasting at Cork Wine Bar, a good friend of mine and I were hungry, and decided to have dinner nearby. It was a Monday night, and not everything was open. He’d never been to Estadio, and it seemed like the perfect choice.

We walked into a bustling, but not packed (for once) restaurant, and chose to sit at the bar rather than a table.

I immediately ordered a Slushito ($9) with coconut, rum, lemongrass, and lime, and was whisked away to the Caribbean. As I type this, I’m craving one right now – out of about a half-dozen Slushitos I’ve tried here, this may just be my personal favorite.

After we’d settled into our drinks, I ordered a tumbler of 2010 Mokoroa Txakoli ($7), a high-toned, high-acid drink that transitioned me from beach cocktail to dry wine. The first round of tapas was Boquerones ($4) with house made bread, Pickled Garlic, Pepinillos & Olives ($4), House Made Terrina ($8), and a wonderful order of Chorizo, Manchego, & Pistachio Crusted Quince Pintxos ($1.50 each). These single-bite skewers are pre-made at the front counter, and about thirty of them were sitting in a tray which I could have taken and run out the door with. As simple as these were, each was a terrific bite of food. Get them.

I sometimes have to pry myself away from Spanish whites, and wasn’t yet ready to do so, so I tried the 2009 A. Coroa Godello ($9) which still leaves me Waiting For Godello – it was very much of an American-export version of this wine which can be so bracing and compelling in its native Galicia. Still, it went well with orders of the Croquetas de Jamón ($6) with pickled cucumbers (cornichons), and Wild Mushroom Croquetas ($6) with roasted red peppers. I didn’t care for either of the soufflé-like croquetas, and when I bit into the ham, I thought I might have been eating the mushroom (a bite of the mushroom made me realize I hadn’t been). That said, my knowledgable dining companion liked them more than I did, and even ordered a second order of the croquetas de jamón.

I thought a glass of Emilio Hidalgo Marques de Rodil Especial Palo Cortado ($10) would be a good pairing with an intriguing-sounding Bacalao Crudo ($10) with jalapeño, avocado, orange, and olive oil. However, both the sherry and the crudo came out at refrigerator temperature, and by that I mean they were both so cold that neither was enjoyable until they warmed up, and it took a surprisingly long time for them to do so. Once they did, they went beautifully together, and I can highly recommend this Bacalao dish which is ample, and has a beautiful combination of flavors and textures.

This was around the point we switched to reds, and I went with one of my (affordable) favorites here, the 2008 Juan Gil Monastrell ($7.50) from Jumilla.

My dining companion and I parted ways a second time on our “main course.” For me, both the Sautéed Shrimp ($11) with garlic, parsley and lemon, and the Sautéed Lacinato Kale ($6) with garlic, sherry, and chili flakes were oversalted to the point where I just didn’t want to eat them, and I took a couple bites of each and was done; he didn’t think the salt was such a problem, and rather enjoyed them.

Because of these two divergences, two experienced diners walked away with very different impressions of the meal – he was impressed as a whole; I thought the kitchen had a terrible evening, and only the pre-made dishes were standouts. I reiterate, it was a Monday night, and the only person I recognized from either the front or the back of the house was Justin Guthrie, super-hospitable as always. That having been said, the bartenders themselves were wonderful, and could not have been more professional and friendly, and as always, good service means a lot to me.

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Bistro LaZeez, Bethesda, MD

Posted on June 12, 2011 by Don

After an afternoon of heat-driven thunderstorms, the sun came out for a glorious few hours before tucking in for the night, and the temperature had dropped about ten degrees – it was a perfect time for an early dinner on the patio of Bistro LaZeez.

Unfortunately, when I arrived at 6-ish, every table on the patio had been taken, and so I walked into a completely empty restaurant and took a table in the back corner. (During the course of my meal, several other parties came in, and they all sat right next to the window which is a quasi-patio since the storefront is almost entirely glass.)

It’s often the case when a restaurant’s wine list is so bad that I’m driven to drinking beer; this was the opposite. The beer list at Bistro LaZeez is awful, but I did manage to find a quaffable glass of 2009 Louis Latour Chardonnay d’Ardèche ($8.45), and as it turns out, this table wine was to pair up perfectly with the buried treasure that I found here (read on).

An order of Hummus ($4.99) was attractively presented, but ultimately nothing special. Bistro LaZeez goes out of its way to say that its entrees are “served with GRILLED pita bread” (caps are theirs), and I assumed it would be homemade; not so. With the hummus, I got a basket of purchased, paper-thin cardboard-like pita bread (think: Amoo’s Kabob or Shamshiry) that works well in a pinch (no pun intended), but is also disappointing. So, unless you’re really, really in the mood for hummus, I would try something else on this menu.

The entree came with a house salad that was mostly disappointing: a small plate of decent greens in a balsamic vinaigrette (why?!) – at this point in the meal, between the bulk wine, the ordinary hummus, and the Americanized salad, I was looking through that glass storefront and longing to be on the other side of it.

And then, the meal did a 180.

Chicken Medley ($11.99), grilled, marinated, skinless chicken thigh, drumstick, and a wing, with a tub of “zesty signature BLZ sauce,” is served with a choice of either basmati rice with roasted almonds, or Mediterranean potatoes (and of course GRILLED pita bread, which is one slice of that same bread, grilled to a golden brown and crispy). Do yourself a favor and get the potatoes. Here’s why: during this course, I had one of my relatively rare moments of Diner Pause – when I pause, look down at what I’m eating, and everything else in the world goes away.  These three pieces of chicken were fantastic, both in terms of their marinade and their execution on the grill. That BLZ sauce (that I was somewhat worried about) was a gripping, lemony narcotic that took both the chicken and the delicious, ample mound of simple-but-perfect potatoes, and made this blue-collar, blue-plate dish into something special. And that mass-produced Chardonnay? With this combination of flavors, it started drinking like a Puligny-Montrachet, both food and wine hitting a synergy, and I found myself shaking my head at how good this was. You simply do not find homestyle cooking this good for $11.99, certainly not smack dab in the middle of Bethesda. It is incredibly gratifying when, as a diner who writes about his meals, I stumble across something like this and can share it with everyone. Get this exact combination – Chicken Medley with potatoes, and a glass of the Latour Chardonnay – and you, too, will find yourself pouring that little tub of BLZ narcotic over the chicken and potatoes and reveling in the moment.

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Fast Gourmet, U Street Corridor

Posted on June 11, 2011 by Don

(See the February 15, 2011 Review here.)

I’ve been raving to Matt about the Chivito at Fast Gourmet, and on Saturday night we decided to make a special trip to get one. Of course, we unwittingly drove right through (the cordoned off) Dupont Circle during the Capital Pride Parade, and it took a full hour to get there and park.

Hangry, we walked into a blessedly empty restaurant, and lucked out because we were told that there was only one Chivito ($13) left – we ordered it without hesitation.

I went with the Milanesa ($12) on the condition that we were going to split everything.

The Chivito was just as good as it was before, with tenderloin, mozzarella, Black Forest ham, bacon, green olives, egg, homemade escabeche, and thin fries. I knew the Milanesa couldn’t possibly be as good, and it wasn’t, although it still kicks the pants off most every other sandwich in town – it’s made with breaded NY strip, egg, and green olives, and also comes with thin fries.

Unlike the Chivito, which needs absolutely nothing, the Milanesa is relatively dry, and would really benefit from a runny egg instead of the hard-boiled version that Fast Gourmet uses – it might turn it from a good sandwich into an excellent one.

Matt got a Fanta Root Beer ($1.70) from the fountain, and since it’s not self-serve, we felt a bit sheepish asking for a refill. Nevertheless, they gave us one happily (and got an extra tip for doing so).

The Milanesa is available in several variations here including a dinner platter, but after three visits to Fast Gourmet, the Chivito remains the main draw for me. Was it worth the hour drive to get there? No, but if you were to tell me I could never have one again, then yes.

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Virtue Feed & Grain, Alexandria, VA

Posted on June 10, 2011 by Don

It was 6:20 PM on June 10, 2011, and Virtue Feed and Grain had just opened its doors to the public for the very first time fifty minutes earlier. Both the upstairs and downstairs bars in this cavernous space were full, save for one seat which I nabbed (I always have Bar Karma like this).

Appropriately (and wisely), Virtue was only serving its bar menu on this evening, trying to ease out of the starting blocks rather than pulling a muscle. They were so aware of opening-day difficulties that there was even a little note on the side of the menu which said, “We’ve just opened – if you’re gonna blog – be nice. Spread good love, we’ll only get better.”

Fair enough!

If you’re used to paying double-digit prices for drinks at Eve, PX, or The Majestic, you’re in for a treat: nominally the same drinks (albeit not executed with the same exquisite detail) are more gently priced here. For a refreshing summer aperitif, I can recommend the Lemony Laurel ($8.50) made with roasted lemons, bay leaves, Galiano, and citrus vodka. Also Majestic’s Hemingway Daquiri ($8.50) with rum, grapefruit, and maraschino.

If it’s wine you seek, you can get the same 2009 Ken Forrester Petit Chenin Blanc here that they serve(d) at Eve for only $7.50 per tumbler (no stemware here). I voice this in the past tense because Todd Thrasher told me they’re switching to the Chenin Blanc at Eve, and leaving the Petit Chenin Blanc for us ruffians by the water. For reds, they’re pouring the 2009 Ponga Pinot Noir ($7.50) from New Zealand by the glass. And for our beer drinkers, Virtue is carrying the Port City Optimal Wit ($5.00, 5% ABV).

I was sitting next to an affable gentleman who was as curious about the menu as I was, and we ended up sharing a large number of dishes. Between the two of us, we managed to try:

Chopped Salad ($8.50, could use milled pepper, less red onions, beautifully dressed), Chili Cheese Dawg ($8.00, hot dog purchased, chili made in house), Stuffed Potato Skins ($8.00, great with the bacon, unknown yellow cheese, green onion, sour cream), Corned Beef Sandwich ($9.25, house made, no nitrates so blessedly not pink), Buffalo Wings ($12.00, good, spicy, expensive for eight wings), Fried Calamari ($9.00, great, but batter too salty), and Garlic Mushrooms ($9.50, deep-fried, burning hot, great dipping sauce, could use less breading, highly recommended in tandem with the hot dog).

Once the public gets used to the reality that not everything at Virtue can be house made at these prices, this is going to be a giant love affair, especially with folks staying at National Harbor and taking the water taxi (which would be a no-brainer given the restaurants they have there). There are also some genuinely bad tourist traps on King Street near the water – I even saw one or two I’d never heard of before – and Virtue Feed & Grain is going to raise the bar in that immediate vicinity. Maybe there’s enough tourist business to go around, but some of the places teetering on the brink are either going to have to get better, or else throw in the towel, because there’s a new 800-pound gorilla that just moved in.

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