Vidalia, Downtown

Posted on April 20, 2011 by Don

(See the January 23, 2011 Review here).

Five of us got together at the bar of Vidalia, sequestering the table nearest the kitchen, and drinking and noshing on a mish-mash of bar snacks and share plates.

There was so much plate passing and cork popping (we brought a couple bottles) that it would be fruitless to write about each dish.

Two things, however, stand out about this meal, other than the company: from Ed Jenks’ excellent wine list, I found a good bottle for only $30: the 2006 Domaine Gournon Chinon. Ed is proud of this light-to-medium bodied Cabernet Franc, and surprisingly added that “nobody orders it.” Well, why the heck not?

And, of course, there was the Shenandoah Angus Burger ($14.75) – the finest-looking hamburger I have ever seen. If you took the hamburger of your dreams, and visualized it, this might be what you’d see. Served on a homemade brioche bun, it has everything you want: crispy bacon, caramelized onions, cheddar cheese, a judicious application of (thick, coarse) homemade ketchup, and to top it all off – literally – a fried egg.

When this hamburger was placed in front of me, I simply could not believe my eyes. It was a thing of beauty, it was a thing of perfection. And it was cooked to a perfect medium-rare, just as I had ordered it.

Which I why I was crestfallen when it turned out to be somewhat bland! I know that sounds impossible, but it’s true. This monster of a sandwich, served with a side of housemade potato chips, actually lacked flavor. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe it. I refused to believe it (*)

And when the check arrived, for the second straight time we’ve been out together, our hyper-generous friend (or should I say, our hyper, generous friend) intercepted it, and put the entire meal on his credit card, leaving us all feeling guilty and dumbstruck (Hat Tip – Mike Allen).

—

(*) I refused to believe it, I really did. So I came back the next week to prove myself wrong.

I was going to get that same bottle of Chinon, but Ed talked me into a bottle of 2008 Valdivieso Reserva Carmenere ($40) from Chile. I was skeptical, as I’m not the biggest Chilean wine fan in the world, but I trust Ed’s palate.

When the wine arrived, it was in one of “those” bottles – you know, fairly heavy, with the top part wider than the bottom part. I was cursing underneath my breath because this always screams over-extraction and abusive use of new oak, and sure enough, it poured into my glass a deep, dark, denture-staining purple.

But when I smelled the wine? Wow, what a nose – complex, full of finesse and very light on its feet. The palate was slightly less compelling than the bouquet, but still, this wine was a great change of pace for me, and I ended up extremely happy to pay the $10 additional cost. It was also surprisingly reasonable in terms of ABV level, although I can’t remember the exact percentage. Good pull, Mr. Jenks, good pull.

And now, the burger. It looked exactly the same as before. Great! But the true test was going to be on the palate, not the eye. This time around? It was seasoned wonderfully (and I didn’t say anything before, either, so the kitchen did this on their own).

So was this the “burger of my life?” Sigh … no, because it was overcooked. My medium-rare thing of beauty came out cooked fully medium-well, with absolutely no pink remaining to the meat.

Perfection. It’s an elusive thing. Vidalia is flirting with it here, but we have yet to reach the promised land. I still give the nod to Peter Smith’s Chef’s Choice PS7’s Burger - the greatest burger I’ve ever eaten. For now.

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CityZen, Southwest

Posted on April 19, 2011 by Don

On Monday, April 18th, CityZen held a fundraiser to benefit the victims of the Japan tsunami disaster. It was a gala affair which featured a brief, moving speech given by Japan’s ambassador to the U.S., Ichiro Fujisaki.

There was both a live and a silent auction, and the live auction in particular showed United States citizens at their finest, opening up their wallets and bidding far, far beyond the estimated values of all packages – one auction lot, with an opening bid of $2,000 and an estimated value of $4,000, featured dinner for eight prepared in your home by Eric Ziebold and sous chef Makoto Hamamura, complete with wines and all the accoutrements. The winning bid? $11,500.

The silent auction was hidden in back, and I’m proud to say I snuck in a winning bid for two tasting menus at Sushi Taro.

Total proceeds from the event were nearly $75,000. Well done, CityZen.

And I’d like to acknowledge the area restaurants that volunteered their time, chefs, and resources to set up stations for this successful event. In alphabetical order:

Argia’s, CityZen, Corduroy, Kaz Sushi Bistro, Kushi, Sei, Sushi Taro, and Tako Grill.

—

I hadn’t dined at CityZen in months, so the next week I went back and remedied that situation.

I got a Chef’s Tasting Menu ($110) with Wine Pairing ($85), and the courses began arriving in earnest:

Spring Garlic Soup with garlic and thyme croquettes, and goat cheese pudding (vegetarian)

Takenoko [Bamboo] Tempura with Haas avocado, shaved radish, and orange Sichuan vinaigrette (vegetarian)

Confit of Casco Bay Merlu with crusched artichokes, roasted pepper, and sauce barigoule

Pan Seared Maine Diver Scallop with roasted takenoko, baby bok choy, tamarind-cilantro emulsion, and coconut cream

Roasted Tenderloin of King Richard Leek with butternut squash and sultana raisin duxelles, and vadouvan velouté (vegetarian)

Braised Martin Ranch Baby Lamb Shank with Anson Mills white grits, arrow leaf spinach, and cumin lamb jus

Ginger Beignet with vanilla-ginger cream, orange-pistachio salad, and muscovado ice cream (vegetarian)

The descriptions of these dishes speak for themselves, and each course was perfectly paired with a wine presented by sommelier Andy Meyers – in once of the courses, Andy deliberately served a white Burgundy which he knew to be ever-so-slightly premoxed, saying that if it wasn’t slightly advanced, it wouldn’t work, and I saw exactly what he meant – it was both unique and brilliant.

Note that many of these courses came from CityZen’s unmatched vegetarian menu – nobody in this city pays better attention to vegetarians than CityZen.

Two final words: it is well-known in this dining community that Eric Ziebold is one of my best friends. Having said that, I’m also going to say that CityZen serves the greatest cuisine that the Washington, DC area has ever seen (with the caveat that my memory only goes back to Le Lion d’Or in the 1980s). I’m trying to think of serious rivals – The Tasting Room at Restaurant Eve, Palena, Komi, The Oval Room, Citronelle ten years ago, Maestro when it first opened, Galileo in its heyday, The Dining Room at the Pentagon City Ritz-Carlton under Gerard Pangaud fifteen years ago, The Inn at Little Washington twenty years ago – and there aren’t many. Take this statement with the appropriate grain of salt, but I mean it from the heart and write it from the head.

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Present, Falls Church, VA

Posted on April 18, 2011 by Don

When it first opened, Present was terribly overrated by the major publications in this town. It was never great to begin with, and after several weeks (perhaps several months), each of my visits seemed to get a little more gloppy.

I hadn’t been in a long time for two reasons: there are other fishes to fry, other dishes to try, and I don’t like Present’s use of MSG in their cooking (they will leave it out upon request, however).

On a Sunday night, I went in with fairly low expectations, that fell even lower when I entered the restaurant and saw almost no Vietnamese-Americans. I opened the wine list, and there was a Torrontes by the glass ($7), of all things.

But you know what? This Torrontes – which may have been Chilean – is exactly what you should be ordering here. It’s a big glass for seven dollars, was varietally true, and had both ample body and supporting acidity – try this wine, whatever it is, and I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. I was less risky and got a 33 Beer ($4.50), and when I finished it, I also ordered a Torrontes for myself.

Present has funny, somewhat silly, English names for its dishes in order to cater to it’s Angloglot clientele. For appetizers, we started with an order of #2, Blue Paradise Seafood Summer Rolls ($3.95, Chả Giò Tôm Cua), shrimp, mixed pork, and crabmeat rolled in a thin rice wrapper and fried; and also #3, Silken Shawl Imperial Autumn Rolls ($3.95, Chả Giò Rế), hand-made rice thread wrapper, filled with marinated mixed prawn and minced pork, and deep fried until crispy. As they have been in the past, the Autumn Rolls were the better of the two, although they weren’t quite at the high level that I’ve experienced (this is one dish here that I’ve always loved).

The entrees, however, were both good enough to stun me into coalescence. #37, Hard-Working Piglet ($11.95, Sườn Heo Ram Mắn) is a fairly standard dish: caramelized pork ribs cooked in a clay pot, and was notable for a couple things: there was an actual clay pot – burning hot to the touch – which kept everything warm for the duration of the meal, and the little riblets were wonderful, both fibrously chewy and also falling off the bone.

There were Rockfish specials of several varieties offered on this evening, including two whole-fish dishes (priced at $40 (!) and $50 (!!) depending on size); we went instead with a Rockfish Filet ($26.95), and thought we’d be penalized for being cheap. Not the case! This was a huge filet of fish, flopping across an entire oval plate that was probably ten inches in length, thick-cut, served skin-on, and bathing in a sweet-ish soy-based sauce. It was outstanding, and tasted as fresh as could be. Maybe these whole-fish specials weren’t so expensive after all.

A great night for Present which also served as an attitude adjustment for me. I really thought I wasn’t going to like the food going into this meal, but I was proven wrong.

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The Atlas Room, Atlas District

Posted on April 17, 2011 by Don

If you’ve still not been to the H Street Corridor, or refuse to go because of all the road construction, The Atlas Room is your excuse.

I had many hours of free time the other night, and couldn’t think of a better way to use them than having an extended dinner at this gem of a restaurant.

I took a seat at the bar, where the ultra-talented Chris Surrusco (who was previously GM at Granville Moore’s, then Marvin) is featuring a whole sheet of cocktails. I started off with a couple highballs: an Old Tom Collins ($8) with Hayman’s Old Tom Gin, lemon juice, and Fever Tree soda; then moved on to the K.A.’s Vesper ($8) with Beefeater London Dry Gin, Finlandia Vodka, Lillet Blanc, & lavender kiss. Many of Surrusco’s ingredients are made or infused in-house, such as his gin and spiced rum (which he is now serving with Mexican coke). The bar here is a great place to have dinner.

The Atlas Room’s menu is divided up into matrix format to great success. There are six categories of cuisine: seafood, chicken, pork, beef, vegetable, and lamb; and within each there are three different dishes: nosh size, shared-appetizer size, and entree size. Although this might sound formulaic when you read my words, it works, and it works well.

The GM at The Atlas Room is Mark Medley, formerly the “Mark” of the underrated and much-missed Mark and Orlando’s on P Street. Mark recognized me, and after we chatted for a bit, I asked him for his recommendations, telling him that I wanted a good cross-section of the menu. All four of his recommendations were very good to excellent:

A nosh portion of Short Rib Ravioli ($10)  with caramelized onions, mushrooms, and herbed demi-glace was three medium-large, housemade raviolis, chock full of good, stringy short ribs, with stove-hot sauce ladled atop.

A shared-appetizer portion of Pork Loin ($14) was served with white yam and pineapple mash, zucchini, and a delicious chili-caramel sauce that brought everything together and somehow managed not to be overtly sweet despite its description.

Saddle of Lamb ($15) with chick pea puree, fennel, tomato, olive ragout and parsley sauce was a 180-degree turn from the pork, and a welcome shock to my palate – the dishes all of a sudden went from light, sweet, and mild, to dark, salty, and assertive. This ordering was a fine call.

And then going one step further on the flavor spectrum was the Grilled Indian-Spiced Beef Loin ($13) with roasted cauliflower, eggplant puree, caper raisin sauce, and curry oil.

The quality of all the meats was excellent, and the saucing complex and perfectly executed. Mark took me into the kitchen where I had the pleasure of seeing owner Matt Cordes and Chef de Cuisine Bobby Beard working side-by-side which explains how The Atlas Room can pull off dishes of such variety and intricacy. If you take a close look at the range of plates I had, they’re all variations of meat, sauce, and vegetables, but the variety and execution lead the diner to believe otherwise. Simple ingredients, bold presentations, and wonderful execution.

If The Atlas Room can retain all four of these talented individuals (Cordes the owner, Beard, Medley, Surrusco), it will have a winning team for a long time. Not only is it the best restaurant in the Atlas District, it’s also the best restaurant in all of Northeast or Southeast DC, including everything on Capitol Hill.

—

Two weeks later, I was back. I shook hands with Mark, took a seat at the bar, and asked Chris to make an Old Tom Collins, and to keep ’em coming whenever the glass gets empty:  Mark had told me the two daily specials, and I knew this cocktail would go very well with both.

The nosh special was an Arugula Salad ($8) with goat cheese, shaved carrots, radish, celery root, and toasted walnut vinaigrette. The only salad I’ve had recently that can compare to this is a brilliant one at 2 Amys – ultra high-quality vegetables (the arugula in particular was impressive), all coming from Path Valley Farms, dressed properly and with just enough acidity to tease the palate into more; the goat cheese puts it over the top.

The shared-appetizer special was a Pan-Roasted Chicken Breast ($12) with toasted garlic sunchoke purée, baby carrots, asparagus, and scallion cream sauce. If you think you’ll be bored with a “chicken breast,” then I urge you to think again because this is, to the best of my knowledge, the most hauntingly perfect chicken breast dish being served in the entire DC area right now. It was judiciously brined, moist throughout, and probably just rubbed with salt and pepper before being grilled in an ultra-hot skillet. Pick your favorite chicken dish in the city (yes, even Palena’s), and this will be its equal. Get this, and write to thank me when you do.

How good was this dish? Good enough where I got the same thing for my third course. There is no way I was going to stop with just one.

And for my fourth course? I ordered a second Arugula Salad, this time focusing more on the goat cheese. It was a true ABBA meal, in musical form.

The Atlas Room is a great restaurant, and now that I’ve mentioned Palena’s chicken, I’ll add that it reminds me very much of Palena Cafe, both in terms of style and quality.

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Equinox, Downtown

Posted on April 15, 2011 by Don

Now that Todd and Ellen Gray have opened their second restaurant, Watershed, their flagship, Equinox, might take a temporary hit in quality. But it sure didn’t the night I went – I had the best meal I’ve had in quite awhile.

I started off nursing a Great Lakes Dortmunder Gold at the painful price of $9, and then everything blossomed.

A fine little bread basket arrived containing two pieces of good bread, salted butter (thank you!), and two surprisingly great gougères – who would have thought that Equinox might just be serving the best gougères in DC right now? Even though they had cooled to room temperature, they were still compelling.

Gnocchi of Wild Nettles ($14) with Spring garlic, roasted maitake mushrooms, chive butter, and shaved Parmesan “reads” like it has unlimited potential for greatness, and this amazing dish was a best-case scenario. I don’t care what your favorite gnocchi in this town is – Tosca, Palena, Galileo III – you will not find a better gnocchi dish than this one. It was just about perfect, and there’s nothing that could have been added or removed to make it any better than it was.

Even though I ordered small, I ordered heavy since I was pretty hungry, and another appetizer of Sauteed Lower Virginia Shad Roe ($14) with sweet red pepper coulis, house cured bacon, and hazelnut-parsley butter was also just about as good as it could be. Rich almost to the point of being overwhelming, yes, and gloriously so.

I paired this with a generously poured glass of 2007 Masciarelli Montepulciano d’Abruzzo (a good deal at $9) which is the type of wine you want with such an assertive dish.

Along with the Shad Roe, a side order of Roasted Fingerling and Blue Potatoes ($8) with cracked green olives and roasted shallots was a perfect partner – heavy enough to stand up to the shad roe, but lending a silken component to its coarse companion. This was a large side order that was easily enough for two – after two appetizers and a side, I was stuffed.

With the check came another surprise: two shortbread cookies, and two awesome little white chocolate confections stuffed with nut and caramel. Who on earth is putting out these fabulous breads and mignardises at Equinox now? The same pastry chef who has been here for a couple of years – Tom Wellings, formerly of Fiamma in New York City, and before that, Maestro.

More than any other area restaurant I can think of right now, Equinox reminds me of Restaurant Eve – exquisite ingredients, prepared in a deceptively simple fashion, with an unapologetic use of “weight” as a characteristic. An outstanding dinner at what has now become one of our most underrated restaurants.

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Gom Ba Woo, Annandale, VA

Posted on April 13, 2011 by Don

Gom Ba Woo has been touted (including by me) as the best Korean restaurant in the area for homestyle cooking. In fact, I’ve never seen a less than flattering review of it – so I may as well be the first.

It had been over a year since I’d been here, perhaps two years, and my expectations were fairly high since this restaurant has been consistent for me in the past.

I walked over to the cooler and grabbed a bottle of Saab Soju, a sweet potato alcohol with green tea extract added, that packs a walloping 21% alcohol content, and yes, my server laughed.

The panchan arrived, and were adequate, with nothing standing out as great except perhaps the sliced turnips. Glasses of “ice water” were actually very dilute, smokey green tea, or at least they certainly tasted like it.

I’m not sure I’ve ever had great Bul Go Gi ($16.95) at a non-barbeque restaurant in Annandale, and this did nothing to change that. The marinated, sliced “rib-eye” (which, let’s face it, often translates into something resembling Steak-Umms) was just bad meat, bathing in a sugary, watery broth. While tasty, there was really nothing here at all of interest.

My go-to dish here has traditionally been Kimchi Jae Yuk Bokum ($16.95) which is stir-fried kimchi and sliced pork, along with some little disks of rice gluten. I’ve always enjoyed this dish in the past for it’s ability to retain a certain sparkle – a crispness to the bright red kimchi despite it being fried – but on this evening, it was dull and lifeless, with a very meager portion of sliced pork.

A disappointing showing for what has been one of my favorite Korean restaurants in the area. Again, I should point out that quite often, a little restaurant such as this will have one stud cook in the kitchen, and when (s)he isn’t working, it can be Russian roulette – perhaps that was the case here.

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La Caraqueña, Falls Church, VA

Posted on April 12, 2011 by Don

The patio at La Caraqueña (at least the side that’s allowed to serve alcohol – the one away from Route 7) was a tough ticket on a beautiful Monday evening, so it was either wait for an outdoor seat to open up, sit on the side that doesn’t serve beer, or head inside – I’m not going to have dinner here without a beer, so inside it was.

I asked our server – who perhaps remembered me, perhaps not – what types of beers were offered, and there was a surprisingly large selection. Then, I asked him what his favorite was (there were several I hadn’t tried before), and he immediately said the Estrella Inedit.

So I ordered a Port Royal ($5.50), a Honduran beer brewed by a subsidiary of the giant SAB Miller corporation, and an Estrella Inedit for my friend based on his recommendation.

All well and good until the Estrella Inedit arrived in an oversized bottle in a metal champagne bucket, and was served with a wine glass. The amount on the bill for this beer? $22.00.

Now, it would be one thing if that price (and the size of the bottle) had been mentioned, but given that I’d ordered a $5.50, 12-ounce beer for myself, this came across as something of an unwanted, inappropriate up-sell. That is a lot of money to be blindsided with when the bill arrives, and dare I say I enjoyed the Port Royal just as much?

That unfortunate incident aside, the food was magnificent. Under the “appetizers” section of the menu are two traditional side orders: Platanos Fritos ($4.99) were as good or better as any I’ve ever eaten, a simple, but astonishing, fry-job and presentation with latino white cheese and picadillo. Get these. Yuca Frita ($4.99) was also wonderful, and may in fact be the first fresh yuca I’ve seen in this area (I’m not sure if it was fresh, but it was awfully good). Served with homemade salsa amarilla and picadillo, my only nitpick is that the portion was small, and came across as somewhat precious (there were only about eight pieces of yuca, and I’m used to a paper sack being loaded to overflow at Peruvian pollo a la brasa houses – I’m actually a fan of frozen yuca, and the difference in quality is not as large as you might think if these were indeed fresh (the menu said “fresh fried yuca” which could mean “freshly fried [frozen] yuca” or “fried fresh yuca” – I suppose I could have asked, if I was curious (which I now am (can you tell I once programmed in LISP?)))).

I’ve never had a grilled arepa here that wasn’t fantastic, and the streak continues with JP’s Favorite ($8.49), with seasoned, thin slices of steak, sauteed onions, tomatoes, and cilantro; and Paluda ($9.99) with pulled beef and shredded yellow cheese. If you haven’t had an arepa at La Caraqueña, you owe it to yourself to try one, and I recommend getting them grilled. I also highly recommend the immortal salteñas here – the best I’ve ever tasted – but unfortunately they were out of them on this evening.

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Kora, Crystal City, VA

Posted on April 9, 2011 by Don

We were in the mood for Italian, so of course we started driving around aimlessly at 6:30 on a Friday night. Argia’s? Nah, just there. Ruffino’s! Has it re-opened yet? Nope, one more week. We headed to Kora.

Unfortunately for us, they’ve started up the Crystal City 5K Friday races again (at 6:30, of course) which made parking tough, even in the garage, and getting in the restaurant even tougher, although we were lucky enough to get a seat in the bar area.

Since the restaurant itself was slammed, it’s understandable that service was interminably slow. Not just understandable, but very forgivable when Kora runs happy hours specials all the way up until 8:30 PM in the bar area! Okay, now while that sounds enticing, I wish I could say I’d rush back for them, but I can’t.

I started with a bottle of Castello ($3.75 at happy hour) while my young dining companion had his Diet Coke ($2.50 with refill).

It was pizza and pasta night, so we started with a Mini Margherita ($5), an eight-piece oval that was just miserable. “As I said at that other place [Ristorante Murali],” Matt astutely quipped, “this isn’t a Margherita; it’s a pizza with cheese and basil.” This was the worst pizza I’ve had in a while, and half of it sat uneaten at the end of the meal. Truly, I would not have eaten this even if it were free.

The pizza was served after a half-order of Seared Salmon Penne ($6 at happy hour) with just a few small pieces of salmon, spinach, and tomato in a bland vodka cream sauce. Wanting something a bit more substantial, a dinner portion of Lasagna ($16 off the regular menu) gets credit for having a fair amount of meat sauce, but that’s about it.

The meal was bad enough where I actually apologized to Matt on the way out — after all the driving around, parking, and waiting, we got this as our reward. “Ah, it’s okay!” he said in his typical upbeat fashion. But it wasn’t okay; it was lousy. Later that night I came home and was talking with a friend of mine, and I mentioned that if this meal was anything even close to being representative of Kora, then you could take every single Italian restaurant in the DC area — from high-end places all the way down to strip-mall crap in the exurbs — and this would fall in the bottom 50%. I’d eaten here a couple times before and liked it well enough, so I’m hopeful that this was just a grisly aberration.

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Acadiana, Mt. Vernon Square

Posted on April 7, 2011 by Don

(See the December 6, 2010 Review here.)

I was invited to a (Jim Beam) Bourbon Dinner at Acadiana with the extremely colorful Master Distiller from Jim Beam, Fred Noe (who was hilariously hurling the F-bomb around in front of about 200 people like he was doling out candy).

Chef Jeff Tunks himself teamed up with Chef Jonathan Lundy (from Jonathan’s in Gratz Park, KY), and each paired dishes to match the Bourbons with dessert made by Pastry Chef Chris Hutcheson.

With Jim Beam’s Bourbons, you’re better off mixing them (and no, that’s not a compliment), and the best two drinks of the night were the cocktails: Bourbon Vieux made with the extraordinarily nasty Jim Beam Red Stag, lime and watermelon juices, egg white, and house-made Grenadine; and the outstanding Boogalee Crush made with Jim Beam White Label, muddled blackberries, ginger simple syrup, and house-made sour mix.

Here are the dishes and pairings:

(Lundy) Sea Scallop Hot Browns – broiled sea scallops with Newsom’s country ham, Bourbon barrel-smoked bacon and tomatoes over brioche toast with white cheddar cream, paired with Jim Beam White Label 80p.

(Tunks) Grilled Rosemary Shrimp – with jambalaya arancine, fresh basil, and creole mustard and balsamic glaze, paired with Jim Beam Black Label 8 Year Old 86p.

(Tunks) Cherry Wood Smoked Quail – with Brabant sweet potatoes, Steen’s cane syrup, and BBQ sauce, paired with Jim Beam Red Stag 80p.

(Lundy) Roasted Domestic Lamb Rack Chop – with Old Kentucky Tomme aged goat cheese scalloped potatoes, sugar snap peas, and Mint Julep jelly, paired with Basil Hayden’s Small Batch 8 Year Old 80p.

(Hutcheson) Bookers Bourbon Chocolate Cake – with butter pecan ice cream and sea salt caramel, paired with Booker’s Barrel Proof Small Batch 7 Year Old 127.4p.

And then an after-dinner taste of Knob Creek Single Barrel Reserve 9 Year Old 120p.

Some thoughts:

1) I was invited as a member of the press, so did not pay for my meal.

2) Jeff Tunks knows how to make outstanding quail.

3) Jonathan Lundy showed an extraordinary gift for pairing his dishes with the Bourbons themselves – both his courses achieved an eerily natural-seeming synergy.

4) Jim Beam Red Stag – a cherry-flavored aberration – is the single worst-tasting Bourbon I’ve ever had in my life.

5) You should not necessarily invite Fred Noe to be the guest speaker at your granddaughter’s graduation from Catholic High School.

6) The same company that owns Jim Beam also owns Booker’s and Knob Creek (do not be misled by the (unregulated) term “small batch” because these two are anything but – even Fred Noe was joking about the misuse of this common term as a marketing technique).

7) The private room at Acadiana (past the bar in the back) should be on your short list of places to reserve for large parties of diners.

—

I wanted to go back and give the restaurant my own business, so a week later, I went to the bar for a late dinner.

It bears repeating that, other than the bar Bourbon (and the soon-to-open Jack Rose which will eventually have the largest Bourbon list in the world), Acadiana easily has the strongest Bourbon list in the DC area.

I happily nursed a Van Winkle Family Reserve 12 Year Old 90.4p ($11) – it’s worth noting again that Acadiana lists the proofs of all their Bourbons, so you know when you’re getting a dilute blend (generally around 80p), or a real-McCoy cask-strength (120p and beyond). It’s around 90 or 100p when Bourbons begin to get interesting, from my experience, and this Van Winkle will not only get you Ripped, but is a good transition into cask strength (without having to dive right in).

Acadiana serves a gratis basket of addicting biscuits, with a dipping sauce of cream cheese and red pepper jelly.

“b.l.t.” Salad ($9) was ordered off the regular menu, and was a variation on a wedge salad, with half a head of mini-iceburg lettuce, topped with Maytag Blue Cheese dressing, Benton’s bacon, and cherry tomatoes. This is a fairly small (and tasty) salad with only a few tiny pieces of ultra-crisp bacon, so do not worry about over-ordering if you’re getting this as an appetizer.

I hadn’t had any alligator this week, so from the bar menu, I went with the Grilled Gator ($12) with west bank slaw, crushed peanuts, and pepper jelly glaze. I’ve had my gator blackened and fried, but never simply grilled, and this presentation really makes you understand what the (tail) meat is all about – everyone says “chicken,” but it’s much more like veal, except a bit gamier, tougher, and more fibrous to cut. Interestingly, this recipe is very Vietnamese in nature.

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Burger 7, Falls Church, VA

Posted on April 7, 2011 by Don

Burger 7 is one of the newest entries in the still-burgeoning moderately upscale hamburger market (i.e., better than fast food, but not as good as Palena, Vidalia, etc.). It has taken over the old Burrito Brothers space in Idlywood Plaza shopping center (does anyone besides me remember when that Burrito Brothers used to be really good, about 10-12 years ago, when Jennifer was the manager?)

My young dining companion and I had a quick meal, me wanting something light, and he being fourteen years old. Thus:

For me, it was a B7 Jr. ($3.99), a single patty with choice of toppings (my choice was B7 sauce and pickle).

For him, it was a B7 Loaded ($5.99), a double patty on a white bun with lettuce, tomato, cheddar (cheerfully substituted for American), grilled onions, sauteed mushrooms, and B7 sauce.

We were not asked about doneness, and both burgers were cooked to well-done. The B7 sauce is a typical “Big Mac-esque” thousand island type of sauce that was applied with admirable restraint.

For the money, the B7 loaded is well-worth the $2 upcharge over the B7 Jr., as it’s not only twice the meat, but taken as a whole, the sandwich is just giant in comparison. Still, I liked mine for what it was, and the meat itself was not at all bad (it’s free range, hormone-free, etc.)

I’d heard mixed reviews about Burger 7, but based on this one visit, I’d say it’s better than average within the genre.

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