9 posts tagged “restaurant”
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I eat out an extraordinarily large percentage of the time for someone who no longer has an income. Before you start grinding down on me and declaring me an undisciplined yuppie or idiotic student who just likes to spend money as if it were water, please try to understand that much of it is unintentional. Let me explain why.
First off, I will be moving from the Washington, DC, Metropolitan area to downtown San Francisco, CA, within the next month to begin my studies as a law student. I probably will not have a chance to return to the area until after my semester is over, and for someone who has not left the DMV (DC/MD/VA) area for any extended period of time before, it is slightly traumatizing to be away from kith and kin for so long. I want to meet with all my friends before I leave, and that means dinners out with them (unfortunately for all of us, they have to work and earn a living, therefore lunches are a little difficult sometimes, although not totally impossible).
Secondly, several of my good friends have birthdays in July, all strategically placed so that it’s possible to go out to eat once every few days or so…
In other words, my wallet has felt a little beat up the past month…
–>Birthday Celebrations
Nava Thai
Our first celebration was at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant for my friend, Caroline. Nava Thai is extremely small, and during our forty minute wait for a table, my friends and I explored the Asian supermarket that is attached (literally, there is a door directly into the restaurant). The service is good, although the English level of this family-run business is a bit shoddy. But their lack of English is totally made up for by the quality of their food; I ended up with a version of a noodle dish that should have had liquid, but mind somehow didn’t have broth (I don’t remember what it is anymore, although all the dishes are good, so it doesn’t really matter what you order there).
Just a note to all of you who like Thai food but don’t like it too spicy– if you’re unable to take the heat, like I am, then please remember to tell them to keep the spice down! Otherwise you’ll be in for a hot treat~!
Penang
For the combined birthday celebrations of my friends Debby and Caroline, we hit up Malaysian food. But the weird thing is that the waitress kept talking to us in Cantonese, despite our consistent responses in English. Luckily, Debby speaks Cantonese and translated for the rest of us clueless ones.
I had a very light noodle soup… It kind of reminded me of Taiwanese styled noodles, but I guess… Malaysian food in my area is a combination of most Asiatic foods?
Anna got a chicken curry. Not bad, not bad.
Fried ice cream on the menu… who can resist? Not my friends, definitely. Unfortunately, it was drizzled with chocolate syrup, which meant I couldn’t eat it… At least I could watch them enjoy it while I ate this…
Black rice in coconut milk. Not the most appetizing-sounding dessert, but yummy nonetheless. It’s not too sweet, which is nice.
Amina Thai
I didn’t know that there were such things as Muslim Thai food, but apparently there is. And it’s good, too. (I swear, I seriously eat Thai whenever I’m out with my friends… what’s up with that?)
In this case, it was to celebrate the long delayed birthday of my friend, Sandra. Her boss recommended the place, and I can safely say that her boss has awesome taste in restaurants. It was a bit difficult to find, but after several many U-turns and frantic phone calls to Sandra, I finally found the place and settled down to eat. I rarely notice the clientele in a restaurant, but living in a place rife with Asians, it was a bit unsettling at first to notice that none of the patrons were Eastern Asian. I hate profiling a restaurant like this, but usually the authenticity of a restaurant’s food can be seen by the people eating there. If a Chinese restaurant is filled with mainly Chinese people, then it only makes sense that the food is probably catered to Chinese tastes, as opposed to places like Panda Express which makes “Americanized” Chinese food…
But if this was the exception to the rule, I don’t mind. The food was delicious.
Mussamun Curry… Yummy and not as spicy as I thought it would be, thankfully. I really liked this one. it was savory and a bit sweet, and I absolutely adore onions, so it was perfect.
The Pad Kee Mao noodle dish that we chose was also very good. Savory with just enough of a spice kick to make things interesting…
And, of course, dessert. Fried banana wrapped in phyllo and then drizzled with a generous portion of honey. Not their forte, I suppose, although it wasn’t bad. After all, it was deep fried. How could it possibly be bad? :D
–>Rehoboth Beach
In an effort to make the most of my summer, my friends and I went to Rehoboth Beach in Delaware a couple of weeks ago. We enjoyed a day of fun in the sun, and it was good times… until I got caught in a tussle with the ocean… and lost. Haha. I basically slipped in the water and ended up being swept back on the beach on my behind. My legs and arms are now scratched up as souvenirs.
For lunch, my friend and I decided to try this interesting side street restaurant:
Go Fish
I decided to have fish’n'chips, except instead of just the fish by itself, I opted for it in a wrap (which somehow made it cheaper than actual fish’n'chips… strange)
The wrap was yummy and absolutely huge. I couldn’t finish it. The chips left something to be desired though…
For dinner, we went to…
Crabby Dick’s
Crabby Dick’s is an awesome restaurant.
They have some absolutely hilarious merchandise for sale (a t-shirt that says Anita Dick? :D), and the food is terrific.
I got a simple salad that had crab and shrimp and chhese and pepperoni and egg and… okay, so it wasn’t so simple. But it was tasty!
My friend, Nguyen, had this for his dinner… I’ve never seen a soft shell crab eaten this way, but… Haha, it was too interesting not to take a picture of!
And here is Nguyen and Debby’s strawberry shortcake dessert. Cute.
As a side note, I find it immensely amusing that whenever my friends and I travel outside of Maryland and see “Chesapeake Crabs” on the menu, we inevitably refuse to order it, saying that we can get the same thing anytime we’re at home… and yet, I never eat crab at home… Strange? I think so.
–> College Park
Marathon Deli
One of my absolute favorite places to eat is Marathon Deli. A small, family-owned Greek restaurant, they have gyros that can rival anyone else’s, hands down. It was a staple in college, and recently, a couple of my friends an I decided to make a trip out to College Park in order to enjoy one last meal there before we all moved to the West coast (I’m not the only one making the hop, apparently).
And their fries are amazing as well. I don’t know what they put on it, but I am in love.
Afterwards, we tried to beat the heat by going down the street to get some Rita’s custard and ice. It hit the spot, really. 95 degrees F is just painful unless you cool yourself down with treats like this.
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And that concludes today’s post. Whew, that was tiring!!
My family is taking a rare vacation together this year. We rarely go on trips together-- in fact, we never really take "real" vacations. They're all just mini day trips into the city or somewhere relatively local. The furthest we've traveled was to Toronto, and even that was when I was in high school-- oh so many years ago. But after many years of talk, my pending departure for the West Coast has prompted a more active approach to our remaining time together (read: I finally decided to push my dad to help plan a family vacation together). So, early Tuesday morning, my family loaded our Toyota Sienna and began the long trip down to... *dumdumdummmm* ORLANDO, FLORIDA!
Yup, we're going to DISNEYWORLD! But because of the long car ride there (13 total hours), we decided to split the travel to Florida into two days and stop by Savannah, GA, on our way down.
There
isn't much to say about our road trip down-- it was relatively
uneventful. But I must say that Savannah is a very beautiful town. We
got in kind of late, so we ended up finding a little restaurant called
the Savannah River House to eat dinner in.
The house salad came with our (pretty expensive, although it was
seafood, so I guess kind of understandable) dinners. It was pretty
good, but a bit heavy on the dressing side. But my littlest brother ate
his, which must say something, since he isn't a salad person.
My brother and I shared an entree. This was the Peppered Shrimp Saute, which was an excellent choice on his part. I am also extremely glad we shared the dish, because it was huge. It was flavorful, and the shrimp was tender.
Apparently Savannah River House is known for their desserts. So we couldn't leave before trying something! This is their banana bread pudding. Very banana-y. Very pudding-y. I wish it were warm, but seeing as how it was 10pm and the kitchen was closing, I couldn't complain. It was still tasty.
The main reason we went to the ASLO meeting was to honor Barbara Sulzberger, a woman whose life’s work has made major impact to the field of limnological research. She’s this dear, Swiss woman who retired last year at the age of sixty, and she’s extremely intelligent. Surprisingly, she did a year of law school before she decided it wasn’t her thing and switched over to science. Quite the opposite of me, more or less.
To honor her, there was a symposium dedicated to her at the conference, and my poster, and the posters of the undergraduate and the postdoc as well, were dedicated to her. On our last night, we also had a dinner to celebrate her career. This is the entry about that dinner.
We went to Bianca’s, a high end restaurant in downtown St. John’s. There we had a five course tasting menu, paired with wines chosen by Yo Chin, a fellow researcher and the guy who helped organize the event with Tina Voelker.
Let us begin.
(sorry about the quality of the pictures—I was trying to be inconspicuous in my picture taking, which meant no flash, and I later went back with Photoshop to clean up the pictures)
The first course was a grilled scallop set upon pureed cod. It was paired with a 2006 Sauvignon Blanc from the Stoneleigh Vineyard in Marlborough. Deliciously light and savory, I really enjoyed the combination of the scallop with the cod as well as the sweetness of the wine.
The second course was a noodle dish made with saffron and white truffle. Unfortunately, we were all too absorbed in tasting our food, and I have already forgotten what the actual name of the dish was. This one was paired with a 2005 Chardonnay from Bourgogne. I have to say that I liked this dish the least out of the five served, but that just means the other four were exquisite, since this noodle dish was quite tasty. The wine was one of my faves of the night though. I love white wines.
The middle course was duck confit risotto wrapped in puff pastry. It kind of reminded me of an Asian egg roll, and I was tempted to ask for chopsticks to help me eat it. But it was tasty, and I love duck confit, so I guess it worked. This dish was paired with a red wine: a 2005 Meursault. Yum.
[rabbit and celery root]
The fourth course of rabbit and celery root paste was very classy. It was paired with a 2002 Yllera. I think I have only tried rabbit once before, and it really does kind of remind me of chicken…
[dessert]
Our last course was chocolate fudge (which I donated to the other grad students in attendance) which was laid on some sort of fruit coulis and had a grainy crème dollop (I have absolutely no idea what was in it) on the side. This last course was paired with my favorite of the wines: 2005 Icewine from the Niagara Peninsula. I absolutely adore icewine. Luckily it’s so expensive, otherwise I’d probably find an excuse to get drunk on it every night!
Little story: The first alcohol in my posession was a slim bottle of icewine. I was sixteen years old, and my family had gone up to Toronto for the North American Hakka Association Annual Conference. After several days of tours through Niagara Falls and the beautiful city of Toronto, we were at the last night’s banquet, eating Chinese food and having a jolly old time. As is standard at every other Asian banquet I have attended, there were raffle tickets and prizes to be won. I was placed in charge of listening for the numbers on my family’s raffle tickets, and so I sat, intent on winning something. The numbers were being called out in Hakka, the language of my ancestors. It also happens to be a language I cannot speak. Except for numbers. I can count like a pro. Or so I think. I’m never too sure about these things… At some point during the night, I thought I heard the numbers on my ticket being called out. I stared at my ticket and there they were! I had won my own bottle of icewine! Of course I was still at least five years underage, so I kept the bottle at home, biding my time until I would be of legal age to drink. The only problem with this was that icewine, like many sweeter wines, tends to go bad with time, so I couldn’t wait the half decade until I turned 21. So as a compromise, my parents and I shared the bottle when I was 18. Ah, it was delicious.
Oftentimes vegetarian food can be disappointing. In Taiwan, they tend to overcompensate for flavor by adding grease, which just makes people sick and unhappy all around. But the black bean burrito I had (which was vegan, by the way) was not greasy at all, and, accompanied by a sharp salsa plus the house salad, it was greatly satisfying.
We went back the next day for lunch and stuffed our faces again.
This time, I had the cheese and cauliflower pie.
And I had the fruit (berries) and almond crisp.
This year’s ASLO conference had many events planned for students (and provided many box lunches for students as well!), including a haunted hike and a pub crawl. Erin and I missed the haunted hike, but managed to haul ourselves out for the pub crawl, which was scheduled for Thursday night, the last evening of the conference. We had been in the area for half a week and had barely met anyone new, so mingling was in order. I managed to drag our lab’s post-doc out to the first bar, but as soon as he walked in, he looked at the dark interior of the bar and turned and announced to me that he was returning to his room to sleep. Bummer.
As an aside, we explored George Street, which supposedly has the greatest density of bars per square foot in North America. There are at least 82 bars on the two and a half block street. Crazy, huh?
I don’t remember the names of the bars we went into—mind you, not because I was drunk!!—but most of us didn’t really care too much. Erin and I did meet a bunch of students attending the conference, but the funny thing was that all the people we met were from Maryland or about to move to Maryland. In fact, one of the girls actually went to my high school. So much for meeting new people from around the world...
The first bar was pretty quiet—apparently the St. John’s bar scene doesn’t really start up until after midnight, and we had started our bar crawl at approximately 10:00pm. We scientists start early! The second bar was better, but small, and we were cramped in like the fish they catch on those trawlers hanging out in the harbor.
By the third bar…
Things had clearly picked up. There was a bachelor party in the middle of things, and it was great hearing people belt out unintelligble song lyrics in sync with the live bad. It was clear to everyone that they all knew the words; I just can’t understand the Newfoundland accent (a mixture of Irish and European English with the speed tripled). People were dancing everywhere and having a generally great time.
After that, we all decided to head home to crash. Not that it was late. I’m just old. And tired.
Especially when it's in good company and with good food.
When my old roommate and good friend Kathy came up to visit from North Carolina last week, we decided to go to dinner at Cava, an extremely popular Greek mezze place down the street from my house. (mezze = similar to tapas or dimsum, in which a diner orders two to three small-portioned dishes per person to share)
I've been meaning to write a review of Cava ever since I discovered its tiny but popular existence in a relatively new shopping square near my house on my birthday last year. It's housed in a small corner of the square and difficult to spot accidentally, but once you know about it, you'll begin to notice the large groups of people waiting outside for seating. The wait can be over an hour on weekends, but most people who go already know of the wait and are willing to take the extra time to stand or sit by the well stocked bar and enjoy a martini or glass of wine. In fact, Mondays boast half-priced martinis, and Tuesdays are half-priced wine bottle nights.
Constantly bustling and bubbling with activity, Cava is owned and run by several local Greek families. Much of the wait staff are sons or close friends of the families, and many young ladies are primarily attracted to the restaurant by the dashing men running around filling out their orders (I really think this is a great tactic for any restaurant-- good looking wait staff means more customers coming just to ogle...haha).
But on to the food! Eye candy and alcohol notwithstanding, Cava has an excellent set of vegetable, cheese, meat, and seafood mezze to choose from.
Who doesn't like calamari? I think it's innate human nature to like things bad for you, especially those that are breaded and deep fried... Mmmm...
Cava also provides pita bread with dip and olives in addition to the meal, and although my friend says the pita bread is Costco, it still tastes delicious, especially with the dips and olives.
The only caveat of Cava is that its interior is extremely dark, making the folded paper menu extremely difficult to read (and getting good pictures of the food is hard as well). The noise level of the restaurant's patrons can also reach a dull roar, and when I went with a friend before, I got the feeling that she was on the verge of yelling in order to talk to me. The pictures for this entry came from the time we decided to sit outside. Now that the weather is warming it feels great to eat outside (actually, it's supposed to reach a record high temperature today). But darkness of interior aside, Cava is definitely one of my favorite restaurants to eat at.
*waves* Did you guys miss me? I've been MIA the past several weeks, and although I haven't been as busy in the kitchen as I would have liked, I do have a good reason why I haven't been posting.
The battery on my Casio Exilim Z75 died a couple of weeks ago, and with no other easy access to a camera nearby, I haven't been able to fully document my past few creations (and sadly, there have been few of those as well). I called Casio, and they are sending me a new battery which should arrive within a week or so, at which point I will resume posting (and baking and cooking, of course!)!
In the meantime, I shall leave you with the last image from my camera before it went kaput:
The above is an omurice from a local restaurant I absolutely adore: Temari. A small hole-in-the-wall establishment, Temari is about as authentic Japanese food can get in my area. It's actually owned and operated by Japanese people, versus the massive numbers of "Japanese" restaurants that are actually Taiwanese, Korean, etc. It's actually quite amusing (or should I say... frightening?), really, to get sushi and realize that the people making it are Latino...
But Temari is different. Instead of focusing on sushi and catering to American tastes, Temari not only features classic dishes like katsu donburi and omurice, they also serve various ramens (much much better than any instant ramen noodle), combination dishes, and various forms of grilled fish. I absolutely love their grilled saba (mackerel), for one. For those of you still in love with sushi and sashimi, Temari does serve both, but they are definitely not the featured items on the menu.
Temari recently raised their prices, which was a bit disappointing, but given the current food crisis and the fact that Costco has placed a limit on how much rice one can buy, it's not surprising.
Well, ja, mata!
The last of my Washington D.C. Restaurant Week excursions was Ceiba, a restaurant featuring contemporary Latin American cuisine. Once again I slipped ever so effervescently from my lab and made my way into DC, sauntering through Chinatown on my way (it's not really "on the way," but I wanted to go out for a brisk walk in the brisk, brisk air).
I met my brother outside the restaurant, and although we were early, we were met with cheerful faces who, after we checked our coats, brought us to our little table and presented us with the following:
It was more like several large pita chips, and I really enjoyed the slightly spicy dip it came with. Spicy but not too much so. The only problem was the fact that our table was absolutely tiny and I felt very uncomfortable and incapable of maneouvering my body around the many things on the table. Much to my chagrin, I ended up dropping a piece of bread on the floor. It made me very sad.
But after I got over my initial embarrassment at my inept bumblings, we ordered lunch.
First Courses--
West Indies Conch Chowder - Sweet Corn Johnnycakes, Gosling's Dark Rum, Outerbridges Sherry Pepper Sauce
In any case, it apparently wasn't enough to make anyone drunk, especially a heavyweight like Jon.
I saw a bunch of people with plates on top of a tray of ice when I entered the restaurant, and I wondered what in the world they could possibly be eating that would require the usage of a tray of ice? It was disturbingly reminiscent of my own lab work, which may not have been the best thing to come to mind. Luckily, I don't work with any toxic substances.
The ceviche was light and delicious. I don't know how they prepared the dish, but I enjoyed every bite of it. I think I got the better deal, appetizer-wise, compared to my brother.
Main Courses--
Jon's dish seemed very Asian influenced to me. I guess the fried rice made it just that much more Asian. I don't think it was uniquely different from any other Asian fried rice that I had ever had, but the swordfish and the sauce made up for it.
I really enjoyed the platones (?) in this dish. Sweet and squishy, they complimented the greens and the rice and peas well. The salmon was larger than I expected and I could not finish eating this dish. To tell the truth, I think I've been eating salmon too much at home, and I've gotten too used to its taste. However, I had never had one cooked to medium doneness before, so that much was a new experience. The brown sauce tasted a bit like curry, which was an interesting pairing with the salmon and rice and beans. Perhaps I'll try cooking curry with salmon next time...
Dessert--
All in all, Ceiba was an excellent addition to my repertoire of fine restaurants to visit in DC (A complete list includes DC Coast, Butterfield9, Chef Geoff's Downtown, and Ceiba, among many).
Thus ended my restaurant week. I can't wait until the next one!
Too lazy to write anything down, really. I'll just post pictures (hopefully it works this time; I was having trouble loading the pictures last time) from Anni and my trek through the cold, slippery snow into DC and down to India. Sort of.
To take advantage of Restaurant week, Anni and I decided to check out Bombay Club, an Indian restaurant that I had visited once with my group at NIH back in high school.
The day we left, it was snowing and as we got off the Metro at Farragut West, I took the wrong exit out and we had to stumble through the blizzard down several blocks before we finally reached our destination. I actually left my lab at 10:45, and we didn't get to the restaurant until barely at our reservation time of 11:45.
I don't really remember what I ate the first time I went to Bombay Club, only that it was spicy beyond my tongue's capability to handle (at the time). However, I do recall impeccable service that makes me feel as if I were in 19th century India being waited upon by well trained servers to the English Trading Company. The decor was simple and elegant. The waiter was smiling and ready to help us with whatever we needed (and as two bedraggled travelers with frozen noses and fingers, we were in need of some time to recompose ourselves).
The food was pretty good too.
Anni's dessert, however, topped mine big time.
All in all, it was a very pleasurable experience, and I definitely enjoyed all aspects of it. I am not the biggest fan of Indian cuisine, so I doubt I will find myself rushing back anytime soon to test Indian waters again (although I admittedly do want to try Rasika, one of Bombay Club's sister restaurants, sometime.)
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