DC Trip Report - part III

Friday and Saturday were both crap in terms of weather, so our outings were not all we had planned, unfortunately. The weather, did not, however, stop us from eating more fabulous food.

Lunch on Friday was at Good Stuff Eatery, which is owned by Spike Mendelsohn of Top Chef fame.  You remember him -- he was the one with all the fedoras.  And he did not disappoint when we were there, as it was a brown hat day.

We got there right before the lunch rush, but the tables were already full up -- I had to stalk for one while Jon waited for the food. 

The stalking was worth it. 

I had the Coletti's Smokehouse: "Applewood Bacon, Sharp Vermont Cheddar, Fried Vidalia Onion Rings with Chipotle BBQ Sauce".  (Oddly, the burger Jon had, which was called something to do with Obama, is no longer listed on their online menu, so I can't tell you exactly what was on that.)  We split an order of Sunny's Handcut Fries, and we each had a toasted marshmallow milkshake.

Oh, boy.

In part II of this little trip report, you might remember me singing the praises of Central's burger.

After I tried today's burger, the thought in my head was, "Central who?"

It was really hard to compare the burgers at Central and Good Stuff, actually.  They both were really amazing in their own right.  However, in terms of an overall meal experience, Good Stuff got the blue ribbon hands down.  And it was all because of that toasted marshmallow milkshake.  Seriously, it was like a religious experience in a glass -- it was that good.  If you go to DC and don't treat yourself to one of these shakes, you're doing yourself a serious disservice.

No pictures of the food... I was too busy enjoying it. 

After lunch, we headed over to the Library of Congress, which neither of us had ever been to. 

We wandered around there for awhile -- pretty interesting stuff, and a gorgeous building on the inside.

After that, we took the underground tunnel across the street and looked around in the new Visitor's Center for a bit.  We didn't plan to have a tour or anything, so there wasn't a whole lot there we could do.

The rain had gotten pretty heavy by then, and it was cold, so we made our way back to the hotel, beating rush hour again.  We'd left our dinner plans open, and since our trip to Hank's the previous day got screwed up, we decided to go there.  We figured this was also a good option, as they don't take reservations, but you can call 20 minutes ahead, and they'll put your name down.  So that's what we did. 

I took this when we thought we were having lunch there.

We slogged back out into the nasty weather, and still had a bit of a wait once we made the walk, but it was well worth it. 

To start, we were brought a small bowl of Goldfish crackers to munch on, which I thought was a cute touch.  Jon ordered some of the day's oysters (I don't touch those things when they're raw -- BLECH), and for our entrees, we decided to get the lobster roll and fried oyster dinner, and share.  This was my first lobster roll ever, and it was delicious.  Oh, my mouth is watering just thinking about it.  The fried oysters were great too, but they can't hold a candle to the lobster roll.  Num, num.  Once our meal was done, our waiter brought out another little bowl, this time with chopped semi-sweet chocolate.  He said that's what they do, since they don't serve dessert. 

One thing I will say is that the tables at Hank's were PACKED in.  I don't think I've ever been in such a tight space in a restaurant before.  That was really my only complaint about the whole meal, and even that wasn't a huge deal...even though the old guy behind me did have his elbow jammed into my back for several minutes after we sat down.  Hmph. 

DC trip report - part II

Thursday actually turned out to be the best day for us weather-wise, and if we'd known it at the time, I suspect we would have taken a bit more advantage of it.

Anyway, we slept super-late, which was lovely, and woke up with lunch in mind.  We headed over to Hank's Oyster Bar, but somehow, both of us had neglected to notice on their website that they aren't open for lunch.  So that left us a bit stumped, and wandering around for awhile.  This only led to us getting hungrier and grumpier, and every time I found a Wi-Fi network with my iPod touch, it wouldn't connect, and that made it really hard to know where we were and/or where we were going.

Finally, like a beacon in the night, we spotted the Washington Monument in the distance, and that gave us some idea of our bearings.  We headed that way, and figured if nothing else, we'd grab something at the National Museum of the American Indian, which was supposed to have a good food station area (not a buffet, exactly...one of those places where they cook the food for you at different stations...you know?). 

Soon enough, we ran into the White House.  I suppose I shouldn't have found the shooters on the roof alarming, but I did. 

We'd been to DC a couple of times since 9/11, but I'd never noticed the sharp-shooters before.  At least I assume they were sharp-shooters.  I don't think they were up there doing shingle work.

And of course, the nuclear protester were there.  They always are.

By this time, we were starving.  We knew there we a restaurant we wanted to eat at on Pennsylvania Ave SE (we were on NW), so we took off -- in the wrong direction.  But all was well soon enough, as we stumbled upon Central, where we actually had dinner reservations a couple of nights later.  So  I called an audible, and decided that we were going to eat lunch there.

We sat at the bar -- we figured we might be a little under-dressed, even for lunch, but the bar is always a safe bet in a situation like that.  Jon, having done all his restaurant homework, knew that Central was meant to have excellent burgers, and that's what we both went with.  Jon got his with just cheese, and I had cheese and bacon. 

Oh heavens.

What they brought out was perhaps the most delicious hunk of cow muscle between two buns that I'd ever had.  EVER.

The burger also had potato tuiles, which were like super-super-thin, crispy potato cakes.  I wasn't sure how they would work, since I don't usually eat potatoes ON my burger, but they were quite good.   The burger came with fries, which were good -- not great -- and I had a house-made grapefruit soda to drink, which was delicious.

Go ahead and drool.  It's okay.

We decided then that we probably weren't going to come back for dinner, since it would be really hard to top the meal that we were having then, and we didn't just want to have the same thing again.  To that end, to get the full Central experience, we ordered dessert -- Michel's Chocolate Bar (formerly known as the Kit-Kat Bar, until the Kit-Kat people had something to say about it).  I think it probably ruined Kit-Kats for me for the rest of my life :)

After lunch, we soldiered on to the Mall, and wandered around there for a bit.  We saw the Capitol and the Washington Monument.

We beat the Metro after-work rush back to the hotel, and were able to relax a little before dinner, which was at Obelisk, just around the corner from the hotel.  (I'd put a link in, but there's not one for me to put.)  Walking into the restaurant felt like walking into someone's home, since there wasn't a sign outside, and really, the dining room wasn't much bigger than the average living room.  There were about 12 tables in all, down both sides of the room, with a large table in the middle where the waitresses prepared a number of the dishes.

All in all, we had 6 courses, if I remember correctly.  We started with an amazing burrata cheese, which is a fresh cow's milk cheese that tastes like mozzarella, but has more the consistency of cottage cheese, although not quite.  This was followed by several more antipasti, including polenta fritters, pork belly tureen (which confirmed by dislike of the tureen), chicory with a creamy anchovy dressing (sort of like a Caesar salad), and Tuscan-style meatballs.  After all that, we finally got to the first course.  Jon had a lobster bean soup, while I had eggplant ravioli, which were so fresh and delicious.  For our entree (we had 3 to pick from), we shared a veal chop that came with perfect roasted potatoes and some kind of mishmash of olives and peppers that I avoided.

Are you feeling full?  'Cause we aren't done yet.

The 5th course was cheeses, served with a fig jam.  One was a goat's milk, one was a sheep and cow's milk, and one a sheep's milk (I can't remember the names -- I know that two were from Piedmont, though).  The cheeses were all excellent, although let's be honest -- I rarely have met a cheese that I didn't like. The fig jam didn't do much for me though.  Too raisin-y.

Finally, dessert!  The cocoa nib panna cotta I had was a great finish to my meal.  Jon had some sort of pineapple thing, I think -- I didn't try it, as I don't like pineapple.  

On the whole, a most excellent meal.  I thought all the surrounding courses were actually better than the main (that may partially be because veal's not really my thing), and it wasn't hard to see why Obelisk consistently receives rave reviews.  The service was also outstanding.

Thus concluded our second day in the District -- not a bad way to end!

Washington, DC trip report - part I

Jon and I had a rare long weekend away this past week as part of Christmas to us from my parents.  They kept Ella for us, and we took off up to Washington DC.

After dropping off Ella and taking the dogs to puppy camp, we hit the road late Wednesday morning.  We had our usual road-trip stop at Cracker Barrel, and picked up an audio book on Billy the Kid, which turned out to be a dud.  The rest of the drive up was uneventful, aside from going around in a few circles once we got into DC proper, which is pretty much standard operating procedure.  Our home base for the next few nights was to be The Fairfax at Embassy Row -- we used our Starwood Points to book it, and on the whole, it was super-nice.  (We did have some ongoing hot water issues, which were kind of a pain, but no major complaints other than that.)

After we got checked in and dumped our stuff in the room, the first stop for us was a Washington Capitals game, and they just happened to be playing the Hurricanes that night (yes, we planned the trip around the game).  We had originally planned to grab dinner before the game, but we ran short on time, and wound up going straight to the Verizon Center.  We knew which stop we needed off the Metro, but weren't sure where to go after that -- luckily, there were plenty of Caps fans heading the same way we were, so we just followed them.

Our seats were AMAZING -- 3rd row, right behind the goal where the Caps were shooting twice.  

The game was tons of fun, despite being two of the very, very few 'Canes fans in the building (which was sold out -- the Jumbotron told us it was their 48th sell-out in a row!).   No one harassed us for wearing our enemy jerseys -- except for Slapshot, the Caps mascot.  He came all the way down to where we were sitting, pointed at our jerseys, then at his, then shook his head at us. Ha!

Much to the surprise of both Jon and myself, the Canes gave Washington a run for their money.  Given the season that both teams are having (them: fantastic; us: not so much), we really hadn't expected a whole lot, but the game actually wound up going to overtime, which was completely nerve-wracking.   The Caps won in the end, though.

After the game, we headed over to Matchbox, where we had originally planned to go before the game.  We had some delicious mini-burgers (part of our whirlwind cheeseburger tour of DC...more on that later), and split one of their wood-fired pizzas.  Yuuuuuum.

On the way back to the hotel, while we were waiting for the Metro,  Jon poked me, nodded towards a group of very well-dressed gentlemen, and said, "Don't look now, but I think that's Ron Paul over there."  I took a glance, but wasn't really able to tell.  Once the train arrived, the man in question wound up on the same car with us, and sure enough -- it was Ron Paul!  He was chatting with another passenger about the hockey game.  Kind of neat.

A great start to our trip!