Tag Archives: virginia

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Pizzeria Orso

Tyler Cowen’s choice for the best pizza in the area, Pizzeria Orso has been on our radar for a long time.  The place is run by a pizzaiolo who worked at Two Amys, which is apparently the high falutin pizza place for folks in the District – and walking in for lunch you could notice a high falutin sort of pizza vibe.  There was the wood oven, a blackboard with the specials listed, including a roasted beet salad with goat cheese – so that’s the vibe we’re dealing with.  Needless to say, given my love for this sort of   The decor is fairly – well I don’t know how to put it – standard.  I mean, no checkered tablecloth or anything but in a modern way entirely appropriate.

The menu is good and varied with a variety of individual pizzas and small plates – there were also specials including the aforementioned beet salad and a braised pork belly small plate.  I got two small plates, arroncini and their sweet corn agnolotti served on a crab-corn ragout.  The arroncini, risotto fritters basically, contained mushroom, taleggio cheese served on a vidalia onion puree.  It was tasty, although did not compare to the arroncini at Pupatella.  The agnolotti was tasty enough, but I was taken aback by only getting two of them – small plate indeed.  Together the two cost $17 which was a little defeating.

LG got a pizza, which had basil, onion, mushroom, tomato, mozzarella.  The pizza was a good neapolitan pizza.  Toppings were ok and cheese was solid also – but the sauce lacked in the simple flavor that we have experienced elsewhere (Pupatella, cough cough).  The other pizza on the table had speck, mozzerella, ricotta – the ricotta was a textural misfire, enough to mute the value of cured pig which is alarming to consider.  Both pizzas cost $13 to $15 apiece.

I normally don’t harp on price – but Pupatella in Arlington offers entree salads for $7 and a clearly superior pizza for less.  It’s not that Pizzeria Orso is bad – I liked it, and I could see how someone else would rave.  But it is demonstrably inferior to options that are not that far away.  Driving to Pupatella is a much better use of your pizza chasing time.

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Lyon Hall

Ah, to be a boring married guy.  Frankly, the chances to hit “finer dining” establishments and such has been going down with various life events intruding (never mind what they are, the intrusion is welcome).  In any case, in a sudden impulse, we decided that we finally had to hit Lyon Hall in Clarendon.  The restaurant, run by the folks who own Liberty Tavern, Northside Social and a few other places in the area, is decidedly aiming at a cut above some of the other places with a menu of continental, innovative sort of dishes. I guess German-inspired might be the most appropriate description of the menu, although that seems like a limiting description too.

For instance, when we got there, for the appetizer, due to their happy hour special, we got moules-frites, which is obviously decidedly not German inspired.  The mussels for the happy hour special were cooked in a tomato based sauce/broth, which was pretty darn tasty.  However, the mussels that we got were not particularly good examples of the breed, as the individual mussels were rather tiny.  One wishes the mussels themselves were “better”, but the overall dish was good, and the fries were well cooked.  The fries came with ketchup, a garlic aioli and some sort of Thai-seeming aioli, with a distinct vibe of coconut milk or such.  It was the least of the three sauces, but the fries were definitely solid average.

The entrees though do speak to the German-inspired vibe, one fairly directly so, and one much more creative.  My dish was the direct application, where I got a bratwurst, served on top of a pickled cabbage, pickled plum and potato cake arrangement.  The sausage itself was stuffed with gruyere cheese, nothin wrong with that.  This is some pretty straightforward Continental block and tackling of course.  The sausage was flavorful and not overworked, and the potato cake-cabbage-plum combination provided a nice acidic-briny-sweet combination played well against it.  But the real imagination was saved for the arctic char, which was presented as a “reuben”.  The char was crusted with pumpernickel bread, and served on top of cabbage and a mustard buerre blanc with flecks of char which was cured in juniper and pastrami “seasoning”.  Overall, the fish had a solid flavor and texture – definitely NOT turning into a corned beef or anything, but the mustard buerre blanc and cabbage worked well.  It is a well thought out and interesting dish.  The red snapper that also was at our table – served with a zucchini and tomato marmalade, squid ink couscous and smoked eggplant puree was more of a misfire as the smoked eggplant was too smoky and sort of dominated the rest of the dish.

This is not some phenomenal bargain – $90 for three people (including tax etc, no booze) – but for a foray into “eating out”, it is another solid place to work into the lineup.  Certainly it is the best meal I’ve had in the genuinely uninteresting Clarendon enclave.

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Silver Fountain and DC Dim Sum in General

Thumbing through some of the mental notes about the eating life in beloved DC, it occurred suddenly that I have criminally neglected Dim Sum.  Of course, Dim Sum is the original brunch – where Chinese restaurant provides many small plates etc etc etc.  Obviously, we don’t live in New York – so the pickings are destined to be a little slim.  That said, recently when we visited Silver Fountain in Silver Spring, we stumbled upon what was pretty clearly my favorite Dim Sum experience.  But I’m not going to put a full review here – it’s Dim Sum, and at Silver Fountain ALL of the major blocking and tackling elements were good (shu mai, pork buns, congee, turnip cake) – but sort of work through the major elements that have shaped my view of the discipline in the area.

  • Obviously, DC proper is worthless for a real get your hands dirty experience.  Ping Pong Dim Sum in Chinatown is good, but also very gringo-focused.  The food is good, but on the pricey side, and meant to provide the motif of dim sum, but when you sit in a douchey DC bar decor, you know that this is a fancypants impostor.
  • A&J in Rockville has the Northern Chinese dim sum.  I’ve been twice – well once to their Virginia location – and liked it both times.  That said, the dim sum items were on a menu, and not on carts hurtling through the restaurant.  That is a bit of a bummer.  In a related story, I am shallow.
  • This starts veering me towards what had been our standby for years – China Garden on Rosslyn, located in the ABC 7 building.  This screamed dim sum to me – the very Chinese crowd, the enormous line after Church, the carts and the indecipherable markings as items are ordered.  It used to be uniformly excellent but in recent years it has slipped.  Things like the sticky rice end up having too much Chinese sausage and end up wallpapering over a less appealing texture.  On this side of the river, it is still the best – but the craving to do it has ceased mostly.
  • Silver Fortune we were lucky to get there for opening as the line exploded after we sat down.  The carts were in full force here too.  But between this place and China Garden, the food was just better, every dumpling, every leaf wrapped sticky rice, every Chinese broccoli, it all works.  The service was – well I would not say “spotty” but it felt weird to wait so long for the shu mai to show up – but once it did, order was restored.
  • Obviously, like any Sunday brunch, this really benefits from being with friends.  It is very much a communal operation as people stop carts and take stuff and you get to sample tons of things.  It is a slow, steady trip towards a serious food coma.
  • And no, I still can’t do Chicken’s Feet.
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Hunan Gate (Huh? – It’s Not Gringo??!!)

Well, well – we meet again Hunan Gate.  This is the first time I’ve reviewed a place twice – but really it is like two restaurants?  How is this so?  Indeed, I can remember a while back when I made a somewhat condescending journey to a plain jane Chinese place.  I can almost picture it now:

Wow!  It has been a long time since I had been to an honest to goodness American-Chinese place.  Sichuan?  Check.  Shabu-shabu?  Check.  Stuff with black bean sauce all over it that looks an awful lot like spaghetti and asphalt?  Check.  But the General’s Chicken and Beef and Broccoli bit?  Actually, it had been a longer time than I could ever remember.  After a day of gaming in the Ballston area, we decided to check out Hunan Gate in Ballston – I am still not precisely sure why.  One of my friends said this was one of the better places in the area – and one of my Noo Yawker friends pontificated about how spoiled he was compared to here.  Personally, if the menu does not have at least one somewhat frightening item on it, it’s all the same.

Clearly, I have you – intrepid reader – excited and aroused at the possibility of Hunan Gate – with all this snark and elitist claptrap.  Oh, there are no chili crabs!  But – putting aside the obvious – this place actually is pretty solid as far as these things go.  The hot and sour soup – actually was both.  It was clearly a pretty conventional hot and sour soup – but in a way that is educational.  It is the sort of the blocking and tackling of American Chinese – if the hot and sour soup sucks, chances are the rest joins in the suckitude.  The entree I ordered was the twice cooked duck – unfortunately given how tough the duck was, it was cooked perhaps one time too many.  I understand the twice cooked thing (once for the sear, once to actually cook the meat).  Alas, I was hoping for it to have kick (being that it was starred on the menu) but it didn’t.  The sesame chicken had similar non-spicy issues (more sweet than anything).  However the kung-pao chicken had solid depth and heat considering.  The broccoli with garlic sauce though was tasty.

Ultimately Hunan Gate is a very solid choice for this sort of thing – although I still like Panda Bowl if I EVER wanted this stuff delivered.  The review might seem lukewarm – but let’s face it, we were kind of destined to tepidness.  I miss Hong Kong Palace.

Funny thing is, you go into the restuarant like we did, and it’s still the same old deal.  The old man who seated us gave us the standard menu.  But then on the advice of the place to get advice on these sorts of things, we waved frantically and said “Manchurian, special menu”.  The man lit up and smiled and then got us a much more colorful menu with pictures and names which were kind of not descriptive at all.  I’ve never had Manchurian food – or at least I would not recognize it as such, but like the shifted bookshelf that leads to the Batcave, we have been transported into a totally different experience than what we had in our previous journey.

We started with the shredded potato salad – a nice touch, especially served with the pickled vegetables they served on the side.  But the star of the appetizer portion was the pan fried chive dumplings – which were actually freakin enormous.  It is really more a chive empanada – but the chive flavor really really shines through but not obnoxiously.  Our entree choice was the Chicken and Mushroom stew (see, so descriptive).  The stew is highlighted by the clear noodles which are a little chewier texturewise but work.  But the broth is seasoned well, lot of star anise and the chicken was incredibly tender, although a little less chunky than you’d want.  The baby bok choy was solidly prepared and of good quality.  In any case – I am not sure if this is the menu I’d go back to, but there is a ton of potential here and more than enough reason to go back as a rotation spot mealwise.  It’s nice to see that there’s more to life than moo goo gai pan.

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Duangrat’s Oriental Food Mart

If I were to tell you that the best Kee Mao/Drunken Noodles I have had in this area came from a super divey grocery store counter, it would seem preposterous - although if you have read any of Tyler Cowen’s stuff come to think of it, you’d find Duangrat’s Oriental Food Mart entirely appropriate.  We’ve been devoted followers of Tyler Cowen’s guide of course – but this is the first time I’ve done something legitimately no frillsy.  If we are talking atmosphere, there is none – just dirt cheap interesting kitchen cooked Thai food.  What’s particularly odd about the experience is that the restaurtant Duangrat, run by these folks – came off as a relatively good but forgettable Thai joint easily surpassed by better fare.  Even around the corner, there is another restaurant run by these folks – Rabieng.  Next door to Rabieng is this grocery store – which is like almost every Oriental grocer known to man, complete with assortment of pickles, spices, alarming looking delicacies and a curious quasi-stale smell (yes this applies more to places like Great Wall than the resplendent Super H-Mart).  But in the corner, yeah back there – to the right – near all those big bags of rice – is a wood counter with a menu of options written.  Clearly the door of the unmanned area is connected to the restaurant next door, though at the counter is a bell to ring.  After ringing the bell (this is no bellhop sort of ding but a loud temple-esque sort of pealing), someone pops their head in, takes your order – you pay at the cashier’s line and they run your food out.  Drunken Noodles and a Bamboo Shoot salad for $14?  In this town?  Obviously this is a terrific price.  The salad was spicy and quite good, though I am not sure how fresh the shoots were, although sitting in the same bag as a hot dish might have hurt it on the drive home.  But the drunken noodles were a revelation – well seasoned and the noodles were well browned.  There was heat, but also the depth of basil and flavor, where it’s not just an endurance test.  It is one of the better versions of the dish I’ve had – and reason enough alone to take it for a spin again.  Certainly if you want Thai in a pinch, it is a lovely option to have at hand.

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District Taco

Well, clearly somebody likes District Taco.  Indeed, a lot of somebodies judging by the swaths of humanity whenever I’ve tried to get food here.  After seeing the crowds and hearing the stark raving gushing from friends of mine, you would expect District Taco to have been an eye opener.  There was once darkness but now I can see – stuff like that.  However, when considering El Charrito – our standard bearer for this sort of thing – District Taco works out as a pretty massive disappointment, sort of the difference between visiting the Grand Canyon and staring at a picture of the Grand Canyon.  Sure, the picture’s nice – and it resembles the thing, but when you sit on the ledge and stare into the ravine … come on now.

When I did get a shot at going to District Taco, my main investment was in the Burrito Mojado, which was a meat burrito of some ilk (I went with barbacoa – just like at Chipotle, the best of the meats in theory), covered with salsa chile black beans, cheese and such – basically turning a burrito into something more like an enchilada.  It was interesting since the salsa was allegedly authentic and “Yucatan Spicy” whatever that means.  Personally, it looked a lot like the Yucatan people liked chile con carne by what the salsa chile was.  Also the heat level was really relatively minor – and so you are left with a chile covered burrito the size of my head.  The beef was surprisingly muted flavorwise for something like a barbacoa.  Similarly the life partner’s spin with chicken and carnitas tacos were similarly unremarkable.  In all of these cases too, spicy salsa was in a bar a la chipotle with a variety of toppings of one’s choosing.  This is all well and good, but alas – you don’t really get much of a flavor of the enterprise and not much differentiation with stuff like California Tortilla (granted it is much much better than THAT).  El Charrito with the corn tortillas and more authentic seasoning and meat selection just blows it away.

Now is District Taco paying a sin here for not being the best taqueria I know?  I suppose it is – I can’t say that it’s BAD in any meaningful sense.  But on the other side, can I sit here and give it rarefied hype for POSSIBLY being better than Chipotle?  I like Chipotle – quite a bit actually – but if the goal is to justify the hype and legend of District Taco, simply being a Chipotle peer doesn’t seem like nearly enough.

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El Charrito Caminate

One of the funny things that can happen when you start blogging – whether really seriously or just in a very dilettantish sort of way like yours truly over in this corner of the interwebs – is after hundreds of posts about restaurants or sports or whatever, some places fall through the cracks.  It’s not like I had driven past these places without going or that it was not memorable.  It just happens that you write about what sounds good, and sometimes other things just go by the wayside.  Indeed it is not until one of my friends had brought up his rapturous love about a DIFFERENT taco place what I suddenly realized that somewhat criminally, I had neglected to sing the praises of the best taqueria I know in these here parts – El Charrito Caminate in border-Clarendon.

Located on Washington Boulevard just as it turns from quasi-highway to local Arlington, it is a really easy restaurant to miss.  It is located next to a Z-Pizza, which has a chic, trendy sort of look built to attract the sort of folks who get deserved derisive sneers as you see them walking into Mr. Days, thus making it look even more shabby.  It’s really just a storefront, as while there is a counter, it is essentially a take away place.  Oh yeah, they don’t take credit cards either.  But they do serve genuine Salvadorean food and tacos and tortas and platanos, and it is far and away the best taqueria in the area.  It’s also ridiculously cheap.

I am not a huge taco guy.  I mean I like the cuisine, but tortillas as an outside do not precisely move my needle.  That said, you definitely need to do corn tortillas if you need to live in a tortilla world (flour tortillas?  who does that!), and the tacos here fit the bill.  Also, a tolerance for stuff you might not understand fully can help.  I mean they offer goat and tongue as fillings along with the basic beef, pork, chicken, chorizo flavors.  They also prepare the tacos with a pico, cilantro filling as well as sauce on the side.  This is not one of those cases where you have a salsa bar or a ton of choices – you choose a meat, but the taco is the taco.  It’s really really good – whether with a tortilla or as a torta.  The chorizo is tremendous in particular, as well as the beef tongue – something I had never had before.  The food is light, spicy without being crazy and not laden with the tex-mex sort of trappings that turn things normal “Mexican food” into anvils in one’s stomach.

As a taqueria, it would be sufficiently lovely, but of course they do other things to.  They make pupusas, a bread stuffed with things – like cheese or loroco (cheese and herbs, I forget the specific flower that constitutes the herb) – and served with marinated cabbage (like a spicier kraut) which are excellent.  The fried plantains with crema – well the life partner totally demolishes those.  The scary thing is how much food we can put away for like $13.  It was amazing.  This is not my favorite place in the area, but there is no doubt that it is the best dollar for dollar dining value out there.

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Bolivian Sunday and La Fortaleza

“I hope you like starch …”

So goes the refrain when I ponder those food trucks lining the access roads by Route 50 west of Seven Corners in what the mail carriers might call Falls Church but what is more properly known as “miscellaneous Fairfax County”.  Of course I am talking about Sundays, when the substantial Bolivian population in these here parts come out of the woodwork (ok, they probably live in apartments), and bring their culinary wares to the public.  I have to admit, this both intrigued and intimidated me coming out of the gate.  I had read reviews of the like from the usual sources for this sort of thing, and I had taken a small step in the Bolivian direction before – but the idea of the menus being entirely in Spanish and a level of flying blind IS in fact a little scary.

Yet there we were several weeks ago, parked at La Fortaleza, which is a converted ice cream truck which is encamped on 50-West near a Radio Shack.  Yes, the directions are THAT precise.  So leaving the car, I went out to the truck where a barrel shaped man was standing there.  I used the entire range of Spanish I knew to ask how he was doing.  While going through this incredibly tortured dance, I got offered a sample of the Chicharron, pork which was succulent, flavorful and tender off the bone.  And then I uttered several barely coherent syllables which ended up with me having two pastries in my hand and a large container of soup.  The pastries of course were Saltenas – lovely stuffed with meat, vegetable, eggs, olives.  To describe it would be inadequate, although referring to it as a lovechild of a samosa and an empanada might get you in the ballpark.  My own choice that day was the Sopa de Mani, their peanut soup.  The soup – suffice to say – was a bacchanalia of starch.  Yeah the broth was lovely with some peas, but then also lots of potatoes, and french fries.  Another time – at a different truck I had a brisket soup which featured what looked to be grits to be tossed in, also excellent.  But my favorite soup of them all was the ranga, a vegetable and tripe soup which will senda few of my erstwhile readers running in horror.  But – if you get past the texture of tripe, which is not universally admired – it is really tasty.  Add the chili sauce and you get a real kick to go with it.

Other dishes are clearly pretty authentic, but less successful.  The silpancho, a milanese beef on rice, was fine but my god we got a lot of rice.  The enrollado was almost an unpleasant texture  – LG disliked it, but it might have been less an execution problem than just being a texture that would be hard to work with.  The chicharron dish was excellent, but the dish still had some unrendered fat which threw us for a loop. That said, it is a minor quibble.  Indeed, hard to get high and mighty about a cuisine that I am only learning about and enjoying while sitting on the pavement in a parking lot like a day laborer with mucho trabajo.  It is overall an excellent experience – and La Fortaleza is particularly excellent, though we have vowed to try to see a few more of the vendors.  On Sunday there are seriously nearly 10 or so trucks lining that stretch – selection is not a problem.

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Brabo Tasting Room

Brabo was one of my favorite dining experiences that I’ve had in DC that did not involve a magical “ethnic” sort of place without pretty women.  What is interesting about the tasting room – not the regular restaurant which I have no real insight into – is that is manages to balance a clean, casual decor with food that really does touch the sort of finesse and plating that signals haute cuisine.  It is rare to find a place with this sort of chic while being legitimately unintimidating.

When you walk in, the place decidedly sweats an open kitchen sort of thing.  I recall there being a lot of white, and the cheeses of the day and the wines on the blackboard.  The Riesling they had was a touch on the sweet side, but certainly a solid choice.  I ordered their duck confit soup, with garlic croutons.  This was pretty excellent – an improvement over chicken soup on par with the improvement that duck represents on chicken generally.  Here, Brabo actually stays fairly true to a homey chicken soup – but the richness of adding duck comes through.  LG’s mom ordered a beet salad which was excellent, especially with the goat cheese (that she preferred to not have on the salad but on the side since she claims to taste the goat – is that tin can?).  For the entree I ordered a homemade bockwurst sausage with chili.  The chili was surprisingly unmessy, really just spiced ground beef, and the sausage was solid average – good texture though taste could have been better.  But the rest of the table split mussels with shallot and garlic.  This was lovely, great smell and the mussels seem cooked well.  The liquid and butter made a splendid pool to sop up with the bread they gave.  Just a fun experience.

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Columbia Firehouse

In the pursuit of a proper mint julep on Derby day – a day I lost a dollar due to somebody guessing I’ll Have Another – one of the places where our search went in vain alas was Columbia Firehouse.  This is kind of funny considering the fairly Southern twist in the menu of course – but somehow despite that, we stumbled into a pretty darn good meal, competitive with Society Fare in the Old Town Alexandria fancy casual sort of deal, solid B+ level American cuisine.  I did get mint julep somewhere else fortunately.

As the link seems to indicate, the Firehouse DOES make something of its faculty with cocktails.  I ordered The Avenue, an erstwhile combination of Maker’s Mark, Calvados, Passion Fruit and and Grenadine.  Of course, with passion fruit involved, there is a fear of cloying sweetness.  Fortunately though the drink has more finesse than that.  Indeed there is some tang and a tinge of bitterness that offset the other notes (of course that is probably the whisky talking).  It was good.

The rest of the meal was concerned with sampling their spring pea soup – this was a lovely soup that is smooth and subtle, but accented with the garlic and chive flavors.  Honestly, it is one of the better examples of the pea soup genre (one with a very high amount of variability as anyone who has tried Campbell’s condensed can tell you).  The other stuff I had was part of their charceuterie, sausage and cheese platter – which was more of a mixed bag.  The charceuterie was flat out awesome – both the pate and the cured pork belly were wonderful.  I could eat the belly all day – and die at 38, but still.  The cheeses were all pretty good, although the stinky Grayson was the best.  Alas, the sausages were not very good.  I had the chicken sausage and italian sausage, and both were dry and overworked.  The homemade sausage was alluring but ultimately a downer.