Georgia Brown's, McPherson Square

Monkey and I are big fans of restaurant week, so we were saddened during the past Winter and Summer weeks that we were unable to get a table at Georgia Brown’s. I should preface by saying that Monkey’s mom makes a mean collard green, I was raised on Kentucky fare, and both of us went to a school in the “South.” (UF is not really in the South, as Florida is not really the South, but when you can get honey biscuits at no less than three restaurants and anti-semitism in your local Wal-mart, it passes as South.)

So, one year into our DC adventure and surely beginning to miss comfort food, we’ve been edging for a fix for a while now.

Last night I came home to a sour Monkey. We should have eaten in, but he needed to get out and get some drinking done and some forgetting about law school definitely needed to be accomplished. I flat-out vetoed Adams Morgan, as I was tired, but I countered by beginning to list places I *was* willing to go. He sighs and mentions something about comfort food, and I, being the gracious sugar-mama that I am, immediately suggest Georgia Brown’s. *Eyes light up* “Really?” “Sure,” I say, and head off to el intarweb to secure us a reservation on OpenTable.

We’ve attempted to secure reservations for brunch in the past, but have never been successful, so I was surprised and pleased to get an almost immediate reservation – probably because it was a Monday night. As I noted to Monkey on the way there, it is something wonderful to live in the heart of DC and be able to make a reservation for 30 minutes later on the way out the door, take your time sauntering over and still have a good 10 minutes to get in and claim your reservation. It means that if you wanted, you could visit downtown restaurants all the time, *if you wanted*, and not have to worry about suburb stuff like sitters and parking and valets and traffic and driving home drunk.

Sitting down, we immediately agree to get fried green tomatoes. [Now, I have in the past dated an Alabama boy who has never not-worn crimson. At his house, momma didn’t allow snacking on potato chips; we snacked on fried green tomatoes, so I’d like to think I know how they should taste, and for that, I am forever grateful to Diane P. As well, my mother has taken me once or twice to visit Miss Minnie, her most regally-aged neighbor-cum-grandmother from childhood. I do not like things pickled and I do not like relish, but you could feed me on Miss Minnie’s green tomato relish to the day I died and I’d die a happy panda. So, with these things in consideration, I was eager and salivating.]

The most disappointing thing about new restaurants is when every item looks delicious until you read the description and find that nearly every item has something about it that you do not like, cannot eat, or for which you are simply not in the mood. It felt like that looking at GB’s menu… I was tempted by the crabcake, but crabcake is not definitively or wholly southern, and was similarly tempted by the horseradish filet, but it didn’t seem so southern and I wasn’t particularly feeling beef. I settled on the Frogmore stew, and Monkey chose the fried chicken, as it is the one true vaccination against melancholies and the Atlas of all comfort foods.

We began perusing the cocktails, and I have to say I was severely disappointed at the northerner notions of cocktails. Where were the Planters Punches? The Mint Juleps? These drinks know no season – the south has no season but “hot” or “wet.” There were a variety of drinks listed on the “Fall” cocktail menu, but they were all slight variations of standard fare. There was the Collins, but not a mention of Southern Comfort in sight. (Admittedly, Southern Comfort is despicable, but shouldn’t it at least get a nod?)

I cannot say enough about the table bread. The one thing I truly miss about FL, and Gville in particular, was the ability to get a seriously good non-pillsbury buttermilk biscuit with a dollop of butter and a good smothering in clover honey. The server brings us buttermilk biscuits and some corn pones made in the little cast-iron corn pone pans (!) Monkey bets me that the butter will be sweet. I doubt him, but secretly I hope it will be, because if they don’t bring butter and honey to the table, the butter might as well be sweet.

It is.

At this time, I am struck with a stupendous idea. You know how movies always montage the fireworks and streamers when the Protagonist gets his first kiss? That’s what actually happens when you think to ask for Southern style sweet tea. (Honey and butter biscuits and sweet tea is one of my favorite never-get-to-eat desserts and snacks.)

[I should digress a moment to explain the difference between tea, sweetened/”sweet” tea and southern sweet tea. In the south, if you ask for iced tea, you will receive Sweet Tea; you have to ask specifically and get a roll of the eyes to get “plain” tea. Sweet Tea is a specific term connoting the manner in which the tea is made and resulting in a particular taste that is available in no other way. Sweet Tea is not sun tea, and it is not cold-brewed. It is made hot in copious amounts; normally, people make superstrength tea and then dilute it for serving. First of all, Sweet Tea is not and never should be diluted. In its magma state, it can be super-saturated with sugar (actual chemistry terms here, folks) and then is allowed to cool to a drinkable level, then served over ice. It has a rich flavor and the sweetness is unlike regular “sweetened tea.” Keeping this in mind, when you are not in an area heavily entrenched in Southern culture, you need to listen carefully to your options. “Sweetened” tea is a wholly detestable northerner concoction. It’s plain tea that has become diluted and cool, to which sugar is added. IT. TASTES. NASTY. Plain tea is bearable, but it’s not Sweet Tea. In fact, I’ve asked before if there was Sweet Tea available, and was told, “we have plain tea, and there’s sugar on the table.” Bleh. Glurg. Feh. Furthermore, when you enter the northern areas, you have to further specify: Southern-style tea or Southern-style sweet tea.]

At Georgia Brown’s I asked if there was Southern-style tea available. The waitress asks: “You mean sweetened?” “Er….” Sweetened is not the same as sweet, as we have just learned, but I do not know what to answer to this server in a Southern restaurant in a northern area. Instead she saves me with “the tea is unsweet, but the peach tea is sweetened.” Peach Tea? Peach? This is not at all apropos. “No thanks, I’ll just take a cocktail.” In her mind, I’m sure this was fine and good because I am opting for the more-expensive alcohol, but in my mind it was a little death.

On to eating.

Back to the fried green tomatoes... Because I assumed that everyone would make fried green tomatoes well and as they should be, unadulterated and pure before God (God likes comfort food, especially BBQ – that’s why he demands burnt offerings), I didn’t look at the appetizer description. Fried green tomatoes are as follows: a cream cheese sandwich of yellow tomatoes, battered and fried, served with a flavored mayo on a bed of watercress and tomato relish.

Miss Minnie is turning in her grave, and somewhere, Diane is weeping into her frying pan.

Why is there all this schmutz to assault my fried green tomato? First of all, yellow tomatoes are far too firm. You need a nice slobbery green tomato. As well, when you sandwich TWO thick slices of yellow tomato, they don’t really cook through anyway. Second, a fried green tomato needs no accompaniment. Relish was good though.

On to entrees.

Monkey was so-so on his fried chicken. The buttermilk batter was nonpareil, but as Monkey astutely pointed out, “it’s all breast meat – no fat, and it’s the fat that makes fried chicken good.” Now I see why heart disease is such an issue in the South, but I had to agree with him. The mashed potatoes were okayish, but I really felt like they needed tons more butter and a large amount of garlic and a beaten egg whipped in. But then, I’ve never met anyone who makes mashed potatoes like my mother, and I have to say that among the things she cooks, mashed potatoes are pretty darn good.

Frogmore Stew is a boil. Which means it’s not really a stew...which means that you either bring me all my boiled goodies on a plate with no sauce, or you bring me the bowl of sauce with a plate to deposit my shrimp skins and clamshells. I got a bowl of sauce. Sadly, the sauce wasn’t so flavorful, the corn was just shy of hominy, and there wasn’t a lot of seafruit. My one scallop was delicious though. It was rather disappointing, as a whole, and I wish I’d gone for maybe the horseradish filet.

Cost at GB’s is pretty high. Plates are 16+, apps are 6+, cocktails are about 10. We foreswore dessert only because I hadn’t really wanted to spend that much this evening, and because there was a bowl of Halloween candy waiting for us at home. We left with a 99$ bill – not going up to a hundred sort of mitigated the expenditure mentally.

Perhaps we had been expecting too much, or rather, we had expected that southern cooking would keep its integrity in a fine-dining setting.

Final decision on Georgia Brown’s: we’ll go back, but we’re not rushing to… maybe for brunch instead next time.

Thai Chili, Chinatown

Life in the big city means that you should have each of these four things: neighborhood Italian, neighborhood pizza, neighborhood Chinese, and neighborhood Thai.

Our neighborhood Italian is DIK, and we have a neighborhood Chinese that’s delivery – if we want sit-down, we have a favorite in Chinatown, so I guess we have two neighborhood Chinese restaurants. Neighborhood pizza is Domino’s, and while I know this isn’t so desirable, remember that this is NOT NYC and we don’t have a nightlife here. Other neighborhoods do, but we don’t and when you have a cold, there’s nothing so wonderful as some airborne and a hot pizza waiting right outside your back door.

As far as neighborhood Thai goes, we think we’ve found it in a little place called Thai Chili.

Thai Chili’s misfortune lies in its location. It’s in the shopping-mall like underbelly of the Chinatown Regal Cinemas. What DOES work for TC though, is that it is owned by the Sushi-Go-Round right next door, so you have the benefit of getting your pad thai and a spicy tuna hand roll brought over from next door. That’s kinda cool; not that we’ve made use of that yet, though. Also, they do get a huge number of people that come for dinner-and-a-movie and then there are those that find they are peckish on the way out of the latest mass-market flick.

Don’t be fooled though; I can’t even count on my hands all the good pan-asian fare to come out of strip mall settings. Being in a movie theater mall is like stripmallplus.

TC is turning into our default Sunday night asian joint, since Sushi Taro is closed on Sundays. Thai Chili is virtually abandoned, and it’s kinda nice to be able to talk and enjoy the burn and maybe play a few rounds of mushroom-or-olive. This is because during the uptimes, TC broadcasts pre-recorded concerts on a couple of large screens in the restaurant. Beyonce was nice, JLo was ok, but Shania was downright eyeball-stabbing. This is really my only complaint with TC. Their food isn’t as good as South Florida, but it’s still good, and they do a definitively above average Tom Kha.

If you’re in the mood for cellophane noodles, Pad Woon Sen is rather tasty. Monkey usually gets a panang or a red curry. Their pad thai is pretty good – it comes in an omelette envelope, but it’s served warm, so it doesn’t really develop flavor until the day after when it comes out of the fridge nice and cold and then gets nuked until it’s lukewarm. My favorite though, is the green curry fried rice. It’s fried with green chilies, so I always have to pick them out so I won’t bite down on them, but I definitely like the extra spice that they add.

Also, thai iced tea is excellent. It’s $2.74 and I don’t think it includes refills, but I really, really don’t foresee that preventing me from continuing to order it.

And speaking of, I could so go for a thai tea right now.

Afterwords, Dupont Circle

I like Afterwords[Kramerbooks] and I will continue to like Afterwords, but I have to say, I’ve discovered something as the sole result of consistency: if you’re seated on the second floor, service will be horrible. Monkey and I went this Sunday morning with our neighbor, Karol and started coming up with a few reasons why this may be the case. First of all, it is one server and about 30 people when it is busy. Food from the kitchen must be carried up by the server when the runner isn’t bringing food up. These are the scenarios:

1) Poor waitstaff get assigned to the second floor for one or both of two reasons

a) they are new and are unskilled – this will be trial by fire and they will need to balance meeting everyone’s needs with making hasty exits to the kitchen for everyone else’s food
b) the management wishes to have poor waitstaff quit without firing them – they figure the overburden as described above with cause service, and thus tips, to decrease; the poor schmuck will quit as a result of his or her worst tipday ever.

2) Kitchen runners are lazy and do everything in their power to delay climbing the stairs to bring food to those waiting on the second level

3) Waitstaff of any degree of proficiency are unable to handle the throngs of demanding customers, resulting in poor balancing act, as described in 1a, above.

I don’t really care which of these factors is attributing to the lack of me receiving my food. Just don’t get seated on the second level. If you do get seated there, ask to be reseated. Believe me, asking to be reseated is a lot nicer than waiting an hour and half for food and leaving a less than 15% tip.

This Sunday’s adventure, though, was probably the result of ineptitude. I will not elaborate, because, as I said, I like Afterwords, but in brief, drink orders were mixed up, delayed, and refilled with the wrong degree of caffeination for all three of us, at least once each. We placed our names on the list at 11:39 and were seated by around 12pm. At 1pm, still no food in sight. I considered ordering another mimosa, but I don’t like ordering more to drink BECAUSE I am waiting for my food. You never know when waiters hold off on delivering your food to see if you order another drink, thus upping tippable total. I don’t know that I have ever been the victim of that, but it’s not inconceivable that this would happen. Also, the point of eating with alcohol at brunch is so you have an excuse to drink in the late morning/early afternoon and not get tipsy. Eventually, we did receive food, and it was rather small. Not because the servings actually are small, but because in the time we’d been waiting, we’d become ravenous. All of our food was cold, albeit in varying degrees (hollandaise at room temperature isn’t so bad…) When we left, I looked at my watch: 2pm.

Initially, I had felt good about going to Afterwords rather than Dim Sum, because I felt I wouldn’t be wasting my day, but at the end of it, that’s exactly what it felt like.

As Monkey put it later, “I’m sad my extra hour from the time change was spent waiting in Afterwords.”

Afterwords word to the wise: don’ let yourself get seated on the second level.

AFI Silver Screen and Macaroni Grill, Silver Spring

Went to Silver Spring with Joe to see Good Night, and Good Luck. I enjoyed it, despite the slight reservations Liz put in my head. Even though we were in a blackbox theater, it was still nicer than your average theater. The seats were comfy and rocked back a little – good, since we got stuck in the first row. Thank goodness I have a theater like the AFI Silver Screen that is so accessible. It would suck to only be able to see mass-market movies at the overpriced Regal in Chinatown.

[I take this moment to interject that I compose in word before I post online, and I *HATE* that XP word now deems it necessary to underline with little purple dots those words or phrases it identifies as addresses or locations. I KNOW it’s a location. In fact, it’s a rather interesting one, and that’s why I’m writing about it. I do not need M$ to remind me that Silver Spring, Maryland and Chinatown are places. You’d have to be an idiot not to know that. And as we all know, idiots should not have computers. It speeds up the dissemination of stupid.]

Afterward, we met up with the Monkey and ate at Macaroni Grill. Monkey and I decided to try a Shiraz, since I’m always up for trying new reds, and we bought a bottle. [Apparently Shiraz is a location, too, which makes word even more irritating, for not being able to realize that I am not talking about place-noun, but thing-noun.] It made the evening more entertaining for a very sober Joe, I am sure, and I ended up sleeping like a baby.

I was a bit of a shrew to the waiter, as I was very demanding. Not mean; just demanding; I’ve found I do that more as I’ve gotten a bit older and a bit more confident, and while confidence is a nice thing, I’m concerned how my assertiveness comes across now and how it will come across if I ever change my last name to [insert obvious Jewish last name here] and wear gold jewelry. I’m so signing on for oppression and discrimination, which, in self-fulfilling prophecy, will make me more assertive and less apt to let myself get pushed around. I’m a little excited to find out what type of post-feminist pillar of womanhood I’ll become. Anyhow, digressions aside, I have a very particular set of criteria when I go out to eat. I hate having to ask for water – one never need ask for WATER. Also, I hate having only two minutes to settle into my seat and in the same two minutes I’m expected to make up my mind about my drink order – which is worse when you say “just water for now,” and the waitperson snatches away the drink menu. Needless to say, the waiter we got was trying to be too friendly and flamboyant (and maybe flirting with Monkey a bit much) to be an attentive server.

Macaroni Grill has a decent spinach cannelloni, which is saying a huge amount for a chain restaurant. I had the Pasta Milano – a sundried tomato butter cream sauce with mushrooms chicken and pasta. But then, that’s what I always get. Their proprietary olive oil is horrendous though, which is why we steered clear the proprietary chianti and went with the aforementioned shiraz.

The waiter talked us into the fried ravioli – which is basically snickers-stuffed raviolis fried, sprinkled with powdered sugar and served on icecream. It was rather good, but I have to say, since the Great Peanut Scare of 2003, I don’t really like snickers anymore.

My favorite part of Macaroni Grill: the proprietary crayolas.

IKEA, College Park

Saturday morning saw a trek to IKEA. I convinced Monkey to come, promising that with a mere 75 cents and an ipod, he could actually enjoy my shopping experience: he brought his homework and read in the cafeteria lounge with unlimited coffee refills while I wandered aimlessly, blissfully, through low-priced, earth-conscious housewares. (It also didn’t hurt to temp him with the aspect of 99 cent breakfast; I even told him he could have two breakfasts, if he wanted, if he’d only come with me. Call me pisher.)

The one thing that I truly love about IKEA is its cafeteria. It’s SUPER CHEAP, and it’s actually pretty good. Best of all, if you get to IKEA before they open, their cafeteria is there to feed you and make everything all right, and maybe even give you a big hug from the heart pillow.

So, how does a girl with no car make it to the College Park IKEA? (If you know how to get to the one in VA, PLEASE tell me.)
1) Leave as early as possible. Factor in 2 extra hours of flub time, because if you miss the bus, you won’t just be singing a Kris Kross song.
2) Take metro to the College Park station.
3) Wait for the Calverton bus. (86, I think.) Try and get there just before the hour, since it comes between X:02 and X:05. If you have missed it, look forward to your hour wait. Bring headphones and a cellphone and be ready to call parents, a boyfriend or the police at the drop of a hat. My past three trips to IKEA have had an overly-amorous Cote d’Ivoire immigrant, an overly-amorous stoned guy, and a couple of strung-out women, with and without children in tow. Also, lots of immature, albeit morning-after UMd College Park students.
4) The Calverton bus drops off directly in front of IKEA.
5) Eat at the IKEA cafeteria.
6) Shop, if you must do that as well.
7) When you are ready to leave, wait for the bus at the bus stop just north of and on the opposite side of where you disembarked. (I so wanted to write that in Spanish, because it makes more sense to me that way.)
8) Take the Rhode Island bus back to the College Park metro. You can also ride it for forever and a day to the end of the line and take the Rhode Island metro instead. This too, you will have to time perfectly, as it also comes between X:02 and X:05 and is hourly.

On the upside, we are ever-nearing the wine and wax party, and are correspondingly ever-nearing readiness and cleanapartmentness. May The San Francisco Treat know what she is missing. I heart Scandinavian entertaining supplies.

Sushi Taro, 17th Street Corridor

Sushi Taro is always a favorite. Monkey and I went for Friday night dinner. (Nothing like 15 pounds of warm stickyrice in your belly to put you to sleep.) There is almost always a wait at ST, and almost always, you’re told “30-45 minutes.” I don’t think we’ve ever waited more than 15. Also, you can’t make reservations unless you make them a day or more in advance if you want private rooms… or if you want kaiseki. For those of you planning to visit on my birthday, be warned: kaiseki is a Japanese mega-feast and 50$ a plate; I have never had it, and I figure it will go well with the AWESOME happybirthday rendition that the sashimi ninjas behind the bar sing to you on your special day.

Rolls aren’t bad here, just not stupendous; Dragonfly in Gville has better. Sashimi is excellent though, and the real play is the chirashi bowl and complimentary miso. Though, if you want to be a piggy, best to get the chirashi and supplement by splitting either the BigRoll or the Rainbow roll with someone else. (These are awesome. Big roll is imitation crab, spinach, sweet fried egg and shiitakes and is, as its name implies, rather big.)

And who goes to sushi and gets Kirin? Shochikubai Nigori is a traditional, unfiltered sake. It’s smooth and a bit milky; a little sweet. It’s missing the harsh middletaste (as opposed to aftertaste) that most sakes have (the one that gives me a bit of a headache.)

Saddest of sad though, Sushi Taro is CLOSED on Sundays! An otherwise perfect end to a lazy weekend perfectly destroyed. Le sigh.

Of special note, ST is also good for people watching, and a good game is: “first date, blind date or awkward friendship?”

Sticks & Bowl, Connecticut Avenue

Sticks & Bowl is exactly what you think it would be: choose noodle or rice, choose sauce, choose meat (or anti-meat, if you wish.) It's kind of pan-asian but also definitely gaijinized. Here's the rundown:

Do not pay extra for udon noodles.

Most likely, do not purchase noodles. As Monkey points out, get rice next time. I will, however, get the chicken thai curry in some form again. I think Monk got red curry and thought it ok; said he wouldn't get it again, but I don't know if that referred to the noodles or the dish itself.

Lots of veggies and white meat chicken.

Superb for the price: 12 and change and we split an arizona between us -- that's including my ill-advised and unnecessary $1.00 upgrade for the udon. That makes it suparcheap for downtown DC lunchtime, and comparable, larger and healthier than Potbelly.

(And then I went and got a venti soy chai.)

Morsels

There is nothing quite so satisfying as a fresh 3 Musketeers bar. I swear I had breakfast first, and it was only a funbite.

Monkey is maybe meeting me for lunch today, so I might convince him to trek to Eli's, or that deli up the street from him, or we might get some ciza$h and try Sticks & Bowl finally. More on that when it happens. Most likely, we'll end up going to the same place we always do. I promise to try something different if that happens.

Additionally, BeerGuyDave of Brickskeller is having a wet-hopped ale tasting at RFD. 30$.

Wet-hopped sounds like everything I like about hops and nothing that I hate about IPAs. I'll let you know if we go/how it is.