If anyone heard delighted squealing and the clapping of hands coming from the vicinity of Thomas Jefferson Street last weekend, that was me walking into Snap for the first time. The creperie and bubble teahouse opened last summer in a converted townhouse in Georgetown, and it’s a good thing.
The menu is long: part classic (sugar crepes), part modern (prosciutto, asiago, and fig spread), part sweet (a bajillion different bubble teas), part savory (pesto and chicken), and part weird (red bean paste crepes…I’m not knocking them, because I didn’t try them, but nonetheless weird. If you’ve had one, email me and tell me…should I try this crazy crepe?).
If setting is at all important to your dining experience, you may be both pleased and baffled by Snap. It is housed in an attractive pied a terre townhouse right off the C&O Canal, with clean, modern bright blue and white walls, black and white photography, and a neat fireplace, but the charm of the setting is partially negated by the necessity to pay first, at the counter, with a credit or debit card. (Snap accepts no cash.) The back patio is breezy and pleasant, with tree branches overhanging the tables, but you set and bus your own table.
The crepes, however, are absolutely heavenly: light, firm, and delicately sweet. I highly recommend the lemon curd filling with fresh strawberries (the strawberries offset the tartness of the lemon, as well as giving the sauce something to hold onto), and the fluffy egg and cheese crepe. I also really enjoyed the very rich, satisfying butterscotch and banana…it’s just butterscotch chips and sliced bananas, but it’s greater than the sum of its parts.
I also had my first bubble tea there. I’ve been hearing about this stuff forever, so I was a little disappointed to discover that the tapioca balls are not tiny and sweet, but tasteless, marble-sized, and slippery. I kept worrying about getting one stuck in my throat. Maybe it’s an acquired taste? The strawberry milk tea the bubbles were in, however, was lovely, and I will be ordering it again (neutered this time).

I’m not sure whether it was unfair of me to be automatically skeptical of the cuisine provided at a venue largely known for its live music, but that was my prejudice, and I was sticking to it. Imagine my surprise when it turned out the cuisine at Iota was edible – even tasty!
We started off the night just grabbing some chicken fingers, but I thought their take rose above the usual fare. They weren’t overly reliant on their breading for flavor (though there was plenty of crunch there), and the honey/mustard sauce hit the spot, and didn’t have the weird, congealed goopiness that many other offerings have.
Later in the night, we were still hungry, and ended up a little more hardcore in our ordering. I got the prosciutto and gouda sandwich, and it was great! Gouda’s not my first choice in terms of cheeses I’d pair with the salty, cured meat, but it worked just fine, and came with a hard & hearty roll to match. Best were the fries on the side – incredibly crispy, and very well-seasoned: I noticed hints of pepper, garlic and perhaps even rye.

The place even has a cheese plate, with everything from a fig spread to a manchengo to more pungent varieties. Perhaps a stuffy companion to the Corona I was drinking, but it still hit the spot.
Not every dish is a winner; two friends ordered the shrimp puttanesca pasta, and I found the linguine limp and the sauce spicy but uninteresting. But rest assured that if you find yourself catching a band at Iota and forgetting to eat dinner beforehand, you stand a decent chance of leaving the place satisfied (unless, of course, the band totally sucks).

-MJF

Apparently the Five Paragraph Bitter Food Critic is prone to the powers of suggestion. Just as a mere reference to Mary Prankster makes me crave a Baltimore crabcake, the picture of the gooey, sauce-soaked ribs from the Chicago RibFest pointed me towards some local barbecue. Capital Q in the not-terribly-Chinese-anymore Chinatown has received all sorts of glowing press for the quality of its meats, most notably on Al Roker’s Food Network show. Since Al knows BBQ like Bo knows football, I was eager to sample owner Nick Fontana’s Austin, Texas-inspired chow. I have eaten at the `Q once before, but it was right before closing time before a holiday – I’m not going to dare judge any place in that kind of circumstance. I may be bitter, but I am fair.
And while I am no Chef Yaneev with advanced culinary training and the cool poofy hat, I am a barbecue junkie and a good man to have in a smoke pit. I’ve worked for a few barbecue places and steakhouses, and, like Al Roker, I too have traveled the country eating at barbecue places. I worked as a radio deejay and comedian for a while, and nothing beats roadside barbecue stands on the way to the next gig. Unlike Roker, though, I exercised, and didn’t wuss out and get the gastric bypass surgery.
So, a sunny Monday afternoon with barbecue and margaritas seemed like a great way to start a week, and the 3 meat platter at Capital Q was practically throwing itself at me like a drunk girl at Rumours. 3 meats, 2 sides…fair enough. I selected the ribs, the turkey and brisket, along with corn and mashed potatoes. Seventeen bucks is a little high, but, it’s cheaper than airfare to Texas.
I shoulda checked Southwest.com for a round-trip to San Antonio instead. The brisket was tasty, but incredibly overcooked. Brisket should not be gray, but more medium-rare with a noticeable smoke ring. The Q’s brisket lacked that distinctive mark of true Texas barbecue. However overcooked, it was good, and the Q’s sauce really made this meat shine. There were two turkey breasts available for the meat cutter to chop my selection from, and instead of the juicy, fresh bird, he chose the dried-out end piece that looked like it sat around under a heat lamp since last week’s lunch rush. This turkey had nothing in common with the exemplary smoked bird served at Rudy’s BBQ throughout Texas and Oklahoma.
The kicker, though, was the rib. And I don’t mean like the kicker at a casino or on a football team, but the kick-in-the-a$$. The meat cutter took a third of a rack of ribs in his tongs, and sliced off *one rib.* ONE mutha-farkin’ rib. It’s like Chris Rock and Isaac Hayes in “I’m Gonna Get You Sucka” but in reverse! The cutter then sliced off the rib’s side trim (the fatty part of the rack removed from most restaurants) from the back of the rib rack and plopped that on my plate. There is more meat on Nicole Ritchie than on a rib trim, and I had to work to get more than two bites out of the charred, substandard cut. Apparently the Texas Hospitality displayed through the generous portions found at places like Coopers, Stubb’s and The Salt Lick didn’t make it to this side of the Mississippi.

Erstwhile salsa dance club Yuca got the boot the other day, being evicted from their building. While it isn’t looting of Katrina-like proportions, it is rather funny to see the basic human desire to acquire plush leather couches and uncomfortable bar stools for home use extends to Northwest DC, too.
Photos courtesy of an anonymous friend who described the scene as “chaotic.” People were trying to take away furniture bigger than their cars!

Got Dibs?	Is that Stephen Page of Barenaked Ladies claiming that couch?
More chairs than Marlo…	WWJD?

I went to Andale last night, following a powerful craving for margaritas and the sage advice of the Going Out Gurus. (Also because Cafe Atlantico was closed for the evening. Come back, beloved Cafe Atlantico, provider of delicious conch fritters and famed tequila concoctions, come back!) I’d always meant to go to go Andale, and now I have, and can’t I just discuss my fabulous new sparkly flip-flops or tell funny stories about my dog instead? No? FOOD blog, you say? Fine.
Andale (“Let’s go!” in Spanish) is just okay. I don’t mean “okay” in that well-yesterday-I-dined-at-the-French-Laundry,-where-did-YOU-eat? way; this is coming from a girl who loves the whole spectrum of dining establishments. And Andale, in my opinion, is overrated. The hostess wouldn’t smile or make eye contact, but the waiter was efficient and friendly and knowledgeable, and made lots of recommendations, which we followed. The appetizers were scrumptious (we had the queso fundito con chorizo and totopas con Mariscos…hot little tortillas topped with crabmeat, shrimp, Manchego, and avocado salsa) as were the sides (mashed sweet potatoes, roasted corn puree). But the entrees didn’t live up to the rest of the meal. The pan-seared grouper fillet (with a sauce of toasted pumpkin seeds, garlic, sour cream and serrano chiles) was very nice, but the grilled pork porterhouse chop (in a red mole sauce of Ancho chiles, garlic, Mexican cinnamon and cloves) was dry. The one saving grace that guarantees I will be back? The margaritas are sublime. I had the Blue Agave, and a had a generous sip of the Slow Matador, with raspberry puree…a delicious if slightly disturbing mental image, considering the name and all.
I wonder if they serve huge bowls of mashed sweet potatoes at the bar….

Last weekend a friend and I decided to try Caribbean Breeze’s new brunch buffet offering. This was my first time at the restaurant. The restaurant is a relatively new Nuevo Latino restaurant with a nice stylish décor in Ballston. Service was good, but bordered on being too attentive at times.
I avoided standard brunch offerings like bacon, sausage, roast beef sliced to order, an omelet station, and scoops of scrambled eggs. I did not try the waffles, although the chocolate sauce, strawberries, and whipped cream looked inviting.
I instead concentrated mostly on the Latin-themed dishes. My favorite items were the chicken empanadas, and I am an empanada fanatic. My friend tried –and enjoyed- a different chicken empanada, which included tomato. The black beans, and the pork tamales were also good. The paella was good, although it did not contain seafood. The potatoes were tasty and flavored with a tomato-based sauce. The salmon was good, although the accompanying pine nut and red pepper salsa was too thin. The teeny portions of creme brulee, rice pudding, and chocolate cake were all surprisingly good, and you can serve yourself as many portions as you need. The creme brulee was flavored with gran marnier.
I was impressed with the brunch, even at $20 per person. Brunch is on Sundays from 10:30am to 3pm. I have not tried their lunch or dinner offerings, so can not vouch for them.
Caribbean Breeze
4100 N. Fairfax Drive, (at Randolph St.)
Arlington, VA 22203 USA
Telephone. 703-812-7997

That line was spoken by Bela Lugosi in Dracula and became a catch phrase in most of the Dracula films that followed. It’s a complex line for four little words. We, the hip audience, know what Dracula drinks, but the poor unsuspecting victims had to wonder what kind of person doesn’t drink wine. My mother is one of those people – not the blood-sucking undead vampire, but the non-wine drinking type. She doesn’t really drink anything alcoholic other than a random margarita or a Baileys-and-coffee. She’s not a prude, but, well, she’s definitely not her son. My blood type has a 2001 vintage. My doctor doesn’t have a phlebotomist and needles for me, but a sommelier and a corkscrew.
On Mother’s Day, we went to Al Tiramisu for an early dinner. The food was fine and the desserts were excellent, but the servers were stunned – aghast, actually – that we didn’t order wine, to the point that they asked us at least six times. The first time they asked, Mom politely declined. They asked again…and again…and again, and you get the point. We were only there for two hours! There was a distinct attitude that we were somehow a lower-tipping table because we declined to look at their wine list.
Now, I’m only singling out Al Tiramisu because this was recent. Every other time there I’ve imbibed and had a blast. They’re certainly not the only place attempting to shove wine down our collective throat. It makes sense for places to sell wine. A bottle of wine pads the check, it’s seldom returned, and most folks tip properly on the higher total. Given the mark-up – usually 100 to 400 percent – the restaurant owners and servers love selling wine!
Sure, wine can make a good meal great, and it’s an obvious, vital part of Italian cuisine. But when the offer is declined, please, dear restaurants, accept it, and move on. It’s like a break-up – sure, you can mope a bit about the lost opportunity, but let it go. Put an ad on Match. Be mature about it. Nobody likes a stalker.
The city will nail drivers on DUI even if they’re not legally drunk. Tourists visit here from temperate Salt Lake as much as wine-soaked Sonoma. Some people simply don’t like to drink, or don’t want to offend a dining partner who doesn’t drink. People have their reasons; please respect them. A desperate sales approach in a restaurant isn’t dining, but is akin to walking past those obnoxious mall kiosks, begging shoppers to try their hand creams, cell phones and jiggly colored pens.

I had brunch with a friend at The Boulevard Woodgrill in Clarendon last weekend. It was my first time at the restaurant. The hostesses were pleasant –and cute- and the service was good.
My friend and I both ordered the skirt steak and eggs. The steak was cooked to the correct level of doneness, and that is a rarity nowadays. The over easy eggs were also properly cooked, and the potatoes had flavorful spicing.
The problem is that there is a step that is situated in between the hostess’ station and the restaurant seating. It was impossible to enjoy my meal because of the sense of impending doom that the step emanates. It is an accident waiting to happen, as sooner or later someone is going to trip and get hurt.
The hostess said that a lawsuit is in progress, but the management does not want to turn the step into a ramp because they feel that people would still trip.
They do warn every person to watch their step as they walk them to their table, but people leaving their tables don’t get the warning. The step has faded letters stating “caution” and “watch your step”, but we still saw an older gentleman stumble. And, one person at a particular table -which happened to be me- gets to sit right over that step, hoping nobody trips, but witnessing when it actually happens.
After watching one man trip, hearing the hostesses warn customers as they seated them, and watching various parents lunge for their small children as they reach the step, I don’t think I will be returning to the restaurant. Well, they do have outdoor seating…
The Boulevard Woodgrill
2901 Wilson Boulevard
Arlington, Virginia 22201
(703) 875-9663

Well, it must be springtime, because I finally got out to Kaufmann’s Tavern in Gambrills, Maryland for the annual rite of bashing crabs with mallets and washing them down with gallons of beer. This place is sheer crabby magic, I swear. A half-hour drive out 50-E from downtown, it would be worth the trip even if one had to walk. (That being said, feminine wiles and/or a nice boy who will drive you there are advantageous.)
Go with a huge crowd of people if at all possible, and reserve the sunroom. It’s quiet enough to hear your companions even over the noise of mallets hitting crustaceans–I know if I had to lip-read in a loud and crowded joint….well, I wouldn’t, because I’d be busy bashing crabs. The waitresses might hate you a little for coming in with twenty people (that’s part of the charm of this place), but be nice and they’ll be calling you “Darlin'” before too long.
Hope it storms while you’re there, because it’s beautiful when it does that. (Alternatively, sit in one of the main dining areas on a night when local stand up comedians are performing. I can personally vouch for Adam Ruben, who appeared on the Kauffman’s stage recently.) Order several pitchers of beer, and the mussels and the rich cheesy crab dip and the enormous spicy peel-and-eat shrimp to snack on while you wait for your bushels of crabs to come out.
I would describe the crabs, but I’d feel terrible if you drooled all over your keyboard and shorted it out.