Our nation's capital... again
May. 8th, 2019 03:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sarea
Last week (late April/early May), my coworker C. and I went to Washington, D.C., where we attended a privacy conference and took a test to get our privacy certifications. It was two full days of a class designed to prep you for the test. C. did a TON of studying on his own, before and during the trip, while I did... not. I amassed maybe two hours of studying total, lol. Also, any hopes I had for studying while in DC went down the drain went my "aunt" arrived, making me so physically exhausted that every time I cracked open one of the books I literally fell asleep. :))))) The test itself was 2 1/2 hours long, and I'm pretty sure I failed. Since he Hermioned it, I'm fairly sure he passed, even though he feels like he failed. Oh shut up, Chermione.
The point of this post, therefore, is not about that, but about the places we went to eat while in town! It was our third trip to DC in about two years, and while I love DC and have a soft spot for it always due to having lived there, I really don't need to be back again any time soon.
I upgraded myself to first class for both legs of my flight to DCA (stopped in Minneapolis), which cost $318.adelagia and jade_okelani felt it was a no-brainer, and I always cave to peer pressure. On the way back I stopped in Detroit, and decided to upgrade my second leg but not the first. The first leg was only 1.5 hours long, while the second was 4.5 hours. Up until two days before the flight the upgrade cost was $700, but then that day dropped to $140 so I snatched it... it was the last seat in first class. Mwahahaha.
Day One (Monday)
Lunch: We were both traveling.
Dinner: We had originally planned to go to Kogiya, a KBBQ place in Annandale, which we've been twice before. But... it's like a 30 min Lyft ride there, and I could tell C. wasn't really feeling up for it. So instead he found a list of recs from Eater, and we both agreed that Zeppelin, a sushi/yakitori place, sounded good. Wellllllll... We tried a bunch of their yakitori and sushi. it was OK. The food was really only okay at best, and it was horribly loud, just like at Quarters. We had a sweet server named Charlie, but he was the highlight of the meal.
Afterward, we weren't stuffed to the gills, so we decided to stop into a Shake Shack LOL. We split a cheeseburger and a "Logan Swirl," which sounds pretty dirty but is just their local concrete. The location was Logan Circle. Get it??? Anyway, it was pretty dang delicious. This second "meal" really hit the spot hahaha.
Day Two (Tuesday)
Breakfast: The hot breakfast at the Hilton, where I was staying, because it's free for Diamond-status members (which I have due to a credit card). We were both underwhelmed by it.
Lunch: We decided to skip lunch, since we'd eaten breakfast and we had an early dinner scheduled. We just got some Starbucks drinks and sat outside.
Dinner: We wanted to return to Rose's Luxury, a place we had been introduced to the last time we were in DC. They do same-day reservations that open at 9am, but they filled up so quickly that we were only able to grab an early 5:45pm spot. :/ That meant we had to leave class early, but I was like, "If we can't miss the last 15 minutes of a class, we were never gonna pass anyway."
We considered getting their prix fixe for $75/pp, but decided against it because it came with caviar, foie gras and another fancy thing that is, like, FINE, but that neither of us particularly enjoyed. The thing that made it most tempting was that it came with fried chicken, which was not available a la carte on the menu. Instead, we just ordered off the menu, getting the lychee salad (the only item, I believe, that remained from the menu we saw last time), hand-pulled stracciatella, strawberry pasta (a savory dish! Where the sauce is made of strawberries!), spring pea primavera, and "South Carolina brisket as done by a North Carolinian" -- and they also gave us complimentary campfire carrots. All sooooooo delicious. Rose's never disappoints!
Day Three (Wednesday)
Breakfast: Founding Farmers. We both had the beet juice drink, which was the best thing. The other stuff was really underwhelming.
Lunch: Skipped again in favor of Starbucks due to having had a filling breakfast, and a dinner we were really looking forward to.
Dinner: Joe's Prime Steak and Seafood. We loooooooooove Joe's. I first had it in Miami, but C. and I have been there several times, and it just never disappoints. Yes, it's really hella expensive, but it's one of our favorite meals whenever we go. This time we started with the tuna poke, which was very yummy. We also ordered fried chicken "for the table," and they even do fried chicken excellently. C. and I both prefer dark meat, though, so we weren't able to choke down the breast pieces completely. I ordered the steak special that night, which was a chili-rubbed rib eye with a piece of king crab leg and one medium stone crab claw. It reinforced the fact that the stone crab claws really aren't that flavorful so we probably don't ever have to get them again (they are also incredibly costly -- 5 large claws for $90). The king crab was, as always, delicious, and of course the steak was done perfectly. C. got the filet mignon with lobster tail, which I helpfully ate half of, and he helped me with my steak when I inevitably could not eat it all. Our sides were the sauteed spinach and mashed potatoes. After dinner we both got decaf coffees and split a slice of key lime pie, which Joe's does better than anyone else, period.
Day Four (Thursday)
Lunch: Rasika, an Indian restaurant recommended to us by our coworker C. who lived in DC for years. The palak chat was excellent. The other food was good -- we got chicken tikka, chicken tandoori, a roti, a garlic naan, and some mango lassi. Also, I had made reservations at the West End location, but C. didn't realize it and led us to the other location. Oops.
Dinner: Nama Sushi Bar. I'm not sure where I read about this place, but it was all right. There was nothing at all wrong with the food, it was good even. But we've been to like three different, highly regarded sushi places in DC now (including the one Michelle Obama apparently likes most), and none of them have blown us away, so I said we should probably stop trying to do sushi in DC, and C. agreed.
Dessert: Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams. I got a mix of peach cobber and ... I can't remember something else. C. got coffee and something else. He loved it, but I just thought it was okay. They have nothing on Salt & Straw imho.
Day Five (Friday)
Lunch: Momofuku. We have gone to Momofuku on every trip, sometimes more than once, lol. However we keep forgetting that they don't do ramen during lunch. I ordered the yuzu lemonade, because they always have it and it's always super delicious, and this time they had their version of jjajangmyeon (black bean noodles). It was okay. There are some dishes that don't need to be fancy, and this is one of them. C. got the branzino ssam, and that was actually REALLY delicious. We also shared their pork bing (think Asian burrito made with green onion pancake), which I did not particularly car for. C. also ordered a bing with cultured butter and honey, and that was VERY good. For dessert we both got the cereal milk affogato, but while I love their cereal milk soft serve, and love affogatos, I did not care for the two of them together. The saltiness of the soft serve didn't go well with the coffee, I thought, and also I could not taste the cereal milk, which is the best part! C., again in contrary to my opinion, LOVED it.
From 4-6:30pm was the test.
Dinner: Bistrot du Coin. Another restaurant recommended to us by C., who's French. We really liked this place a lot, though C. thinks it was the best meal we had in DC and I didn't think THAT highly of it. I would choose either Rose's or Joe's. We both ordered French onion soup to start, which was a mistake. We should have just split one, because while it was super delicious, it was just toooooooo much. There was like a pound of cheese on top! We also got their special pate of the day, which was like... pork and mushrooms or something. That was very good. We also both got steak frites, which was a mistake, because we should have split one and then gotten something else totally different to try. They have like 10 different kinds of steak frites though; I got hanger steak while he got tenderloin. For dinner we got decaf coffees and split a sundae that had both vanilla and chocolate ice creams, as well as sliced pear. It was quite good.
C. really wanted to walk the mile back to my hotel after dinner, but I didn't want to because my purse was super heavy from books and other stuff, and my back had been bothering me, so I just wanted to grab a Lyft. But he offered to carry my purse, so I said okay. And he did, the whole way. HAHAHAHAHA. I could have walked any length of time given that! It was a SUPER nice night, too, with the perfect temp... you could wear anything and still feel comfortable.
The point of this post, therefore, is not about that, but about the places we went to eat while in town! It was our third trip to DC in about two years, and while I love DC and have a soft spot for it always due to having lived there, I really don't need to be back again any time soon.
I upgraded myself to first class for both legs of my flight to DCA (stopped in Minneapolis), which cost $318.
adelagia and jade_okelani felt it was a no-brainer, and I always cave to peer pressure. On the way back I stopped in Detroit, and decided to upgrade my second leg but not the first. The first leg was only 1.5 hours long, while the second was 4.5 hours. Up until two days before the flight the upgrade cost was $700, but then that day dropped to $140 so I snatched it... it was the last seat in first class. Mwahahaha.Day One (Monday)
Lunch: We were both traveling.
Dinner: We had originally planned to go to Kogiya, a KBBQ place in Annandale, which we've been twice before. But... it's like a 30 min Lyft ride there, and I could tell C. wasn't really feeling up for it. So instead he found a list of recs from Eater, and we both agreed that Zeppelin, a sushi/yakitori place, sounded good. Wellllllll... We tried a bunch of their yakitori and sushi. it was OK. The food was really only okay at best, and it was horribly loud, just like at Quarters. We had a sweet server named Charlie, but he was the highlight of the meal.
Afterward, we weren't stuffed to the gills, so we decided to stop into a Shake Shack LOL. We split a cheeseburger and a "Logan Swirl," which sounds pretty dirty but is just their local concrete. The location was Logan Circle. Get it??? Anyway, it was pretty dang delicious. This second "meal" really hit the spot hahaha.
Day Two (Tuesday)
Breakfast: The hot breakfast at the Hilton, where I was staying, because it's free for Diamond-status members (which I have due to a credit card). We were both underwhelmed by it.
Lunch: We decided to skip lunch, since we'd eaten breakfast and we had an early dinner scheduled. We just got some Starbucks drinks and sat outside.
Dinner: We wanted to return to Rose's Luxury, a place we had been introduced to the last time we were in DC. They do same-day reservations that open at 9am, but they filled up so quickly that we were only able to grab an early 5:45pm spot. :/ That meant we had to leave class early, but I was like, "If we can't miss the last 15 minutes of a class, we were never gonna pass anyway."
We considered getting their prix fixe for $75/pp, but decided against it because it came with caviar, foie gras and another fancy thing that is, like, FINE, but that neither of us particularly enjoyed. The thing that made it most tempting was that it came with fried chicken, which was not available a la carte on the menu. Instead, we just ordered off the menu, getting the lychee salad (the only item, I believe, that remained from the menu we saw last time), hand-pulled stracciatella, strawberry pasta (a savory dish! Where the sauce is made of strawberries!), spring pea primavera, and "South Carolina brisket as done by a North Carolinian" -- and they also gave us complimentary campfire carrots. All sooooooo delicious. Rose's never disappoints!
Day Three (Wednesday)
Breakfast: Founding Farmers. We both had the beet juice drink, which was the best thing. The other stuff was really underwhelming.
Lunch: Skipped again in favor of Starbucks due to having had a filling breakfast, and a dinner we were really looking forward to.
Dinner: Joe's Prime Steak and Seafood. We loooooooooove Joe's. I first had it in Miami, but C. and I have been there several times, and it just never disappoints. Yes, it's really hella expensive, but it's one of our favorite meals whenever we go. This time we started with the tuna poke, which was very yummy. We also ordered fried chicken "for the table," and they even do fried chicken excellently. C. and I both prefer dark meat, though, so we weren't able to choke down the breast pieces completely. I ordered the steak special that night, which was a chili-rubbed rib eye with a piece of king crab leg and one medium stone crab claw. It reinforced the fact that the stone crab claws really aren't that flavorful so we probably don't ever have to get them again (they are also incredibly costly -- 5 large claws for $90). The king crab was, as always, delicious, and of course the steak was done perfectly. C. got the filet mignon with lobster tail, which I helpfully ate half of, and he helped me with my steak when I inevitably could not eat it all. Our sides were the sauteed spinach and mashed potatoes. After dinner we both got decaf coffees and split a slice of key lime pie, which Joe's does better than anyone else, period.
Day Four (Thursday)
Lunch: Rasika, an Indian restaurant recommended to us by our coworker C. who lived in DC for years. The palak chat was excellent. The other food was good -- we got chicken tikka, chicken tandoori, a roti, a garlic naan, and some mango lassi. Also, I had made reservations at the West End location, but C. didn't realize it and led us to the other location. Oops.
Dinner: Nama Sushi Bar. I'm not sure where I read about this place, but it was all right. There was nothing at all wrong with the food, it was good even. But we've been to like three different, highly regarded sushi places in DC now (including the one Michelle Obama apparently likes most), and none of them have blown us away, so I said we should probably stop trying to do sushi in DC, and C. agreed.
Dessert: Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams. I got a mix of peach cobber and ... I can't remember something else. C. got coffee and something else. He loved it, but I just thought it was okay. They have nothing on Salt & Straw imho.
Day Five (Friday)
Lunch: Momofuku. We have gone to Momofuku on every trip, sometimes more than once, lol. However we keep forgetting that they don't do ramen during lunch. I ordered the yuzu lemonade, because they always have it and it's always super delicious, and this time they had their version of jjajangmyeon (black bean noodles). It was okay. There are some dishes that don't need to be fancy, and this is one of them. C. got the branzino ssam, and that was actually REALLY delicious. We also shared their pork bing (think Asian burrito made with green onion pancake), which I did not particularly car for. C. also ordered a bing with cultured butter and honey, and that was VERY good. For dessert we both got the cereal milk affogato, but while I love their cereal milk soft serve, and love affogatos, I did not care for the two of them together. The saltiness of the soft serve didn't go well with the coffee, I thought, and also I could not taste the cereal milk, which is the best part! C., again in contrary to my opinion, LOVED it.
From 4-6:30pm was the test.
Dinner: Bistrot du Coin. Another restaurant recommended to us by C., who's French. We really liked this place a lot, though C. thinks it was the best meal we had in DC and I didn't think THAT highly of it. I would choose either Rose's or Joe's. We both ordered French onion soup to start, which was a mistake. We should have just split one, because while it was super delicious, it was just toooooooo much. There was like a pound of cheese on top! We also got their special pate of the day, which was like... pork and mushrooms or something. That was very good. We also both got steak frites, which was a mistake, because we should have split one and then gotten something else totally different to try. They have like 10 different kinds of steak frites though; I got hanger steak while he got tenderloin. For dinner we got decaf coffees and split a sundae that had both vanilla and chocolate ice creams, as well as sliced pear. It was quite good.
C. really wanted to walk the mile back to my hotel after dinner, but I didn't want to because my purse was super heavy from books and other stuff, and my back had been bothering me, so I just wanted to grab a Lyft. But he offered to carry my purse, so I said okay. And he did, the whole way. HAHAHAHAHA. I could have walked any length of time given that! It was a SUPER nice night, too, with the perfect temp... you could wear anything and still feel comfortable.
