Restaurant Week Rundown

And another Restaurant Week has come to an end.  Twice a year, restaurants offer price-fixed lunches and dinners, and if you do a little research, you can find some awesome deals.

Step 1: Seek out the list of participating restaurants
Step 2: Check out their normal menu.  This year, dinner costs you $35.13 for 3 courses.  If you would normally pay this amount, or less, at a given restaurant, don't bother going for restaurant week.  Look for restaurants whose entrees are normally $25-$30+ to ensure you're getting a good deal.
Step 3: Check out their restaurant week menu.  Most of the time, restaurants will pare down their menu for restaurant week, giving you a handful of choices for each course.  Sometimes they only offer their less pricey options, so it not longer becomes a good deal.  A select few will offer their entire menu.  These are your best options.  But in the end, make sure their restuarant week menu has items that you're actually interested in eating.
Step 4: Make a reservation.  They fill up fast, so it's best to have a few choices.  And if you can't get in for dinner, you can always try lunch.
Step 5: Enjoy your meal! Be sure to tip really, really well, you are basically getting a free appetizer and dessert...your server has to come to your table a lot and restaurant week is really busy, so take care of your servers :)

Now, here's where/what we chose to eat...

Our first stop was Bibiana.  Friends had said good things about it, and initially, they were offering their entire menu.  Upon arrival, we were handed a pared down menu, but there were still great options to choose from.  We started with a couple cocktails while we perused the menu.  We ordered up a Speciale (ginger infused vodka, grapefruit, rosemary, and cherry bitters), and an Aged Negroni (gin, vermouth, and barrel-aged Campari).  Justin commented that his Negroni was one of the better ones he's ever had because of the balance between the sweetness and bitterness.  My Speciale had a nice spiciness from the ginger, while the grapefruit gave it a nice citrusy finish.  For our first courses, I went with the arancini, which were stuffed with mushrooms.  They were perfectly crispy on the outside, and nice and gooey on the inside.  Justin chose the squid, stuffed with white beans and soppresatta.  It was cooked to perfection.  For entrees, I went with the grilled cod, and Justin opted for the black truffle risotto.  He has a weakness for truffles, so this was a no-brainer.  The risotto was so creamy, buttery and not overly truffle-y, while the rice was cooked to a perfect al dente.  My cod had a nice smokiness that permeated into the olive oil mashed potatoes.  The tomatoes, olives, and capers that adorned the plate added a nice saltiness to the dish too.  And to round out the meal, I chose a coconut panna cotta with roasted pineapple, and Justin chose the torta, an almond pastry topped with strawberry jam, toasted almonds, and cream.  Both desserts had the perfect amount of sweetness, and were a perfect way to round out the meal.

Part 2 of restaurant week took us to Mintwood Place.  It's a very quaint and rustic spot in Adams Morgan.  But don't worry...it's removed from the craziness of the bars on 18th St.  While we perused the menu, we had to start with the maple pork cracklin's.  These were an additional item, but we couldn't resist.  They were perfectly crisp and airy, and served with a dipping sauce that complemented them perfectly.  As for drinks, I chose the Woodrow Wilson (gin, hum liquor, elderflower, and cava), which had the perfect amount of sweetness and some bubbles.  Justin opted for the Farewell to the 20s (rum, aperol, lime, spice bitters and orange syrup).  He's a sucker for anything with aperol, and the rum was a nice compliment.  For our first courses, I went with the smoked potato, sunchoke and mussel chowder.  The presentation was superb...the potatoes, sunchokes and mussels were mounded in the center of the bowl, and the rich broth was poured around it, tableside.  The broth was exactly what you'd want in a chowder; thick and creamy, but with some sweetness from the mussels.  Justin went with the wood-grilled confit beef heart.  The beef heart was cooked perfectly, and was atop a bed of greens and a poached egg.  For our main dishes, I chose the dorade, which was grilled and served with fennel, olives and onions.  Justin went with the grilled Amish chicken, served with wax and green beans.  The skin on the chicken was perfectly crispy, while the meat was still moist and juicy.  And for dessert, I opted for the baked Alaska, while Justin chose the pecan pie with a creme fraiche drizzle.  The baked Alaska came with a bit of a show.  Some alcohol was set ablaze, tableside, and poured over the dessert.  Rather than the outside being covered in merengue, it was engulfed in marshmallow, and within the white cake was some strawberry sorbet.  It was refreshing, and a great way to end the meal.  Justin's pecan pie was equally delicious, and the creme fraiche was a nice, fresh component to the dish that cut the cloying sweetness of that ooey gooey delicious pie filling.  The crust was nice and brown and buttery and flaky and um...crusty!?!?!

Overall, both restaurants proved to be great choices, and places we'll likely return to in the future.  Now we have about 6 months until we have to decide where to go for summer restaurant week.

Cleaning Out the Fridge

With the holidays approaching and both of us heading out of town soon, we need to clear out the fridge and try to eat our remaining CSA goodies.  We haven't been cooking as much this past week between holiday parties, pop-up tacos (more to come on this soon), and birthday celebrations, so we have quite a bit of food to get through.  So I turned to my trusty friend, Gojee, to see what kinds of recipes he had to offer.

If you haven't heard me say it before, you'll hear it now...I LOVE this website.  You can type in what ingredients you have, things you don't like, things you crave, etc., and it will spit out a slideshow of recipes that meet your criteria.  The main veggies we need to use up are the kale and potatoes.  In those ingredients went into the "I Have" field, and out came 100 recipes.  Since we also have onion (white and green) from the CSA, and some eggs in the fridge, we settled on the Spansh tortilla with kale.

First things first...slice the potatoes.  Here's where I realized having a mandoline would really come in handy. But the box grater worked fine enough.  Once sliced, we layered them into the pan with some olive oil, salt and pepper, to get nice and crispy and brown.

While those were cooking, I sliced half of the white onion, and a few green onions.  We also deribbed the kale.  Is deribbed a word?  If not, it should be.  Once the potatoes were golden brown, we tossed in the onions to sweat them out a bit.  The kale followed shortly thereafter.

While that was all cooking, I beat the eggs...all 3 of them.  Yeah...here's where I should've checked how many eggs we had left before we started cooking.  Lesson learned.  Once the kale was wilted down, we dumped in our eggs, trying to distribute them throughout the big pan.  It only took a few minutes for them to cook up, and we were ready to eat.

To top it off, we threw a dollop of chipotle sour cream on top.  This was leftover from last week's sweet potato latkes.

And since I had a couple oranges, we decided to make a little orange crush cocktail.  I flexed my muscles a bit and squeezed the juice from the 2 oranges.

To that, we added some Aperol, vodka, and fresh mint.

If you like cocktails, and don't have stainless steel straws, you need to get some.  Thank you, Tiffany, for sending me some.  They get so icy cold in your drink, and just enhance your cocktail sipping experience.  Although we were lacking about 4 eggs, it was still a tasty, filling meal.