Our National Christmas Tree Lighting Calamity

We won the lottery this year - the lottery for tickets to attend the 2011 National Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony in D.C. Participating in the nationally televised celebration led by President Obama and his family was supposed to be a memorable experience my family would cherish for years to come. It was memorable alright, but for all the wrong reasons.

After dealing with the dual problems of a full parking garage and empty Metro cards, my wife and I collapsed into our seats for the ride into the city. However, excited by their first ride on the subway, my boys were crawling around the seats like ants on candy crumbs.

It was only a short walk from the Farragut West stop to the Ellipse, the oval-shaped park just south of the White House, and the lengthy security lines we'd heard about weren't bad at all - but maybe that was because we arrived a full 90 minutes early. We passed through the metal detectors with nary a beep and found a dry spot on the lawn near some carolers.

Our tickets were standing room only, which meant we were far enough away from the action that we couldn't read the closed captioning on the "big" screens. Closed captioning would've been nice because I swear I've heard louder speakers in college dormitories. But I'm getting ahead of myself; we nearly left before the show even started.

The standing room within the snow fencing wasn't too bad, but my boys don't react well to being penned in. As the flag atop the White House fluttered in the distance, my boys dodged adult legs like traffic pylons and spun themselves dizzy in the warm sunshine. The boys' behavior deteriorated quickly, and no amount of threats on behalf of Santa Claus slowed them down. With the Washington Monument and the cops' mobile observation tower looming above us, my exasperated wife suggested we leave. Giving up and packing it in is normally my overreaction to unbearable public fiascoes, so I was quite pleased to play the calm and reasonable parent as I backed her off the ledge. (I seem to remember cheerleaders with pom-poms showing up out of nowhere and chanting my name.)

As dusk set in, the marble monument glowed orange and pink against the fading, cloudless blue sky. A circling helicopter nearly drowned out the seasonal songs of the carolers, but my boys were too busy fighting over iPhone games to notice. Although I couldn't hear the music and could barely see the screens, I assume the band was good. But the thing that caught the standing crowd's attention was the roar of the police motorcycles leading the Presidential motorcade of black SUVs. Smartphones and cameras were thrust into the air in unison with the hope of capturing an image of Mr. Obama's arrival.

As the gathered guests awaited the beginning of the program, my boys wrestled on the ground. I must say they created a nice perimeter for us, as no one wanted to stand too near. My two young heathens threw handfuls of grass at each other during the national prayer. As everyone reverently bowed their heads, my kids were giggling and rough-housing at their feet.

My wife and I boosted the boys onto our shoulders for a better view of the distant entertainment. Honestly, unless you were seven-foot tall with super vision you couldn't see much from where we stood. However, when the President was introduced the crowd showed respect and grew quiet enough for everyone to hear his address. The silenced crowd permitted a hushed chuckle when my four-year-old repeatedly screamed out, "I love you Obama! I love you!"

After the President and his family threw the switch on the big tree's lights, we threw out any plans of staying for Kermit the Frog or will.I.am's appearances and made an early exit. As we headed toward Potbelly for some sandwiches and a public restroom, my boys asked every cop about their gun. Our first National Christmas Tree lighting ceremony will be remembered forever, but maybe not for the reasons we had first hoped.

La Tasca Does Vegetarian Tapas Right

The American Dietetic Association is celebrating National Nutrition Month in March. The theme for 2011 is Eating Right With Color.

I recently published some suggestions to chefs on ways to provide more interesting vegetarian options on their menus. Although I don't claim to be a vegetarian, I am eating far less meat as part of a new low-cholesterol diet. My wife went vegetarian over a decade ago, and meals out are a lot more satisfying for both of us when she's able to eat more than just pasta, salad, and side dishes.

On Saturday night my wife and I hit the the streets of Arlington, Va., in search of a good meal. A Moroccan joint looked promising, but the lighting was too bright. The Thai place was empty and we were already familiar with the Indian restaurant. Then we stumbled across La Tasca, a local franchise that serves a sprawling menu of Spanish tapas (small plates of food to share). There are more options for meat eaters than vegetarians, but the menu does include a section dedicated to vegetarian dishes, and it didn't disappoint.

Our first experience with La Tasca in Alexandria, Va., was just average. The food was tasty, but sharing food between a vegetarian and a meat eater didn't work. In contrast, our affair in Arlington was fun and flavorful. We started with rustic bread and three olive oils for dipping. Then came the battered and fried eggplant slices and the delectable Cabrales cheese sauce.

We hadn't finished our appetizers when the multiple plates of tapas arrived. Everyone has had onion rings, but our plate of onion and red and green pepper rocked. The breading was light, flaky, and oh, so tasty.

If you like homefries, La Tasca's version is complemented by both a mild hot sauce and a garlic aioli. Crispy taters, spicy, creamy dips - how can you go wrong?

The wild mushrooms were fantastic. I've really grown to become a fanatic of funky fungi. The shrooms were nice and firm and the olive oil didn't drown out the earthy flavors.

I wasn't blown away by the paella, but my date loved it. Both of us were impressed by the spinach and pine nut croquettes. The balls were crispy on the outside and creamy and wonderful on the inside. Imagine a savory piece of Lindt chocolate. If you were driving, you'd have to pull over to enjoy the taste rush.

Our meal climaxed with a plate of Canelones de Berenjenas, one of the best vegetarian creations I've ever sampled. The La Tasca menu description says, "Eggplant rolls stuffed with herb-roasted roma tomatoes, grilled, sweet piquillo peppers, and a mild goat cheese." That just doesn't capture the volume of saliva generated by the scent and flavor of these magical rolls. Presented on the plate, they looked like they needed a drizzle of some sauce, but after a bite it was obvious that the flavors had their own legs. (Seriously one of the best things I've ever eaten.) We spent 15 minutes trying to figure out how La Tasca softened the eggplant to make it roll without being soggy, and still couldn't solve the mystery of this masterpiece menu item. Eggplants are pretty easy and fun to grow, so we'll be trying this ourselves this summer.

So if you're in the D.C. or Baltimore area, look for La Tasca for an awesome menu of Spanish tapas. Their selection of sangria is on full display in big vats and wine lovers will not be disappointed by the depth of the list. For me, the bottle of Alhambra Negro was the perfect beer to keep my taste buds moist.

Enjoy.
I'd love to hear your comments and suggestions on eating vegetarian.

Big City, Small World

We knew the pizza and pong would be tasty and fun after seeing Comet Ping Pong featured on The Food Network's hit show Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives with Guy Fieri, but who knew date night would lead to a chat with a Pulitzer Prize nominated author about the Maharishi School in Fairfield, Iowa over Peruvian cocktails and beers in D.C.

It happened just like that. On a whim we decided to book a babysitter and take a night for ourselves. So with the man-van parked at the Springfield Metro station, we took a carefree train ride into D.C. to sample some new pizza and battle for ping pong bragging rights.

Comet's neon sign may be visible from the moon. I've never visited the lunar rock, but the sign is a bright beacon to any and all crispy crust, wood-fired pizza lovers in our corner of the solar system. Seriously, the pizza was awesome, the beer selection was more than respectable, and the ping pong action was hot.

Comet features three full-size tables and one mini table in the back, and one full-size table outside- yes, outside. The outdoor seating area was packed with pizza people! So dinner was a rockin' success, except that the online review we read had us hop off at one Metro station too soon. Luckily the cabs were prevalent and we caught a relaxing ride north. Last thing about the Comet: have fun finding the restrooms. I mean it - have fun!

So the pepperoni and cheese of this blog post was our bartender at Los Andes in Adams Morgan. The basement bar beneath the Peruvian restaurant Los Canteras caught Angie's attention because she saw a lone patron through the barred windows. Well, barred windows, dark stairs to a subterranean bar, and anything in Spanish is usually enough to draw us in for a drink.

The lone patron turned out to be the chef, and he quickly withdrew to the kitchen to prepare for the dinner rush. (We're parents, so date night starts around Boca del Vista time, i.e. early) So with the chef cooking, we had the barman's full attention. He slid me a bottle of Cusquena, which he described as a fuller beer than Peru's alternate hopped beverage option, Cristal. (Cusquena's slogan is "the gold of the Incas") My wife went with a Macchu Pisco, an egg-free twist on the bar's signature Pisco Sour cocktail.

My wife shared a story about our friends, who married themselves along the Inca trail on the way to the mountain ruins of Machu Picchu. The barman listened quietly, a knowing smirk forming in the corners of his mouth. After listening to her story, he divulged that he was co-owner of a B&B in a small Peruvian village near the Machu Picchu trailhead.

As the conversation flowed on, we learned that he had been a travel writer for the Washington Post and Time magazine. In fact, he once ran the Post's Moscow bureau in Russia. I didn't learn until later, during a Google search on the way home, that he was fluent in five languages and had been nominated for a Pulitzer for his writing. He was much too modest to brag about such an honor.

Maybe the most interesting thing to us was that one of his brothers had run a restaurant in Ames, Iowa, where we had gone to college. He couldn't remember the name of the joint, but we left our email address in case it came to him. After reading his profile on a travel writers Web site, I think he'll follow through. As a former Post reporter, I'm sure he won't be able to sleep until he knows the restaurant's name.

What a great night out! The best thing about living in and around big cities is meeting fellow transplants. Everyone has a story to tell. We were just lucky enough to be served by a well-traveled, professional storyteller and Pulitzer Prize nominee from Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Stop the Train! Our plans have changed.

The Metro is a great way to get around the D.C. metro area. The cars are clean, the riders are polite, the stations feel safe and many of the outer lines are above ground. It's usually pretty reliable. Usually. But I'll think twice the next time I gamble the success of a date night on the reliability of its service.

Hiring a babysitter is a rare occasion for my wife and me. At $15/per hour, we choose our nights carefully. So when our train crawled out of the Springfield station slower than a sunburned drunkard on a Jersey beach, we began to doubt our chosen mode of transportation. The conductor's voice crackled over our car's speakers. It was hard to make out what he said, but it sure sounded like he said all Blue and Yellow trains were terminating at Crystal City due to police action at the Pentagon City station. Though the cherry blossom trees ringing the Tidal Basin across the Potomac River were merely a couple miles away, they might as well have been in Japan. This train wasn't going to D.C.

Our plans had been fairly modest but had promised to forge some new memories. We were going to experience the cherry blossoms at dusk on the final weekend of the festival, and then walk to The Pour House on Capitol Hill to find out who the true Skeeball champ was. Now we were trapped one stop from where we'd started, the clock was ticking, the frustration was mounting and the train wasn't moving.

The night could have been ruined before it even began, but we decided to take control of the situation. A quick look at my iPhone revealed that there was indeed a police situation ahead and it was a bomb threat. After living in New York City for four years and around the D.C. area for five, we knew that this wasn't going to be resolved quickly. Suspicious packages aren't taken lightly, especially ones near the Pentagon. So we bailed on our D.C. plan and hopped out to catch the next train to Old Town Alexandria.

Just across the street from the King Street station we saw a Hilton Hotel with an attached bar called Seagar's. We needed to regroup, relax and relaunch our date night. Upscale hotel bars are always fun. The bartenders are always professional and the wine and beer options are plentiful. Well, almost always. We should have recognized the impending disaster when a large vase full of cut cherry tree branches greeted us in the lobby. Slap! Thanks for the reminder, Hilton!

So we bellied up to the posh bar on comfy stools and admired the back-lit bottles of expensive booze and exotic wines. I ordered a bottle of beer an Angie chose a nice red. I don't know what ever happened to my beer, but the bartender returned to tell us that Angie's wine was out of stock. This was not a short process. We sat there for ten minutes empty-handed, our night teetering on the brink of disaster, and we began to wonder why we had left the house to begin with. The barman finally returned (without my beer) and asked Angie for a second choice. We politely declined and told him we'd try another watering hole.

Luckily, O'Shaughnessy's, a true drinker's pub, was only a block away. The bar is located above a deli on King Street and seemed like the answer to our prayers. Unfortunately, the bar was one of the few that still allows smoking, but the windows were open and a good breeze was keeping the air fresh. The portly barman said he was doing me a favor when he discouraged my attempt to order the house ale. A game of pool would have been nice, but an almost comical "Out of Order" placard informed us that pool would not be played this evening.

We looked at the Washington Post's Going Out Guide application on my iPhone to locate a good restaurant. We were surrounded by options, so we knocked back our Sierra Nevadas and joined the throngs of early evening revelers on the street below.

We popped into Tiffany's Tavern for a quick one and asked if anyone had heard of The PX, a modern speakeasy we'd just read about. The first woman hadn't heard of it, but her coworker had. With loose directions to look for the blue light on South Columbus Street, we headed down the road.

After a firm rap on the door, a well-dressed woman opened the door a crack and I told her we were there for The PX. She opened the door and allowed us to enter, but I was disappointed she didn't use the traditional sliding window to check us out first. She escorted us up steep stairs past a hardwood bar to a small sitting room. An ornate chandelier dangled from the high ceiling. A smartly dressed couple sipped cocktails on one couch. A pair of women chatted quietly on another sofa. Angie and I settled in for some nice red wine. The atmosphere reminded me of some of the eastern European lounges in Astoria, Queens we used to frequent.

After being escorted back down the stairs, we headed to the Overwood for dinner. The wood-fired kitchen is off the normal tourist route by a couple blocks. I appreciated the large glass facade and enjoyed a potent pint of Old Rasputin Imperial Stout and some spinach artichoke dip before my steak arrived. Our meal provided a nice cap on an evening that nearly never started. The episode reminded me that good food, good drinks and good company can rescue a date night from the ashes. And I'll ride Metro again, but if our plans begin in D.C., our vehicle may be parked there too.