OpenTable just announced the participants for one of my favorite semiannual events - DC’s Restaurant Week.  Some of the city’s finest restaurants offer fixed price, three course meals for lunch and dinner.

DC Restaurant Week:
$20.08 3-Course Lunches
$35.08 3-Course Dinners

Book your reservations today on OpenTable.com as most of the time slots at the more expensive fill fast.

An occasional series where my friends and I go out to eat. And then tell you about it.

At the urging of a friend from school, we ventured to Top Chef contestant Spike Mendelsohn’s new restaurant on Capitol Hill: The Good Stuff Eatery on Friday night. As yet another entry in the DC burger scene (recently chronicled by the Post’s Tim Carman), I found myself wondering if a celebrity like Chef Spike could move product. The answer, as proven by the crowds on the sidewalk on Pennsylvania Ave. SE, is unquestionably “yes.”

Full review after the jump.

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Last Friday, me and the missus decided to dine in Old Town. We were craving Irish food; after our jaunt up in Maine a few weeks back and hitting several New England pubs we were feeling nostalgic for our Ireland walkabout back in 2005 and wanted to try getting back to that setting. Yes, yes, this is Virginia after all, but no harm in trying, right?

I’d read some reviews on O’Connell’s a while back and since it boasted itself as “a modern Irish restaurant in an ancient Irish setting” (from their website), we decided to give it a whirl.

We arrived right at 5 p.m., before the dinner crush on a typical spring weekend evening on King Street. After doing a quick check of the menu out front, we followed the pleasant and cheery hostess upstairs to the third floor. (As an aside, I love it when restaurants post their menus out front - saves me a heap of time of going in, scanning the menu and then bailing because I can’t find anything on it that waters my mouth.)

Seated in a corner along the long banister “corridor” connecting two of the older bars upstairs, the busboy was prompt in getting us water. So we dove into the menu and after some discussion, decided what to eat.

And then waited for our server. Read more

I dug into my first round of farm share strawberries last night, but if you’re not signed up or prefer to have someone else do the preparations you could get on over to Food Matters on Saturday for their Strawberry Festival. “Join us for free samples of strawberry desserts, strawberry-inspired menu items, and strawberry cocktails.”

My darling girlfriend and I went to Food Matters about three weeks ago after they were mentioned in an update mail I got from Local Harvest. She’s good about indulging my Michael Pollan disciple leanings and the promise of good food that is concerned with connecting eaters with origins was enough to interest both of us. Although it’s metro inaccessible and oddly located - just head East from Landmark Mall and turn at the eerily similar townhouses - the experience was not a disappointment.

My dearheart’s amish chicken - named for the origin, not its garb or way of life - was superb and had the subtle but recognizable taste of non-commercial foul. My pasta carbonara was similarly delicious. We sat at the bar and I was delighted to indulge in their Bell’s Oberon on draft, a fact that might be enough to get our Mr Bridge there all by itself.

The decor is on the edge of odd, reflecting the fact that this is a place with some identity issues - they have some cafeteria-type premade food in a walk-up case, as well as some farm fresh items such as eggs, as well as a sit-down restaurant area as well as a sizable bar. On the other hand, the layout includes an open plan kitchen which allows you to stand and watch the goings-ons without being in the middle of a bunch of your fellow eaters. As a bit of a cook voyeur I found this to be a great feature and if it bugged the people working they didn’t give any sign of it.

If you’re an Arlington-ite and possessed of a car I’d say this is a place worth a visit. We’ll be back.

My lovely wife and I went to Taverna Cretekou in Alexandria recently. The food was fabulous, as was the service. The highlight of our visit came after the meal, when the waiter read Elise’s fortune in her coffee grounds. Was it simply a ploy for a bigger tip? Probably, and likely it worked.

I highly recommend this restaurant. Fabulous food, great service and reasonable prices for an upscale place.

That’s right, kids, it’s a gorgeous day out. The kind we get all too precious few of as DC makes the transition between “cold and gloomy” to “humid and sweltering.”

So why are you sitting in front of a computer reading this? Get up! Go outside! Open the sunroof! Occupy a sidewalk table at your favorite restaurant! Go to the zoo!

But don’t stay here when you could be taking advantage of this.

Omg awesome outside

Originally uploaded by tiffany bridge

If you love wine but only know that it sometimes comes in red and other times in white (and sometimes it comes in a box), you should really think about taking a Wine Class for Beginners at the Whitemore House in Dupont. From the GiraMondo Wine Adventures website:

This class will cover the following topics:

- Where do wine flavors and aromas com from

- How are these aromas categorized

- How to pair food and wine

- What are the main differences between old world and new world wines

- Basic wine etiquette (restaurant, liquor store, party at home)

When it comes to wine etiquette, is there much more than pulling the cork and taking a swig? Well, besides letting the wine breath sometimes? Anyway, tonight’s class has done sold out, but there is another one scheduled for April 16th and 7:00PM. Until then, happy drinking! I know I’m looking forward to the weather warming up so I can crack open my Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand. A glass or two of that up on the roof deck, well, it just doesn’t get much better than that.

Photo by F1.4

(photo by bcostin)

So as previously mentioned, my wife and I had determined now was the right time for us to look for a home in Northern Virginia. (Considering my decades-long “dislike” of Maryland, it was automatically disqualified.)

This past weekend was our first outing with our Realtor to see what the area had to offer. We stuck to Springfield this weekend; no need to rush hither and yon right out of the gate.

We saw about 8 houses over the course of the last two days. Four were flat-out clunkers, two were ‘ok’, and two were outstanding! So much so we were hard-pressed during a late dinner at Mike’s American Restaurant to decide between the two - supposing we would place an offer so quickly from the start.

Needless to say, I’m amazed - and appalled - at the selection, even within a small five mile radius. Certain neighborhoods seemed to have ‘foreclosure’ or ‘for sale’ signs up nearly every other house. Others, you’d have a hard time finding even one.

A couple of the homes we visited were what I call “tired.” Scuffed walls, small holes, beaten appliances. Lived hard, then left vacant. Homes like that, I assign about $20K of additional “fix-up” money in my head - I’m no handyman, I’m gonna pay some guy to do it for me.

One home in particular you could tell was “rooms rented” - every door had a separate key, the carpet was beat to hell, and it LOOKED like a flophouse on the inside. You’d never know on the outside, though. We ‘passed’ on that one.

There was one place we went to that was still occupied, sorta. The house was a disaster; the two lower rooms were being ‘rented’, and it was just a sad testimony to the overeagerness of some people who bought over their heads and couldn’t keep above water.

Though I will pass on advice to this homeowner(s) - if you’re going to try selling your house, it would *probably* help if you, you know, CLEANED IT UP first. I know you’re supposed to look at the house and not the stuff, but geez! Nothing says “no way in hell” like old food along the baseboards, dirty clothes everywhere, and piles of junk “hidden” in the garage.

Bottom line? This first outing I’d give a B+. Two great possibilities, 4 disappointments. Prospects are looking good, though. I am really encouraged regarding the homes available for our projected price range.

Next week: the I-95 corridor (unless plans change).

Barbeque. It’s a controversial subject in these parts, and you need to look no further than Wikipedia’s entry on regional barbeque to see all manner of subtle protest of one state’s traditions over another. Some people prefer St. Louis-style ribs with a heavy tomato-based sauce. Others prefer North Carolina-style ribs with a good solid dry rub followed by thin vinegar-based sauce. Which one you choose specifies the kind of personal preference usually reserved for Religion, Politics or Sports Teams. It’s not a small deal.

When my friend Jonathan told me about the Rocklands re-opening on Lee Hwy in Virginia Square, I couldn’t have been more excited. For a long time, Rocklands shared a space with the pool-bar Carpool right off the Metro. But, apparently, the management agree expired in 2005, and since then Arlington has been left largely rib-less. Sure, tons of places served the dish, but none really gave it the deep and abiding respect and love that good ribs deserve. Four of us went over that way last night, the new location is next to the Georgetown Valet (and the Ron Paul Revolution World Headquarters) where Pica Deli used to be.

When you open the door, the sweet, tangy smell of barbeque wafts gentle out into the outside, followed by the hickory smoke that makes their food so good. Rocklands is an order-then-sit type of restaurant, with both family-style and individual-sized meals. Tiff and I had sandwiches (Lamb, Brisket) and some of their spicy onion rings, while our friends had a full slab of smoked ribs. As we ordered, they were moving full-sized briskets and pork shoulder from the smoker to the carving platform, and they were huge cuts of meat, steaming from the heat, and smelling like heaven to any barbeque lover.

Rocklands will be a favorite of ours, I’m sure. Welcome back, guys, we missed you.

Rocklands
3471 Washington Blvd.
Arlington, VA 22201
(703) 528-9663

Perhaps a result of yesterday’s Flickr outage that kept service out till 10pm our time, I could only find two pictures on Flickr from yesterday’s no pants non-revoluion. The first by Madeline Paige is one otherwise businesslike rider in a suit sans pants (you have some admirers dude - if you’re single go leave your contact info, you could land some dates for restaurant week) and the other is Aziz Y’s Metro Center shot of two anonymous people. I like the drawers with stars on thars.