central michel richard, 1001 pennsylvania avenue nw, dc

my beloved central. it's pronounced "sen 'TRAHL" just so you know. i will try to keep this on the up and up and report as unbiased as possible.

you see, it's hard to do though. having cooked there, i've sampled nearly everything on the menu at one time or another. i could go on and on and on but i need to keep this succinct.

i cooked for michel richard for nearly three years all together, a third of that time at central. i loved central the first time i went - two birthdays ago, after they'd just opened. i love the concept of this restaurant - it's open and airy with great lighting, cool seating no matter where you're placed. (i prefer the bar area.) i love that michel's big jolly face is plastered on the back wall, though if your eyes don't focus properly it just looks like a big red and white abstract painting. i think the wall of glass holding all the glorious bottles of wine is genius. i love the sculpture of stacked oversized plates greeting you at the door. and of course the view of the kitchen is probably best since i know what really goes on in there....watch next time you visit. pay attention to what's going on in there. it's not a picnic; it's not for the weak at heart. it's a crazy show and if you look carefully you'll realize you can see and hear some of the magic of cedric's kitchen. ok i might miss it a little. while all this attention to detail in the decor of central is important in creating an atmosphere, what it comes down to is the food. the food is is the central focus.

back to the food. well here i chose to spend another birthday. i know how much effort goes into each dish. i know that each menu item was designed with love and creativity and care and is executed with pride, technique, attention, top quality and then more love.

this was a birthday i didn't feel like going out at all for (i want to stop getting older for crying out loud, i just want it to stop already!) i told the girls early in the day: game off, i don't want to go out and celebrate. i didn't give them the gory details because they're ridiculous: i didn't feel pretty, didn't feel motivated to go out, didn't have anything to wear, felt fat, i didn't want my girlfriends spending a bunch of money, just got back from a week of drinking and eating in the islands, blah, blah, blah.

i had plenty of reasons not to go out. but then i realized: i am tan in february. i am so going out. so i emailed the girls: game on. i emailed my friend and chef, cedric, to tell him i'm comin' in for my birthday, hoping they'd have key space in the bar area for us.

oh the good karma (barma) we had - and help from bartender friends who tipped us off about who was leaving from the tables in the bar! yippee. there were just 6 of us. nice, manageable group (i don't like it when there's 10-12 of us and you can't talk, it's an unruly number of people to fit places, etc., probably because i'm officially a dinosaur/stick-in-the-mud).

we had at first a too-sweet bottle of sparkling (probably a prosecco or maybe it was the rose, it's a little blurry). we quickly remedied that by drinking it off and ordering a different bottle, i think the gosset brut excellence. i popped over to the kitchen to say hi to my friends and colleagues working. (while i love to work in the kitchen, i think i'm still glad i don't right now, especially because i can enjoy a night like this like it's meant to be enjoyed, stress-free, filled with good food and drinks and my dear friends in what i think is my favorite resto in town.)

the service was embarrassingly good. the waiters and bartenders (some of whom i used to get into arguments with - sorry) were doting on us - we were treated so kindly and like queens for an evening. i certainly felt more special than i had in a while. it was exactly what i needed on my birthday.

what didn't the kitchen send to us? the kitchen sink. in my head i can hear cedric yelling at the cooks - VIP!!!

we had a dozen plump oysters, served with cocktail sauce and red wine vinegar.

next - a mountain of frogs' legs that were simply wonderful. if you think you might not like frogs' legs, you should definitely try them at central. stop turning your nose up at them. they're so delicately perfect yet love a great sauce because they're fried. they have the texture of a white fish but taste more like chicken. they use a sweet and sour and spicy "bbq" sauce here. they're not just for hillbillies. try them, they're yummy.

we also had wonderful steak tartare with french fries. i always think the tartare needs a bit of salt but i love it - it is one of my all-time favorites. it's so rich but i could eat the entire large order myself. i know i could.

oh and make no mistake: the fries are the best in town. hands down. no question. stop questioning it. stop arguing it. stop voting on it in magazines. they are unequivocally the best. i was sad i only got two fries. wait, what the?

we had the salmon tart - probably an underrated appetizer - i don't know. it seemed like we sent out a lot when i worked in the kitchen. please do order it: if i was a regular here, i'd order it every time. i love love love it. crispy, salty, creamy. oh and cedric put some secret stash of caviar all over it. how indulgent. i love caviar. i need caviar. where can i get a good caviar service in town? dc coast? i digress.

i think that was it. i hope i didn't leave anything out. i feel like i'm leaving something out.

well until dessert came. holy mother of sweetness.

banana split - amazing, sinful, should be illegal; it probably is in montgomery county
"kit kat" bar - way better when someone else makes it for you and serves it to you. the hazelnut sauce is to die for. i could just eat that. like soup.
creme brulee - the creamiest most delicate creme brulee texture you could dream of. (needs more vanilla maybe?). i'd like to know what's up with that. it's definitely hard to get that perfect of a texture. it was like pudding. i'm gonna ask how it's done over there. flawless.

oh what a marvelous night it was. there was nothing missing from it. nothing at all. i don't even wish there'd be a cute guy hitting on me. it was a perfect night.

matchbox vintage pizza bistro, 521 8th street se, capitol hill, dc

so a couple saturdays ago after my birthday evening out, my dear friend and i (in rough shape much like our younger years found us on saturday mornings) decided we better check out the new matchbox location on capitol hill in hopes of curing what was ailing us. the night before was a champagne wonderland of girls being girls. girls gone wild. minus the midriff baring, beer-chugging keg-stands. our version of girls gone wild is much more civilized than it used to be but so much fun, nonetheless.

so, i picked her up saturday morning (at 1:30 pm) from undisclosed location near cap hill wearing same outfit as night before. black, sequined shirt, skinny black pants, platform pumps and all, slightly less glamorous than she looked the prior night. let me tell you this was no ordinary february 7 - it was gorgeous outside - nearly 65 degrees - so her get-up was even funnier we thought.

oh thank goodness the fine folks at matchbox had a seat for us. (rumor has it it's been jam-packed since day 1 and it's a biatch to get in to). sadly they didn't have a booth for us. isn't that all we really want in life - a nice cushy booth with lots of space and no one touching us, no one close enough to hear us, smell us, or even look at us when we're hung over? oh well we can't have it all. we were actually sitting uncomfortably snugly between two couples along the wall. and you know what? we didn't give a rat's arse - we were happy to be laughing and rehashing the night before - again, just like old times.

everyone has already been to the matchbox in chinatown, i'm sure, but i'm writing about this one, ok? i haven't been to the old location in moons as it happens so i'm talking about it like i've never been, which i haven't, to this just-opened location.

oh my brain was not functioning that day. how i went from not wanting to celebrate my birthday at all to having a full-fledged 3:30 am stumbling home blowout i don't know. what the heck happened to me? i'll tell you what happened. i never go out - i'm boring and busy and never go out. therefore when i do, it's like letting a wild, caged animal out of the zoo. he goes crazy, throws caution to the wind, finds a lampshade and puts it on his head, dances in public like michael jackson and thinks he's really funny. really really funny. that aside, back to matchbox, the new locale.

it's so incredibly big, ginormous. you think it's going to be a tiny little hole in the wall from it's downplayed location on 8th street, nestled amongst the beer pubs, and old mixed with new shops of all sorts. everything is new and shiny and clean but rustic with exposed pipes and brick. i love the look of it. they have a loft upstairs too - thank goodness they didn't make us walk those stairs though. i think it'd be fun to sit at the high-top tables at the bar too next time. note to self for future: i think there might be some hotties hanging out here on the weekends, drinking beer with their gourmet pizza. could be my type of guy.

we were so excited to get a pizza. matchbox is known for having great pizza - the kind i really love - thin, crispy crust with simple toppings. we had a hangover hankering for a tomato and mozzarella pizza with basil. simple.

well that is until we saw the mini burgers! we must order those too, we said. and we did. you should know mini burgers are all the rage now. but people call them mini burgers and they're really not that mini - they're actually the perfect size burger. (i make the smallest burgers in town - and they're mini burgers - they're tiny burgers; maybe i should call them mini sliders, because a slider is a mini burger, right?)

anyway, we get three mini burgers, ordered with bleu cheese on top. well, we think our neighbors got our burgers and ours came with smoked gouda or something. oh well, they were still really good. they come with a mountain of fried onions on top. impressive looking but they're too thin to eat. they're also not crispy. they're limp and oily. hey, limp and oily actually reminds me of another story. well, perhaps another time. i know a lot of people really go crazy for these but not me. they fall into the shoestring fry category for me. i like a little more substance in my fried onions (and my french guys, i mean fries).

we ordered our pizza and started to eat it when sadly, the crust isn't crispy at all! turns out the mozzarella and tomatoes have so much water in them they can't get the crust crispy! what??? oh no - this won't do. no gummy pizza when you're hung over.

our neighbors sitting {in our laps} next to us to us (probably annoyed with us eye-balling their pizza like starving children) inform us they too have ordered the mozzarella tomato pizza with disappointment, sent it back to be "crisped up" without luck. damn, sam. they said we could have some of their pizza if they wanted. sweet, no?

see, this is what i'm talking about: you're just too close to people in some restaurants. somedays you feel like making friends with your neighbors and some days you just don't. when i should have been a grumpasaurus rex though, i actually didn't mind - the alcohol level in my blood was still fairly high i think so i was somewhat perky and still pretty darn funny. my friend couldn't resist telling them she doesn't normally dress like this on saturday afternoons.

by the way, they don't have fresh tomatoes - we asked! darnit, they were using stewed whole tomatoes. i know tomatoes aren't in season but still, roast up some fresh ones - that's what you do when they're not in season! please for the love of all things holy!! call me for a quick and useful lesson on making fresh tomatoes taste good - roast 'em up! garlic, olive oil, herbs, salt, pepper, sugar. geez, louise!

instead, we ordered a different pizza. sausage, roasted red peppers and onions. it came out hot and crispy and perfect. i wished we'd gotten a large but we only had a medium. neighbor boy ordered the best looking bloody mary i think i've ever laid eyes on. for once i just couldn't do it though. i knew it would easily send me back into la la land and i had to get home and watch some quality lifetime television for women movies and rest. (neighbor boy was, by the way, pretty cute my friend tells me - i was too blinking close to distinguish his features - kind of like a monet.)

you know, one of the things i think is kind of strange in this today's age of restaurants shutting down all over the place because of the economy, lowering their prices, firing people, etc., when i see the amount of money that must've gone into the menus at matchbox i think what a waste. they're gorgeous, sleek and chic as can be bound with real wood on the front and back covers. the decor of this place is so cool because it's done so perfectly well - it's so clean and new but has a rustic, not trying-too-hard, casual appeal to it. then the menu goes against everything else they've done to create this feel. i don't get it. i'm sure no one else thinks of this but me. just an observation.

i was real happy with that place, i gotta tell you. i love the atmosphere. the 2nd pizza we got was perfectly done just right. we boxed up the first one and i ate it later. from the comfort of my sofa as i used the rest of my day to fully recover from the transgressions of the night before.

thank goodness for matchbox pizza.

jackson 20, hotel monaco, 480 king street, old town alexandria

jackson 20, an american tavern. walking through the king street entrance i'm greeted by a life-size bronze pig (perhaps the most charming thing about this place), said to be president andrew jackson's favorite animal, and a symbol of hospitality and abundance. i like pigs. and i know, i've dated a few. kidding. i do like pigs and all pork products.

i don't know how long it's been open - a year or maybe two? whenever holiday inn transformed into hotel monaco (thank the lord for signs of coolness coming to old town). i've been wanting to check it out, hoping that old town would start its resurrection of hipness and and stop being so bleeping old.

sadly old town alexandria is not so charming as it used to be. back in the day you could wander in and out of endless shops packed with art, furniture, italian, french gifts and antiques and whatnots. you could pop into one of many pubs to grab a beer or a bloody mary on a saturday afternoon and just enjoy relaxation and old town-iness. now old town is empty, closed down, bankrupted businesses and lame restaurants (with the exception of a couple, like restaurant eve, union street - not for their food - or maybe even vermilion).

just this past summer (as i continue to digress), 6 gorgeous ladies were walking around in the heat of summer longing to sit at one of the charming resto's lining king street for a bite to cure their horrendous hangovers - on the patio. well we happened upon landini brothers (a great place to go in the winter months - speaking of charm), whose patio was completely empty. we asked to be seated on the patio and were refused. yes, refused. but why? the patio's empty. we're told they don't have a table for 6. can you please push two together? nope, nada, not happnin. what in the world? who would rather have $0 than push two tables together - or at least offer up a 4 top and a 2 top. sorry - that shoulda been a story of it's own - perhaps i'll do a blog titled "buffoons running businesses without customer service: how do they survive in this economy?"

back to ye olde towne. it's called old town becaue it's 250-something years old and boring and dying. perhaps if you're a tourist it's doesn't seem so boring (it's rampant with tourists and browsers aimlessly meandering the streets all summer long). i can't blame them. i too bring guests down to visit charming old town. or i used to. what do you people in your cute, historic townhomes do???? what a perfect town for walking, shopping, eating, drinking. geez, i swear if i lived in the heart of old town i'd never drive anywhere; or at least i wouldn't have when all the businesses were open.

{off the subject but of important note, hotel monaco hosts doggy happy hours from 5-8 pm on tuesdays and thursdays april through october in their courtyard. i've been wanting to go to that too (in hopes of meeting a cute boy). evidently my dog philippe went once last summer when i was out of town. i hear he had a great time but he did not mention whether there were any hotties for me.}

so i met a couple of girlfriends and a guyfriend for a couple of cocktails and hors d'oeuvres president's day night; how apropos i now think, president's day, having a drink at a bar named after a former president. they wanted to start drinkin' early since everyone had had the day off (except for me, i just started nightly cooking for a family this very day so i had to meet up later, ugh, sigh, i knew this new gig would be a commitment that i didn't want to keep for fear of it cramping my social life). anyhoo, they'd gotten well into a bottle of penfold's bin # something. old reliable. jackson 20 has 20 bottles of wine for $20. way cool considering everyone's in the poorhouse now. pourhouse?

the appetizer fool that i am is always excited to see what's on the menu. what's on the appetizer menu here is disappointing though. crabcakes, fried green tomatoes and a bunch of rabbit food. nothing good for sharing. if you want some things to share - peruse the "sides" section of the menu for more options. we opted for the fried green tomatoes, a side of macaroni and cheese, asparagus - for something green and not fried and cheese fries (ok, so no one's on a diet here - but there were 4 of us - and we were sharing. besides - isn't the pig at the door supposed to give you an idea of how you're supposed to eat?). also of note - the regular dinner menu looks fantastic with lots to choose from.

the fried green tomatoes were really good actually. they needed salt, but they had a tangy little salad of arugula on the side and a buttermilk blue crab dressing which went nicely. the cheese fries were nothing to write home about (especially for me - i couldn't write anybody at home about these because it's in stillwater, oklahoma that the best cheese fries in the world are made at eskimo joes, once famously mentioned in a speech by none other than President Bush I) - clearly not homemade fries and WHERE'S the godforsaken cheese, people? how lame, how sad. what would old hickory say about these cheese fries? not much. i've already said too much. don't get 'em, they're not worth the calories.

i would like to mention, however, that the mac and cheese was heavenly!!! angels were singing. and i am not normally on the mac & cheese bandwagon like everyone else in this town. the cheese sauce had lots of earthy oregano infused in it and was just perfectly cooked - not overcooked like most mac & cheese. yum and i will use that idea - just lovely. white and creamy - i didn't think it was going to be good - the breadcrumbs on top were not properly gratineed (they weren't browned at all). surprisingly i was surprised. we were actually still hungry so we got some pretty decent little rolls with butter brought to us.

what i noticed most about this place - for somewhere that's supposed to be named after andrew jackson, in a town with lots and lots of presidential history, it was actually pretty nondescript inside. the photos online make it look pretty hip but it didn't come across in person. the service was good yet it was nondescript too.

the other thing i noticed and this is a doozy for a single girl like me (or for people who like to go where there's good people-watching) - jackson 20 drew an amazingly unattractive group of people. rarely do you look around you and find that not one person in the place is nice to look at. what gives? i asked my friend. he says to me, "well today is the equivalent of a sunday night since it was a holiday." ah, true dat. i forget from my restaurant days of not so long ago that sundays are for early birds, non-appetizer eating eaters who like to get in/get out and not fuss with the rest of the world who eat out all of the other nights of the week. rude? perhaps it is. it's a generalization! don't get angry at me. after all, we were out and we are really attractive people. i had to go look at myself in the restroom just to remember that attractive people are out and about on a holiday.

i will give jackson 20 another chance because it's so darn easy to get to from my place. plus, my friends promise that normally there's a better crowd. plus that dinner menu had a few things calling my name - and that's unusual for appetizer girl.

for all the negative things i said about old town. i'm just sad about it and venting. i'm actually a hopeless romantic for old town alexandria, praying it makes a comeback soon.

more to come this spring from doggy happy hour at hotel monaco. cheers, people!