The Kimpton boutique hotels can be found scattered all over DC and the surrounding suburbs. It’s likely that you might have seen one of their hotels and not known it belongs to the Kimpton empire. Hotel Helix. Hotel Rouge. The Topaz Hotel. Hotel Monaco. Hotel Palomar. I’ve long been impressed with their locations and accommodations after having a great berfday party being thrown for me in the Hotel Monaco in Alexandria a couple of years ago. So it was only natural that my curiosity was piqued when the opportunity to eat at Urbana presented itself. The restaurant is part of the Hotel Palomar in Dupont Circle, easily passable during the day because of its subterranean entrance, but less so in the evenings when luminescent blue lights mark its entrance.

The interior is clean, very modern, and very tastefully done.  Dim lights and wood tables provide a comforting atmosphere, while marble serving tables strewn about loudly speak to the ‘no cost spared’ belief in outfitting the restaurant.  Etched glass and illuminated panels serve as wall panels and decoration everywhere.

To start, I ordered a quartet of raw oysters.  I’m no mollusk aficionado,  but the two varieties that I tried were nothing short of perfect to me.  An entire dozen would have been too much for me to tackle on my own, but something more manageable and recommended for a larger party than two, especially when one’s a vegetarian.

The cheese and charcuterie plate come correct with some strong contenders.  Jen and I sampled Manchego from Spain; the Rosselino from Italy; the Midnight Moon from the US; the Amish Cheddar from the US; and I happily devoured the Mortadella sausage from Italy.  The Manchego was the definitive winner of the lot, but all of the cheeses and meat were equally as appetizing.

Jen also ordered the Smoked Tomato and Cannellini Bean Soup.  The dish comes with a fried goat cheese island in the middle, and defied her expectations, to say the least.  Rather than a full-sized bean soup, the tomatoes and cannellini beans were carefully pureed and strained to produce a creamy and fragrant dish.  Topped with the cheese to mix in and add an extra layer of creaminess, I barely could keep her from licking the bowl.

So being the good boyfriend, I did that for her.

Tough job.

Our entrees arrived shortly thereafter.  Jen’s main course, the Pappardelle, served in a morel mushroom cream sauce with sugar snap peas and pecorino romano shavings to match, this would have been my choice as well if I were a vegetarian, too.

Not a terribly large dish, but the combination of the cream sauce used with the appetizers we had prior to this made up for it.  That’s not to say that Jen didn’t struggle to finish it and call me in as reinforcements to take out the rest, but something to keep in mind.  Still, the ingredients and presentation were well balanced, and nary a complaint from the woman about this place yet.  The noodles were fresh, not over or under cooked, and the small bits of morel mushroom gave this dish a bit of an exotic flair.

My peasant-ish dish, roasted organic chicken with a ragout of gnocchi, english peas and baby carrots, were also equally as good as every other one that been presented thus far.  The gnocchi was a very good accompaniment to the chicken, which in my opinion could have only been improved if it were a free range one.  At least to me, organic does not equate to free range when it comes to chicken.  My english peas were so fresh, they spoke unintelligible Cockney Rhyming to me before I put each to their demise.

“Oi, ‘ats a bit of Jackson Pollocks eatin’ us like that, innit?”

Stupid limey peas.

I probably couldn’t gush anymore about this place.  I’d easily put this as a place I’d like to revisit for dinner, or possibly even brunch.  I felt remiss having not tried the pork belly, roasted lamb loin, or the various pizzas available.  The restaurant also has a very reasonable wine menu, and the service is good enough to leave your redheaded step childen in their care while you’re out busy for a Melvin in the Karsey.

See Urbana on a map here.

Recommended For:

• Anniversaries
• Vegetarians
• Fans of the Mollusk
• Girls Night Out

Not Recommended For:

• Frugalistas
• Zone Dieters
• World Cup Celebration Parties
• Proposing to Your Japanese Body-Pillow Girlfriend

Jen and I had to really keep an eye out in trying to find Aditi at night. The evening air was electric with life in Georgetown. We almost passed by the restaurant twice in our search for the place, with a tiny awning just above the front door barely proclaiming its existence, squelched to barely a murmur next to the bright lights of Georgetown Cupcake across the street. I’ve roamed up and down M street (the main street that cuts through Georgetown’s Business District) many times, and I can’t say I’ve ever seen or heard of this place. My lack of knowledge, however, should not speak as the brevity of Aditi’s existence, as their menu states that they’ve held their very location for well over 20 years.

The first floor you come to greets you to a hostess stand, with a short set of stairs up to a bar. Another flight of stairs leads you farther up to the main dining area, lined with more floor to ceiling mirrors and dimly glowing lights than a porn star’s bedroom at night. Jen noted that it gave the space a much larger appearance, while I noted that it was great for people watching as from our seats, you could see every single other patron in the room.

Nobody’s going to come running up behind me to stab a knife into my back.

I ordered the Majaraha Platter (natch), a cornucopia of meat, which the French would kindly call “La Degustation”.  Everything from lamb, chicken, beef, and shrimp, this was probably the best way to sample all of Aditi’s meats.  Nothing extraordinary, but the quality was good, with nary a dry meat offering on the plate.  The sauteed vegetables were fairly mediocre, but the fact that the order comes with a small basket of naan makes up for where the vegetables and rice lack.

If I had realized this dish came with it’s own bread, I don’t think we would have ordered a separate basket of mixed breads as well.

Stacked with enough puffed grains covered in butter to give a flock of pigeons all coronaries, the breads here are very good, especially to wrap the meats in the Majaraha Platter.  I particularly liked the onion bread, but given that I don’t eat breads or grains at all during the week, this stuff was little more than a basket of delicious crack to me.

What?

What do you mean crack’s not delicious?

Jen went with her Indian cuisine favorite, the Chana Masala.  I think she’s the region leading expert on Chana Masala by now.  Her verdict?  The dish was good, but it lacked any sort of spiciness that she was expecting.  In fact, it turns out this version of the chickpea dish was about as spicy as a glass of milk.

The service here is reasonable, with several wait staff always hovering about, quick to fill your glass of water and attend to your every need.  The location is also great for that post shopping meal when you’re looking for something slightly more ethnic than pizza, but just ever so.  The indian cuisine here has been dulled down to the basic ingredients and offerings, with none of the exoticness of true Indian fare.  It’s not to say that any of the food here is bad, but the dishes do their best to be as inoffensive to the palette as possible.

The portions and prices here are, however, quite appealing, and it’s nice to have something different than what you’d expect to find in the neighborhood.

See Aditi Indian Cuisine on a map here.

Recommended For:

• Plain Janes
• Vegetarians
• Bread Buffs
• People Who Own Rotating Beds

Not Recommended For:

• A Party In Your Mouth
• Palette Discos
• First Dates
• Wedding Receptions
• People Who Like To Play Bloody Mary

Sorry for the lack of posts this week. My computer had some issues that were finally resolved late last night, but it’s been keeping me away from writing and posting photos. We’ll be back to normal and posting by Friday. Hope you all are having a good week!

Ko’Olina rests at the southwest end of Oahu and at the end of the H1 highway, far and away from the populous city of Honolulu. Several resorts and timeshares make up the majority of the buildings here, with more just around the way. Marriott has plans to build another building to build a fifth building, while Disney is busy putting up their own massive Hawaiian outpost here. To say that Ko’Olina will be a major vacation destination on Oahu is quite the understatement.

What does exist there now are several restaurants on the Marriott properties, both at the JW Marriott at the north most point, to the restaurants that are part of the Marriott Beach Club to the south.

Jen and I had the opportunity to eat at one of the restaurants at the Marriott Beach Club that sits outdoors, just a few feet from one of the four lagoons in the area, and a couple of hundred feet from the expansive, ever crashing waves of the Pacific.

I ordered the macadamia crusted marlin, which comes in some sort of glaze that could have been a crab juice reduction for all I know.  Wanna know what I about marlin?  It tastes like poo.  Well, not literally.  I blame the poo taste on the crab juice.  The marlin is apparently a very dry textured fish, with no tender flaking like I had hoped.  I did at least take comfort in that I’ve always wondered what marlin tastes like, so I can check it off my list of meats to meet.

Norm’s Meats to Meet

• Ostrich
• Marlin
• Extraterrestrial
• Alpaca
• Dodo
• Clown

The menu was light on vegetarian fare, so Jen didn’t have too many choices here.  There was either the pasta or…the crabgrass growing near the beach.  Seriously, there were pretty much zero available vegetarian options. She finally settled on a pasta dish, which looked decent, but fell a few steps short of being satisfying or appetizing.  For the price, I’d expect the kitchen to put some effort into this, but, like I said, even imported slop comes at a premium in Hawaii.  She left more than half of her dish on the plate, and I managed to pick at the limp vegetables, playing vulture cleanup crew as always.

Our friends had some equally uninspired dishes, one being a chicken salad and the other being another fish that left him just as unsatisfied with the meal.  We could have opted for dessert here, but thought better of it with the restaurant already batting a .000.

It would seem that Kolohe’s has little to offer visitors other than an absolutely phenomenal view, and drinks to enjoy it.  The service here is reasonable, but certainly not doting, and as I mentioned earlier, the prices are a bit severe for the quality.  The presentation is better on some dishes than others, which looking back at the photos I took here, I’d say is more actually about half.

It’s sad that a place as beautiful as the resorts of Ko’Olina suffer from some really bad tourist trap restaurants like this, but at least the JW  Marriott seems to have a better selection of places to eat, which we did for a number of our meals while in Oahu.  But I wouldn’t recommend this place for anything other than just drinks, and saving your dining experience for someplace else.

Kolohe’s gets two fins down.

See Kolohe’s on a map here.

Recommended For:

• Drinks
• People Watching
• Blandstravaganzas
• When Pringles and a Diet Coke Won’t Cut It For Dinner

Not Recommended For:

• Frugalistas
• Flavor Mavens
• Marriage Proposals
• Gastronomic Adventures

photo credit: developerimplode.com

Pienza Italian Market at the Gaylord National Harbor Hotel offers an enormous smörgåsbord of food for their Sunday Brunch, and definitely not geared towards the casual, light fare eater.  I’ve been here on numerous occasions, and have richly enjoyed every visit.  The restaurant is a giant biosphere-like enclosed atrium of the hotel, with a riverside view that looks out towards Old Town Alexandria, and intermittent planes passing through the sky en route to land at Reagan National Airport.  One of the best parts of having brunch here for me is catching the after church Sunday crowd, because the entertainment alone is worth the admission of the buffet.  Giant, ridiculous hats that could pass for proper headwear at the Kentucky Derby, and dresses to match.

And boy do I love me some hats.

But enough about the plentiful entertainment, how about some photos of the buffet?

Several large bread baskets offer up almost every kind of baked good you could want, such as croissants, muffins, rolls, and pastries.  My favorite here?  Go for the chocolate chip pastry, which I always tend to eat half a dozen of.

There’s a cold bar, with fresh fruit, vegetable salads, seafood salads, cocktail scrimp, and smoked salmon, which I raided on my first foray…

A hot bar with fish, roasted chicken, lasagna, bacon, snausages, scrambled egg, and cheese tortellini…

…All part of a very nutritious and “this is gonna make me Fatty McFat Fat” meal.

There’s also another station serving up pizzas, freshly made-to-order omelets, and carved roast beef for you to stuff your gullet with…

Or you can have at the waffle station that comes armed with all fixin’s, like whipped butter, whipped cream, strawberry sauce, syrup, and the like.  Note that the bacon here is a little on the weak side, so be prepared to have an extra helping of snausages.

Just make sure you save some room for dessert.

Besides the various types of cakes (and sometimes éclairs, on a good day), they also have cherry cobbler, peach cobbler, and both chocolate and vanilla ice cream on hand.  Sprinkles? Check. Crushed Oreo cookies? Check. Insulin syringes?  Better bring some in your jacket.

I love the fact that all the plates are so vibrant and rich in color.  Each table has a cup filled with forks, knives, and spoons, which lends a casual and unique touch.  The service here is pretty good, with dirty plates being cleared every time I went to get another round of food.

At around $40 with tip, it’s hard to say whether this is the right place for the average buffet diner.  It’s definitely an experience, and the atmosphere here is top notch, but the cost is a detriment from making this as regular of an occurrence as I’d like it to be.  Parking in the adjacent garage can be validated by the hostess for up to 3 hours, which gives you enough time to walk around the surrounding National Harbor area to check out the various art shows and boats down at the dock.

See Pienza Italian Market on a map here.

Recommended For:

• Competitive Eater Training Sessions
• Brunch Buffet Buffs
• Sunday Celebrations
• Out of town family visits

Not Recommended For:

• Zone Dieters
• Paleo heads
• Nitpicky Noshers

I had the perfect opportunity to try this recipe out while Jen and I were out vacationing in Hawaii. Reading over the ingredients list, you’d question whether or not this really will taste good, as I did while I was prepping the salad. The result? Delicious. I neglected to pick up red wine vinegar as Paula Deen calls for in her original recipe, but balsamic vinegar works just as well here. My one suggestion, is that if you’re making this while you’re out in Hawaii, is to make sure and not buy the 14 lb watermelon at $1.49 a pound.

Whoops.

So…how about that Kama’aina discount?

Don’t judge this one by how it looks, because it’s a great way to fight off a long, arduous day of relaxing in the Pacific sun.

Adapted from Paula Deen’s recipe here.

Jen and I stopped by downtown San Francisco for lunch on a layover, and we made a beeline straight for one of her favorite Mexican places in the city – Colibri Mexican Bistro.  The restaurant gives off a sleep post siesta atmosphere during the day, and the perfect setting for a rambunctious and lively watering hole at night.

The guacamole here is good. Damn good.  Like trade your sister who made you walk home every day after practice because she was too busy making out with some jock during high school good.  The menu says it’s made fresh at your table, which I never witnessed, but I’m always one to believe that guacamole is one of those rare foods that’ll instantly tell you whether or not it’s been made fresh or from the day before.  Fresh guacamole just has a je ne sais quoi that guacamole savants like Jen can tell whether it’s the not so fresh…stuff.

Anyways.  Behold. The sacrificial stone mortar of guac.

The guacamole arrives with hand searingly-hot homemade corn tortillas and a trio of salsa, which started one of the most beautiful guacamole soft taco binges I’ve ever been involved in.  Well, except for the soft taco binge of ’86 when I had that chance encounter with those midget twins from Wisconsin while high on unicorn meat and absinthe, but that’s a story for another day.

We also split an order of the Tamalitos Colibri, a small plate of corn dough stuffed with Oaxacan cheese and drowned in tomato sauce, queso fresco, and white corn.  The end result was something that tasted like it came straight out of Chef Boyardee’s private recipe book.  Not a bad dish per se, but with a flavor that so strongly resembled something you ate after class in grade school (or college, for some of us), it wasn’t a big hit with either of us.

For our entrees, Jen ordered the Huevos Rancheros.  Two eggs cooked over easy on a blue corn tortilla, served with salsa molcajeteada and the smoothest refried beans I’ve ever tasted.  I mean Barry White smooth.

I opted for the Caritas omelet, a generous portion of juicy pulled pork, wrapped in eggs and then dressed with sala ranchera, served with more of those Barry White refried black beans, Oaxacan cheese, and potatoes.  BAM.  Awesomeness.

And just to make sure we had enough food (in fact, the waiter wanted to make sure just how much food we were getting into here), I also put in an order for the Torrejas Colibri – a homemade cinnamon coated Mexican pastry that’s somewhere between french toast and bread pudding without being either, served fresh berries, mango, and left to drown in a pool of honey agave sizzurp.  Er, syrup.

Brunch here was exactly what I needed on our layover.  Lots of homemade foods, worth the venture outside of the airport that serves up little more than TSA approved reheated meals of flavored gruel, in your choice of consistency.  Prices here are more than reasonable

Colibri’s my new favorite go to spot for Mexican in San Francisco.  Now I just need another opportunity to visit.

See Colibri on a map here.

Recommended For:

• Guac Jocks
• Vegetarians
• Mexican Delights (that’s not some weird nickname for a sex position)
• First Dates
• Second Dates
• Fresh, Homemade Tasting Food

Not Recommended For:

• 21 Consecutive Tequila Shots
• Singing “My Little Buttercup” to your fellow patrons
• Zone Dieters
• Deliciousness Defiants