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

On our last visit to the restaurant, Jen and I had a less than positive experience at PS7′s. I won’t rehash all the sordid details, but you can read about our Restaurant Week (RW) visit here.

Fast forward a couple months to the present date, and we still were holding on to a coupon that we weren’t able to use on our previous visit.  Steeling ourselves for a return, we made our reservations and headed back over for dinner.

The first difference was immediately noticeable:  the restaurant was tamer, quieter, and filled with a vastly different crowd.  I’m not sure if I could pin down a specific group of people, but there was a good deal more diversity in age, group sizes, and species types of people in general.  A much easier going crowd, celebrating anniversaries, visits from parents, and random diners like us, less of a concentration of budget diners looking to get sloshed at the bar afterwards.

Free from the confines of a restricted “dining on rails” RW menu, Jen and I decided to split a Nutty Goat Flatbread, coated in walnut butter, goat cheese, arugula, and shallots.

I also threw in an order of the Angel Wings – a quartet of sausage stuffed boneless chicken wings, served with a generous serving of a peach gastrique.

What we were treated to was…vastly better than our last set of appetizers there.  The flatbread, about the size of an 8-inch pizza, was buttery without being too greasy, loaded with a rich goat cheese flavor, and given just the right amount of wilted arugula and shallots to pair it off.  Like a goat cheese salad on bread.  My angel wings were the equivalent of a gourmet order of Chickum McNuggets served with sweet’n'sour sauce.  I tore through the nuggets in a matter of seconds, without even bothering to offer Jen a single one.

In retrospect, I’m 99.9% sure she really didn’t mind.

Our entrees, arrived in short fashion.  Jen ordered the Cannelloni, a cast-iron skillet filled with celery root, sweet potato, and mushroom ‘sausage’, straight from Hell’s Kitchen.  Well, with as hot as this dish was, it might as well have been delivered from the underworld.  Jen burnt her tongue on her first taste, and took a few spoonfuls onto her bread plate just to have it cool down from the cast iron skillet.  I guess you can’t really complain about food being too quick from the kitchen, right?

I let Jen pick out my plate, and she went with the Stuffed Pork Loin – a giant slab of pork, pounded and rolled with leeks, spinach, bacon, and coated with parmesan, then served with a sherry au jus.

My girl knows me so damn well.  Or maybe she was just living vicariously through me.  One of these days, she just won’t be able to resist the call of the bacon.  Either way, I really enjoyed this dish.  The pork was succulent, and the leek/spinach/bacon stuffing just seemed like a natural pairing for the pork loin.  The only way it could have been better would have been having this dish served in a bacon gravy, with a side of bacon lollipops.

Sweet merciful Jebus I love bacon.

I’m sure that Restaurant Week brings in the volume and the dollars, but the set menu does this establishment no justice whatsoever.  I almost wish that we hadn’t gone here for Restaurant Week in the first place.  While PS7′s still might not be at the top of my favorite places in the city, it’s certainly much better than I had originally thought.

The best part?  The kitchen sends a dessert out to every table, compliments of the chef.  Two freshly made soft truffles.

Still looks like a skidmark to me. A damn tasty one, at that.

DC’s streets run in a grid. There are four quadrants, NW, NE, SW, and SE, which all extend from the Capitol at the center. Numbered streets run North to South outward from the center, and letter streets run West to East from the center. State streets, for all understanding, have absolutely no rhyme or reason to their ordering, but they do run diagonally, and often bisect park squares and circles. You can get around for a good amount of time just running by the numbered and lettered streets, but you’ll eventually have to learn some of the state streets in order to get to some of the restaurants in DC, like Zentan.  Zentan is the official restaurant of the Donovan House, a boutique hotel that spruces up Thomas Circle a bit, much more than the former owner of the building, which was as far as I can remember, a bit of run down Holiday Inn.  The renovations have really paid off here.  I constantly see travelers and tourists flowing in and out of the Donovan House, and having a mysterious and ubercontemporary restaurant like Zentan is just icing on the cake.

Having a friend of Jen’s in town, we figured Zentan would be the perfect spot to treat a traveler to a special meal.  Jen and I had previously eaten here and left satisfied when the restaurant first opened, so we figured it was due time to give this place a proper review.

photo credit: The Washingtonian

The appetizers here are in my opinion, what really makes Zentan stand out, particularly the Singapore Slaw.  The chef combines 19 semi-secret ingredients like eye of newt, hair of the dog, witch’s horn and deathlock (more like daikon, jicama, purple basil and edible flower petals) to combine an amazing tower presentation coated in a light, salted plum dressing and brought straight to your table.  The staff will then deconstruct and mix your salad tableside, and then it’s time to dig in.

The mixed salad is a lot less pretty, but also a lot easier to eat without flinging vermicelli noodles at the table next to you and ruining some poor girl’s first date.  Or bar mitzvah.  An abundance of textures of flavors here make this dish a must, and there’s enough here to share the salad between three people at any time of the year.

The Chickpea Onion Tempura is another great starter, although it leads me to believe that one of these days I should come in here just ordering a table full of appetizers and going Godzilla on the table of food.  Each layer of chickpea tempura onion ring is given a generous coat of mint yogurt and mango chutney for good measure.  Another great dish that brings a ton of unique, complimenting flavors to the table, I could easily go through this stack of onion pancakes myself.  The mint yogurt probably helps with that kickin’ onion breath afterwards, too.

While the three of us quickly devoured the appetizers, we realized that the waiter had oddly left us without taking our entree orders.  Not that this was a huge this to fuss about-  we were busy catching up and chatting away, but I have a feeling that had I not flagged down our waiter on one of his pass throughs, we might have been waiting a good deal longer to have our food made.

Jen, with her typical light eating habits, ordered an Avocado Roll for her entree.  The presentation is solid, and the portions are just right, filled with an assortment of vegetables and topped with spinach…but, no avocado?  Apparently the avocado here is an avocado paste that’s glazed in somewhere between the spinach and the rice, but you’d think ordering a dish with avocado in the name would at least present some decent sized chunks of the good green stuff, right?  I flagged down our waiter once again and asked if Jen could have a side of avocado with the meal, and he unquestioningly obliged, to which I really credit him for.  I do agree and feel for Jen, that this might be better suited as being called a Spinach Roll, but who the hell wants a spinach roll?

I didn’t have too much luck with my order, either.  I tried to steer towards a more Paleo direction with the Empress Shredded Chicken- a stirfry mix of chicken breast, vegetables, mushrooms, cashews, and cooked in a hsiao hsing wine sauce.  The result?

Yeah, not really all that appealing in person, either.  The vegetables do just fine, but again, the main ingredient, the chicken, really fails to live up to any sort of expectations.  The meat is extremely dry, which leads me to believe that little to no effort was placed in really giving this meat a good marinade.  I’d skip the Empress Shredded Chicken on my next go here, maybe for a nice caramelized Michelin tire instead.

Jen’s friend hit the jackpot with the Cantonese Marinated Skirt Steak –  a long trough of steak cooked a shallot butter mix, served in a chili ponzu sauce with crunchy hazelnuts.  The presentation is on point, and it got the thumbs up from our guest.

Everything about this place is a mixed bag of inconsistency.  Some dishes are outstanding, like the Singapore Slaw, Onion Tempura, and the Skirt Steak, but other dishes, like the Avocado Roll and the Empress Shredded Chicken, completely miss their mark.  Consistency with all your dishes is really crucial, especially if you want to have people coming back time and time again.  Service seems to also fit into this category here at Zentan.  While our waiter was  extremely knowledgeable of their menu, and as accommodating as one could ask for, leaving us hanging to put in our entree orders until we were well past our appetizers is a bit of odd behavior, but at least in this case it thankfully devolved to being a quirk rather than an issue.  The mixed drinks here are outstanding and decidedly unique, and the more open minded visitors can be treated to something special by just discussing their favorite brand of alcohol with their waiter (which in this case, happened to be Hendrick’s Gin).

The atmosphere here is great for dates and happy hours, with downtempo-esque and lounge music softly setting the mood.  The large window that faces towards Thomas Circle is perfect for people watching in the afternoon, and it’s worth trying to sneak upstairs into the rooftop lounge of the Donovan House just for the view.  I’ll give my recommendation to trying Zentan if you’re a fish lover (the restaurant proudly proclaims having the best fish of any establishment in DC), but I can say no more than ‘caveat emperor’ if you order either Jen or my main dish for the evening.

See Zentan on a map here.

Recommended For:

• Gastro Gamblers
• Ditching Work Afterhour Drinks
• First Dates
• Anthropology Classes
• Vegetarians
• Neighborhood Bar

Not Recommended For:

• Paleoheads
• Zone Dieters
• Frugalistas
• Bar Mitzvahs

Dupont Circle once was the darling neighborhood of DC.  Businesses crammed themselves into every available space, and the various streets leading into the circle- Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, P, and 19th, are filled to the gills with an array of restaurants adorned with neon signs and shielded by faded awnings.  Jen and I stopped into Taj Mahal, which had it not been our destination for the evening, would have never been something I’d even consider visiting.  The restaurant does little to garner the attention of passing pedestrians such as myself, but the problem arises from the fact that the restaurant’s public facing signs are only visible if one is constantly looking up while walking down the street.

We climbed the flight of stairs to the second floor, where the restaurant sits with a view to Connecticut Avenue below.  We were quickly and politely seated, and left to peruse our menus.

Our first appetizer, a set of Pakoras, is an assortment of vegetables coated in chickpea batter and fried to perfection, then served with a pair of chutneys and ready to go.  These things were awesome!  Not too heavy nor greasy, and the flavors of the vegetables were heightened rather than dulled by the chickpea batter.  A highly recommended dish to start your meal.

We also split an order of the assorted bread basket, a triple stack of naans, baked with onions, garlic, and assorted herbs.  In retrospect, Jen and I should have waited to eat this with our entrees, but we were so ravenous that we took down more than half the bread before those dishes even arrived.  We asked for a yogurt dipping sauce to go with the bread, which was a fantastic accompaniment.  I have to point out that the yogurt sauce here is thick, rich, and fresh, and completely unique in comparison to the yogurt sauces I’ve had in many other Indian restaurants.

Jen’s entree and perennial Indian cuisine favorite, the Chana Masala, looked and tasted great.  The dish seemed to come swimming in a more curry based sauce rather than a tomato based sauce like most restaurants prepare it, but it didn’t negatively impact her enjoyment of it.  Not particularly a lively dish, but nothing bad about this one, either.

I wagered on the Lamb Madras – large chunks of lamb coated in a fragrant and moderately spicy coconut curry sauce.  The waiter did his best to evaluate my tolerance for spicitivity before taking my order.

Waiter: On a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being not spicy at all and 10 being the most spicy, how much can you handle?

Me: About a 6 or a 7.

Waiter: (Nods approvingly) Then you will enjoy this dish.

I should have removed a matchbook from my pocket and extinguished a lit match on my tongue, all while staring him in the eye, but mayhaps such a display of arrogance would have been a bit over the top for a simple question like this.

He was probably envisioning something more along the lines of…

My take on the Lamb Madras?  An excellent dish.  The curry was spicy but not searing, and the lamb was tender, tearing at the slightest pull of a fork.  Watch out for the peppers sitting on top though, that’s like eating a small stick of dynamite.

Considering this was a cheat meal, Jen and I had to get the puddin’. Awww yeah.

Bear in mind, this is no Kozy Shack pudding that you used to eat back in the day.  The rice pudding here is definitely spiced and mixed with almonds and raisins, but still very much a delight.  Thankfully, Jen declined to get into a spoonfight over the last bit in the cup as we plowed through this dessert, but I’ve got my eye on her to stab me in the neck with a spoon the next time I’m not looking.

The decor inside the Taj Mahal Restaurant unfortunately does not reflect the name.  Wood paneled walls and paper place settings hardly evokes an atmosphere of grandeur, and prices here are a bit on the higher end because of the proximity to Dupont Circle.  However, the dishes are well prepared and tasty, but not quite extraordinary.  The service we were treated to was possibly the best service we have had in months, and in that respect, perhaps the restaurant does in a way find a way to make it befitting of its namesake.  Dinner here is good, but it would seem that the big draw is to come in for their lunch buffet, as long as you can make it past the food coma that succeeds it.

See the Taj Mahal Restaurant on a map here.

Recommended For:

• Four Star Service
• Curry Consumptionaries
• Vegetarians
• Indian Afficianados

Not Recommended For:

• Frugalistas
• Carbophobes
• Paleoheads
• Zone Dieters
• First Dates

Penang, unbeknownst to me, is actually a chain of Malaysian cuisine restaurants that run along the Atlantic.  The DC location recently reopened its doors to the public, after a vicious fire gutted the space for well over a year.  I had been to Penang on a couple of occasions prior to the inferno, and reasonably enjoyed the atmosphere.  With a completely redone interior, I felt that Jen and I should go and check it out to give this place a proper review.

The layout, from what I remember of it, remained fairly the same.  A set of white loveseats act as the waiting area behind the hostess stand at the front door, with a thriving bar scene to the right of the entrance.  There are a number of tables behind the bar, one of which we were able to get near the window facing out to M Street.

The two of us started our dinner with a small army of appetizers, but because Penang refuses to post their menu to their website, and I neglected to document the name of each dish we ordered, I’ll have to exercise some creative freedom in naming each dish here.

The first, a quintet of meat filled dumplings, although not quite what I had envisioned when I put in the order.  These dumplings, filled with a miscellaneous meat, weren’t terribly memorable, and just barely satiated my craving for dumplings to begin with.  The preparation was great, and the presentation wasn’t terrible, but not something I’d think about ordering on a return visit.

The second order of dumplings, listed as a curry puff dumpling, were seemingly vegetarian on the menu.  However, when they arrived to the table, the waiter informed us that they were actually not vegetarian, and filled with meat.  Provided with the difficult decision to eat all ten dumplings or send one of them back, I manned up and polished each one off…including the bed of shredded carrots and lettuce.  I would absolutely swear that I did not taste one bit of meat in these dumplings, and that the menu had no mention of meat in these dumplings, but because of the plausibility of not being vegetarian, Jen just avoided the risk altogether.  Like the dish before, these weren’t terribly exciting dumplings, not extremely satisfying.  If both these dishes are indicative of the overall quality of dumplings available here, I’d likely skip ordering any of the dumplings on the appetizer menu altogether.

The one thing I do remember enjoying at Penang is their roti bread.  A giant puff of bread, that comes with a flaky top and a chewy bottom, I fully intended this to be the highlight for Jen.  The waiter even brought a vegetarian curry dipping sauce for her, as the normal curry dipping sauce contained large chunks of chicken.

But something wasn’t quite right here.  The roti, with considerably more crispy parts than chewy ones, just wasn’t as filling, or satisfying.  I couldn’t put my finger on it, but at least for me, I felt the lack of the chewy, soft bottom really was a detriment to the enjoyment factor of this dish.  It would have appeared to me that one of the things I enjoyed the most about coming to Penang was nothing but a shadow of its former self.

After a considerable wait, our waiter hurried over with our entrees.  Jen picked out one of her favorites, the vegetarian Drunken Noodles.  With overly wide noodles and a fair amount of vegetables mixed in, I was hoping that this dish would be the savior of the meal for her.  Her response, to my inquiry of satisfaction, amounted to little more than ‘meh’.  We were also presented with another order of dumplings that a food runner tried to unload on our table, but after several futile verbal explanations that it wasn’t our dish, we vigorously shook our heads, and I think he got the drift.

My entree, the Penang Char Kueh Teow (which is one of the nine dishes featured on the site), is one of Penang’s siganture dishes.  A mix of flat rice noodles, shrimp, squid, eggs, chives, and bean sprouts in a black soya chili sauce, resulted an opinion of “BAH!” from me.

Don’t get me wrong, I shoveled this dish down my gullet without barely taking a breath, but that’s par for course with me.  But I didn’t really find this dish fantastic, nor something I would have bothered making a return visit for.  For being one of the restaurant’s signature dishes, I have to say that it lacks any definitive character that any other noodle house couldn’t just as easily replicate.

Giving the restaurant one last chance, Jen and I ordered the Mango and Sticky Coconut Rice dessert.

BAM!

Finally, a winner.  The rice and mango perfectly complement one another, with each slice of mango a buttery slice of heaven with the pile of sticky coconut rice.  This dish doesn’t come off as too heavy or too sweet, and it’s one thing that Penang actually gets right.

Overall, the food here isn’t terrible, but it’s by no means great, either.  At best, I’d call it just average.  Service, unfortunately, is less than stellar.  Our waiter was almost never available or nearby at any time.  After having my chopsticks and fork taken by a busboy, I waited for five minutes before Jen walked over to a large table of guys and asked if she could take an unused pair of chopsticks from them.

See?  This girl is amazing.

As we were presented with the bill, I noticed that the total was much lower than I had expected, and noticed that we were presented with the wrong table’s bill.  I tossed in my credit card and handed it to the waiter, who returned with our actual bill, with nary a word of apology for mixing up the bill or explanation.

As we were leaving, the music was cranked up, as loud as neighbors banging it out through balsa wood thin walls on a Friday night.  This is the second time we’ve gone to an establishment only to have it turn into a club, but this time, the experience was more grating than amusing.  As we walked outside, a large security guard was busy patting down and running a metal detector wand over each person entering Penang, which makes me wonder if anyone’s been shot here recently.  Definitely not a practice I remember before Penang’s unfortunate blaze.  It’s highly unlikely that either of us will be returning to this new Penang ever again.

See Penang on a map here.

Recommended For:

• Lip Readers
• Oontz-Ootnz-Oontz-Oontz
• Twentysomethings
• Terrifying your Inlaws

Not Recommended For:

• Quiet Dinners
• First Dates
• Dumpling Whores
• Noodle Canoodlers
• Carbophobes
• Zone Dieters
• Paleoheads

Kabab-Ji Grill has entered into an already crowded market of kabab (kibab, kebab) restaurants and vendors in DC.  So what exactly makes it stand out?  What makes it worth choosing over any other kebab restaurant?

According to the website, it’s the fundamentals of what makes a quality dish – the ingredients. Kabab-Ji Grill uses only the finest of ingredients in their recipes, which is evident as soon as you walk in the door. The grill sits behind a giant display of prepared but uncooked kebabs in a glass cased refrigerator, proudly on display like a classy timepiece around Flavor Flav’s neck.

The interior is well executed, a throwback to the chain’s Lebanese roots, with large rough cut stone walls and ornate wood panels abound.  Tables are topped with colorful ceramic tiles, although mine had a wobble factor to it that was a tad irritating.

The staff here is extremely friendly, courteous, and accommodated every request from the table.  A decanter of olive oil imported from Lebanon?  Done.  A dish of cucumber yogurt dip? Of course.  An order of a Swarovski vajazzled* cornish hen with eggplant and hummus? Wasn’t on the menu. Maybe next time.

Kebab Orfali, courtesy of the Kabab-Ji Grill's site

I ordered the Kabab Orfali, two skewers of seasoned beef with tomatoes, onions, and eggplant, because it sounded like the closest thing to paleo that I could get.  I expected a heaping of grains to accompany the dish, in addition to the basket of freshly baked pita bread delivered to the table, and what I got was…just that.  No surprises with the kebabs here, as they weren’t terribly huge, but enough to make up a small lunch for me.  That is, of course, skipping the hilltop of rice and large slabs of bread covered in a delicious looking tomato paste/sauce, but, trying to stay paleo, I was barely able to avoid disaster and downing it all in one fell swoop.  Was it delicious? Absolutely.  Was there tons of meat? Hmm…I’d say closer to 3 oz here, which like I said, is fine for a small lunch with me, as I doused the meat and vegetables heavily in the Lebanese olive oil.

It’s important to keep in mind that the price premium you pay here isn’t about the service (although it’s not lacking in any way or manner) or the portions, but the emphasis of quality ingredients.  Could I really taste the difference? Honestly, no.  With a dish like this, it’s hard to determine the quality with so much seasoning on the meat.  I could have likely been served a lesser grade of beef, and still not have known the difference. I do, however, appreciate high quality ingredients being used when they’re available, and respect that Kabab-Ji is offering something that’s not typical of a kebab house in DC.

If you’re looking for a restaurant holding a high standard with their ingredients (and what goes through your body) in their Mediterranean dishes, Kabab-Ji is just the place for you.  Otherwise, I’d say you could quite easily find something similar and cheaper elsewhere in the city or the suburbs nearby.

See Kabab-Ji Grill on a map here.

Recommended For:

• Organic/Grass Fed/Free Range Carnivores
• Quick Lunches
• Carbogluttons
• OCD Engineers
• Mediterranean Munchers

Not Recommended For:

• Starvin’ Marvins
• Paleoheads
• Zone Dieters
• Vajazzling Parties
• Frugalistas

*A Bejazzled behemoth. A twinkly-eyed beaver. A crystal-ornatified hoohah. A sparkling ladyjunk.  Jennifer Love Hewitt’s ‘A River Runs Through It.’ Do you get what I am saying here?

Do you ever find yourself in the Valley looking for a good meal? I’m talking about the Rio Grande Valley. That is where I found myself famished and in need of a good meal this week. I needed a little luck on my side because I Googled Harlingen’s Top 10 Restaurants, Harlingen Fine Dining, Harlingen’s Best Mexican Restaurants…and Olive Garden hit the Top 10 every time. I finally settled on Las Vegas Café for some local Mexican fare. I did a drive by and kept on driving. Harlingen is sketchcity and this place seemed to fit right in. I drove around for a couple more miles, but just couldn’t bring myself to eat at Applebee’s or Olive Garden. I decided to swing back by Las Vegas Café to check out the clientele. I immediately noticed 2 cop cars in the lot. Eating where the local cops eat is usually a good idea.

I ventured in to this run down dineresque establishment and was told to pick any table. The restaurant was at least half full which I took to be a good sign. Not knowing Spanish was ok. This can be an issue in the Valley. The following night out, I asked my server for vegetarian recommendations and he suggested the chicken fajitas (???). Language issue-clearly. Anyway, the staff at Las Vegas Café spoke enough English to help me out and my meal came out in short order.

The guacamole appetizer was enough for two and very fresh. However, I found the dish to be quite bland. I could only identify two ingredients-tomatoes and avocados. This was Michigan guacamole, not 3 miles from Mexico guacamole.

Guacamole

My cheese enchiladas came out piping hot and with a side of homemade flour tortillas-YUMMMM!!! I know white flour is a no-no, but these were homemade flour tortillas! The cheese enchiladas were fresh, but also bland. I ended up dumping an entire vat of salsa on both my guacamole and my enchiladas. Had I had the opportunity to take this food home with me, I totally would have made little bean burritos out of the leftovers for breakfast.

Cheese Enchiladas

With a 30% tip, the grand total was $13. I would definitely eat here again, but I would pack hand sanitizer and would run a marathon after my meal so as to not catch a case of the fats.

There are plenty of places waiting to lighten the load you carry in your wallet along the Inner Harbor in Baltimore, but for the most part, they tend to be chains headquartered in other states, with little actual Baltimore flavor.  This statement does not mean ‘tastes like Old Bay seasoning and hooker tears’, but rather, something that’s in Baltimore and nowhere else. So to find a more unique and local dining experience in the Inner Harbor is a nice treat.

Jen and I randomly came across the listing for Miss Shirley’s Cafe, and headed over to grab breakfast on a particularly overcast and drizzly morning.  The location is on the ground floor of a large office building, with the restaurant tucked away in the back.  The entire lobby of the office building is transformed into a large waiting area/overflow dining area on the weekends, which only added to our belief that we had set upon the start of a fantastic dining experience.

We sat down at a booth and scoured the menus.  Jen, as per usual, honed in her selection, while I continued to pour of the offerings in search of the most cheatiest of cheat meals available.  After considerable deliberation and several days later, we got our order in for breakfast.

Jen’s order of Pumpkin Cheesecake Stuffed French Toast turned out to epic in proportions.  Two giant slabs of challah bread, filled with pumpkin cream cheese and graham cracker crumbs, then given a generous dusting of cinnamon and powdered sugar, served with a dollop of whipped cream and a mini-pitcher of maple syrup.  This dish tasted amazingly good.  I teared up a little bit after having a bite of her dish, and this time, it wasn’t because I had just snorted a teaspoon full of Tabasco sauce (but that’s an entirely different story for an entirely different time).  This dish will have no problems satisfying even the most ravenous of breakfast seekers, although in my opinion, it could use a little bacon worked in there somewhere.  I guess that’d pretty much nix it for vegetarian options though.  You can’t please everybody.

I ordered the What Came First, the Chicken or the Egg? dish. A boneless fried chicken breast on a biscuit, with a poached egg on another biscuit, served up with a ground beef and sausage gravy.  This dish could have been fantastic, but it fell a little short of expectations.  The flavor is definitely there, as is the presentation.  However, the chicken breast was less of a breast portion and more along the size of a large wing.  The amount of gravy was also a bit on the light side for a description that mentions “smothered”, and simply did not come in a large enough portion to accommodate two biscuits in the order.  Luckily, me being me, I was prepared for such an event to occur.

Did I mention I’m a huge glutton?  Or have you just figured that out by now?

Miss Shirley’s also offers a short stack order of any of their specialty pancakes, and I felt it necessary strictly for restaurant review purposes to try one of their specialty pancake orders.  I ordered the Cinnamon Danish Pancakes- two enormous pancakes coated in cinnamon and sugar, and then coated with a cream cheese icing, served with whipped cream and maple syrup, just in case you weren’t sure that you’d be getting enough sugar here to put you in a diabetic coma for the next two weeks.  I have to say that these fit right up with my opinion of Jen’s french toast…amazing.  The only way to make them better?  Find a way to infuse bacon in there.  Really though, these pancakes were off the chain good.

Service is quick and courteous, and my cup of coffee was rarely left empty.  I can vouch for their pancakes and french toast, but the lilliputian chicken breast portion left something to be desired.  That being said, the pancakes combined with the breakfast dish I ordered sufficiently filled me up, but not everybody is going to order like that.

If you’re in Baltimore and looking for a good breakfast or brunch, look no further.  Miss Shirley’s is a win in my book, and I anxiously look forward to another opportunity to eat up there again.

Miss Shirley’s Cafe has two locations in Balitmore.  See the Inner Harbor location on a map here.

Recommended For:

• Casual Breakfasts
• Vegetarians
• Lazy Saturdays
• Slothlike Sundays
• An alternative to the megachains along the Inner Harbor
• Tiger Woods, looking for an alternative to Perkins

Not Recommended For:

• Carbaphobes
• People with Diabeetus
• Paleoheads
• Zone Dieters
• Velociraptors
• Robocop

Mystery. Secrets. Espionage. All these things make for a great spy themed story. From what I’ve heard, the attached Spy Museum of DC really plays up these things, but unfortunately, as a restaurant, Zola can only do so much in incorporating these ideas into the theme of the restaurant.

Let’s start with the restaurant itself. An elongated bar presents itself immediately to your left as your enter and approach the hostess stand, with seating for dining to the right. The design here is contemporary, but nothing too flashy or forward thinking to offend the eyes. If you walk straight towards the back of the establishment, you can see a staircase to your right that leads up to a walled off ceiling, which looks a bit odd, but the fact that the owners decided to save the staircase instead of gutting it is appreciable nonetheless. The restrooms in the very back can only be accessed by passing through a secret compartment wall, which plays into the spy theme nicely.

The wait staff here is friendly, humble, and best of all, actually knowledgeable about their food and wine. Jen ordered a glass of something something that smells like grapes to me, which to her, tasted a little off. Now bear in mind, Jen is RARELY picky about her wine, and will drink just about any sort of wine that’s given to her. The waiter suggested she try the Dona Paula Malbec they had on hand, which really impressed her. And if she’s happy, well, damn, I’m happy too.

Zola started our meal off with a chicken liver mousse with a fig spread on a small toast flotation device, compliments of the chef, which I happily swooped in on and took out both in a blink of an eye.  Nothing too extraordinary, but pretty tasty all the same.

For her dinner, Jen split her order between the Porcini Mushroom Ravioli and the Brussel Sprouts with Shiitake Mushrooms, topped with Parmesan Cheese.

The ravioli definitely looks a little on the light side for me, but for Jen, coupled with the brussel sprouts, it turned out to be the perfect amount.  Despite the small portion (and granted, it is an appetizer), the raviolis pack a signifcant amount of mushroom flavor with each bite.  The marsala sabayon helps give the dish some depth, and everything about the presentation makes this a winner.

The brussel sprouts are served in a minature cast iron pan, although they don’t have the char that denotes being cooked in a cast iron skillet, but likely a cook over the range and tossed into the oven to melt the parmesan cheese.  An excellent side dish that isn’t too overwhelming, but a large enough portion to shared with another.

I ordered the “American Hot Pot”, a hodgepodge of seafood and chorizo cooked in a tomato broth, served with a heavily buttered sweet corn quinoa foothill with a bridge of toast.  There’s got to be some sort of metaphor here of bridging something something to the land of seafood and pork, but I wasn’t getting it.  I was getting the heavy use of delicious butter in the quinoa, which likely wasn’t the healthiest of dining selections, but certainly worth eating.

Zola’s “Straight Forward American Cuisine” self-description is certainly befitting to the food here.  Nothing stands out as extraordinary, but nothing is completely disappointing, either.  Many of the other diners there were well dressed and on either a mission to impress their dates, or seeking a special night out.  Jen and I rolled up in our patchiest of patchy granola pants with our hair done up in dreadlock rasta with a single care in the world.  The setting here is definitely edging towards the upscale, and the same can be said about the service.  The food here, however, is above average at best, without being particularly memorable but undoubtedly satisfying.  I wholly believe that if the kitchen took some effort to revitalize their menu offerings with the right chef, Zola could be a much more desirable dining destination.

See Zola on a map here.

Recommended For:

• Out of Towners
• Fancy First Dates
• Vegetarians
• Paleo heads
• Zone dieters
• Butter Buffs

Not Recommended For:

• Gastronomic Gallivanters
• Quick Dinners
• Double Agent Double Dates
• Trashy Hobos
• Fat Phobics