Text 4079, 123 rader
Skriven 2008-03-20 21:37:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: trip 3 13
=================
After a week of music, it was back to the airport. Kristen
was supposed to take me, but she had a meeting called, so
her mom drove me - this added 10 minutes to the trip. 

Security was less of a snap than usual owing to my having
a pint of chili powder, which the girl at the machine
interpreted as liquid (she was doing her screening as she
did her coiffure). I joked around with the other agents
while she reran the chili powder separately (while she put
her lipstick on); got a bemused sort of semiexplanation
from one of them.

I was hoping to escape before a line of thunderstorms went
through - 2 hours on a tiny plane not appealing to me even in
the best of conditions, and being tossed about by the weather,
no, thank you. The inbound was 20 minutes late - not a big
thing except that one could see the storm about to roll in.
Luckily we weren't delayed further than that, and we got out
before the rains started in earnest.

CO2878 XNA EWR 1010 1359 ER4 4A

The computer had assigned me 1A, which would be okay but for
the lack of storage space, so I hustled my bustle to the
airline website, which refused to let me do anything about it,
the seatmaps being zeroed out except at the very back of the
aircraft. On checkin, though, it turned out that this was a
fairly empty flight (empty enough so they cleared standbys
an hour before departure).

Bumpy flight. Snack box - Sparrer beef salami, Rondele
Parmesan peppercorn cheese spread, Carr's water crackers,
Power Snacks sweet trail mix, M&Ms fun size. Amazing how
a buck or two outlay can make people happy - other than
this snack box, I think the service on this flight was
no better - perhaps a touch more surly - than other
carriers' express flights, but I got the feeling people
were enjoying themselves.

Our inbound had been delayed by 20 by headwinds; given the
airline version of Murphy's law, though, our arrival was not
expedited by 20 - in fact, we were delayed an additional
few minutes, which gave me not too much time to get from
terminal C to terminal A ... but when I got to gate 71 a
somewhat sullen but reasonably efficient shuttle guard gave
me the news that my connection was 45 min late. As the buses
were not quite so frequent as advertised, a bit of delay was
somewhat welcome. Eventually the bus showed up, and I had
half an hour in the PC, where the wireless was on the fritz
but the drinks flowed free.

CO1111 EWR DCA 1505 1619 735 14A

Scored the famous infinite legroom seat on this one - as
13A would be right in front of the exit, Boeing very
cleverly didn't put a seat there - and stretched out for a
little snooze that lasted until the FA came by and asked me
to put my seat up for landing. Most satisfactory. We landed
a hair later than expected.

I'd thought the President's Club at National was in the
parallel location to the Red Carpet Club in the next pier
and the US Airways Club two piers over, but I was wrong.
The Crown Room is there, and so I took advantage of that.
They pour a particularly nasty Merlot, and the wireless
isn't free. Staff was nice, though.

=

My brother wanted to go out to dinner, so I picked Grapeseed
in Bethesda on what has become a big old restaurant row,
Cordell Avenue. It's pretty fashionable and was quite busy
on a weekday night. The advantage for me was that it has a
good selection of wines by the glass and the half glass, and
the advantage for my brother is it has a young hip clientele
including a large proportion of attractive women.

The bread basket showed a decent fresh sourdough boule
served with a dipping sauce of tomato, garlic, and oil. An
auspicious start.

Ehrhardt Herrenweg Gewurztraminer was a very nice aperitif,
just off dry and very spicy and tropical fruitish.

I got three appetizers; Jonathan was planning to do a normal
meal, only upon hearing what I was going to do, he decided
to "join" me with a second appetizer. He's a bit of a swine
anyway, but he's a real pig when someone else is paying.

For starters I had grilled quail with piment d'espelette,
blood orange, and Marcona almonds. All the ingredients were
impeccable, and the preparation and presentation were nice.
The quail was done pink in the middle the way I asked. The
main quibble was that for $12 I should have got more than
one tiny quail. I know a place that charges half that for two.
With this I had a half glass of Vina Alberdi Rioja Rosan
2000, a moderately tannic, quite smooth, coffeeish pleasant
wine. My brother had a bowl of bean soup, which I didn't
investigate - this cost $8.

Second course: deep-fried chicken livers. I ordered mine
rare, and they came rare, three big roaster livers, browned
outside and creamy inside, just perfect, atop croutons. The
sauce was sort of silly - essentially jalapeno pepper jelly
melted down and thinned a little. The suggested wine with
this, Rosenblum Heritage Old Vines Petite Syrah, was way
too sweet by itself but matched well with the dish. My
brother's came medium-well, as he requested, the philistine.

Next I had mussels in lambic, which was a quart of very
nice though insufficiently debearded shellfish, in a quite
nice sauce of beer, smoky bacon, and (the menu didn't say
this) cream. With this I had a Sam, which went perfectly.
Jonathan's lamb shank was creditable but nothing special;
it was from a baby lamb, which means that 1. it didn't taste
like much and 2. normal restaurants give you two of them.

Service was unobtrusive, attentive, and excellently paced:
Jonathan thought it was slow and was extremely surprised to
find that we had gotten out in an hour and half.

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