Text 10545, 101 rader
Skriven 2011-05-09 00:10:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: my recent trip end 305
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And then after my train ride, after which I was
unaccountably famished: East Street Cafe, Washington,
which is not on East Street (there isn't one) but
rather in Union Station, whose street address is
50 Massachusetts Avenue. I'd always wanted to try this
restaurant, especially because the menu out front touts,
among other delicacies, beef rendang, and on previous
trips through the station, the food smelled pretty good.

So here I was, and a nice girl seated me, and presently
I was handed a menu, on which the rendang item had a very
old and faded sticker that read "out." Sufferin' succotash.
I was way away from the entrance by now, seated comfortably,
with a nice place for my luggage, and no rendang. I ordered
by way of a consolation prize the manila pork bbq served
with garlic rice, $11. There was also nothing on draft, so
I stuck with tea, which was the usual dishwater.

It took half an hour for my order to be made - cooking aromas,
mostly nice, and noises kept coming from the kitchen, but
nothing came out. I could see a number of tables whose
occupants had preceded me there, still not eating. And
eventually everything came out in a little parade. My dish
was much better than I had feared, better than expected,
almost as good as hoped for. The pork was grilled very hot
and just a little too much, so its pineapple-juice and bay
marinade had deeply caramelized the outside of the meat with
the burn mark here or there. The so-called garlic rice had
been stir-fried in a very hot wok with about one partial
clove of garlic (which I found only in one of my last five
forkfuls - the place does not offer chopsticks). On the
side came a peculiar vegetable medley - sweet-sour shredded
cabbage and carrots, cold, topped with stir-fried green
pepper, zucchini, and carrots, hot. I left, reasonably full
and reasonably happy and about $16 or 17 poorer - they
charge for tea here.

==

Rocklands BBQ, Rockville Pike, Maryland

In a small corner of a strip mall, this is mostly a
takeout place - not too different, actually, from what
I'm going to be seeing soon - with a big table in the
middle of the room and a wrap-around counter at the
periphery. As it's not too close to public trans, I
waited until my brother wanted to go out in the car
to go here. It wasn't hard to get to with a car, a
clever invention, though not so much as the one that
allows me to hurtle through the air at 85% of the
speed of sound.

They had a promotion: 5 wings free with a Yueng, so I
ordered that, followed by the Belly Buster - 1/4 chicken,
brisket, sausage, ribs, and grilled onions; a roll on
the side. My brother ordered just wings and water, as we
had decided to dutch it this time.

The wings (actually wing halves) were thoroughly
smoked and then coated in a sweetish sauce. Not
bad, nothing special. I gave most of them to Jonathan.

The Belly Buster came with white meat. I'd specifically
ordered dark, of course and had heard the young cashier
(who brought the food) call out "dark" to the kitchen.
I sent the white meat back, but they said, well, we have
no further use for it, why not take it home as a bonus
- which I didn't want to do, but my brother said he'd
eat it. So all was fine.

The food was just okay on average, the smoke being a
bit acrid, the meats of not spectacular quality.

The onions were quite good, the best thing on the plate.

The ribs were fairly good - smoky, just enough fat,
maybe a hair too salty, but that's a quibble. More
than a quibble was that they were not of the freshest
and had a whiff of that fishiness that over-the-hill
pork has.

I took but a tiny bit of sausage - it was way too dry
but of good flavor. I put the rest on the wholly mediocre
somewhat sweet roll that came with, napkinned it, and
saved it for the plane next day.

Chicken: I don't know what the white meat was like; the
dark was okay but way too salty and not quite fresh.

Brisket was represented by some very lean, bland, tough
though thin and machine-cut slices - awful stuff.

No side orders come with.

This place periodically places in the top 1, 5, or 10
bbq polls. Just goes to show that Washington doesn't
know from bbq.

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