brunch at boundary stone | where to eat in dc

You know those brunches when two hours pass in a matter of seconds, it seems, and the food is just right, and the mimosa glasses are never empty, and you're laughing too hard to remember to take pictures to document every sip and bite on your blog? Man, they don't happen often enough. But I relish them when they do. I relish every moment like that - so present and alive and buzzing with energy and friendship. I live for that.

I had one of those brunches a few weekends ago at Boundary Stone in Bloomingdale. I've been a fan of the whiskey bar since it opened a few years back. It arguably has the best wings in the District, the entrance is through an old barn door, the beer is local, they always have bubbly on hand, and it's in one of my favorite neighborhoods. For the too-short time that I lived in Bloomingdale, I frequented their happy hour ($4 wings), and Zander and I occasionally stopped in for a night cap. It's a neighborhood bar that welcomes you home, even if it's your first time there.

When my girlfriends Clare and Sara and I met up to try their new full-service brunch with a bottomless drink option, I didn't know what to expect. The food has always been great, but I couldn't put my mind around exactly how brunch would work. It works well.

I arrived at noon, and the restaurant was full but not overflowing. I waited, looking like a wallflower, for five minutes as a couple sitting at a booth inside paid. A friendly server noticed me eying the table and quickly cleared and cleaned it for me to sit. I ordered bottomless mimosas while I waited for my girlfriends to arrive. And they. are. strong. I'd expect nothing less from the Stone. If they're going to charge $12 for bottomless mimosas, they're not going to hand you a glass of orange juice with a splash of champagne - they care about quality too much. They also used fresh orange juice, and the difference it makes is huge.

Sara and Clare and I ordered seitan wings to share, and I discovered that vegetarian "meat" isn't as scary as it looks. Then again, I'd probably gnaw on a tree trunk if it were covered in their wing sauce. At some point - oh, 30, 45 minutes, maybe an hour later - we finally got around to looking at the brunch menu and ordering. I tried the chorizo sandwich ($13). It's served with a fried egg and green salsa on top and roasted breakfast potatoes on the side. If I could have fit another sandwich in my full stomach, I would have ordered a second. Clare had the vegetable quiche and gave it rave reviews. Sara ordered off the lunch menu and tried the half smoke - also delicious.

We drank and talked for so long that when Zander came to pick me up (sweet boyfriend!), he ended up joining us for a little bit.

Sometimes I forget that having brunch isn't just about the newest restaurant or the hottest scene or the best chef in town. It's really easy to get caught up in wanting to try everything and photograph it all along the way. Having brunch with Clare and Sara was my favorite brunch I've had in ages. It was about sharing an experience more than experiencing the food. Though, it doesn't hurt that the food was damn good, too. And those mimosas. I'm still rehydrating after those.

if you go...

boundary stone

116 rhode island ave nw

@boundarystonedc

fiola | where to eat in dc

 the bar at Fiola

Every once in a while, you need to shut down your inner voice saying, "It costs how much?" and experience decadence. It's an incredibly difficult thing for me to do. I'm hopelessly reasonable when it comes to finances. (If only I could transfer some of that reasonableness to, say, any other area of my life!) When it comes to money, Zander and I complement each other. He appreciates good food and good wine and the beauty of occasional indulgences. He appreciates the restorative - emotionally, physically, and mentally - powers of a good meal. He knows that romance lies beyond a glass (or two) of Prosecco at an intimate bar. All the while, I keep him grounded - sometimes you have to find that romance in things far more practical and light on the wallet. 

But this blog post isn't about practical. It's about that romance and indulgence at an intimate bar. It's about Fiola Da Fabio Trabocchi, one of D.C.'s most sough after, romantic, delicious dining experiences. 

For our first visit we opted to sit at the bar. We started with a few glasses of wine; we just barely missed the happy hour that ends at 6:00. We started with the bar menu, comprised of elevated takes on typical bar food. We tried most of the menu, starting with the Mozzarella - Neapolitan buffalo mozzarella fritters. The salty Parmesan, the crispy breading, the flavorful mozzarella, the light marina sauce spooned in the bottom of the bowl all came together to form one of the best appetizers I've ever tasted. I almost ordered another serving.

Next, we tried La Piadina - grilled flatbread with proscuitto and stracchino cheese. I really enjoy Italian cheeses, is what I've discovered. The above-average sized portion was filling - I had to wait a while to order the next bite. To say this wasn't our favorite dish of the evening should hold no credence - it's great, it just didn't pack as much flavor as the others.

Our final appetizer was the veal meatballs. These succulent, moist meatballs are covered with tomato and a sunny side up egg. I kissed my fingers and threw them in the air with appreciation. Zander would come back to Fiola just for these. I would, too.

If you're wondering just how much food two people can eat in the course of one evening looking at these pictures, so am I. Apparently, it's a lot. Zander ordered the oysters before his entree. From the sound of him throwing them back, they're a winner, too.

For his entree, Zan tried the Tortellini of Cotechino Sausage with oyster mushrooms, veal sweetbreads, and green asparagus. I tried a bite of the broth and a tortellini, and even I - who am squeamish about sweetbreads, truly enjoyed it. The tortellini is rich and filling, the sweetbreads not overpowering, and the asparagus adds a great crunch to round off the dish. He loved it.

Now let's talk about this burger. It might odd that I went to a fine-dining Italian restaurant and ordered a burger, but would it be as strange if I told you it's quite possibly the best burger I've ever had? It really was. I have daydreamed about that burger. The $22 behemoth is a tenderloin patty topped with smoked provolone cheese, pancetta (swoon), and con fit tomato, and is served with rosemary fries. After all the food we'd had over the course of a few hours, I couldn't eat more than half of it, but Zan was more than happy to help me polish it off. The rosemary adds a nice flavor to the fries, though they were just a tad too salty.

Zan and I left with a tab that nearly made me faint, but a meal like this - that transports you to Italy for an evening, and lavishes you with flavor and decadence that make you close your eyes to savor each bite, it's worth it every once in a while.

if you go... 

fiola

601 pennsylvania ave nw

bar menu

happy hour: 4-6

dinner menu 

dreaming big

I saw a girlfriend this weekend who's actively pursuing her dreams. She wants to own her own restaurant. She has been tweaking her business plan for years, worked in the industry, knows the ins and outs of the financial side as well as the front of house. She's ready to do this. I asked her about her timeline; I think I still expected it to be a pipe dream - maybe 5 years or 10 years down the road. She said six months. She's my age, mid-late 20s.

Two different social media acquaintances blogged in the past week about chasing their dreams. One dreams of being a writer, the other an artist. They're dropping their day jobs, bidding see you laters to their friends, and running into the unknown for the chance to say, at the very least, "I tried."

I've been so inspired hearing these stories. And at the core of my inspiration has been unease (doesn't inspiration always feel slightly uncomfortable?). What would I risk everything to do? To achieve? To be?

It infuriated me that I don't have a career answer. I don't. I don't know for what I would give up everything to do with my life. Write? Be a travel writer? I don't have a perfect answer for a dream career path. But if I could risk it all, I do know that I'd move somewhere abroad again - not as a tourist but as a local.

I know that I'd rent someplace small, and I'd eat like a local and live like one for a month, to start. I don't know the details, but I know that I'm at the start of something. At the start of figuring out a dream that I can chase, that I've wanted to chase since I set my feet back down on American soil. I've wanted to live abroad again since I came back from it.

Where would I live for short or long-term? Nepal, Italy, somewhere in Central or South America immediately come to mind. I'd live nearly anywhere.

I've been so inspired lately that all I can think about is that it's time. It's time to stop wanting and stop daydreaming and to start acting again. I'm happiest when I'm uncomfortable, uncertain, passionate, excited. Now that this idea has planted itself in my head as real, a thing that if I put my mind to it, I can make happen, it's not going away. It's only going to get bigger.

I don't know how I would earn a living for a lifetime in my dream world, but I do know that I wake up with thoughts of countrysides I've never seen, trails leading me into the unknown, food I can't pronounce. I dream in cities I've never seen. It's time to see one of them, to live in one of them again.

A month living in another country. I want to do that this year. 

what cherry blossoms mean to me

Cherry blossoms break my heart. They bloom with all the hope and rejuvenation I want from spring, and then they fall, in clumps and one by one, and forge a descent that, like some tears down the lines of some faces, are so beautiful they break your heart.

The first time I experienced cherry blossoms was in Iwakuni, Japan. I lived 45 minutes away by train from the Kentaik-yo Bridge, one of the most beautiful spots in all of Japan to see the blossoms in bloom and participate in "hanami," or the picnic and sake-filled celebration of the new season. I went so many times to Iwakuni that year I lived there. The blossoms only stay in bloom for a week - depending on the weather, maybe a little less, or in a gracious year, maybe a few days more. I went once before they were fully bloomed and twice while they were in bloom, and I could have gone 100 times more. I could have camped under them and let the pink petals float down on me like the most gentle rain shower, and I would have been heartbroken and joyous.

One of my karate teachers - a woman who spoke little English but with whom I communicated and shared so much despite - took me to Kudamatsu, a small, neighboring town to ours, one night after class. It was 9:00 or 10:00pm. She turned off the ignition in her small car outside of a park. Lanterns lit the way, strung from tree to tree. A young couple kissed beneath one tree, stealing moments long after the day's hanami ended.

We walked mostly in silence, but Iwamoto-san spoke up once, to tell me, "This is the nature of cherry blossoms."

I said wistfully that I wish they'd live longer than a week. "We like to fall as fast as they bloom," she told me.

Japanese people treasure tradition, respect, dignity, and pride. But when the cherry blossoms bloom, they set all that aside and embrace frivolity -  they laugh and smile, a sight I didn't see very often, and they celebrate the blossoms. The beer and sake and food they bring to enjoy beneath the blossoms represents a moment in every year when nothing else matters but appreciating beauty and nature's art.

I think I'm a typical westerner when it comes to wanting gratification. I want it fast, and I want it often, and I want it prolonged. That's our culture, that's rooted in our values of capitalism and advancement and reaping the rewards- whether it be food or beauty, we want more. But the cherry blossoms don't give us that. They offer us a blink of gratification, and then they die.

The nature of cherry blossoms - beauty so profound and death so sudden - teaches me to notice and seek out and appreciate the precious few days that mark winter's change into spring. The blossoms keep me accountable, too, for remembering Japan, and what I learned there, and my difficult path towards understanding a culture so different from my own.

But mostly the cherry blossoms break my heart with their beauty and transience, and I spend another year waiting for them to bloom again.

It's with wonder and awe that I say that I get to live in D.C. in the Spring - a city blooming with cherry blossoms as I type this. As a token of kindness and a mark of friendship, Japan donated cherry blossom trees to D.C. many years ago.Today, the most iconic image of them is along the National Mall and Tidal Basin. But I wanted to show you where I've seen and loved them this Spring. 

 1. top of the post - the White House 2. a mural depicting cherry blossoms on Barracks Row SE 3. the view from Cantina Marina, on the SW waterfront 4/5/6. a home near my home in upper NW (Cleveland Park) 7. my street (Porter, NW) **the ones in NW may not all be cherry blossoms, but they're beautiful nonetheless

snooze | where to eat in denver

Ever since I said I don't like eating breakfast out, I've been made to regret it. I posited that I can make most standard diner breakfasts at home for less money and less hassle, and I wouldn't have to put on pants. Of course, it seemed every person in my life set out to prove me wrong, and I happily admit that they succeeded. I was wrong, and the rest of the general population was right: breakfast is best. 

When I visited my girlfriend Callie in Denver last month (I wrote about our snowboarding trip), it worked out that I would stay one night in her city before heading up into the mountains the next afternoon. Her response, "We can go to Snooze!" 

One of the six locations of Snooze, a local "A.M. eatery," is within walking distance from Callie's beautiful apartment. We went on a Friday morning, which accounted for some of her excitement - the place has a several hours long wait on the weekend. Even on a week day morning, we waited 15 minutes for a table. We started with loose leaf Earl Gray Tea in mugs so cute I wanted to steal them (I didn't, scouts honor!). 

I asked Callie what's good. She thought for a second, and pointed out the pancakes that come in a multitude of flavors, the entire, lengthy eggs benedict section, the omelet, the breakfast burrito, and finally looked up and said, "Everything," 

She went with her longstanding favorite, the breakfast pot pie. A very flaky puff pastry is topped with homemade rosemary sausage gravy and an egg (she chose sunny side up), with a side of hashbrowns. I don't care for chicken pot pie, but I'd eat Snooze's rich, savory breakfast version any day of the week.

True to form, I couldn't make a decision. I teetered between the the barbacoa benny and pancakes. Callie let me in on a Snooze secret: they'll let you do half and half of different dishes and meals. That is pretty freaking cool. Just like she said, when I told the server I was torn between the two, he offered the half-and-half option. 

The barbacoa benny was a unique, delicious take on traditional eggs benedict. I loved the tender, flavorful Mexican-style meat with a gentle pico de gallo salsa, with the flavor of poached egg and smothered in creamy Hollandaise. Our server suggested the pineapple upside down pancake. It's decadent and spoiled me silly. Callie and I together couldn't quite finish it, but we got close. 

I didn't have much time to do anything else in Denver, but breakfast at Snooze made me feel like a part of the city. 

If you go... 

Snooze locations

the menu

prices are in the $8-12 range per entree

giordano's | where to eat in chicago

You know how you shouldn't go grocery shopping when you're hungry? Well, you probably also shouldn't blog about pizza that stole your heart and hid it in a restaurant in Chicago when you're hungry, either. But, alas, life is short... and hopefully plane tickets to Chicago are cheapcheapcheap by the time I finish writing this.

I don't want to say that I'm a pizza snob, or a foodie - pizza version. But those things may be accurate descriptors. Pizza is absolutely, without a doubt, my favorite food on the planet. I used to say that sort of embarrassed and admit immediately after uttering it that I know it's a kindergartener's favorite food, too. I used to think it meant I had a weak, undeveloped palate. But that's just not true. There isn't much that could be more wrong with that sentiment. Pizza, nay, good pizza, has a depth of flavor - basil and garlic and oregano and lightly seasoned tomato sauce that pop, that dance on your tastebuds. The crust can be light and fluffy, or crisped, wood-oven seared, thick, or, in the case of my work trip to Chicago a few months ago, deep dish.

I'm a pizza traditionalist, although, with the world's most adapted food (we're talking corn as a topping in Japan!), is there such a thing? I mean it in the sense that I prefer Neapolitan-style pizza - thin, crispy, with fresh tomatoes, mozzarella and basil in each bite. That said, I'm also a meat-lover so you'll almost always fine pepperoni and sausage on any slice of mine. (I guess I'm not so much of a traditionalist then, am I? But leave off the corn, please.)

I had my mind expanded for the better when I tried Giordano's Famous Chicago Pizza. Sure, I've had deep dish pizza - the gooey, massive servings at District of Pi in DC were a good introduction. But the real Chicago deal made my mouth water just looking at it. As I picked up a piece, mozzarella oozed off, fresh garlic hit my nose, and - the true test of deep dish success - I couldn't eat more than a single piece. I tried for a second. I put my mind to it, and I only got a bite in before admitting defeat.

I read an article recently about how the love of pizza brought a couple together. It was beautifully written. It got me reminiscing about my travels and just how often I've turned to pizza for a taste of comfort and home - and to experience how a local culture interprets the dish. I mentioned the Japanese style with corn - there's also mayonnaise as a topping. In China, going to a Pizza Hut is a reservations-needed event. In South Africa, I washed my cheese-heavy slices down with a Savannah Dry. And in Chicago, I fell in love with deep dish pizza. If you're ever in the area, order a pie from Gioradano's for me, okay?

Hi, my name is Cyndi, and I'm a pizza addict. What's your favorite slice and style? 

silver thatch inn | charlottesville, virginia

Mostly I stay in hostels when I travel. My recent trip to Mexico was an exception (I blogged about where I stayed here). Traveling with mi novio made it a very different trip than any I've taken before. I cared about things like sheets and blankets and having a mattress. Comfort became a bigger priority as part of a couple than it ever mattered to me as a solo traveler. 

Being part of a couple has me thinking about travel a little differently. Instead of only saving for international trips, I've had a little romance in the form of bed and breakfasts on the brain. A weekend away in a tiny town on the outskirts of a bigger town, or tucked away in the mountains, or at the end of a winding drive through a vineyard makes me as wistful as the thought of a twin-sized dorm room bed in Shanghai, China (okay, almost as wistful). 

So when Zan's and my anniversary rolled around a few weeks ago, we capitalized on my new found kind of wanderlust and spent a night at the Silver Thatch Inn outside of Charlottesville. Zander surprised me with the B&B. The inn is historic, like most of the homes near Charlottesville. Begun in 1780 by a group of Hessian soldiers captured during the Revolutionary War, it served as a tobacco plantation, a melon farm, and a dairy farm before becoming the quaint guest house it is today. 

A couple named Jim and Terri currently run the Inn. They have a wine cellar takes you by surprise, a charming bar, and both are trained chefs. We stayed cozy in the Madison Room, and besides being ridiculous (ie, myself) and squeamish about that whole, everybody thinks we're totally doing it right now thing that follows you around when you stay somewhere like a B&B, it was relaxing (oh, come on, you know you've thought it, too!). The bottle of bubbly on ice and homemade chocolate chip cookies on our pillows didn't hurt a single bit. 

We were famished for Sunday morning breakfast. That's the best B of the B&B - at least, to me. Terri brought Zan fresh coffee and offered me a large selection of teas. She started us out with fresh fruit and yogurt. I handed my blackberries over to Zander because who can handle those seeds in your teeth? The main event was panko-covered french toast with blueberry compote, sliced bananas, and chicken and dried cranberry sausage. With real maple syrup. Did I mention the maple syrup? I'd be very tempted to pay the price of the room just to have a do-over with that french toast. Can I get seconds? 

I'll never give up planning and budgeting and saving for the big trips, the international ones, the ones whose flight times are longer than you believed planes could fly. I'll always want those trips, and I'll always take those trips. But there's something to be said for splurging near home, taking a holiday two hours away in a home that's not your home, where the food and history and sights give you that same high of a new experience.

And plus, that french toast. 

Silver Thatch Inn

434.978.4686

$190-$220

*most B&Bs in the area require a 2-night minimum, but they kindly bent the rules, allowing us to stay for one