#173 - mr shawn goes to washington (pt deux).

hey there, neglected food blog. how're things going? oh yeah. i suppose that since i decided to shun you for the past month, things have probably been fairly crickets & tumbleweed for you lately. sorry bout that. things have been pretty fun for me though. thanks for asking! mid-month, to kick off my annual bday week celebration, i decided to revisit my 2008 d.c. birthday celebration with a trip down to the capitol to hang with my good friend tadley, best known round these parts for his uber-classy guest column on spotted dick. as has become the standard these days for my vacations, my time there ended up being one that was jam packed with food & drink.

after a mostly-painless trip down 95 on the MEGAbus, i arrived early friday eve & met up with tadley at his office in georgetown, where i caught the tail end of his office's friday happy hour & downed a couple of flying dog k-9 cruiser winter ales before heading out for pizza at il canale, a hip italian joint with a SMOOVE-soundtracked website. whilst there, the owner totally came to our table & was all "how is every little thing?" we told him it was great & i proceeded to ask a since-forgotten lame bloggeresque question, something like "how long have you been open blah blah blah puke?" anyway, i opted for the il canale, a pizza named for the joint & adorned with buffalo mozzarella, sheep ricotta, prosciutto & eggplant cherry tomatoes. it was salty & lovely. please note: if you are reading this & eventually open a restaurant called "SALTY & LOVELY," i will totally invest COLD HARD CASH in your/my dream.

the next morning, we made our way to clarendon for brunch at the boulevard woodgrill, a sufficiently-hip-enough place serving american food & football on tvs. i was a bit "beat" from the previous eve, so i ignored my oft-declared "EGGS F'N SUCK" rule & ordered the southwest frittata with potatoes for its potential hangover-absorbing powers. then, because i was on vacation, i got myself a lagunitas fusion. suck it, hangover. "hair of the dog" & junk. the combo definitely straightened me out & eased me into the day. we followed it up with a few hours at nick's riverside grille, where we looked out at the potomac, drank a few sam adams & took in the local color. when i say "local color," i'm definitely referring to the orange, leathery tint of the cougarish likely-lobbyist who was sitting across the bar from us. in the evening, we traveled to mr kenny mcnugget's place on capitol hill, where we watched some college football game & i drank a bottle of dogfish head sahtea specifically purchased in NYC & brought down to DC for the bday festivities. i'd always been too cheap to buy a bottle of it but always wondered how black chai tea & juniper berries would work as part of a beer. after finally taking the plunge, i'll say this about it: tasty but weird.

from there, we headed to the H st NE area, an area which, from what i've gathered, is a "hip neighborhood" where you "could get mugged if you aren't careful." F-U-N! just like bushwick (circa 2008)! we started the night at biergarten haus, where we sat at the bar drinking dunkels & the like whilst consuming brats and a meat & cheese plate and pretzel rolls. it was TOTALLY BAVARIAN & totally good but we never actually visited the beer garden out back that gives the place its name. side note: this place has a kids menu, so if you're looking to bring your son and/or daughter to a beer garden, look no further. once we'd filled up on food & drink, we left there for a bday gathering for a friend of tadley's at little miss whiskey's golden dollar, a bar whose ridiculously long & unrememberable name will be forgiven for their beer selection. i split a hoppin frog B.O.R.I.S. the crusher oatmeal-imperial stout with kenny & watched a college friend i'd been reunited with for the weekend (YAY!) have a duck-rabbit milk stout & wished i'd held back on the dunkel in favor of the tasty beers at little miss whatever blah blah blah not puke. oh well.

come sunday, my soon-to-be 36-year-old body was ready for a relaxing day, so we drove down to the old town section of alexandria. after a spate of walking around, we stopped in at the burger joint, where i had a turkey burger, one that's made sous vide with portabello mushrooms & gorgonzola cheese infused into the burger. it kinda ruled, as did the cheerwine cherry soda i had with it. the last two days had been pretty packed with drinking, so we went easy from there with a single beer (guinness for me) at murphy's grand irish pub, a dark bar with police patches covering the walls. one was enough though, so we headed back to tadley's place in rosslyn for some football viewing. the sunday night game that week featured our hometown patriots, but before it started we headed to wendy's to pick up some dinner, expecting to try out their new fries. unfortunately, they hadn't made the switchover yet. LAME. still, i was cool with it. i liked the old fries & saw no reason for change, as they'd already achieved fry greatness.

snacks: toffee crunch cupcake / "texas" cupcake
drink: iced white mocha

on monday, tadley bid me adieu as he took off for work in the morn. i had time to kill before catching the MEGAbus in the early evening, so i opted to start my day by walking across the key bridge into georgetown, picking myself up a cupcake breakfast & eating it on the mall. i first visited georgetown cupcake, an establishment you may know from TLC's d.c. cupcakes, a reality show that aired earlier this year. after securing a toffee crunch cupcake (pictured below left) but being denied one of their fancy pink boxes since i only purchased one cupcake, i headed down the block to baked & wired, a much cooler establishment. whereas georgetown cupcake is clean & streamlined & had a reality show, baked & wired has cute lil handwritten signs in front of their cupcakes & pixies lyrics written on the front window. WAY cooler. i got one of their "texas" cupcakes, a cupcake made with chocolate cake with a hint of cinnamon & a pecan praline top. i'm not sure what makes that texan but whatevs.

  

i tried the toffee crunch cupcake first, assuming that it'd be the less-sweet of the two & therefore a better one to start breakfast with. it's one of georgetown cupcake's "special" cupcakes, one that's only available on mondays & it's pretty much what it sounds & looks like--a toffee cupcake with toffee-infused vanilla frosting & crushed heath bar on top. the cake was moist & tasted faintly of toffee & the frosting was soft & sweet & complemented the cake well. it was a good cupcake overall, but it wasn't anything flashy, especially when compared to baked & wired's "texas" cupcake. i mean, just look at that thing! the frosting was firmer, crunchier & sweeter than that of the toffee crunch one & the cake was moist & chocolatey, with the hint of cinnamon adding a whole other level to the overall flavor. while it was a bit sweeter than i generally prefer, it was the more complex & ultimately satisfying cupcake of the two.

for my breakfast beverage, whilst walking from georgetown to the mall, i stopped by casey's coffee, a joint inside some place called "columbia plaza" in d.c.'s foggy bottom neighborhood. from what i observed in my five minutes there, casey's is basically a starbucks without the logo & the carly simon/sonic youth cd's for sale. their appearance aside, their employees are due kudos for getting me my iced white mocha lickedy-split after i ordered it. chop chop!

there's really not much to say about the iced white mocha. it's a drink i used to get all the time during my caffeine-drinking, starbucks-patronizing days, so i guess it was like taking some sort of lame trip down memory lane or something. it came with all the necessary ingredients--coffee, milk & white chocolate--and since it was all sweet & stuff, it went well with the cupcakes. as i sat in our nation's capital, on the mall, sipping my iced white mocha & munching on cupcakes for breakfast & staring at monuments & reflecting on my weekend & whatnot, i was quite satisfied...definitely a great start to my annual bday week.

BONUS! check out the d.c. food photo gallery over at the eat!drink!snack! flickr page!