Wannabe Wino

I was recently tagged by my new friend Foodette to do a new meme. Foodette writes the blog Restaurant Review World, all about restaurants around the Los Angeles area. Since Matt's family lives in the LA area, I will be certain to check out her picks on the next trip out there, and if you live in LA or are visiting, be sure to stop by her blog!

So this meme asks me to pick my 5 favorite restaurants in my city. I had to think about this one for a while. DC and Northern Virginia have a ton of fantastic restaurants and I love lots of them for different reasons. To combat that, I've decided to stick to restaurants that are affordable on our everyday budget and offer great service and food for the money. My first pick was easy:

1.) I love Pizza Paradiso. There are two locations in DC and each one has its charms. The location in Dupont Circle is tiny, really tiny. If you go on Friday or Saturday night, be ready to wait for one of the 8ish tables or to sit at the bar (which is actually great as it's right in front of the oven and you can watch them toss and cook the pizzas in the open brick oven). In Georgetown, the location is much bigger, but be prepared for lots of college students to be there. My favorite thing to eat there is the Pizza Paradiso with fresh buffalo mozzarella and fresh tomatoes. Be sure to check out the huge beer selection (sacrilege, I know, but it's seriously good) and try the tiramisu!

2.) My second pick is also Italian (I love Italian food, my grams is a tiny little Italian woman who is the best cook!) and would be the Odeon Cafe. It holds a special place in my heart as we ate there the night we got engaged. (Insert sappy moment here.) The food is always excellent, the portions are big and the service is great. The Odeon Cafe is also located in Dupont, we used to hang out there quite a bit when Matt first arrived in DC. I recommend the bruschetta, but be sure to request it with fresh mozzarella as it is billed with just tomatoes! The olive oil dip on the table is to die for to put your bread in and the four cheese fettucini is my favorite. Good prices, always a seat available, and a special memory for me, I can't ask for more.

3.) Next would be the Lebanese Taverna. The first time we went was to the one in DC near the National Zoo. Matt had to drag me kicking and screaming but now I can't get enough. I love everything we have there, we even went twice last week! My favorite appetizer is the Jibneh Halloum, which is salty, delicious Lebanese cheese served with olives, tomatoes and onions. My favorite dish is the Shwarma, the house special, perfectly cooked slices of lamb and beef over a bed of rice pilaf. There's always a seat available and the service is impeccable.

4.) It hasn't gotten such great press, but Bebo Trattoria in Crystal City, Arlington certainly makes my list of great affordable places to eat. Our bill here is the best part. We rarely spent over $60 for 2 meals, an appetizer and a bottle of wine. For DC, that is fantastic! The wine list is pretty good, the service is really the most attentive I have ever seen and I really like all the pastas I have tried. Go for the sausage in orange sauce with cheese appetizer and be sure to stock up on the yummy bread.

5.) Last but not least is a recent affordable and fun place, one that's perfect for a quick, cheap weeknight meal. Mackey's Public House in Arlington. Things I love about Mackey's: the first time we went we had 5 pitchers of beer and it only cost us $30, they have dart boards and pool tables, and the food is actually really good for pub grub. I recommend the nachos, the homemade mac and cheese, and the mozzarella sticks. Delicious, open late, actually an okay wine list for a bar and plenty of beer, sports and games.

Thanks for tagging me Foodette! If any of these bloggers care to indulge, I'd love to hear about the best restaurants from David of Cooking Chat, Winedeb of Deb's Key West Wine and Gardening, Leah of DcGastronome (I bet she has tons of great ideas for my area and I'd love to hear her picks!), Brooklynguy of Brooklynguy's Food and Wine Blog, and John of Brim to the Dregs. Hope you will play along!

We got this bottle of 2006 Michel Schlumberger Pinot Blanc on our recent trip to the Sonoma area. It was a perfect wine for the night we drank it, the thermometer was hovering around 92 degrees, but thankfully the humidity had not yet descended upon us.

The wine had a real cork closure, cost $21, and was 12.5% alcohol by volume.

On the nose the wine displayed pineapple, limes, lemons and tangerines, a veritable fruit salad of scents. It actually reminded me of a tropical drink and I could picture myself sipping it poolside....if we had a pool. A very aromatic bottle of wine.

In the mouth, the wine was citrusy, showing lemons and grapefruit, very crisp and clean flavors. I noted the excellent acidity and structure of the wine and additionally the very clean and pleasant finish. I served the wine with parmesean encrusted baked tilapia, white corn and parmesean cous cous. It went perfectly with the fish.

I wish I had another bottle for the hot days that are approaching!

That time of month has rolled around and wine bloggers all over the world (well hopefully, I'm not sure how easy this theme will be for those outside North America) are raising glasses of Washington State Cabernet Sauvignon, our theme for this month. This month's lovely and gracious host is Catie of Through the Walla Walla Grape Vine, no surprise that the theme is Washington-centric!

I've been a WBW slacker for the last two months, though I think I had very good reasons for my absence from the festivities. However, I'm back in the saddle for this month, though even being here in the US, it was no easy feat to find a Washington State wine that was not Chauteau St. Michelle or Columbia Crest. I ventured to Total Wine and More in Alexandria, VA to find my wine this month. To my utter surprise, they actually had two Cabernet Sauvignons from Walla Walla, but Matt would not have been pleased if I brought home a $52 or $34 bottle of wine. Other than that, in the nearly 1000 bottles that must have been Cabernet Sauvignon, there were only 5 options...2 of which belonged to the aforementioned wineries. I finally settled on a bottle, after literally examining every bottle to make sure I wasn't missing anything.

My entry for this WBW is a $12.99 bottle of 2003 Bridgman Cabernet Sauvignon from the Yakima Valley of Washington State. It had a plastic cork closure and weighs in at 13.9% alcohol by volume.

On the nose there was alcohol at first. That eventually blew off. Underneath were aromas of bell pepper with an herbacious note, blackberries, blueberries, oak and something oddly sweet. Overall, I would say the fruit was very sweet on the nose. In the mouth there were candied blackberries and overall it was sweet in the mouth though it had smoky undertones.

I served the wine with brautwurst on the grill and homemade macaroni and cheese. It was a fairly good match, though I think perhaps it would have been better with a steak.

Overall, an okay foray into Washington Cabernet, though I wish I could have justified the ones from Walla Walla!

I finally got around to visiting Total Wine and More this weekend. Nate from Vinvenio has been urging me to check it out for a few weeks now, but it's sort of out of the way and actually kind of difficult to get to, so I'd been hemming and hawing about it. However, I wouldn't be a very good wino if I didn't eventually go to this behemoth of a wine shop. And besides, a coupon arrived in my welcome wagon mailer for $10 off a purchase of $50 or more. I'm a sucker for coupons.

Upon arriving at Total Wine and More in Alexandria, I thought my eyes would pop out of my head. I have literally never seen that many bottles of wine in one place before. I think they claim to have 8,000 different wines. I was overwhelmed. I was even more overwhelmed when I realized that there was an entire aisle of just Cabernet Sauvignon, my main reason for this outing was to procure a bottle for this month's WBW with the theme of Washington State Cabernet Sauvignon. It took me nearly an hour to just get through the Cabernet aisle so I didn't have much time to closely examine everything else as we were drywalling yesterday and Matt needed me to hold stuff.

The good: Lots of wine in all different price ranges. Lots of wine accessories. They also sell all kinds of beer, so this would be a great stop if you were throwing a big party.

The bad: Very few sales staff. And no one I talked to seemed to know wine at all.

The ugly: I am all for finding cool things hiding in wine shops. However, those wine shops usually do not have 8,000 wines that need to be looked through to find that gem. And that was the problem here. I'm sure there must have been some really good stuff in the Cabernet aisle. But it was IMPOSSIBLE to find anything as there was no rhyme or reason to the organization. A $3.99 bottle sat next to a $54 bottle. Australia, then CA, then Uruguay, then CA again and so on. Finding the very few bottles from Washington State took me forever!

The results: 1 bottle of Washington State Cabernet Sauvignon. 2 bottles of Sauvignon Blanc from Chile, 2 bottles of Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough, 1 bottle of Sauvignon Blanc from South Africa. (I'm on a huge Sauvignon Blanc kick as it is hot and humid and sticky here.)

The total: 6 bottles of wine for $54. $44 after my $10 off coupon. Possibly the best deal ever.

Would I return? Yes, for the purpose of gathering many inexpensive bottles for either everyday drinking or if we ever get around to having a housewarming party. If I were looking for a very specific bottle or even for another WBW bottle, I doubt I would return. Without knowledgeable staff it was very difficult to find what I was looking for and the lack of any organizational system made it that much harder. A good place for a mixed case of everyday wine or a cheap case for a pary.

Be prepared- I love crisp white wines in the summer and Sauvignon Blanc often fits my perfect idea of what to drink in the 95+ degree humid summer days of Virginia. That's right folks, it appears that summer weather has arrived and is here to stay. Apparently we don't believe in spring in this area of the country and jumped straight from frigid to boiling.

Which brings us to the night's wine. A 2005 Passalacqua Sauvignon Blanc the we picked up on our last CA trip. The wine cost $16, had a real cork closure and clocked in at 13.9% alcohol by volume. I believe we have two more bottles in the basement, though my organization structure got all rearranged with the move and hasn't made it's way to the top of my priority list to redo yet.

I tend to jot down not very specific things in addition to flavors and impressions as I'm drinking my way through a bottle of wine, as I did with this wine. My first descriptor in my notes is "Yum." And really, that pretty much sums this bottle of wine up.

The wine showed lemons, apricots, and honeydew melon on the nose, leading to a wonderful tropical aroma wafting out of my glass. In the mouth, there were lemons, but on the sweet side, not tart, grass, and melons. Overall the wine had a very slight sweet note. The mouthfeel of this wine was quite smooth and the fruit really showed well, both on the nose and in the mouth. I clearly really liked this one as I wrote "Yum" again at the end of my notes.

I served this wine with over baked chicken (done in breadcrumbs), rice pilaf and green beans. A very good match, I liked the way the wine played with the spices in the chicken breading. Overall, the wine was a great deal, I felt like I got a lot out of this wine for the price tag.

Or at least the 2005 De la Montanya Tina's Vineyard Pinot Noir seems to not have cooked on it's arduous journey from CA to VA. This despite being stuck in a UPS truck for 2 full days and sitting for 3 full days over a long weekend in a warehouse! I'm hoping since this once is fine the other 5 bottles in the shipment are as well, though only time will tell, clearly.

The wine came in a club shipment (as you may have realized given my ranting about this wine over the past weeks), cost $25.60 for the bottle, has a real cork closure, and weighs in at 14% alcohol by volume.

The nose of the wine displayed spicy cedar wood, oak, spices and raspberries. In the mouth were more raspberries, tart cherries and spices. Overall the wine had what I would call a smoky characteristic, mostly imparted by the wood aromas on the nose. The wine was very light in the mouth, with the fruit feeling very fresh.

It was actually a great match with dinner! I'm experimenting with our new grill and purchased a cedar plank to cook on. Using that, our dinner was cedar-planked salmon steak with lemon, mashed potatoes and steamed broccoli. Now, I know you are thinking that the cedar quality in the wine was my nose playing tricks on me with the cedar planked salmon, but I assure you that I opened and tasted the wine before the salmon was even brought in the house. And, if I do say so myself, the salmon was delicious, especially with the wine. The light body of the wine and its smoky quality paired incredibly well with the heavy salmon.

This wine needs to come with a warning: decant before attempting to drink or risk lighting yourself on fire with the fumes. The wine itself is a 2002 Mazzocco Merlot.

Weighing in at 15% alcohol by volume, the bottle had a real cork and cost us $25 at the winery. (One of our purchases on our recent trip.)

After the alcohol blew off the nose (really, trust me on this one, decant) strawberries showed through. Then, and I realize this will sound incredibly odd, chocolate leather. Neither simply chocolate or leather, it was honestly a combination. In the mouth there were more strawberries and the wine was earthy overall.

I would describe this as a big wine. Big flavors, big alcohol, big aroma. The wine was the darkest wine I think I have ever seen. Not a ray of light was getting through this deep purple wine. The wine was also very tannic, it could certainly age for quite a while longer and I think it would develop into an incredible wine in another 3-5 years. It took several hours for the flavors to smooth out.

I served this with bbq pork chops, parmesean cous cous, and white corn on the cob. It was an excellent match for the bbq and I would definite suggest a bbq pairing for this one!

Again with that whole moving thing, I uncovered wines that have been hanging around for quite some time in corners and under books and such. This was another one I found while moving.

It was a 2004 Robert Mondavi Private Selection Cabernet Sauvignon. I *believe* I picked this up for around $10 at Costco in August, 2006, but I could be horribly off on the price. Whatever the case may be, I remember buying it because I was in Costco picking up cheap bottles of wine for a large group of people we were having over. As is turns out, none of the wine actually got consumed that day and I ended up with a mish-mosh of cheap wine hanging around. Such is life.

On the nose were berries, mostly blackberries, with maybe a little blueberry perhaps from the Petite Sirah blended in and alcohol, despite the bottle only being 13.5% alcohol. After that blew off, there were aromas of vanilla and oak.

In the mouth I found mostly blackberries. However, after it had been sitting out for a while, there were other dark fruits present, pretty much indistinguishable, but perhaps cherries?

I served it with keilbalsa off the grill, rice pilaf and green beans. It was a quick meal that I threw together after a long day spent tiling and grouting and I didn't want to open a pricey wine with it. For $10 the wine was simple, fruity, and drinkable, though the strong alcohol scent and presence really surprised me given the low level.

As you may know from reading, we've recently moved into our first house from an apartment. In our apartment, wine was squirrled in corners. While I have set-up CellarTracker to manage my wine, some of the bottles managed to escape me as they were hidden too well. Back in November I made a trip to Unwined for a mixed half-case of everyday wines. I thought we had consummed them all, but some had managed to elude their destiny for 7 months. No more I say!


Since I love Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, I'm drawing a blank as to how I let this one sit around for so long! It was a 2005 Scott Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand. The bottle cost $14.99 at Unwined, was 13% alcohol by volume and had a screw-cap closure.



The nose on this one was reserved, though I did pick up a bit of vanilla (odd) and a slight hint of gooseberry. In the mouth was gooseberry with a ton of citrus. Mostly lime all over the place, though there were hints of other citrus, grapefruit and lemon. Overall, the wine was light and crisp with good acidity. Not quite as crisp and tart as some others I've had, but it sure did the trick for us as we were exhausted and hot after moving all day.

I have a problem. When new wine comes in my door I get this nagging little voice in the back of my head telling me I should try it right.then. Such was the case when my latest WineQ showed up at my door. I managed to wait all of 3 days before jumping into this bottle of 2005 Lava Cap Reserve Sauvignon Blanc.

The wine cost $11.99 (free shipping since my order was over $35 total!!), was 14.6% alcohol by volume and had a real cork closure. Have I mentioned how much I enjoy getting free shipping from WineQ? It's the shipping costs from my other wine clubs that kill me when I realize I could have purchased at least another bottle, maybe two for the price it cost to ship the wine!

In the glass this Sauvignon Blanc wass straw gold in color, it really struck me as a pretty wine. The nose came wafting out of the glass with vanilla, lime and orange citrus flavors. A very aromatic wine overall. In the mouth I would describe the wine as creamy. I got flavors of lime, melon, oak and clementines in the mouth.

The oak aging really lent a different characteristic to this wine, much different from most of the Sauvignon Blancs that I drink, so I had to adjust my expectations to appreciate this wine for what it was: a very well-balanced, inexpensive, aromatic and flavorful white, with good citrus and melon flavors tempered by the oak aging. I think it would do wonderfully with an herb-roasted chicken dish, though it was great on its own as we drank it.