DC Food Gluttony Re-cap - Part 1

I was afraid they'd have to roll me onto the plane back to Atlanta, that's how much food I had this weekend.

It was all so worth it though. I got to reconnect with a cousin I hadn't seen in over 10 years and hang out with my sister, aunts, and other cousins. Food, family, and fun, that's the best way to sum up the weekend.

I tried to document as much of the food as I could but was foiled a few times by dying batteries, bad timing, and some forgetfulness.

Let's start with Thursday evening, when we got into DC . . .

After we got checked into our hotel room and had settled in, we were STARVING. Luckily, my sister was coming to meet us for dinner. We just needed to figure where. Last time I visited, she kept telling me about this place that served pupusas, which are a type of filled flatbread that seem to be native to El Salvador. We didn't get a chance to eat them then, but I remembered them and suggested trying them for dinner that night. As it turns out, we were pretty close to a string of restaurants and shops in Arlington and there was a place that served pupusas. Off we went.

We arrived at Mexicali Blues to find that there was a long wait, but we decided to tough it out and eventually got a table in the bar area. I had of course been drooling over the menu as we'd waited for our table, and I knew exactly what I was going to have. We had decided to order a couple pupusas to split as a quasi-appetizer and we got one filled with beans and cheese and one just with cheese. I ordered the enchiladas and got to choose three fillings -- I chose beef, potato, and spinach & mushroom.

I guess I should confess here that no pictures were taken of our food. Mr. Spice is not too keen on me taking pics of food in restaurants and I didn't feel like arguing with him.

Anyway, when the food came out, I noticed that the pupusas looked like stuffed pooris, which are a fried Indian bread. My favorite kind are dal pooris, which are pooris stuffed with spiced lentils. The pupusas were a dead ringer for them, which was a good sign for me. I wasn't as enthused with the bean and cheese ones, but the all cheese pupusa was pretty good. The cheese was gooey and salty and a perfect foil to the sturdiness of the pupusa.

The enchiladas were okay. Keep in mind we'd already polished off two baskets of chips and salsa while waiting for our food, so I was already a bit full by this point. The fillings just seemed too bland for me, but I did enjoy novelty of the potato and spinach/mushroom fillings.

After all this, my sister and I were still ready for some dessert. We headed further down the street and hit up Boccato Gelato & Espresso. I was starting to wish I'd saved even more room or even that I'd forgone dinner so that I could do full justice to the selections there. I immediately zoned in on a chocolate gelato, but decided to try some of the fruit-based ones instead. After sampling the blood orange, mandarin, and mango sencha flavors, I settled on mango sencha, which was a mix of mango and sencha tea. So good and refreshing after our salty and heavy dinner. The mango hit me first, and then I got the undertones of the tea. I tried a bit of my sister's pineapple basil gelato and enjoyed that as well. We tried to entice Mr. Spice with a gelato or an espresso but it didn't work. I looked at their latte menu and saw they had mandarin chocolate, which sounded so good, but I was beyond stuffed by this point. Next time.

Stay tuned for the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday installments of this food gluttony recap!