DC Food Gluttony Re-cap - Part 4 - The End

I had to save the best for last.

To be perfectly honest, Sunday brunch was the one meal I had been looking forward to all weekend. When you see the pictures you'll understand why.

When my sister sent me the link to a restaurant called Co Co. Sala and mentioned it was a chocolate lounge and boutique, I was immediately intrigued. Once I saw the Sunday brunch menu, I knew we HAD to go there. Hello, who wouldn't want to have S'mores french toast stuffed with dark chocolate, among other amazing looking eats? Our fate was sealed and brunch reservations were made for the Three Musketeers, our cousin, Aunt #1, and her friend.

Now this place would definitely be a great place to hang out at night, but I'm telling you, brunch is the way to go here. You have the option of ordering of a prix fixe menu or a la carte. The prix fixe menu gives you an amuse bouche, an entree, and then dessert, and since we were all feeling indulgent we all ordered the prix fixe menu.

The amuse bouche consisted of a warm chocolate fritter that tasted like a fresh chocolate doughnut hole, served with a warm caramel sauce with pecans. Sadly, the light was being funky and I didn't get a good pic of this. For my entree I got the French Toast S'mores, which was made with cinnamon brioche, stuffed with dark chocolate and marshmallows. On the side were warm bananas in some kind of sauce (I'm allergic, so I didn't sample) and some graham crackers with chocolate mousse. We all sampled each others entrees and I think everyone had a winner. Despite Mr. Spice's protestations, I had to capture my brunch:


By the time we had finished our entrees, we were all pretty stuffed. Oh I guess I should mention my sister and I ordered some chicken sausages on the side to balance out the sweetness of our french toast. Soo good. Oh and a few of us might have indulged and ordered a cocktail. I don't drink a lot, but this cocktail was worth it. It had pear vodka, lychee puree, rose water, and lime juice. We quickly figured out a way to make it non-alcoholic and vowed to recreate it for the dinner at Aunt #1's house that evening.

Right, so here we are stuffed after our entrees when the waitress comes by with the dessert selections. Believe it or not, I had about hit my chocolate limit for the day. Sacrilege, I know. We were presented with four options and could choose two: a peanut butter and banana parfait thingy, an espresso brownie, a ricotta tart, and a pistachio chocolate thingy. Here's what I chose:



My selections were the espresso brownie and pistachio chocolate thingy (my term not theirs). Both were good but I was so full already that I could only take a couple bites of each. Well, I had room to sample a couple bites of the ricotta tart too:


I really should have ordered the ricotta tart instead of the espresso brownie, it was light and citrusy and didn't taste as heavy as the other choices. Live and learn.

Once we managed to heave ourselves away from the table, we decided to walk around a bit to walk off some of the damage from brunch. Then we came back to our hotel and collapsed onto chairs, the bed, and the floor to recover.

We still had more eats on the way, since we were due in a few hours at Aunt #1's house for dinner, which she was having catered. We stopped on the way to pick up fresh berries, some ice cream, and the fixings for the virgin version of the cocktail drink we'd had at brunch. We found pear juice to sub for the pear vodka, lychee juice, limes, and some pomegranate lychee white tea I like that I thought would go well with everything.

Never mind that we were still stuffed from brunch, once my aunt started serving dinner, the spicy smells of Bengali food wafting from the kitchen was enough to entice us. I didn't take pictures because she had other guests over and I didn't feel like explaining what I was doing. The food was from a Bengali restaurant, but really it was so good it tasted like home-made food rather than restaurant food. I was particularly focused on the beef curry, which tasted almost exactly how we had it growing up, and the mixed vegetables. I'm very envious of my aunt, cousin, and sister, who all get to eat the leftovers.

As for the drinks, well let's say the alcoholic and non-alcoholic versions were equally popular. Once I figured out the ratio of lychee juice to pear juice, it was easy to put together. Expect to see the non-alcoholic version sometime in the future on this blog. It's such a perfect summertime fruity girly drink, exactly what I like.

And that, everyone, ends the story of my weekend of food gluttony. I'm sure everyone feels the need to go walk for an hour just after reading all that.

The End.

:)