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.

:)

DC Food Gluttony Re-cap - Part 3

To make up for the lack of pictures in the past two recaps, there will be LOTS of pictures in this one.

Now in order not to bore everyone with details of the family stuff, I will skip over it. This in any way does not diminish the memories of seeing everyone that day, but since the majority of you have not met me or my family or are not members of my family, then it doesn't mean the same to you. Just trust me that there was lots of squealing, giggling, hugging and all that. And Mr. Spice has it all captured on video.

The plans for Saturday were to meet Aunt #1 and my cousin in Georgetown and walk around a while and then we were going to drive to Maryland to have dinner at Aunt # 2's house. Thankfully the weather had cheered up from Thursday and Friday's rain and it wasn't too hot, which was perfect for all the walking we did.

All of us were still quite full from the various breakfasts we had, but when I spotted a frozen yogurt place, nobody resisted. Well except for Mr. Spice and Aunt # 1's friend. For some reason I thought this place was the one Sweetie Pie talked about a few times, but it was a different store. Hers was Tangy Sweet and this place was IceBerry.

Anyway, since we'd had a huge breakfast and an even bigger dinner was on the way, I opted to get a small chocolate frozen yogurt topped with raspberries. If they'd had a kid-sized I would have ordered that, since the small was the size of a small vat. That still didn't stop me from finishing it off, but whatever.

Oh and I managed to sneak a pic of it while Mr. Spice wasn't looking. Tee hee.



Doesn't that look so refreshing?

So anyway, we walked around more, took pics, and then headed back so we could get ready for the drive to Maryland. Thank goodness I was following my aunt and her friend, because I think the directions I printed off Google maps would have taken us longer to get there.

Skipping over more family fun, let's get down to dinner. Aunt # 2 really outdid herself. I seriously think she spent the whole day cooking. I wish I could have taken more and better pictures, but we were all starving and my camera battery chose to die at that point. But here goes.

First we have a lovely salad, cut up by moi:



Now some chicken kababs:



Then some tuna kababs (this is what they look like when properly deep fried):



And then some beef curry (notice the lovely bowl, which was a present from me!):



Unfortunately, the main attraction, which was chicken biryani, didn't get photographed on me because of my stupid camera dying. Trust me, it was very good.

Oh and how could I forget dessert? I didn't even remember to take pictures of it! We stopped en route to dinner and picked up a cheesecake sampler, an ice cream pie, and my sister brought her chocolate chip cookies. Don't worry, I tried a little bit of everything! :)

And so endeth day three of gluttony. Day four is coming up!

DC Food Gluttony Re-cap - Part 2

So when we last left off, we'd kicked off our food gluttony weekend pretty well.

Friday was the only day we didn't have plans with all our family, so we Three Musketeers decided to spend the day at the Smithsonian. I hadn't been there in ages and neither had Mr. Spice, so we were really excited about it.

Our hotel was chosen for two main reasons, other than price: it was close to a Metro station and it was close to my sister's apartment. This made coordinating plans pretty easy.

But before we could start, we had to have a nice big breakfast to fuel our day. Oh what a perfect breakfast it was! We headed over to my sister's apartment where she had breakfast ready to go for us: blueberry pancakes, fresh macerated raspberries and blueberries, hash browns, sausage, and orange juice.


Trust me, this was as yummy as it looks.

This absolutely filling and delicious breakfast filled us up and lasted us for quite a few hours as we explored the natural history museum and Sackler gallery. Only afterward did we succumb to hunger and have some hot pretzels while hiding from the drizzle.

I'm very ashamed to say that dinner was wolfed down and escaped the camera. We took advantage of the Delivery Doctor service to have some great sandwiches delivered from Tarbouch, a Middle Eastern restaurant. I was of course waffling between five billion choices and in the end decided on the tried and true chicken shwarma sandwich which came with a very garlicky sauce. I took bites of my sister's chicken tabbouleh sandwich and Mr. Spice's sandwich which I can't remember the name of but contained beef and lamb sausage. Both were good, but I liked mine the best.

For dessert we got to snack on some fresh chocolate chip cookies that were being made for the next night's dinner at my aunt's house. So so good. The recipe has been sworn to secrecy, but I will be making these at some point.

Stay tuned for the Saturday and Sunday recaps!

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!