Krik's Picks

I was chided recently for not having enough restaurant reviews for DC. After all, this blog got its name from my notes on DC restaurants that I prepared for Land O'Lakes board members when they were in town. The trouble is, often when I'm in DC, I have group meals either in restaurants or in hotels with business acquaintances, and those meals don't often lend themselves to a restaurant review. So consequently, I haven't put many DC reviews on Krik's Picks. Well, I guess the obvious solution is to simply post the Krik's Picks list that I prepared for the Board members. So here it is - Krik's Picks the 2008 Edition. It's organized roughly by city neighborhoods. I include a short blurb from the Washington Post or other restaurant guide and then a sentence or two of my own impressions. Enjoy! Capitol Hill South (House side) Sonoma Restaurant & Wine Bar 223 Pennsylvania Ave. SE Phone: 202/544-8088 Washington Post Review: A warm fireplace, soft couches an...

Blogger has updated its features and I've decided to adopt one of the features for Krik's Picks. I've always had a list of Links in the sidebar. But now Blogger offers something called a Blog Roll. So now you can see what's new on some of my favorite blogs before you click to them. (Or maybe seeing the info will entice you to click to them.) Anyway, I've also added the Bakers Banter Blog from King Arthur Flour . King Arthur Flour is a 5-generation family-owned company that now has converted to 100% employee ownership. Cool. I like perusing the company's periodic e-mail promotions, and occassionally I buy stuff from them. I first found them while I was looking for a specialty ingredient for my bagels. (Oops. I just realized I've never done a blog post about baking bagels. Watch for that in the near future.) I don't buy a lot of stuff from them. Their prices are reasonable, but shipping usually makes it uneconomical unless you can't find the ingredient...

Last week, I was in Washington, DC, for a meeting. A group of us went to the Capital Grille for a lunch event. I was heading home after the lunch ended. We all were dairy folks . So several of us intended to order the Caprece salad . ‘No can do,’ our server informed us. Due to the salmonella scare , the restaurant had no fresh tomatoes … hence no Caprece. Well, actually, being dairy folks, we mostly were interested in the mozzarella. It turns out that they did have some roasted tomatoes in the kitchen. So we asked if they would serve us a modified Caprece with roasted tomatoes instead of fresh. Oh, and by the way, throw on some roasted peppers, too. They did it for us, and it turned out pretty well. The roasted tomatoes had a more intense flavor than fresh. But the mozzarella, basil, and olive oil blended nicely with the tomatoes and peppers. Moral of the story? Never stand between dairy folks and their cheese!