This is my favorite place for Mexican and Spanish food. Their décor is very interesting but can be kind of much with all the Spanish/Mexican masks. They try to keep it authentic with all the jars filled with peppers and garlic that litter the restaurant.
Their menu is huge, so be ready for some serious decision making. The spices are always perfect and their fajitas are the best I’ve ever had, especially since they have shrimp fajitas. Their chips and salsa are amazingly fresh and you can ask for a spicier salsa. But that definitely has a kick. My mom loves this place for their delicious and huge margaritas, especially the mango ones. Since I am not 21, I can’t order them but I’ve tried them and this is one of the first places I’m going to order drinks when I become of age. For others like me, who can’t have alcohol, they have a wide selection of smoothies with many different combinations like banana, raspberry, chocolate, etc. I highly recommend the raspberry piña colada smoothie, even if you don’t like the taste of piña colada since it is very light.
Recently I went here for lunch and the food was just as good. Even better since it was lunch prices!
The Perfect Pita →
This is a place my boyfriend recommended. I have not eaten here but he was raving about it so I figured I’d at least mention it. He said he went during his lunch break. He tried the Chicken & Steak Pita, which according to their website is “a combination of marinated sliced chicken breast and rib-eye steak in our Perfect Pita with lettuce, tomatoes, mayonnaise and seasoned onions.”
The prices seem reasonable, basically like any other sandwich shop. However, this is a chain so there are many locations in this area. I don’t know if I’ll eat here but since my boyfriend kept talking about it, I figured I’d let you all know.
Saka-It to Me!
This place has THE BEST SUSHI! My friend introduced me to it since she knew the owner and her family had been going there for a long time. The owner likes to make all different types of sushi rolls with anything on them. Their “special sauce” is very good, though I don’t know what is in it. Since the sushi is so good, I haven’t tried much of anything else. They have other Japanese food, as well. Their box lunches or dinners are pretty good and filling. Their ginger salad dressing is really, really good. One of my friends has even said he wished he could buy it so he could drink it.
Recently the friend who introduced me to this place told me that they have changed owners. She and I are planning on finding where the owner has opened up a new restaurant around the area. I have not been to the place since my friend told me this. Although, I can see why the location was moved, it’s right next to Springfield Mall. This place means so much to me. After a rather difficult break up, this is the place I went for comfort food.
When in Rome…
If any of you know of Bertucci’s, this is somewhat similar. I love this place. Their food is always amazing! They make their own bread and always have an interesting dipping for it. Now it is pesto, parmesan cheese and olive oil. They have two locations, one in Herndon and one in Burke. Sadly, I have not been to the one in Herndon.
My favorite dish is sadly no longer on the menu but they have no qualms about making it for me. A couple of the new servers will ask what it is, but the more experienced ones know what I’m talking about. This dish is simple yet delicious. It is called the Calzone Pomodoro. It is a calzone stuffed with cheese and tomato sauce. Like I said, simple and delicious. Their lasagna is very good as well. Their desserts are very good, the cannoli and the chocolate soufflé are rich and a great way to end a meal. If you want something light for desert.
Just recently, I’ve tried their Big Bowl Mussels which are Prince Edward mussels steamed in a White wine sauce with lemon, parsley and fresh tomato garlic served with a crostino. I was very impressed with this dish, not just because of the flavor, but because of the size of the mussels! I am a lover of seafood so the bigger the mussel, the better. And this restaurant does not ski on the size like some. I also love the decor, the painting on the wall makes you think you are in a restaurant in Italy.
Good times…
I was here a couple times before after doing some hardcore karaoke with friends. The buffet was a bit pricy for us, coming in at $20 per person. The food was always delicious, but in High School $20 was a bit much to spend for dinner to me.
Anyways so one of my friends had invited me and a couple other friends to this place for a late night dinner, at 10 p.m. Needless to say I was very excited since I had not been to this place in YEARS and I had loved their sushi bar.
Upon entering the restaurant, we immediately see that there is no sushi in the area where the sushi bar is. But they still have the rest of the food, so no loss there. The cool thing about this place is that you can cook at your table in a Korean barbecue style. They have a raw section of the bar where you pick out the meat you want to cook and then you bring it back to your table. The servers will put it onto the grill and turn it when needed.
So I was a little disappointed that there was no sushi since we went when it was late night hours. But since we went during those hours there was a price break! It was almost half off so that definitely made up for the lack of sushi because I’m still a poor student.
The Thai (Restaurant) Who Shagged Me
This is the place that I seem to take people I want to impress…so family members and potential boyfriends always end up here.
One day, I wanted to impress one of my friends who goes to VCU so I took him, his friend, and his little brother here. We were ordering appetizers when my friend decides, in his infinite wisdom, that he will get the waitresses’ attention by whistling at her (like a dog) and snapping his fingers. We were all really embarrassed but it did get the waitresses’ attention. For the rest of the meal, we mercilessly made fun of him for doing so.
Needless to say I did not want any ill will so I kept my distance until my grandma and her boyfriend came up from North Carolina to visit. My mom and I decided to go to this place for dinner. There was no sighting of the waitress that my friend had been so rude to but the once incredibly spicy food had definitely morphed into a sweeter version. I blame my friend for this issue, apparently the restaurant had had enough “spice” from him to last a lifetime. They have four levels of spiciness so if that’s what you crave, be sure to specify which level you’d like. You have been forewarned: Level 4 is a doozy.
The Tom Kha soup is my favorite dish in the restaurant and I order it every time I go. Without fail, whoever I am with will end up finishing almost half of it, whether they have been known to like the ingredients (coconut milk, etc.) in it or not.
And in the morning, I’m makin’ falafels!
Ah, procrastination. Because of it I was in D.C at the National Museum of the American Indian researching for a paper that was due the next day. I was planning on skipping my geology class at 11:30 because, well, it’s geology, and this paper needed to get done. I had gotten up early in the morning (well early for most college students, anyway) at 8:45 a.m. and didn’t want to drive into D.C to go to said museum. So, I decided to take the metro. I didn’t want to pay for parking, so I decided to take the Mason to metro bus. Everything was going so smoothly, I was ready on time for once in my life, I hadn’t lost my key card, etc. But then I noticed my Metro SmarTrip® card wasn’t in my wallet…
After practically tearing apart my room, like I normally do whenever I lose something, I found that somehow my SmarTrip® decided to hide in my checkbook. I ran to the bus stop and missed the bus by one minute. Now this is the last stop until the metro so I had to go through another bus and wait for it to go back to the metro. In the distance, I see another bus coming my way. I hop onto it and wait for it to complete its round. That was a lovely 30 minutes of the bus driver asking me questions from where am I from to what I want to do with my life. I am not a morning person. I don’t need the third degree from ANYONE that early in the morning. I am dropped off at the metro and get to the museum. The game plan was to get to the museum by 10 a.m when it opened. I got there at 11:20ish. Game plan fail.
By the time I was done researching, I was starving. I was about to leave when my boyfriend called to say he had been in D.C traffic and had meant to surprise me at the museum earlier. Since I was done, he asked if I wanted to go to the Amsterdam Falafelshop in Adams Morgan. What a falafel was, we didn’t know, but he had been crazy obsessive over wanting to go whenever D.C. was mentioned. We drove around trying to find it, which was an adventure in itself, and many wrong turns later we did.
Immediately upon entering the place, I was lost. I had no idea what to do. There was a salad bar type structure filled with around 21 different garnishes. You order an order of small or large falafels (which are apparently balls of deep fried chick peas or fava beans) which they put into a whole wheat or white pita. Then you squish the pita flat and fill it with any of the garnishes on the station that range from pickles to garlic sauce to coleslaw. Being the indecisive person I am, I put almost every topping into the small sauce cups and tried them. Anything with garlic was GARLICY, which I loved. The only things I didn’t like were the Tahini sauce, the hummus, and the Yogurt/Dill Tzatziki sauce. They have brownies and fries, too. Because I’m weird, I don’t like fries, but my boyfriend told me they were good.
The Amsterdam Falafelshop is really good, just as the newspaper articles posted on its walls say. It is also quite convenient that it is open past midnight daily, so the next time it’s 1 a.m. and I’m hungry, I know where I’m going…if I don’t miss 18th street.
