Alexandria, Virginia

I have been quite pleasantly surprised by the food here. And once again, I find that some of the best ethnic cuisine can be found, of all places, in strip malls. While the food in the DC area is generally expensive, in both restaurants and the grocery stores, I have found it to all be quite good.

Pho Viet Flare is a little shop serving only pho and bun (rice vermicelli noodle salad), with cha gio (egg rolls) and spring rolls. These are always my favorite. Somehow the pho is always better in a place that does only pho! I found the broth to be very good; rich and aromatic without being overly spiced. The bo vien (meatballs) were a little lackluster but the herb plate was fully loaded. Their spring rolls were fantastic! The texture was so perfect, maybe the best I've ever had. Their che (sweet bean parfait dessert) was also excellent. Something about the sweetened red beans, grassjellies, coconut milk and shaved ice come together to just complete a pho meal! Good to know I can get my fix for pho here.

My coworker Rachel Gilberti and I went to the Afgan Market Restaurant and Bakery. We both enjoyed it quite a bit. We both ordered kubedah kabob combos. I got a lamb kabob too (which was tender and quite good) but the kubedah was fantastic. Ground sirloin mixed with fresh herbs and spices rolled onto a skewer and char-grilled, served on a bed of basmati rice sprinkled with cinnamon served with a little bowl of tender garbanzo beans in an oily, spicy tomato sauce. This was served with a salad of romaine lettuce and tomato with a dressing of yogurt, tahini and lemon, and some oil-fried flatbread. It is located in a market where you can buy everything from rugs to hookahs to groceries to jewelry. They had some dumplings that looked like they'd be worth going back for too, but we were sooo stuffed when we left! They'll just have to wait until next time.

Satay Sarinah is an Indonesian restaurant located in the same strip mall as Pho Viet Flare. I started with the crab shomai fried dumplings. As I browsed the menu, I noticed they had Kopi Luwak on the menu. I have read about this before and had promised myself I would try it if I got the chance. Kopi Luwak is coffee made from coffee berries that have been eaten by the civet cat. The civet digests the berries but passes the coffee bean and, in the process, filters some of the harsher alkaloids from the bean. People collect the beans and the result is supposed to be the very finest cup of coffee in the world. The price reflected the labor-intensive nature of this drink ($10/cup!) but it is quite rare and thought I should take the opportunity when I had it. They made it by grinding the beans to an turkish grind, steeping it in hot water and hand filtering most of the grounds, making each cup individually. The result was a cup of full-bodied coffee like a cup of french-press, but not so strong as turkish, but with the sediment that turkish coffee has. The remarkable thing about it was that it was completely free of that final bitter note of coffee. It was strange to have a nice strong cup of coffee without that tang at the end. Like hearing the first three notes of Beethoven's 9th, and just kind of waiting for that fourth note that never comes. The caffeine was mellower too, not so jangly as it can be for me sometimes. Quite nice but worth the price? Maybe not but you gotta do it once... and truly it's not THAT much more than a latte, especially given what it is.

I moved on to the Rames village platter. Steamed jasmine rice topped with fried shallots surrounded by several bites of several things: coconut curry chicken, green beens in a spicy coconut sauce, a deep-fried hard boiled egg in a sweet chili sauce, a skewer each of beef satay and chicken satay, and some deep-fried shrimp chips, like a pork rind only shrimpier. The portions were a little modest but the attention to detail was nice, the flavors fantastic and I left with quite a nice little spice high. For dessert, I ordered the Es Campur. This is kind of an ideal dessert for me. The only thing that could have made it better was if it had been summer outside instead of 25 degrees. It is chopped rambutan, lychee, pineapple and jackfruit, cubes of grassjelly, and a hunk of young coconut all topped with shaved ice drizzled with a little condensed milk and plenty of pandan syrup. YES! Pandan is such an intriguing flavor, I can never quite wrap my mouth around it. It is made from the leaves of the Screwpine tree and used like vanilla but tastes nothing like vanilla. It tastes kind of fruity, nutty, grassy... very difficult to describe. Kind of like coconut maybe but kind of like buttery rice. Very delicate, almost floral, but earthy. It made for a delightful end to a very nice meal even if the service was kind of distracted.