Asian delights in DC area: Thai (Chinese), Chinese,
and Viet (Chinese).

So I find myself back for a brief visit to
the area. What's there to do but eat?

Rabieng, Leesburg Pike right near Duangrat,
Arlington. Present: sister, brother-in-law,
Carol and Jon Fisher

This is the sister restaurant to Duangrat, which
Naxos and her husband had said was better and
more authentic (but not so festive). My own sister
had not been thrilled when she'd gone many years
ago, but that was back in the days that people
smoked in restaurants, and here had been very
smoky. My friend B likes it; I tried calling her
on the pay phone outside the door; the phone
didn't work but ate all my change. I gave it a
good hard kick, which dislodged a dime, nothing
more. Turns out B would have been able to go.

Wild boar - chunks of boar rather than the thin
slices you get at Duangrat in the moo pah. Also
no green peppercorns. Quite salty, pleasantly
spiced. I'd asked for it to be quite hot, and it
wasn't quite hot. Some bamboo shoot flavor, good
basil flavor.

Northeast spicy chicken - this was a green
curry type affair, and they made it quite hot.
This was the good part. A very strong bamboo
shoot flavor and a lot of weedy, stemmy pieces
of basil made it a bit peculiar for me.

Pork in Kaffir lime sauce - well, it turns out
that this was a typical coconut-peanut concoction
with a pleasant but too-mild Kaffir lime flavor.

Esan chicken - marinated in a sweet soy dressing
and then cooked so the meat was just done through
and the skin was flabby. Nobody else ate the
skin. So I got the whole thing. A very Chinese
preparation.

Crispy cod on bed of watercress - a universally
liked dish, the fish in a hot-sweet soy sauce and
served on sauteed cress so delicious my sister
and I fought over the last scraps. Another one.

The food was better spiced than next door, but
some of my favorite dishes there aren't available
here; however, a lot of dishes are found here that
aren't found there. I find it marginally better;
I think my sister now agrees.

Desserts are limited here. Our table had a dish
or two of mung bean mousse.

Beer: Singha

- - -

Meiwah, right near Blackie's House of Beef in NW,
I think someone said New Hampshire Avenue?
Present: sister, brother-in-law, Ellis Rubenstein

Snow peas in ginger sauce - exactly as expected,
only there was a touch of sweetness in the ginger
sauce that was beyond that exuded by the vegetable.
The sauce was light brown: soy, broth, ginger, sugar.

Duck in garlic sauce - slivered bits in a salty
slightly sweet brown soy-based sauce. Bits of
mushroom and water chestnut chopped into the same
size and shape, pretty amusing. Not a generous amount
of duck.

Crispy beef - the classic as originally served at
City Lights of China (this restaurant was founded by
the guy who founded City Lights after he sold it).
I am not super fond of the dish, but it's universally
popular among wei guo ren. Very crispy, very sweet.
Pretty garlicky. Not enormously hot; in fact, not hot
at all at either place, despite the presence of
handfuls of dried red peppers.

Szechwan green beans - ordinary stir-fried beans, a
little fat and tough, topped with minced pickled
vegetable (you know, the one that looks like a green
brain lobe). I enjoyed it; nobody else did, including
the one who suggested it.

Spinach tofu - as advertised; everyone except maybe
Ellis liked it.

Beer: Double Diamond

- - -

Huong Que (Four Sisters), Eden Center, Arlington.
Present: sister, brother-in-law, B

In the southwest corner, almost, I think it is,
of a big Asian marketplace that looks like a
shopping mall: sis and b-i-l found it better than
the pho place next door (which they liked pretty
well). There are an assortment of restaurants and
stores in this complex. South of this place there's
a Chinese restaurant that serves all kinds of
innards and fatty stuff: very authentic, think I; got
to try it sometime, but who can be convinced to go?

Also, on the north side of the center is a cool
well-stocked Asian grocery with about nine zillion
kinds of fish, many meats (pig uteri turned even me
off a bit, although if someone else prepared them
I'd try them) and several kinds of produce that are
hard to come by elsewhere, including durian. My
sister gets her rice here in 25-lb bags. We went on
a short field trip before eating

Mussels in garlic sauce - big green-lips inviting
in their iridescent shells, a bit of oyster sauce
and garlic and scallions topping each. Delicious.
A very Chinese-style dish. A dish of minced tiny
very hot hot peppers came for this; I didn't see
anyone use it but me; the rest of the peppers came
in handy in spicing up the rest of the meal.

Clams with black bean sauce - very much the usual
thing, the black bean sauce pretty mild and a little
sweet. Nice little clams.

Seafood combination soup - squid, shrimp, white
fish in a tasty broth with lots of vegetables
(carrot, broccoli, pea pods, mushrooms, whatnot).
Others found it spicy. I didn't and so added some
hot stuff, which made it a little salty.

Caramel catfish in clay pot - the only really
unchinese dish of the lot. Usually this dish is
way sweet, but this version was delicate and
tasty, the caramel being really caramelly but
the sweetness mostly burned off.

Squid with mixed vegetables - all the vegetables
in the seafood soup, plus a couple more, bok choys
and stuff like that. Nice, tender squid, perfect
veggies.

Salt-pepper shrimp - quick-fried whole in oil
after having been dredged in cornstarch. This is a
great dish if the oil is almost dangerously hot
when the shrimp are thrown in: in such a case, the
shell becomes very crispy and easy to eat. Here,
a little timidity with the heat kept this from being
a truly exceptional dish. Instead, it was just very
good. I ate the heads off my two shrimp as well as
any others proffered. You're supposed to dip the
shrimp in this dish of salt and pepper, but it
wasn't a significant improvement - the beauty of
the dish lies in its simplicity.

Banana tapioca - the house dessert. A bit of cooked
banana, a cup of watery sweetened tapioca. Real Asian
desserts, many of them including this one will turn
off non-Asians. I found it inconsequential but soothing.

Beer: Michelob