Adams Morgan

Try the Churria Madrid at 18th and Champlain

for inexpensive spanish food

:: Four of us are going to Adams Morgan tonight for an adventure in dining. :: We've already tried Meskerem. Where should we go next? Do all these :: places require reservations or can we just show up and browse?

Most of the intersting places in 18th St. DON'T take reservations, and browsing around and reading menus is half the fun.

There's a Senegalese place whose name I forget right now that's about a block and a half down from Columbia Rd -- really very good.  It's become one of my current favorites.  The Saigonais is pretty good -- not up to the standards of the Quuen Bee and Cafe Dahlat in "Little Saigon" (Clarendon), but decent Vietnamese food if you're in Adams Morgan anyway.  The Veneziano at Kalorama and 18th is an excelent northern Italian restaurant, and if Italian food doesn't seem exotic enough for you, make sure you try some of their Grappa -- killer liqueur made from what's left after you've made wine -- skin, stems, seeds, etc.  Never heard of it until I went to Veneziano, and THEY have an entire menu with something like 120 selections!  That completely outclasses even places in Little Italy in New York.  In the summertime they make a fabulous desert called semi-freda (freida?).  For slightly nouvelle cuisine and a really nice atmosphere (and a little more expensive than some of the others), the Little Fountain is a really nice "date" restaurant.  The Star of Siam has good Thai food, although it's not as good as its older sibling down around (I think) 19th and L.  They doo have a nice rooftop for dining -- keep that in mind next spring.  Around the courner a few blocks, at 16th and U, is Julio's Pizza -- really loaded, deep-dish pizzas, with a small but nice rooftop in summertime and pool-tables for $5/hr/person (I think it's per person) downstairs.

I've never liked the Mixtec, even after several menu changes.  Their sister resaurant in Georgetown, Enriquetta's, is MUCH better -- perhaps the best Mexican restaurant in town.  And I hope the guy talking in an earlier message about mole sauce was teasing -- it's pronounced MOH-lay, and one of its major ingredients is unsweetened chocolate.  It doesn't taste "chocolaty", though -- it's very good on chicken, at least at Enriquetta's.