Dining in DC

The Vienna Hotdog:

This is the best hotdog in the US.  It's meant to be a street dog, but the Shake Shack used to be a street vender.  Vienna hotdogs are only sold to street venders.  My guess is that the Shake Shack was grandfathered in when it left the streets for its dine-in restaurant.  Hotdogs, in my opinion, don't get any better than this.

The Shake Shack:

This place is off Dupont Circle.  Just google the Shake Shack to find directions.  I would give them to you, but I get lost in DC.

Here's the main fare there: hotdogs and hamburgers with fries.  My daughter Michelle took me here for lunch.  She had the burger and I had the dog.  Love Vienna hotdogs.  If you ever come across a street vender, ask what kind of hotdogs (s)he's selling.  If it's Vienna, buy one.



Scion's Restaurant:

This place is a few blocks off of Dupont Circle and has some great dishes.
















Bacon-n-Mac-n-Cheese:

Where's the macaroni?  Look at all that cheese.  And the bacon flavor!  I ordered this for an evening meal.  Big mistake, but it was one of the most tasty mistakes of my life.  Forget about the pounds I gained over night and the trouble going to sleep with acid reflux.  This dish was awesome!

My daughter ordered this Swiss-cheeseburger.  It had fried pickles on top.  Another not-good-to-eat-late dinner.


DC Harvest:

The DC Harvest tends to serve more healthy foods, though tasty.  And I can't even begin to tell you where this one's located.  To keep me from getting you lost in DC, I'll let you google this one as well. Note: Brunch is served only on Friday thru Sunday.








House Scramble:

This omelet is the Harvest's house scramble.  It's stuffed with sautéed mushrooms and goat cheese.  Michelle's friend, Ann, ordered it.  They also make a scramble with spicy lamb sausage, peppers, and caramelized onions.  Thanks, Ann for taking us here.

Shrimp & Grits:

Typically, this is a New Orleans dish.   To my surprise, shrimp & grits was on the menu at the DC Harvest.  I had to order it, and it was so good.



Pancakes:

My daughter ordered the pancakes.  She topped them with their awesome homemade strawberry preserves.  Need I say anything more?

Dixie Grille of Seguin, Texas

The Dixie Grille knows how to deep fry foods.  Above are their huge fried mushrooms.  This is really good stuff.  Just drop a little hot sauce in that cream gravy and go to town.

The grille is located off I-10 in Seguin Texas of Exit 607 on the south side of the highway.  Seguin is just east of San Antonio.  This place is opened for lunch and dinner, and is a good stopping place on the way to Houston or San Antonio or Austin.  Normally, I do not do no-breakfast places unless they are really good, and Dixie Grille is really good.



Bacon Cheeseburger:

That cheeseburger is shouting, "EAT ME!"  Melted cheddar on a half pound of hand made burger with all of the "veggies" (tomato, lettuce, and onions).  Mayo and mustard are on the side and catsup is in the bottle.  The fries are as good as the burger.




Chicken-Fried Meats

Chicken-fried pork chops, steak, and chicken are fantastic here at Dixie Grille.  Note that the mashed potatoes are standard with these meals.  The potatoes are homemade and still have the skins, and that's the way I like them.  All plates come with homemade corn bread.  I could just eat that!

Pork Chops:

Steak:

Chicken Breasts:

Chicken Strips:

Other Specialities

Homemade foods doesn't stop with fried foods.  They stew and bake other great foods as well.  Here are two of their favorites.


Meatloaf:

The sauce on the meatloaf has this rich tomatoey taste.  And look at those green beans; beans that green don't come from a can.



Pot Roast:

You'll see the wait staff in tee-shirts that say: "Legalize Pot ... Roast".  Luckily this stuff is legal and wonderful.  The pot roast is the specialty of the house.  If you only come her once, get the pot roast.



Drink Glasses:

When you order your drink, the wait staff brings you a pitcher and they purposely don't explain.  If you are a new customer, don't call them over for glasses.  The pitcher is your glass!  The waiters and waitresses have a lot of fun with the new customers on their pitcher glasses.

This is not all that is on their menu.  They have deep fried shrimp, beer-battered cod, and homemade desserts including cobbler.  I never have enough room left for dessert.

Kenner Seafood Market & Restaurant, Kenner, LA

Great oysters in May?  Yes, but the restaurant has to have the right buyer.  And Kenner Seafood and Restaurant obviously does.  Good oysters generally run from September through April.

Kenner Seafood is an easy find.  Just take the Loyola Exit off of I-10 in Kenner, LA, just west of New Orleans.  Drive down Loyola Drive until you see the blue building on the right.  Get their early because parking can be a problem.



Dozen Oysters for Six Bucks!

Must have been a special that day when I arrived with my Uncle Pete from Kenner and my cousin BJ from Austin.  Each of us had a dozen oysters to start.



Oyster and Crawfish Po-Boy:

I had purchased a sandwich outside of Louisiana with a friend of BJ's and myself.  She remarked that the sandwich was small.  I told her that she lived in New Orleans too long.  Well here it is ... a New Orleans Po-Boy and it must be 8 inches long and 3 inches wide, all loaded with oysters and crawfish.

My Uncle Pete ordered an oyster po-boy and I ordered a crawfish one.  So he decided to have a crawfish one as well.  So I changed mine to oyster.  Then he changed his back to oyster.  I was getting ready to go back to crawfish so I would have more than one po-boy to blog when the waitress said that they could go half and half.  So he did.



Red Beans & Rice:

That hole in the middle of the red beans and rice is a Cajun sausage paddy.  BJ ordered this dish, a Monday special in the New Orleans area.  And it was Monday.  The taste brought me back home to the Big Easy.




Oyster & Shrimp Po-Boy:

I was able to order a somewhat different sandwich.  Both the oysters and shrimp were fresh and fried to perfection.  It made for a great send off for me back to Texas.





Fried Oyster Plate:

On a second visit, Uncle Pete ordered the fried oyster plate.  Look how perfectly fried those oysters are.



Fried Shrimp Plate:

Pete's son Peter and his wife Susan shared the fried shrimp plate.  And this place doesn't skimp on the shrimp.



Seafood Gumbo:

Peter also ordered the seafood gumbo.  Looks like it was made with a nice dark roux.



Marinated Crab Claws:

OMG!  Marinated crabs!  I took a photo of this dish on the way out of the restaurant.  No, they don't give you that much on a plate.  They're generous here, but nobody in the New Orleans area is that generous.




Daily Specials:

Boiled Crabs:

They have a case full of these.  My guess is that the boiled crabs will run from May through September.  Maybe April through October.



Boiled Shrimp:

This is just half of the boiled shrimp they have on display.  My guess is that the shrimp runs year round, though they are best in the fall monte.



My Uncle Pete:

Thanks, Pete, for taking me to this great place for New Orleans style seafood.  I will be back here.

Clear Springs Seafood Restaurant of New Braunfels

Fried oysters and shrimp ... Clear Springs knows how to fry up the seafood.  And to me their speciality is their shrimp.

Clear Springs used to have five locations in Texas, but the one in San Antonio closed.  This is the one outside of New Braunfels on TX-46, between I-10 and I-35.  The other ones are in Nacogdoches, Midland, and Tyler.

Have you ever seen such an inviting entrance?  This is my favorite place for shrimp ... cooked anyway.



Appetizers

Fried Mushrooms:

Here is one of my favorite appetizers: fried mushrooms served up with this spicy sauce.  A great dish to share with someone special before one of Clear Springs great meals.

Fried Cheese Sticks:

Don't try this at home.  The only dish more difficult to prepare is deep frying a turkey.  You start this dish with breading the cheese sticks.  Next you freeze them.  Yes, freeze them or you'll have this pot of greasy goo, and you may still get that.  Then you get your oil hot.  Now comes the hard part and I have yet to master it:  deep fry the cheese just long enough to heat the center.  Too little time in the fryer, the cheese is cold; too much time, and you have that greasy-gooy mess.  My guess is there is a three second window for fried cheese which is ideal.



Entrees 


Blackened Catfish with Crawfish Ettoufee:

Here is a combination of two of my favorite entrees: blacken catfish, which Clear Springs does so well, and one of my favorite dishes ever, crawfish ettoufee.  This is an eat-it slow dish.  Savor each bite.

Shrimp-n-Catfish Platter:

Clear Springs's other speciality is their catfish.  One of the best plates they serve is the fried shrimp-n-catfish combo.  Their cooks know how to fry up seafood.




Seafood Platter:

Just take the previous dish up a few notches and add fried oysters to get their seafood platter.  And look at those hushpuppies next to the bowl of beans.  I always ask for extra hushpuppies or swap it out for salad.






Fried Shrimp with Side of Shrimp Brochette:

The shrimp brochette is shrimp grilled with jalapenos wrapped in bacon.  Need I say anything else.




Shrimp Trio!

This is the masterpiece platter: deep fried shrimp, shrimp brochette, and grilled shrimp.  There's almost a dozen shrimp on this plate!  See the tub of melted butter.  That's for the grilled shrimp.

Tell Swiss Restaurant Cambodia

This is some of the best Swiss food outside of Switzerland.  Look at that bread dipped in melted Swiss cheese!  Thanks goes to my daughter Michelle and friends (Marisa, Sister Len, and Ningang Lou) for taking me here three times!

Yes, you have to go to Cambodia to eat here.  Cambodia probably has more restaurants per square mile than any city that I've visited.  The government encourages immigration (or is it emigration?) making the cuisine there quite cosmopolitan.  No directions, just ask a tuk-tuk driver and they'll get you there.


Swiss Fondu:

I finally made it back to Cambodia to Tell Restaurant to have their Swiss fondu.  Note that the cheese is not stringy.  The Swiss add white wine to the sauce which in effect changes the physical composition of the cheese so it is no longer stringy.  Put that on your pizza.  Here, Tell adds a little more wine than I have had before and I'm not complaining.  Also I could taste butter in the mixture.  This was really rich stuff.



Pork Knuckle: 

The pork knuckle (knee bone is my guess) is marinated and deep fried (no breading) and served with potatoes.  They bring the knuckle out for viewing and then cut it away from the bone.  This is NOT a single serving.  The custom in Cambodia is to share food, and I like that.

Here is a photo of the pork buckle after being cut from the bone.  Dig in!

Bratwurst:

This is the wurst (pun) stuff on the menu.  Bratwurst of course, regular and smoked.  This place makes their own sausage from what I understand and it is great!


Kraut:

Stewed shredded cabbage in vinegar.  This stuff is populart with bratwurst.


Mixed Bag or Pot:

When we recently returned to Tell, the group was smaller, three adults and two children.  So we just had them put everything in the same warmer: pork knuckle, brats, and potatoes.   Yes, we had left overs and took them home with us.  And yes, I ate them.