Present

Present is such a fitting name for the Vietnamese restaurant in Falls Church, Virginia, that we went to on Saturday evening. The food was a present to my mouth, and it paid for us to be present at the restaurant when we were. Let me explain. We were meeting up with friends who recently moved to Fairfax for dinner. We had tried to get reservations at several restaurants, but ended up not being able to, since we didn't try to settle on a place to eat until 6 on Saturday. Not a good idea. I had heard about Present through the Washingtonian's list of the areas top restaurants, and thought we should give it a try. Just so you know, you definitely need a reservation here. However, we arrived at about 6:45, and there were a few big tables in the back being held for an 8 pm reservation. We were told that we could be seated at one of the tables if we could be done by 8. By virtue of being present at the right time, we were seated without a wait on a Saturday night. This is perhaps one of the best Vietnamese restaurants I have tried. And yes, I have been to Four Sisters. The menu seemed a lot more varied and creative, and I was much more impressed with the food, even though Four Sisters was good. For appetizers, we ordered the Green Parasdise spring roll, a cold roll with shrimp and vermicelli and pork in rice paper, which is actually called a summer roll at other restaurants. I feel like these are generally all created more or less equal. We also ordered the Silken Shawl Imperial Autumn Roll. FYI - you can order half orders of these puppies. It was a fried roll wrapped in a lacy rice noodle paper, which comes with lettuce to wrap it in. I wonder if the lettuce or the lacy rice paper is the "shawl." I loved the idea of wrapping the roll in lettuce; it was something different than what's offered at other restaurants, and it was a nice contrast to the crispy roll. It may be one of the best fried rolls I've had at a Vietnamese restaurant. The main courses were excellent as well, and truly memorable. I ordered the No. 61, aka the Open Field in the Sunset, which the menu describes as a sweet and sour soup with pineapple and green vegetables. It can be ordered with either fish or shrimp. The server recommended the fish, so I went with that. The soup was awesome. I wish that I could do it justice with words, but I can't. It came with two decent size non-fishy white fish fillets and was chock full of veggies. The broth was sublime. The only other dish I tried was the spicy beef soup, which my husband ordered. It had a nice kick, and the noodles were thick and round; they looked like thick white spaghetti noodles; not the thinner vermicelli. I can't wait to go back. I am dying to try the whole fried fish, but need to go with someone who is into the whole fish thing. Just a few parting random parting thoughts. If you're looking for traditional pho, don't go here because they don't have it. They have a lot of other great soups, but no pho. Also, the prices are imminently reasonable; presentation is beautiful, and they're nice to kids there.

Original Pancake House

After running the Army 10-miler, I treated myself to brunch at the Original Pancake House in Falls Church, Virginia. It's a chain that I'd return to. It has locations spread across the country. It wasn't out-of-this world, but there are so many creative pancake varieties on the menu, that I want to go back and try them. Most importantly, it has really decent coffee. Courtesy of my friends sharing, I tried three different types of pancakes. Gingerbread, pumpkin, and wheat germ with pecan. My friends preferred the wheat germ pancakes, which were packed with pecans. I thought that they were fine, but liked the gingerbread ones the most even if they were a bit tricky. How can a pancake be tricky, you ask? Well, I thought that a gingerbread pancake would be dark and molasses-y, but these pancakes were more just ginger-flavored pancakes. Really tasty, but not like any gingerbread I've ever had. The pumpkin pancakes were "fine." Other observations. The bacon is nice and thick and crispy, but the eggs were a bit weird. I ordered them fried over hard and they came in this unnatural looking omelet form; they reminded me of Waffle House eggs. Don't get me wrong; Waffle House has a special place in my heart, but there's something about the cooking spray it uses that makes the eggs taste a little off. I want to try the apple pancakes and the Dutch Baby pancakes and the crepes!

Overwood Wood Fired American Kitchen

So, my husband and I took a trip out to Northern Virginia today, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to try a new restaurant. We are trying to cut down on our dining expenses, so we chose to go to Overwood Wood Fired American Kitchen (220 North Lee Street, Alexandria, VA 22314), which from the outside, looked like it wouldn't be too expensive. The ambience was a nice hodgepodge. There were flat panel TVs for the sports lover against the backdrop of a warm interior to save the restaurant from having a sports bar atmosphere. It looked kid- friendly as well. Also, if you sit in the back of the restaurant, you have a view of the open kitchen and some nice wooden wine cases. The food was pretty good overall, but as discussed below, it was not the place to go if you are looking to eat on a budget. That's the last time I'll ever take TVs showing sports to mean cheaper food. On a scale of 1 to 5, I would give it a 3.75. I know that I'm splitting hairs here, and most reviewers give half-points and don't go as far as quarter-points, but I was conflicted. Maybe I'd give it a 4 if it were food alone and I wasn't considering bang for the buck. Oh screw it. Just read. You can make your own assessment based on the lengthy detailed explanation. We skipped appetizers (again trying to save $$). There were some that looked interesting. I would have liked to have tried the fried green tomatoes, for one. We only ordered entrees. When ordering, I realized that we should not have judged the restaurant by its outside appearance. We thought it would be a bit cheaper, but most of the entrees aside from the burger option were $14 or over. I think that there was meatloaf for cheaper, but it had veal in it, and even I, the carnivore that I am, will not eat veal because I think that it's mean. I ordered the steak salad, which was $14.95, and my husband ordered cavatelli with sausage for $17.95 (a special and not on the regular menu). My steak salad was good. The steak was yummy with a nice texture and tasted like it had been lightly marinated. The salad contained crispy potato strings, standard field greends, grape tomatoes, a bleu cheese, and a decent ranch dressing. Nothing out of the ordinary, but still tasty. My husband's pasta dish was good as well. The pasta was perfectly cooked with a slightly spicy sausage and nice tomato-based sauce. It was accompanied by a large piece of crispy bread -- almost the consistency of a crouton. Pricewise, the salad was probably about right because of the quality of the meat. $17.95 for the pasta was a bit much. The portion was not especially large, and I don't think that it's justified to charge that much for sausage and pasta in a tomato sauce. We ordered dessert because we were slightly hungry after entrees. There were a lot of interesting options -- a double chocolate cheesecake, Elvis Pie (oreo crust, bananas, peanutbutter -- obviously in homage to Elvis's love of peanutbutter and banana sandwiches), and a few others. We selected the brownie sundae, which was pretty good. The brownie was served warm and had the perfect amount of moistness. For an interesting twist, the brownie was topped with two scoops of ice cream -- one chocolate and one vanilla, topped again with caramel sauce. The ice cream was high-quality, and the sundae was good overall. I decided to do the coffee test here. THE COFFEE WAS EXCELLENT!!!!! The restaurant uses coffee from local company M.E. Swing, which I frequented when I worked near the D.C. location. It was the perfect strength and not just good for restaurant coffee. On a scale of 1 to 4 mugs, I give it 4 full mugs! So, the upshot is that I would go back, but probably not that often because the price. Other good things were the interesting-shaped glasses, the pretty white coffee mugs, and the conveniently-placed coathooks on the booths.