Wok and Roll

I don't know if Wok and Roll's food tasted better going down or coming back up. Seriously. To be fair, since this wasn't the only thing I ate all day, it might not have been the cause of my stomach misery, but I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that it was.

Wok and Roll is located on ChinaBlock in a building most famous for being the boarding house where John Wilkes Booth and company stayed while conspiring to kill Abraham Lincoln. Now, it's a combo Chinese-Japanese restaurant that conspired to kill my intestines.

We started our adventure with steamed dumplings which looked promising enough until we took a bite.

Inside it was about 90% dough and 10% filling. If you're wondering if your eyes are deceiving you, they aren't. That really is corn inside the dumpling. For those who like boring American veggies in their Chinese dumplings, there were peas too!

Next up was the Szechuan Chicken which promised to be spicy but lacked any real kick.

We also tried the Chicken Chow Foon which had pleasantly thick and hearty noodles but was missing flavor.

Sorry Wok and Roll, I don't think I could return after the rough "wok" home I had. For those of you with a cast-iron stomach who are looking for cheap eats late at night in a historic building, good luck, but don't say I didn't warn you.

Second Thoughts From B

Paired with our recent trip to Odeon Cafe, which you can read about here, this was a less than stellar culinary weekend. Thankfully, J salvaged it by cooking the tried-and-true childhood favorite, chicken broccoli casserole, for Sunday night's dinner. But back to Wok and Roll...

So I'm the one with the cast-iron stomach but even putting aside J's time praying to the white porcelain god, I still wouldn't advocate for a return trip. You might be thinking that this is just my Chinese food snob coming out again, but it isn't. Truth be told, I do enjoy Americanized Chinese food. As long as no one is trying to say that the Orange Chicken at Panda Express is authentic, I'm cool with it. I've even come to accept that Chinablock serves Americanized Chinese food no matter what language the street signs are written in. However, Wok and Roll is just not very good food. Take your pick, Americanized Chinese or authentic Chinese... either way, it was bland, uninteresting, and just plain bad. Our friend who guided us to Wok and Roll summed up the experience thusly, "This was much better when I was drunk." We summed it up by paying him to take home the leftovers.

Odeon

We found ourselves at Odeon on Friday evening thanks to the Tastings Journal $45 Five Course Menu. The online menu looked really promising and the addition of a prosecco toast and glass of wine made it too good to pass up. Well... at least the great company and fun conversation took the focus off of the food and service.

Our party of 6 was seated in the upstairs dining room at a table crammed next to another large party. The table placement combined with our waiter's impossibly soft voice made ordering a challenge. The waiter insisted on bringing us all red wine though two of us repeatedly asked for white. After hiding our glasses to prevent him from pouring us the red, he relented and brought us white.

There were two choices for each of the starter courses, so B and I teamed up to order one of each. Sorry for the poor picture quality, the lighting was very low. On second thought, I don't think even the brightest light could make this food shine.

B started with the Goat Cheese Arugula Salad (arugula topped with goat cheese in balsamic homemade vinaigrette). Nothing much to say here: it was a pile of arugula with some goat cheese and balsamic.

My salad was Apple Mesclun (mesclun mix, tossed with homemade honey mustard dressing, walnuts, and sliced apples). The mesclun greens were wilted and soggy, and couldn't hold up against the crisp apples and crunchy walnuts.

Next up for B was the Funghi E Granchi (mushroom caps stuffed with crabmeat in a garlic butter sauce) which B described as an average wedding appetizer. He also added: "It wasn't a chore to finish them." Moving on . . .

Spinach Calamari Saltati (fresh calamari sautéed with spinach, garlic, fresh lemon, and virgin olive oil). Saltati must mean rubberbands in Italian. Most of the calamari were laughably tough and the sauce did nothing to soften them up or add any flavor to the rubber.

The Tastings Journal menu bills the lobster bisque as "one of my favorites, an amazing bisque!" Wow, we must have been eating completely different soups. It had this weird sweet and sour taste, and wasn't particularly warm.

B had the Cream of Broccoli Soup which tasted pretty much like Campbell's. Definitely not bad, but nothing exciting.

For his main course, B had the Lamb Shank (braised lamb shank, fresh veggies, and red wine reduction with rosemary roasted potatoes). This was the highlight of B's meal, but he loves lamb so much that this isn't much of a surprise.

I ordered the Lobster Ravioli (ravioli stuffed with lobster meat in homemade lobster cream sauce). Check out that picture, does that look tasty to you? The sauce was as gloppy as it looks in the photo and there was no discernible lobster meat in the ravioli. It was some sort of fishy seafood concoction that was a far cry from chunks of lobster meat. It was definitely edible, just not $45 per person food. Trader Joe's lobster ravioli blows Odeon's out of the water.

My dessert erased the memory of the lobster glop and left a sweet taste in my mouth. The tiramisu featured spongy ladyfingers and a nice, light cocoa/espresso flavor.

B had the chocolate souffle with toasted almonds and vanilla ice cream. He gobbled it up before I could steal a bite so he'll have to tell you about it.

The piece de resistance was the check. They kindly divided it between 3 credit cards but charged us each $118. Curiously, the "total" line said "pre-tip total." I am terrible at math but I know that $45 multiplied by two (plus tax) is not $118. Since our waiter had one again disappeared, we had to hunt him down to ask about the bill. They added in 18% gratuity since we were a party of 6. I have no problem with restaurants adding in gratuity for large parties but they shouldn't do so without a warning, and the "pre-tip total" line is pretty deceiving. Luckily, we realized what was up and avoided tipping our sub-par waiter more than 18%.

Second Thoughts From B

I arrived about 20 minutes early after a very long day at work. While waiting for everyone to arrive, I escaped the rain by warming up in the nearby Starbucks and spent the time reading up on Odeon on Yelp. J often does a little homework on restaurants that we're about to visit so we know what dishes we should pay particular attention to while ordering, but this time I was the one on the Blackberry. I found myself reading one particular disgruntled post by someone who also "took advantage" (this may need to be rephrased) of the Tastings Journal offer at Odeon. The bottom line is that our experience does not appear to have been an aberration.

Most of the meal could be judged on a scale of 1 to "not a chore to finish my plate." It was kind of sad actually. Even those things that were somewhat pleasant were quite ordinary. Every flavor was one-dimensional (flat, uninteresting) and unrefined (glopped on the plate as if quantity of sauce would make up for the lack of quality). Basically, it all landed somewhere between average wedding food and work cafeteria food despite the menu descriptions being littered with words like homemade and fresh. Does any of this make sense when I talk about "flat" flavors? It is like the difference between fresh squeezed orange juice and the stuff from concentrate.

Let me sum up - MasterCard commercial style.
1 glass of champagne: free.
5 course meal: $45 + a misleading 18% tip.
1 glass of wine: free.
A meal that was as lousy as the weather: Completely forgettable.

Dangerously Delicious Pies

D.C.'s dessert scene is about to get dangerous. The Baltimore institution Dangerously Delicious Pies is opening up shop on H Street, NE in November. We recently stopped by their Baltimore location and offer a preview of coming attractions.

We first learned of this rock n' roll pie shop in an Express article on Baltimore desserts (see our post here). It's located in the trendy Federal Hill neighborhood near the baseball and football stadiums, and the Inner Harbor. They offer whole pies (call ahead to place your order) and pie by the slice. If sweet pie isn't your thing, you can buy mini savory pies in flavors such as steak, mushroom, onion, and gruyere pie or mushroom and swiss quiche.

There's no chance I'll pick a savory pie with so many tantalizing sweet pies on the menu. They have a rotating selection of flavors available, but the Express article pointed us to the Baltimore Bomb. It's a combo of a traditional Southern chess pie (we'd love to tell you what that is but we're not exactly Southerners) and Berger cookies (a local Baltimore treat). We also tried the White Trash Creme Brulee (a cinnamon custard pie).

The Baltimore Bomb was bombtastic. The chocolatey cookies melted into the vanilla custard of the pie and made for a unique texture sensation. The White Trash Creme Brulee was more memorable for the name than for the pie. It was a pretty standard custard pie with cinnamon sprinkled on top. Might be good if you're eating it in a trailer park, but when you are paying $6 a slice (!) it didn't cut it.

While I don't think the pies are Dangerously Delicious enough to make a trek to Baltimore, it is definitely worth a visit once they open up shop in D.C.

Second Thoughts from B

When we first spoke of our love of pie (see our post here), I broke down the great cake vs. pie debate through a basketball analogy. At the risk of going to the well one too many times, I'd have to say that our experience at Dangerously Delicious Pies is akin to a 2009 Pistons fan's view of Allen Iverson. Great name, kind of little, and overpriced (the analogy even works with the tattoo vibe in the store). Would you enjoy watching him on your team? Yes. Would you enjoy watching him on your team if you knew he was being paid almost $21 million - more than 4 and a half times what Chris Paul makes? Not as much. On a side note, AI in his prime was one of the all-time greats and one hell of a competitor but he's not worth $21 million - consider he was just signed for $3.1 million...

The point is that Dangerously Delicious Pie is good pie - maybe even delicious pie - but for $6, it better be great pie, or at least a huge piece of pie. In my opinion, it was neither. In comparison, the heavenly Goober pie (chocolate and peanut butter) at the Afterwords Cafe is twice as big, twice as good, and about the same price ($7.43) with table service. Unfortunately, the only thing in danger at Dangerously Delicious Pies is your wallet.

On the Road Again...

As I sit at home on Columbus Day recovering from another red-eye flight from the West Coast, I can't help but reflect on America's favorite lost explorer. While J and I seem to rack up enough miles to make any gold and fame-seeking sailor proud, we've come to depend on a little more than a sextant and the stars. I'm not talking about the GPS unit in our car. Rather, I'm talking about the newspapers, magazines, and TV shows that help us locate the hidden gems along the way.

Now that we've been writing about our adventures - culinary and otherwise - for 8 months, it has become routine to take pictures of our food. (Documenting what we do isn't so out of the ordinary, but doing so at fine restaurants took some getting used to). Traveling outside of DC presents short reprieves from our photographic duties (afterall, the blog is not called Two World), but that doesn't mean that we stop seeking out interesting, diverse, and quality meals and activities unique to our location.

The question remains, "Where to begin?" Surely, each town has far more than a day or two worth of gems. This not only makes it hard to choose, but it also increases the pressure to choose wisely, for fear of missing something. In the last few months, weddings and the need to get away, have taken us to cities like Portland, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Here's how we chose where to go and what to do:

The Express. I can't stress this enough: this newspaper is the perfect length (30 minutes to read it cover to cover) and the perfect price (free). It's available at Metro stops every weekday and is comprehensive. Sure, it is a little lacking in detail, but that's not the point. It is there to give an overview that allows the reader to pick and choose what they want to further investigate. For us, we are often exploring the restaurants and random cool things featured in the local sections. No matter if it is by land, sea, or air, you'll find it in The Express.

Not long ago, The Express ran its (annual?) Baltimore feature that detailed cool neighborhoods and sweet desserts. Want a little cardio with your history and your pie? We did. Try walking throughout the Mount Vernon and Federal Hill neighborhoods, climbing the original Washington Monument, and finishing it off with a trip to Dangerously Delicious Pies, which are so good they deserve their own post.

Magazines. Another way we've stumbled across delicious treasures is through Bon Appetit magazine. You don't have to be a culinary master to enjoy this rag... you just need to enjoy food (and its no secret that we do!).

We've talked about several of DC's food carts (see here and here), but Portland is king. Whereas some cities have a few diamonds amid the rough (read: hot dog carts on every corner throughout downtown), Portland features unique, diverse, cheap, and colorful carts that fill entire city blocks. J and I were able to have a memorably delicious breakfast burrito at La Jarochita

and an equally mind-blowing Czech sandwich at Tabor just paces away from each other. This is not to mention the 20+ other options we had to pass up...


TV. J here to report on my favorite way to find new restaurants in different cities: TV shows! We're big fans of Adam Richman and his "Man v. Food" show on the Travel Channel. In each episode he travels to a new city and competes in some sort of extreme food challenge. While we're not extreme eaters, we like that he highlights two or three other local restaurants on each show with great enthusiasm. Recently we found ourselves in Philadelphia following Adam's footprints through the City of Brotherly Love.

A stop at the historic Reading Terminal Market was a feast for the tummy and the eyes. Everywhere you looked there were vendors selling all sorts of tasty treats. We took Adam's advice and stopped in for a sandwich at Tommy DiNic's . They are famous for their roast pork sandwich topped with garlic broccoli rabe. While perhaps not the best sandwich on the planet, the broccoli rabe made this one of the most unique. Also, the stools at the counter in the heart of the bustling market are fantastic for people watching.


After polishing off the massive sandwich, we indulged in the best soft pretzel ever (this is no small feat since I am a soft pretzel connoisseur) at Miller's Twist. Total. Food. Bliss.

Man v. Food also led us to the quirkiest doughnut shop ever: Voodoo Doughnut in Portland, Oregon . If you'd like a side of goth culture with your voodoo doll doughnut, this place is for you. They even do weddings so grab your black wedding gown and go!


Just down I-95 in Baltimore, we were treated to more culinary delights thanks to two TV shows. The Food Network's "The Best Thing I Ever Ate" and "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives" both pointed us in the direction of Chaps Pit Beef in a gritty industrial section of Baltimore (by gritty I mean flanked by a strip club on one side and across the street from a porn shop). Baltimore resident and cake master Duff Goldman and lord of the greasy spoon Guy Fieri recommended this monument to meat so we figured we couldn't go wrong. I kept it simple and ordered the ribs (a great deal at $7.50 for a pound) with a side of mac n' cheese. B followed the wisdom of the food sages and ordered Guy's Triple D sub sandwich piled high with beef, corned beef, and sausage. This thing would make a vegetarian run screaming in the other direction, but if you're a dedicated carnivore, this is your sandwich.


Internet. It may seem obvious nowadays but don't overlook the power of the internet to guide you when you're out of town. We googled our way to a really unique tourist destination in Philadelphia that I never would have known about without Trip Advisor and Yelp. The Eastern State Penitentiary may sound like an odd choice for a tour, but that's exactly why we loved it. It was unique, fascinating, and a photographer's dream come true. The natural light spilling through the cracks in this 180-year-old (now shuttered) prison makes for fantastic photos. Grab your audio tour headset and get lost in the history.

I Spy. With all this said, keep your eyes open and your plans flexible because you never know when you'll stumble across a person or a sign that might point you in the right direction. In our most recent case, this came in the form of a printed-out review of Bassetts Ice Cream that was posted near the bathroom in Philadelphia's Reading Terminal Market. As J described, we were stuffed, but after reading the review that claimed it was some of the best ice cream ever - and dated to the beginning of the Civil War (1861) - we found room. (J claims she has a stomach just for ice cream). Call it addiction, call it tasting history, call it whatever you want: Gadzooks Blanc ice cream is heavenly.


Where will we go next? We'd love to hear your suggestions for our next road trip!