P Street Eats

After our disappointing fare at the Fairfax, we got out of the hotel asap for breakfast and ate before returning each evening.  P Street offered a variety of restaurants of all types, and here are a few that we liked.

At Le Pain Quotidien, the service was great, and the décor made it an excellent place to sit and have breakfast and a coffee.  It was also a relief to find a restaurant offering local and organic fare.  The coffee was good, as was the bread.  The highlight was the French Toast.  The wild mushroom omelet was nice, but we had to fight over the bites that had mushroom in them, so the filling was a little sparse considering the price.  Overall, it was great meal for a D.C. breakfast for a trio who prefer a fully cooked English breakfast to a bagel or donut.

We also enjoyed Scion, which I personally wished we had eaten at a few more times as I liked the beer selection and wanted to try a few more menu items.  There we had the artichoke and crab dip app, our son had a surprisingly good mac & cheese topped with bacon off of the kid’s menu, my wife had the stuffed chicken, and I had the salmon wellington and a flight of ales.  All in all, it was a great meal.  Only the dessert, billed as a bourbon pecan pie, was a shocker, as it was more like a TV dinner dessert than my expectations.  Some of my fondest memories are of eating pecan pies made by my aunt with fresh pecans from the tree in the front yard of her farm in North Carolina, so I’ve got a pretty high standard for any dessert that calls itself a pecan pie, and this wasn’t even close to being a pecan pie…it was more like a choco-pecan-puck.

Just up the street was the Café Japone, a sushi place with an excellent happy hour.  We were so exhausted from doing tourist D.C., that we didn’t remember to take pictures until the second round, but here’s a shot of their rainbow roll, seaweed salad, and gyoza.  Great service again, and a nice window seat to watch the sweaty masses scurry home in the near-100 degree heat...I just wish they had offered just one stout or IPA!

Finally, the fourth restaurant worth a mention was Panas, which offered some very nice empanadas that we grabbed to go and munched on as we wandered the Mall and the monuments.  These were a great treat to save us from the food courts of the Smithsonian, and they were tasty, some were spicy, and were enjoyed by all.