Sunday, June 3, 2007

Restaurants in the Dupont Scene!

one last post...on Saturday after my LSAT class and after M&M ran (okay, jogged) (okay, strolled) the Race for the Cure, we met in Dupont for lunch - thankfully, my friends know when to pull me away from the books and save my sanity - and were heading for Kramerbooks, when M1 suggested a new cafe called Circa, which as a Cafe Deluxe, but nicer, feel to it. Even though it was brutally hot, we sat outside under their large awning. After a 20 minute wait, though - this place is already hopping.

The menu is fairly standard - pizzas (which I can't have, but they looked good) and some interesting salads; such as the lump crab and avacado that M1 had - lest you think it sounds too healthy, it has a nice fat onion ring placed on the top of it that looked delicious. We started with prosciutto and melon, which is enough for three (they may have grouped it for us into three portions on a long white plate, it's that kind of place that thinks of things like that). The prosciutto comes draped over cubed melon with a bit of balsamic, not too much - really tasty, although melon takes on a certain taste when it's been touching prosciutto for too long, and this had that taste.

Then I (surprise!) had the burger, no bun, no fries when I found out they use the same fryer for onion rings and fries (cross-contamination), so I had a salad instead. The burger comes with cheese, fresh onions and tomatoes, and bacon - a pretty standard prep. However, it was really tasty, fresh beef and the waiter brought me out some avacado after I saw how nice it looked on M1's salad. M2 had a salad with fruit, walnuts, and a citrus vinaigrette which also looked really fresh - which is not something you can always count on in DC.

Their drink menu is also cute and inventive - we had the Berry Smash, which is vodka with "mashed" or something (they used a verb I wouldn't have thought applied to fruit, but I can't remember what it is!) and some kind of syrup. It was really tasty and light on such a hot day, but the mashed fruit gets stuck in the little straws, so we chucked them and started drinking directly.

The waiter was really helpful with all of my substitutions and gave us the avacado for free! which was nice. The only weird thing - every 20 minutes or so, the awning would be cranked back because it got "too windy", and then about 10 minutes after that (and it getting very hot in direct sunlight), it would be cranked out again. It's very fancy and automatic (no one's actually cranking the thing) but it wasn't really that windy, and much longer in the heat and people would've been highly annoyed. So I hope they get that straightened out, because it's so sensitive someone sneezing on Connecticut Avenue will probably break it.

A very cute neighborhood cafe! Two thumbs up.

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