Lou's City Bar: It could be perfect, but it's not

I've lived in and around Columbia Heights for the six years I've lived in DC, and I always lamented the fact that there wasn't a good sports bar in Columbia Heights.  Sure Ventnor Sports Cafe in Adams Morgan is solid, and Old Dominion Brewhouse is an adequate refuge to watch football on Sunday, but they weren't convenient.  So I was ecstatic when Lou's City Bar opened just a few blocks from my apartment several months ago.  But now, after several months and several visits I am here to tell you that I am underwhelmed and that there is still a place for a great sports bar in Columbia Heights.  Let me explain.

It should be perfect.  There's a critical mass of TVs, an extensive beer selection both on draft and in the bottle, there's a solid bar, good service, and a fantastic outdoor patio that they have three TVs out on most nights.  The beer is reasonably priced and there's always a beer special of the month (for a time it was a $4 Leinenkugel Summer Shandy, "Yes, please!"), but there's still something lacking.  The food is painfully mediocre.

I've been to Lou's a number of times and always enjoyed the beer.  I've also eaten there a number of times.  In fact, I've tried the buffalo wings, the calamari, the nachos, the french dip, the reuben, the blackened bleu burger, and the benedict burger.  That's constitutes a good percentage of the menu and while I never sent anything back, I've also never ordered anything more then once.  In fact, part of the reason I've had so many different things is because every time I order something I am so underwhelmed by it that I think something else has to be better.  The search continues.

I'll begin with the buffalo wings.  I am a wing fanatic, especially on a Sunday afternoon.  Some of my favorite places to get wings are Mackey's (which is inexplicably closed on Sunday much to my chagrin) and Ventnors.  At Lou's the wings come unbreaded, but fried.  All that is normal, but the sauce, well it's not good.  It's a sweet-ish spice the departs a long way from say a Frank's Red Hot sauce or anything similar.  Also, the wings look a bit scrawny, which could be a consequence not being breaded, but it could also simply be that they're puny wings.  When you want me to pay $10 for wings, I expect some meat on the bone.

Next, the burgers.  They tend to come out dry and a bit overcooked.  That lack of juicy-ness though is the real killer for the burger.  When I think about the better burgers I've had at a bar like at Sign of the Whale, or even a no frills place like Lindy's Red Lion, those burgers are juicy and flavorful.  The taste of beef and the toppings come together splendidly.  But sadly, that's not the case at Lou's.  I dare say the best thing I've had so far is the reuben, but taste to price the $10 they charge me for it seems a couple dollars too expensive.  That's really the issue with all the food at Lou's.  None of it is awful or offensive, but when the bill comes and you wonder was that a $10 sandwich the answer for everyone I've ever dined there with is no.

Now I'm dogging on the food pretty bad and I don't know what the chefs are working with in the kitchen.  It could be they don't have the materials to be successful.  It could be my tastes are wrong.  And I don't say any of this to try and run Lou's out of business.  I want Lou's to succeed, because I've waited a long time for a sports bar in Columbia Heights.  But I worry that the take on slow sports nights will be so abysmal that it could sink the restaurant.  People will come to a bar like Lou's on a Sunday afternoon for the beer and the TVs, but they'll come back after work on Tuesday if the food they had on Sunday was really good.  I worry that for Lou's, nobody will be there on Tuesday.

But I'll keep going back to Lou's.  They've got a great beer selection.  They've got a great vibe, and they're just around the corner.  But I'll eat dinner before I head over for a brew.

Rookie Brewing Adventure Update

When last I reported on my home brewing adventures, the jalapeno saison was a success and a batch of tripel was fermenting in my carboy.  Well after that post I decided to buy a second carboy so I can have two batches brewing.  And so this past weekend I brewed up a batch of Everyday IPA from the Brooklyn Brew Shop.  I followed the instructions, but in the last five minutes decided to throw a pepper in the wort for the final five minutes a la the jalapeno saison.

With two batches fermenting it'll be a little while before a report out the results of these brews.  I plan to bottle the IPA on October 1st after three weeks in the carboy and then bottle the tripel on October 9th after 6 weeks in the carboy.  I already have a new adventure I'm considering that would take me away from the predetermined kits with this Pumpkin Ale recipe.

So stay tuned for updates and as always, consider taking a shot a brewing.  It's fun and easy.

Brunch at Tonic-Mt. Pleasant

On Monday my girlfriend, Erica, and I went to grab brunch at Tonic in Mt. Pleasant.  I've been there many times before, but I didn't have a blog about eating before so here's the review.  They only had the upstairs open so we grabbed a seat.  She ordered coffee, while I ordered a bloody mary.  The bloody mary was pretty lack luster.  The mix had a nice spice to it and you could taste the vodka, but there wasn't any depth of flavor.  It wasn't as bad as the tragedy of a bloody mary I had at Madhatters before they moved, but I definitely didn't think to order a second one.

Erica ordered the lox plate and I ordered the biscuits and gravy with cheesy grits.  The lox plate looked fantastic.  And the biscuits and gravy were excellent.  One of my minor complaints is that most of the places I go for brunch don't offer biscuits and gravy.  At Tonic they come with two eggs and grits, home fries, or fruit.  I got my eggs over easy because just about every breakfast dish is improved with some runny egg yokes.  The cheesy grits, however, were a miss on Monday.  I've had them before and they've been delicious so I don't want to swear them off, but on Monday they were too salty that had me begging for more water.  But I got all that for $10 which is a pretty good deal.

I'll definitely be back to Tonic for brunch in the future, but I think I'll pass on the bloody mary.  Maybe the mimosa will be better.  I vaguely remember that they were on previous ventures there, but only vaguely.

Rookie Brewing Adventure - Success!

Yesterday it was about failure, but today I'm here to gloat.  After 5-ish weeks of waiting, the jalapeno saison was released for consumption.  First, the essential, everyone drank, no one died.  Second, the more essential, it tasted awesome.  Right out of the gate, the first thing you notice is the smell of jalapeno.  It was unique and, you know, earthy.

The taste was very light, with spicy notes (shut up Kyle).  It finished clean, and while it's hard to know the actual alcohol content, I think it was above the standard 5% ABV.  It was a fantastic first experience brewing beer and I'm not sure if it was good by chance or method, I'm just glad it was good.  Everyone, except Kyle, really seemed to like it.  Kyle kept asking why it didn't taste more like cider, despite my attempts to explain the different between cider and beer.  I've still got one 15 ounce bottle lingering in the fridge for a special occasion, or until I need that Grolsch bottle.

Also, if you're a beer drinker in a space equal to or greater than 500 square feet, you should definitely buy the kit and get to brewing yourself.  So much fun.  So gratifying.

What's next?  I'm glad you were planning to ask, but couldn't because this is largely a one way medium.  On Sunday I brewed up a batch of Tripel and I've been advised by my beer brewing mentor, Neil, to let it sit because it can only get better.  I'm not sure my patience will hold out, unless I buy a new gallon carboy to get a second batch of something brewing.  Also, I bought proper sanitizer and used it when I prepped for the new batch.  Second also, despite the post time, this post is fueled by Magic Hat Hex.

Away Game: NYC

I took a trip to NYC over the weekend and spent an evening hanging out with a grad school buddy who is from the city (Brooklyn to be precise, and he is).  He told me to meet him at Zum Schneider at Ave C and East 7th in what I learned was Alphabet City (I thought that was DC) to enjoy a Bavarian Beirgarten.  It's a pretty small place, but a solid beer selection and after a few Reissdorf Kolchs we decided to head across the street.

So we went catty corner to Edi & The Wolf named after shortened versions of the chefs names for dinner and more beer.  Edi & The Wolf is an Austrian restaurant that doesn't have a biergarten feel, but certainly a lot of crossover appeal in the beer department. At this point I relinquished beer drinking decision to my buddy and was not disappointed.  He'd been there before and knew the lay of the land.

For dinner we started with an ode to pork, getting the cured pork belly and the baby back ribs.  The pork belly was as expected, little delectable bits of cured bacon with diced apples to cut through the salt.  It was good.  But the ribs, they were great.  Fall off the bone tender with a sweet glaze and house made mustard with that potency that distinguishes real mustard from yellow mustard, they were fantastic.  After the ribs were gone I may or may not have just eaten some mustard on its own.

By the time the ribs were gone I had consumed about 2.5 liters of beer (those handy lines on the glasses helped me keep track) and what would have otherwise been enough food felt lacking so we moved on to entrees.  My buddy got the organic chicken, while I got the veal wiener schnitzel.  His chicken was this perfectly wrapped and cooked mini chicken roast.  Meanwhile, my wiener schnitzel was outstanding.  It came with potato salad, cucumber with dill, and lingonberry jam.  Everything just worked.  These were classic Austro/German flavors at their finest.  The potato was great with the schnitzel, as was the jam, and the cucumber was a great side to go with a fried piece of veal.

I also have to say the service was fantastic.  My buddy has a reputation of being a bit loquacious with wait staff, but our waitress and the hostess both parried back and forth with him.  Our waitress warned me about the good, not great-ness of the pork belly, but I didn't listen.  Suffice to say I asked her opinion for my entree.  After all that food and a fair bit more beer we decided to head to Brooklyn to see a friend of my buddy's band play.  This was my first time in Brooklyn.

Now as a consequence of having at this point an indeterminate number of liters of beer, I don't know where we ended up.  In fact, I don't think the place had a sign, it was just a small venue with a narrow concert space, stage, and a small bar in a side room back into the building.  It was a cans only kind of place, but we made do.  Meeting up with a couple of my buddy's friends we were greeted with shots of I think Jameson (my true friend and downfall of late) and more beer, and then more shots, and some conversation, and then more beer, then one last shot...or two.  Having started this drinking at about 5:30, but midnight I was pretty much done and so we wandered to look for a cab and thus my NYC adventure ended.  Great beer in some cool little neighborhoods.  Excellent food, but mostly awesome people.  From the waitress we harassed to the excellent folks I met in Brooklyn some quality people all around, and that's what drinking, cooking, and eating is all about.

A Rookie Home Brewing Adventure

A couple months back my girlfriend got me a home brewing kit from The Brooklyn Brew Shop.  The Brooklyn Brew Shop's unique angle is giving anyone the set up to do small batch home brews.  In this case, it's one gallon at a time.  They even include the mix with just about everything you need to get to brewing.  It was definitely a great gift for your blogger here as it is not by accident "Drinking" comes first in this blog, but my creativity had previously been stifled by uptight roommates.  (Yes, I just called out fully 50% of my readership)

Drinking a beer while brewing beer.

A few weeks ago, before the advent of this blog even, I made my first batch and set it to ferment in the carboy (jug) for a few weeks.  The recipe said two weeks, but I gave it 2.5 on the hopes it would up the alcohol content a little.  So, with my girlfriend out of town last Thursday, I invited my buddy Ben over to help me bottle the contents of my gallon jug.

A jug of beer

For this, my first attempt, I was making a Jalapeno Saison.  Now, that sounds super fancy and thanks to Wikipedia, I know a Saison is "the name originally given to low-alcohol pale ales brewed seasonally in farmhouses in Wallonia, the French-speaking region of Belgium, for farm workers during harvest season."  What makes this a Jalapeno Saison is the addition of (you guessed it) a jalapeno at the end of the brewing process.

You will also notice in the above picture a swingtop beer bottle.  This is (and all the bottles I used) are 15oz Grolsch bottles which allowed me to skip buying a capper and caps.  I didn't discover these bottles until I had drank about 3 six packs of pry top bottles in anticipation of the bottling.  Some mistakes can be hard on the liver, but good on the heart.

You'll also notice what appears to be sand at the bottom of the jug.  It's the yeast, called trub, which is a word that accurately conveys the grossness and the lack of desirability that it get into you bottled beer.  So, to avoid getting that into your bottles you have to siphon the beer from a jug to a pot, where additional sugar was diluted with water, and then from the pot into the bottles.  This was definitely the tricky part and not a one person operation.  In the end, though, Ben and I managed to get the beer into bottles with a minimum of trub.

Nectar of the gods or failed science experiment?

And so now, here they sit to ferment a further two weeks before I throw them into the fridge and cool them down.  The recipe had some pretty explicit (and to my mind onerous) sanitation instructions that I skipped so all these weeks of waiting (5 from brew to taste) could just be a waste of time.  But that's part of the fun.  I'll let you know what it ends up tasting like, good or bad.  I'm interested how the jalapeno ends up being tasted it the beer.

This is my first of what I anticipate to be many attempts in brewing beer.  If you've got any interest, I really encourage you to get the Brooklyn Brew Shop kit.  It's a great size for a small space.  Almost all the ingredients are included, and the instructions are damn-near idiot proof.  In time, I hope to discard the training wheels of the recipes.  For now, thought, I'm happy to minimize the errors I could make.

The Bar within a Bar

I went out for drinks last Friday at a place called Last Exit.  It's a speakeasy style joint and it is literally a bar within a bar.  It's nestled inside Tonic: Mt Pleasant with a sign that was unlit when I walked by.  That may have been the point.  A hipper friend picked the place (because it's about 2 block from her apartment), and I expected a nondescript door, but honestly had to call her once my girlfriend and I arrived because I saw no doors, no signs, no placards, nada.

After figuring out where it was, I immediately liked the basement party darkness the bar emanated.  If you've been to Tonic, either Tonic, you know it's a pretty straightforward sports bar atmosphere.  The contrast in styles just by crossing the threshold was a bit jarring (I'm predisposed to like sports bars), but I dug it.  This, combined with some great, comfy lounge furniture and I was sold.  There were a few high top tables as well, if you wanted the over the table intimacy that comes from being in a dark bar.  But for me, heaven was the old, comfy chair I decamped to for the evening.  Seriously, I didn't leave that spot for several hours and if not for the call of nature I wouldn't have moved all night.

The drink menu is an interesting mix of cocktails and beers.  Given the vibe of the place and the comfort of the chair, I opted to start with a cocktail and tried out the Sazerac Willie.  It was a great mix of whiskey and bitters.  I had been concerned the absinthe might take the drink over, but it sat in the background adding a different dimension to the bitters.  And so I drank that in 5 minutes because it had been that kind of Friday and followed up with a Violetta.  It is essentially a mint julep, and is supposed to come with chocolate chips.  I passed on the chocolate.  Violetta is part of the Infusion section of the drink menu, which is what I think Last Exit wants to be the drinks you come back for.  There were some great combinations on the menu, but at $10 a drink my tab was running up and it'd only been 20 minutes.  I drink quickly.

I shifted to beer to help out my wallet and my liver.  You can't go wrong with $5 sixteen ounce draft Natty Bos.  Natty Bo being the hipster beer of the moment (sorry PBR), and the lowest ticket option it made sense for my overall plan.  However, there were a number of great beers available and an option for any discerning beer drinker (which I am not).

They also serve a number of small plates and I have to admit I was not excited.  Tonic for brunch in solid, but my last few dinner at Tonic: Mt Pleasant have been...well, bad.  Still, my compatriots craved sustenance and I kept my apprehension to myself.  I didn't have all the dishes they ordered but it doesn't matter because I know what the best dish is, the pate.  Seriously, ridiculously, magically delicious pate.  I've made pate before, it's not hard to make, but it's hard to get right and they got it right.  I spent five minutes wondering what was in their pate that wasn't in my pate that made theirs head and shoulder ahead of mine.  I never figured it out, but I did finally grab another slice of bread and slather it up.

Remnants of the pate

By around 11:30, I was two cocktails and three 16oz Natty Bos deep.  The cool temperature in the place, combined with the imminently comfy chair was conspiring to put me to sleep/pass out.  I nearly did, but we closed out and I left drunk and noticeably lighter in the wallet.  That said, I plan to go back.  The cocktails were great, the service was excellent, the pate was a moment, and the atmosphere straddled the line between upscale and pretentious.

Welcome to my blog

Hello to you, lonely blog search wanderer, or one of my friends regretting that association now that I have another outlet with which to share my random thoughts.  When I looked around the blogosphere, I noticed something.  There aren't enough blogs about food.  Okay, maybe there are, but I'm not contributing to any of those and thought I'd start one for my self.  So beyond the obvious topics of drinking, cooking, and eating, what am I going to be writing about here is:

Drinking
I've been going to bars since before I was 21 and I've enjoyed many of them.  I'll be talking about different drinks, beers, bars, and my own home brews because life is too short and you can detox when you die.

Cooking
I am an amateurish cook with no formal training and very limited skill.  You will be able to see my creations and here how they came to be triumphs or tragedies.

Eating
You can't cook all the time, and sometimes you don't want to.  So I'll throw in some restaurant reviews, but also just great meals with great friends.  My palate is the refined one of a Midwestern who's mother believed in only Lawry's Seasoning Salt.  Please take that limitation into consideration.

Along the way, I hope you learn a little more about cooking and maybe find a new spot to eat or drink.  Hope you all enjoy.

Thanks,
Jason