JeffreyLipsey.com

We don’t normally eat Irish food around here, considering that Marlyn cooks Italian/Asian and I cook just whatever I want. However, this week our meals have had more of an Irish fix.


Monday night I took my first foray into corned beef and cabbage, although I didn’t use any online recipe. Most recipes I found online involved stewing the corned beef with carrots and cabbage and I didn’t have that much time. However, I remember the way my friend Bill used to cook it in college, and it was always a big hit.


Basically, all he did was stick the whole slab of meat in the oven and baked it for a couple hours; so that’s what I did too. The meat turned out excellent, very tender and even Marlyn liked it (she historically doesn’t like heavy beef dishes). The only problem I had was trying to find a good way to cook the cabbage.


Jamey, on the other hand, had no idea how to cook cabbage in college and I never looked at how Bill would cook it. Marlyn always chops her leaves up when she cooks with cabbage and, to be honest, I’ve never cooked with it before. All I did was boil the fuck out of the leaves until they turned tender, although I think over cooked it. In the end, it just tasted like overcooked broccoli. Well, 1 for 2 isn’t bad, I need more help with my cabbage skills though.


This morning though, we out for brunch as we normally do and went to an Irish bar in Old Town. The place was huge and for the first couple minutes it was quite awkward inside. Once we ordered our food things got a lot better. Marlyn ordered a Bailey’s French Toast and regretted it almost immediately as she was craving crab cakes. Her intuitiveness was correct though, the french toast wasn’t that great; but she’ll have to wait until next week to have those crab cakes.


I ordered an ‘Irish Breakfast” which is just another term for: lets give everything possible on one plate that has anything to do with being Irish. It came with scrambled eggs w/chives, some soft Irish bread, breakfast sausages, baked beans, potatoes, grilled tomato and two other types of sausages that I had no idea wtf they were. Either way, just about everything on the plate was good with an exception to the grilled tomato, it just didn’t fit in.


It wasn’t the best brunch we’ve had, but the prices were pretty good as they were probably some of the cheapest brunch we’ve had yet. I don’t know how much their drink prices are but the food prices were good. I could see going back again.

I’m a little late in writing this, but who knows where the time goes. On Saturday, Marlyn and I went out to eat lunch at Cafe Salsa, a Cuban-style restaurant in downtown Alexandria.


I’d say it was pretty authentic feeling inside. You don’t get chips and salsa but instead fried-banana slices with a hearty olive-based dip. I liked it.


As an appetizer, Marlyn and I ordered some Seafood Ceviche, which was served without tostadas and made it quite awkward to eat. As usual, the Ceviche was served cold but they had to use a lot of lemon juice to hide the seafood flavor from the shrimp, scallops, fish and squid. The lemon juice made it taste odd and without a necessary crunch I didn’t care for this dish (although it was OK when I started to eat it with the banana chips).


As a main course, I ordered the Nueva Ropa Vieja, which was basically a barbacoa-style beef stewed with bell peppers served on rice with cooked bananas. Marlyn liked the bananas the best, but I really like the way the beef tasted. I would order it again.


Marlyn ordered something not on the online menu, it had grilled cornmeal on the outside and its a famous dish, although I can’t remember it now. It was pretty good, probably better than my dish.


We split a desert, which was the first time I’ve ever had Flan. I have to say, it was pretty good and I was very surprised. I think the Flan was the best thing on the menu, if that says anything.


The atmosphere in the place was only OK. I felt that the dishes might have been dirty and there was a guy on a date wearing a bluetooth headset that was annoying the crap out of me (although it had nothing to do with the restaurant itself). I would like to go back to Cafe Salsa to try out some other dishes, but truthfully that wont happen for a while given we have higher priority restaurants.

So Saturday Morning Marlyn and I take our usual visit to a restaurant in Old Towne Alexandria for brunch after we get back from the Farmer’s Market. We are slowly running out of brunch places and we’ll have to start going there for ‘Linner.’


This weekend we decided to go the restaurant called 219. I guess its another French place but I didn’t notice it nearly as much as the place we went to last week.


I’m really glad we went there for brunch because when we arrive they had an unadvertised special going: If you order off the brunch menu you’ll get either 1) Free side salad, 2) Free cup of soup, or 3) Free glass of champagne. Is it even an option? It’s 11 am for goodness sakes, of course we’re both going to get the champagne… Its certainly the option with the most value.


Marlyn ordered:

Seafood Crepes


Crab Meat, Shrimp, Mushroom rolled in thin Crepes
With Red Pepper Beurre Blanc … $13

And I ordered:

Steak Benedict with King Crab Cake with Hollandaise sauce … $18

I know, it wasn’t on the online menu but they had it at the restaurant. Marlyn’s tasted decent, but IMO it was just like one big plate full of sea food. I guess that’s fine but I don’t think there was as much subtle flavor as my dish.


I won’t slowplay: my breakfast was awesome. The steak was cooked perfectly to the medium rare, and it had the exact same texture as the crap cake so there wasn’t any awkward slicing. Below the steak was the crab cake, which like all crab cakes, taste great! The whole thing was served on a english muffin with the egg on top and the sauce poured over everything. Not only was each individual part great, but when you actually took the effort to eat a little bit of everything at once you were rewarded for the effort. I have to admit, this is probably one of the best breakfasts I’ve had that I can remember, let alone one that has steak with it.


I see no reason to not order this the next time we go back to 219, as it wouldn’t make any sense to even try anything new. The prices were a bit expensive but if you subtract the glass of champagne from the breakfast then its actually fairly inexpensive. Well worth the price though.