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On top of spaghetti, all covered with cheese
"We may live without poetry, music and art
We may live without conscience, and live without heart
We may live without friends; we may live without books
But civilized man cannot live without cooks."
- Owen Meredith (19th century English statesman)
After our movie experience (see my January 22 entry), J. and I caught a cab to Il Mulino for our 10 p.m. reservation. We don't usually eat so late, but since that particular evening concluded Washington D.C.'s restaurant week, seats at more traditional meal times were scarce by the time we made our dinner plans.
Il Mulino (Italian for "the flour mill") is located in downtown D.C., on Vermont and L St. near McPherson Square and well within the boundaries J.'s former neighborhood. The restaurant is nestled squarely beneath an unremarkable gray office building (and beside an epileptic neon-blue nightclub). Neither J. and I had ever noticed it before, despite having ventured into the 24-hour CVS across the street on numerous occasions to appease spontaneous late-night ice cream cravings.
The lobby revealed a small but classy operation, with the dining room creeping into the foyer, constructed around an enormous Italian-style horn-o'-plenty (featuring crates of various vegetables, cheeses and exotic cooking oils) and populated by a full company of waiters in white ties and tuxedo jackets. It was like an oasis of the 1920's in a 21st century world, the kind of place into which a person could literally stumble and escape visions of corporate ubiquity, entrenched cynicism, and hookers.
The maitre'd greeted us both with a warm and sincere "Buona sera, signorini," harkening my imagination to memories of our trip to Italy a little more than a year ago. My knee-jerk response was to blurt out a mechanical translation of the phrase, "good evening," which thankfully made sense in the context of our dialogue. If he had greeted us by saying "Bienvenuto a nostro trattoria," I almost assuredly would have replied, "Welcome to our restaurant."
We were seated at a table adjacent to the foyer, which, owing to the aforementioned size of the venue, lacked any kind of border or separation from the dining area. On a cold evening, at a time when many satisfied diners were leaving the restaurant, this created intermittent gusts of chilled air, which, naturally, could only be tempered by the ordering of alcohol and pasta.
Once seated, we were immediately presented with twin plates of authentic cured salami and zucchini that seemed to have been sauteed in a pound of butter. As we were settling in, a stoic cheese steward silently crumbled large chunks of reggiano parmesan onto our cocktail plates and gave way to our waiter -- cheerful and enthusiastic to such a degree that I suspected he was on amphetamines -- who eagerly took our drink order.
It probably would have been a good night for a rich, red wine, but we nevertheless elected for two glasses of Vernaccia di San Gimignano, our favorite and fondly remembered white wine variety from Tuscany.
At this point I excused myself to go to the restroom, which immediately presented me with an unfamiliar predicament: the first urinal I approached was filled, rather precariously, with ice cubes. I assumed that this meant it was out of order, until I saw that the other urinal was similarly stocked. The only other option, the stall, was occupied.
My mind raced. Is this a European thing? I could not recall ever seeing ice in a urinal before, even in Italy. Or maybe it was designed as a sort of game, to see how much you could personally melt in one session. But weren't they concerned about riccochet? Maybe my first instinct was right and they were both out of order. Should I wait to use the stall? The occupant was barely stirring, and my needs were becoming urgent. The door opened behind me; I did not want this incoming stranger to think that I was a culturally illiterate rube who didn't know anything about ice urinals. So I strode confidently up to the facility and did my best to maintain a safe angle. The new arrival, apparently just as baffled as I, decided to wait for the stall.
When I returned to the table, there were two glasses of red wine. Confused, J. and I informed our waiter that the wine was supposed to be white, though we conceded that we were not experts and I was already starting to wonder if I was an unwitting participant in some kind of twilight-zone obstacle course. The waiter said something fast and unintelligible in response, and then huddled with a number of other servers, making it obvious that no one on the staff had any idea what Vernaccia was supposed to look like. For the next five minutes, various restaurant employees dropped by every 30 seconds or so to quickly mumble that they were getting to the bottom of the situation.
Meanwhile, other servers were rushing by with baskets of warm bread and samples of fresh bruschetta, while whisking away any other plates that might have been on the table. I was able to take one bite of the delicious bruschetta before an enterprising busboy tried to take it away from me; I had to cover the plate with my arms and growl. So he took my bread instead. I suspected they must be under some kind of orders to keep the meal moving. Either that or they were running out of flatware.
J. and I had ordered the same first course, a caprese salad consisting of beefsteak tomato slices and huge chunks of fresh mozzarella cheese garnished with shredded basil. Normally, when eating a caprese salad, I have to carefully apportion my cheese in such a way that I don't end up with leftover tomato bits. But in this case, I ended up with a cheese surplus that made me wish I could have combined it with the long-gone zucchini.
For my main course I had selected the Tartaglie con Carne Salsiccia -- wide, flat pasta noodles with sausage meatballs in a thick tomato sauce. The pasta tasted homemade and was just short of overcooked -- exactly how I like it. The sausage was just the right combination of sweet and spicy, and if anything, too sparse. The marinara had a pleasant bouquet of oregano and romano cheese, pulling the entire dish together into a symphony. I quickly cleaned my entire bowl, just in case a rogue busboy was planning another quick-strike extraction.
J. lingered more deliberately over her ravioli al funghi -- plump pasta packets filled with wine-marinated mushrooms and smothered with creamy pesto. After tasting one, I understood why. The flavor was so powerful that it seemed to start with a flash of "salty," soar past "sweet," bypass "tangy" and land squarely on "explosive." It was the papillary equivalent of hardcore pornography.
For dessert, we were presented a large plate with a melange of rich, creamy confections: the most easily identifiable was a slice of lemon-infused cheesecake and generous portion of tiramasu. These fluffy, whipped concoctions are not really my idea of decadence, so I didn't feel so bad about being overstuffed with the previous four courses. J. sampled a little bit of everything, but by that point most of her taste buds had collapsed in an exhausted heap.
The only thing capable of rejuvinating those taste buds was the meal's final flourish, a small glass of grappa poured from an ice carafe. Grappa is apparently a type of brandy made from distilled grape residue and other remnants of winemaking. It is commonly served as a highly alcoholic digestivo or "after-dinner drink," though I suspect that in a pinch it can be used as substitute for lighter fluid or nail polish remover. Its blinding potency suddenly made J.'s ravioli seem like matzoh.
This meal was J.'s treat and I never saw the bill, so I only speculate as to Il Mulino's value for the price. It probably wasn't cheap, considering the army of waitstaff they apparently employ. But J. did reveal something unusual about the check: underneath the line for the tip, there was a separate line for the "Captain tip". Not only were we entirely ignorant of the standard calculation for the "Captain tip," we could not actually identify with any certainty which guy was the "Captain." Whomever he or she was, they were not wearing a captain's hat, nor were they wearing any tell-tale badges, epaulets or other regalia.
(I knew that this very situation had played out in an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, an episode which I remembered to be very funny though I could not remember Larry David's approach to the problem or the ultimate outcome, which probably would have been useless in real life, anyhow. All I was sure about was that we didn't want to stiff the Captain. Or the waiter. Besides, in my bloated, half-drunk condition, I was in no shape to stiff anything.)
Eventually we decided to give the waiter 15 percent and the Captain three percent, which I've learned is below the standard five percent for "the guy in charge of greeting, seating, supervising the waitstaff and coordinating with the kitchen," but above what I would normally presume to pay for such services, especially considering the occasional weirdness evident throughout the evening.
Thank goodness I didn't have to tip a urinal guy.
Il Mulino by the numbers, on a scale of one to ten:
Food: 8.5
Atmosphere: 6
Service: 6.5
Restrooms: 5
Value: 7
Overall (not an average): 7.5
We may live without conscience, and live without heart
We may live without friends; we may live without books
But civilized man cannot live without cooks."
- Owen Meredith (19th century English statesman)
After our movie experience (see my January 22 entry), J. and I caught a cab to Il Mulino for our 10 p.m. reservation. We don't usually eat so late, but since that particular evening concluded Washington D.C.'s restaurant week, seats at more traditional meal times were scarce by the time we made our dinner plans.
Il Mulino (Italian for "the flour mill") is located in downtown D.C., on Vermont and L St. near McPherson Square and well within the boundaries J.'s former neighborhood. The restaurant is nestled squarely beneath an unremarkable gray office building (and beside an epileptic neon-blue nightclub). Neither J. and I had ever noticed it before, despite having ventured into the 24-hour CVS across the street on numerous occasions to appease spontaneous late-night ice cream cravings.
The lobby revealed a small but classy operation, with the dining room creeping into the foyer, constructed around an enormous Italian-style horn-o'-plenty (featuring crates of various vegetables, cheeses and exotic cooking oils) and populated by a full company of waiters in white ties and tuxedo jackets. It was like an oasis of the 1920's in a 21st century world, the kind of place into which a person could literally stumble and escape visions of corporate ubiquity, entrenched cynicism, and hookers.
The maitre'd greeted us both with a warm and sincere "Buona sera, signorini," harkening my imagination to memories of our trip to Italy a little more than a year ago. My knee-jerk response was to blurt out a mechanical translation of the phrase, "good evening," which thankfully made sense in the context of our dialogue. If he had greeted us by saying "Bienvenuto a nostro trattoria," I almost assuredly would have replied, "Welcome to our restaurant."
We were seated at a table adjacent to the foyer, which, owing to the aforementioned size of the venue, lacked any kind of border or separation from the dining area. On a cold evening, at a time when many satisfied diners were leaving the restaurant, this created intermittent gusts of chilled air, which, naturally, could only be tempered by the ordering of alcohol and pasta.
Once seated, we were immediately presented with twin plates of authentic cured salami and zucchini that seemed to have been sauteed in a pound of butter. As we were settling in, a stoic cheese steward silently crumbled large chunks of reggiano parmesan onto our cocktail plates and gave way to our waiter -- cheerful and enthusiastic to such a degree that I suspected he was on amphetamines -- who eagerly took our drink order.
It probably would have been a good night for a rich, red wine, but we nevertheless elected for two glasses of Vernaccia di San Gimignano, our favorite and fondly remembered white wine variety from Tuscany.
At this point I excused myself to go to the restroom, which immediately presented me with an unfamiliar predicament: the first urinal I approached was filled, rather precariously, with ice cubes. I assumed that this meant it was out of order, until I saw that the other urinal was similarly stocked. The only other option, the stall, was occupied.
My mind raced. Is this a European thing? I could not recall ever seeing ice in a urinal before, even in Italy. Or maybe it was designed as a sort of game, to see how much you could personally melt in one session. But weren't they concerned about riccochet? Maybe my first instinct was right and they were both out of order. Should I wait to use the stall? The occupant was barely stirring, and my needs were becoming urgent. The door opened behind me; I did not want this incoming stranger to think that I was a culturally illiterate rube who didn't know anything about ice urinals. So I strode confidently up to the facility and did my best to maintain a safe angle. The new arrival, apparently just as baffled as I, decided to wait for the stall.
When I returned to the table, there were two glasses of red wine. Confused, J. and I informed our waiter that the wine was supposed to be white, though we conceded that we were not experts and I was already starting to wonder if I was an unwitting participant in some kind of twilight-zone obstacle course. The waiter said something fast and unintelligible in response, and then huddled with a number of other servers, making it obvious that no one on the staff had any idea what Vernaccia was supposed to look like. For the next five minutes, various restaurant employees dropped by every 30 seconds or so to quickly mumble that they were getting to the bottom of the situation.
Meanwhile, other servers were rushing by with baskets of warm bread and samples of fresh bruschetta, while whisking away any other plates that might have been on the table. I was able to take one bite of the delicious bruschetta before an enterprising busboy tried to take it away from me; I had to cover the plate with my arms and growl. So he took my bread instead. I suspected they must be under some kind of orders to keep the meal moving. Either that or they were running out of flatware.
J. and I had ordered the same first course, a caprese salad consisting of beefsteak tomato slices and huge chunks of fresh mozzarella cheese garnished with shredded basil. Normally, when eating a caprese salad, I have to carefully apportion my cheese in such a way that I don't end up with leftover tomato bits. But in this case, I ended up with a cheese surplus that made me wish I could have combined it with the long-gone zucchini.
For my main course I had selected the Tartaglie con Carne Salsiccia -- wide, flat pasta noodles with sausage meatballs in a thick tomato sauce. The pasta tasted homemade and was just short of overcooked -- exactly how I like it. The sausage was just the right combination of sweet and spicy, and if anything, too sparse. The marinara had a pleasant bouquet of oregano and romano cheese, pulling the entire dish together into a symphony. I quickly cleaned my entire bowl, just in case a rogue busboy was planning another quick-strike extraction.
J. lingered more deliberately over her ravioli al funghi -- plump pasta packets filled with wine-marinated mushrooms and smothered with creamy pesto. After tasting one, I understood why. The flavor was so powerful that it seemed to start with a flash of "salty," soar past "sweet," bypass "tangy" and land squarely on "explosive." It was the papillary equivalent of hardcore pornography.
For dessert, we were presented a large plate with a melange of rich, creamy confections: the most easily identifiable was a slice of lemon-infused cheesecake and generous portion of tiramasu. These fluffy, whipped concoctions are not really my idea of decadence, so I didn't feel so bad about being overstuffed with the previous four courses. J. sampled a little bit of everything, but by that point most of her taste buds had collapsed in an exhausted heap.
The only thing capable of rejuvinating those taste buds was the meal's final flourish, a small glass of grappa poured from an ice carafe. Grappa is apparently a type of brandy made from distilled grape residue and other remnants of winemaking. It is commonly served as a highly alcoholic digestivo or "after-dinner drink," though I suspect that in a pinch it can be used as substitute for lighter fluid or nail polish remover. Its blinding potency suddenly made J.'s ravioli seem like matzoh.
This meal was J.'s treat and I never saw the bill, so I only speculate as to Il Mulino's value for the price. It probably wasn't cheap, considering the army of waitstaff they apparently employ. But J. did reveal something unusual about the check: underneath the line for the tip, there was a separate line for the "Captain tip". Not only were we entirely ignorant of the standard calculation for the "Captain tip," we could not actually identify with any certainty which guy was the "Captain." Whomever he or she was, they were not wearing a captain's hat, nor were they wearing any tell-tale badges, epaulets or other regalia.
(I knew that this very situation had played out in an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, an episode which I remembered to be very funny though I could not remember Larry David's approach to the problem or the ultimate outcome, which probably would have been useless in real life, anyhow. All I was sure about was that we didn't want to stiff the Captain. Or the waiter. Besides, in my bloated, half-drunk condition, I was in no shape to stiff anything.)
Eventually we decided to give the waiter 15 percent and the Captain three percent, which I've learned is below the standard five percent for "the guy in charge of greeting, seating, supervising the waitstaff and coordinating with the kitchen," but above what I would normally presume to pay for such services, especially considering the occasional weirdness evident throughout the evening.
Thank goodness I didn't have to tip a urinal guy.
Il Mulino by the numbers, on a scale of one to ten:
Food: 8.5
Atmosphere: 6
Service: 6.5
Restrooms: 5
Value: 7
Overall (not an average): 7.5