In recent years, I've had the pleasure of traveling to Bethesda every 4 months or so.  Of course I don't always go back to La Miche, but it has become a bit of a tradition to return every fall with a rather large group of my colleagues to enjoy a wonderful French meal.  This year, I decided to bring Husband with me to enjoy some of the wonderful food in the Capital area, as well as see a bit of DC itself.  Yes you read that right, enjoying the food was clearly the top priority of the trip.  We'd previously been to the Capital but that was before we had the food passion.  This trip was definitely about food!  In reality, it was a good thing because fall in DC can be dicey and our trip hit a terrible wet and cold patch that made the sight seeing a bit less enjoyable than we'd hoped. We were not disappointed, however, with the food.

On the first night of our culinary adventures we made my annual visit to La Miche, in Bethesda, MD.  I always get the Crab Cakes because they are excellent.  Since my last visit,  La Miche became a 3-course prix fixe restaurant which meant we all had La Miche's trademark Soufflés.  Husband and I had chocolate while some of our other dinner mates had the Grand Mariner.  They were an excellent way to complete the meal.

The remaining two nights were spent dinning in DC.  We intended to spend the day visiting the capital and then have dinner around 8:30pm.  We assumed museums etc would be open until 8 or 9pm.  We were wrong.  Everything closed at 5:30.  Sadly, on the first night this meant we walked around in the rain for an hour, browsed some uneventful shops for an hour, and had cocktails in the restaurant where we were to dine for an hour.  The cocktails part was ok but the other two hours were not great - especially with the rain.  The restaurant was Vidalia which serves "regional American cuisine with a subtle southern influence".  For a cocktail, I had an interesting mixture composed of apple cider, apple brandy, Carmel, and a cinnamon sugar coated martini glass rim.  It was quite good and I just may have to try reproducing it at home.  In fact, everything about Vidalia was  excellent.  My dinner was four small vegetable plates, each of which got better and better.  The first was a small salad, the second roasted carrots, the third a butternut risotto with chanterelle mushrooms and the final a potato latke like pancake.  Of course, none were as simple as just a salad or just carrots.  They were very intricate creations by the Chef. I really really enjoyed the chanterelle mushrooms in the butternut risotto, so much in fact that I tried to reproduce the dish this past weekend.  My attempt was good but clearly no match for the Vidalia version.  Vidalia also has a very nice cheese course with cheese from the Artisanal Cheese Center in New York City.  It just so happens that my favorite cheese book, "Cheese: A Connoisseur’s Guide to the World’s Best", is authored by Max McCalman from the Artisanal Cheese Center.  Trying the cheese course was a given and we were not disappointed.  

Our last night in DC, we went to an Italian restaurant.  Most fancy or top-tier restaurants we've dined at are not Italian so this was an interesting experience.  The meal began with a wait.  Reservation timing can be difficult for restaurants and Tosca handled it well apologizing and providing us a complimentary appetizer because we waited twenty minutes for our seat.  Other than the wait the meal was great but I think after the large dinners the two previous nights we were overloaded with food - hey it can happen to best of foodies! 

DC has so many outstanding restaurants that I can't wait for my next visit to try more.  Yet, I am a creature of habit and I just know I'll be back to these restaurants sometime soon. Once ignited the food passion is not easily dampened and once discovered restaurants are not easily lost... 

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