Samantha's

Samantha's is a little Mexican/El Salvadoran restaurant on University Blvd in Tacoma Park. My first impression was that the interior was a lot nicer than I expected from a restaurant in a neighborhood who's chief commercial business seems to be the pawn shop. The tables are nicely set up, not too tightly packed in, with white tablecloths. The prices are a bit higher than I'm used to paying for Mexican food, but not exorbitant. Most entrees were between $10 and $20.

The food was great. I'm not sure that it's better than our long-standing favorite DC Mexican restaurant, Mi Rancho, but it might well be (Allyson liked the food better). I had the carne asada, which was well marinated -- flavorful and tender. She had the taco salad and pupusas. The papusas were very good; the shell didn't overpower the fillings and it was well flavored. The chips and salsa which came out before were superb as well. The margarita I had, on the other hand, was unexceptional. Not that it was a bad margarita, but it was solidly average.

Samantha's is somewhat hard to get to, not being Metro accessible and not having a very large parking lot, but I definitely recommend it for a nice Mexican dinner. 4.5/5.

Brickskeller

Just having arrived in DC, we went to the Brickskeller. Our primary reason was that my dad was still with us, and they're the only place I've ever seen that serves a "Skip and Go Naked," my Oma's favorite drink. They're probably best known for their ginormous beer selection.

The atmosphere is very nice, kind of a low key pub atmosphere, but with more space than most pubs I've seen. Perhaps because it was a Tuesday, it wasn't very busy. I hadn't noticed this, but they have dart boards, and the lack of business aided us in being able to play darts (and to get beat by Allyson.)

The beer selection is large, which is generally a good thing. But I felt like the selection was too large. There's not a lot of reason to go for the beer from the Dominican Republic over the Vietnamese beer. I prefer a smaller list of beers with descriptions, so I know what I'm trying and so I know what beers the bartender thinks are good. They generally know better than I do, though I'm trying.

The food was quite good. The selection is pretty limited to just bar food. But the burgers Allyson and I had were both the best burgers we've had in a long time, and certainly better than any beer you could find in St. Louis.

Welcome to the New Blog

Some of you might be wondering why I decided to start a new blog. I felt that the subjects I was most tempted to write about did not quite fit the old tag line, especially since the focus was generally not the law. More often, I was tempted to write about places I had been, movies I had seen, that sort of thing. So I'm starting this new blog to do this. Unfortunately for those of you outside of DC, it will tend to be DC focused, for obvious reasons. But I hope you will find it interesting, and I certainly anticipate that there will be items of more general interest. Or, if you remember some of the topics from the old blog, general disinterest.