As avid seekers of yummy eats, we’ve started cataloguing our food posts into a little series called Food Finds. These posts include casual reviews of the unsung culinary gems we encounter on the road–or even right here at home in DC and NY!
There is a little corridor on 11th St NW near Columbia Heights that is littered with newish restaurants. When Chops and I lived on 14th Street we used to bike down 11th to get to work, and it was fun to notice anytime another business was coming in. We would piece together information about a new restaurant partly by watching the owners renovate the interior each day, but partly via these nifty email alerts I get from foodie gossip sources like Washington City Paper and Prince of Petworth.
This past Saturday we finally made it to Maple for their brunch! It was a tiny space but the interior had a lot of character, a lot of dark wood. There was a black curtain hung from the ceiling that was meant to separate our table from customers walking in through the front entrance, but it also doubled as a piece of decor that added warmth and luxuriousness to the little place. For a pre-meal dish to whet the appetite, Chops zeroed in on the Mascarpone with Preserves and Toasted Baguette. On my own I wouldn’t even have noticed this dish on the menu, but it was pretty darn delicious.
A close up of the preserves was necessary. Yum! Look at all that fruit seedage.
So guess which spreading style is mine and which is Chops’s. I keep trying to convince him that the amount of spread he puts on everything he eats is way above average, but he maintains that his is the “normal” amount and mine is just austere, frugal, spartan hehe… whatever you want to call it.
I loved our waitress for some reason. Some people just have a beautifully friendly and sincere face. I almost felt like we were friends from grad school or something and I had just come in to try the restaurant that she was working at. I also felt like I could tell her all my problems and she would understand 😉
Back to the food… I got the special they were offering, which was scrambled eggs with mascarpone and smoked trout. And brunch fries. It was tasty! Especially when I randomly bit into chunks of cheese.
Chops opted for sweet and got the Stuffed French Toast … brioche with cinnamon apples and dried cherries, whipped mascarpone cream. I guess mascarpone was a winner that day hehe.
And coffee! Which had so much flavor, like a dark roast without any hint of burntness. It turns out the coffee was fair trade Vigilante coffee. Takin’ notes 🙂
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