Sunday

We tried to eat Lebanese food at Layolina yesterday, but when we finally wedged into the small parking lot we spied a handwritten sign on the door advertising the belly dancer they'd booked for the day. Call for reservations, the sign said along with a number. Inconveniently, this poster obscured much of the glass door, so we couldn't really peer inside to see what was what. We opted to go eat Lebanese food at the Taverna, instead, which was remarkably empty for a Saturday evening. I guess everyone was off watching that unseen dancer. Tonight's dinner was better. Our dear friend, the wonderful Hannah,* stopped over in Falls Church for dinner while on vacation in Charlottesville. It has become a tradition to eat Vietnamese on these occasions, so we all walked over to Eden Center from our unit. Little Saigon is especially impressive on Sunday nights. It's always crowded with shopping families wandering the walkways from store to store. All the neon signs are on, advertising food and haircuts and music and groceries in a vibrant Vietnamese rainbow. The weather was breezy and dry. We ate at Four Sisters, which I've decided probably has the best vegetarian menu of the restaurants we've tried to date. Hannah and I, being the vegetarians, split a large bowl of soup, caramelized tofu with straw mushrooms in a clay pot, and garlic asparagus. That soup consists of baby corn, bok choy, cabbage, tofu, mushrooms, and some sort of processed veggie matter rolled with peppercorns and sliced into thin cakes. The meal was served family style, with communal serving dishes to be portioned out into individual bowls. The kind of meal where you pass things around. The resultant reddish, rice, and green plates of pungent asparagus spears and hot, sweet tofu were marvelous. [Cavin]