2 Amy's Again

2 Amy's is a great little authentic pizza place in the Cleveland Park area of DC.  We've been here before but its taken us almost a whole year to make it back here.  There are always so many new places we want to try, its hard to make it back to the good ones we've already been to.  But we had been craving some 2 Amy's pizza for a couple weeks and we had a free Saturday to make a trip to DC so here's where we ended up...

A selection of mixed olives in their own olive oil...

Be careful of the pits! These things are fresh!

 Nice tart mix of favors, some strong, some subtle, all delicious.

A lovely salty combination...sardines and olives

Pretty little salty sardines served with bread and butter...

The butter added a slight sweet and creamy texture to the salty little fish.

The bread was baked fresh too.  Soft on the inside, a bit crunchy on the crust.


And then the pizza...

Salami, peppers, buffalo mozarella...yumminess!

Oh yeah, sometimes on Saturdays, they also offer these donuts for a dessert.  I guess we ate them so fast we forgot to take pictures of them. But trust me, they were awesome!  Lightly crisp, covered with sugar, baked fresh, and still warm when they put them in the paper bag.  They even let you have the leftover donut holes that go with them!

Vapiano

A couple weeks ago, Superking and I went out to lunch with our family on a Sunday afternoon after church.  We wanted something different, something not too expensive, and something conducive for children and large families. My brother-in-law suggested this place in the mall called Vapiano.  We had walked by it a million times but had never been in.  Its Italian cuisine and Superking and I aren't huge fans of traditional Italian.  But we went along with it because everyone else seemed to be happy with the choice.

It actually turned out to be an interesting and unique culinary experience. It has a little bit of a cafeteria format but in a much more modern fashion. Each customer gets a card and you choose your own seats.  The seats, by the way, were stools pulled up to very high, bar-style tables made of wood and adorned with some lovely fresh green plants in the middle. One table actually had a whole tree in the middle! In the middle of the restaurant is a set of shelves that house a bunch of fresh potted herbs that I believe they pick from to season the food.

This is a pizza Superking ordered. Check out all those peppers!

Then you take your card up to where they make the food.  Each item is freshly made-to-order and you stand in line behind whatever item you wish to order. If you want pasta, go to the pasta line. If you want pizza, stand in the pizza line. You can choose whatever kind of toppings or sauce you want.  With the pasta, you can even choose from like five different types of noodles.  They put your order on your card and make your food right in front of you so you can watch.  When you're done eating, you take your card to the register and thats how they know what to charge you.

bottled drinks, fresh produce

squiggly pasta with sausage, a little sauce, and red peppers

At another area of the restaurant, you can even watch them make their own pasta. And if you don't want to sit at a bar-style table, you can enjoy the lounge area and cozy up in a nice comfy arm chair.  The whole atmosphere is very cool and relaxing and modern.  Very different from most Italian restaurants I've been to where they have the fake ivy everywhere and the fat guy in a chef's hat with a large black mustache like from Super Mario Bros.

the lounge

Even the food here was refreshing. At most Italian restaurants, the portion sizes are big enough to feed an entire family of four and the food so heavy you can barely make it to your car before you fall asleep. Now don't get me wrong, the portions were not exactly small here either but the food was a lot fresher which made it seem lighter.

pasta machine

drying pasta

and they even offer you some gummy bears as you leave!

A nice welcome change if you're looking for some good fresh Italian food but don't want to gain ten pounds in one meal! And you can enjoy it with the whole family!

two of my silly nieces making faces

the kids bunny-shaped pizza! cute! I want one!

A Mellow Mushroom at the Ice Cream Parlour

One night in Myrtle Beach we wanted to go for a low-key cheap dinner.  Whats more low-key and cheap than pizza?  But the problem is that we've been a little spoiled with pizza by The Don's, a local NoVa pizza joint run by a friend of ours.  Their pizza is the best! For us, thats the only take-out pizza we eat.  So to find another pizza worthy of our tastebuds, is quite a feat.

The Mellow Mushroom is an interesting and unique little place.  They serve salads and subs as well as pizza but pizza is their main gig.  And they offer many unique toppings on their pizzas such as broccoli, feta cheese, tofu, jalapenos, bbq sauce, red potatoes, and tzatziki sauce and of course all the typical cheeses and meats and veggies too.

We ordered the Funky Q Chicken pizza...topped with bbq chicken, mozarella and cheddar cheeses, caramelized onions, applewood smoked bacon, and bbq sauce.  It was very rich and tasty.  A little bit of sweet, a little bit of smokey. A lot of flavor.

In our opinion, The Don's still wins hands down. But The Don's can't come to Myrtle Beach with me so the Mellow Mushroom is a good away-from-home option.  And incidentally, there is a new Mellow Mushroom coming to the Adams Morgan area of DC in the very near future! So go check it out!!

After we had Mellow Mushroom pizza we stopped at Kirk's 1890 Ice Cream Parlour for dessert.  It was jumpin'!

Its got an old-timey flair to it and the ice cream is hand-scooped.  There's even a couple old-school video games for the kids.  

Superking got peanut butter cup ice cream and mine was butterfinger, both in a waffle cone dipped in chocolate and peanuts!!  It was so creamy and sweet! It was probably the same ice cream you could've bought in the store but the atmosphere is so quaint. And really, do you want to scoop your own ice cream into a cone? I think not.

Mussel Bar in Bethesda

This will be my first blog post about a place in my neighboring state of Maryland! Superking and I went on a little drive to DC for some breakfast cupcakes and then after a short stroll down a couple streets and in a couple shops, we took another drive into Bethesda, Maryland. We were in search of a new culinary adventure at a place called the Mussel Bar.

The Mussel Bar is a rustic yet chic Belgian-themed restaurant that strives to offer fresh, local, and sustainable foods to their customers. Obviously their specialty is mussels, of which they offer several different preparations, but they also have delicious salads, sandwiches, and pizzas.

Superking, of course went for their mussels.  The Stout mussels to be exact. They come served in this large steaming pan swimming in a delectable soup consisting of stout beer, cream, smokey pancetta, and shallots. On the side, an order of crisp salty fries with a side of mayonnaise, which is very Belgian apparently.

I ordered one of their wood-fired tartes, which is a Belgian pizza.  It was a thin crispy bread topped with melted gruyere cheese, wild savory mushrooms,  bacon, arugula, and truffle essence. I'm not exactly sure what "truffle essence" is but this little pizza was absolutely enchanting and aromatic.

The atmosphere was cozy, the service was friendly, and the food was charmingly delicious. I can't wait to go back!

the lone mussel

mussel soup

2 Amy's

No, this post is not about a person or even two people named Amy. Its about a pizza.  A special pizza.  A Neapolitan pizza authenticated by the Italian government. Sounds like a pizza spy movie.  But its not. Its real. Very real and very yummy pizza.

Superking and I decided to head into DC for lunch today since he had the day off for Good Friday. And we were in desperate need of a food adventure. He found this little pizza shop called 2Amys.  Apparently they are well-known for their "pizza d.o.c."  What is this you ask?  2Amys website says this...
       "In 1998 the Italian government formally recognized Neapolitan pizza as a traditional food worthy of preservation and granted it D.O.C (Denominazione di Origine Controllata) status, which specifies the legally permitted ingredients and methods of preparation necessary to produce authentic Neapolitan Pizza."

pizza authentication all in Italian

crazy wine menu

regular menu: simple and yummy

These pizzas can only use very specific ingredients and be cooked in a very specific way, making it, what the Italians believe is, the best way to make pizza.

margherita pizza

One of these d.o.c. pizzas is called the Margherita.  Very simple ingredients...tomato, buffalo mozzarella, basil, with a little sea salt in the dough, and a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil on top.  The pizza is just big enough for either one very hungry person or to split between 2 people who also want to share an appetizer.  The crust is light, thin, and almost flaky.  I'm one of those people who generally does not eat the leftover crust. I figure once the cheese is gone, whats the point? However, this crust was worthy of eating, even by me. And the entire pizza just had this fresh, clean essence to it.

beautiful slice with a whole basil leaf

In addition to the pizza, we decided to get a small cheese plate and a small charcuterie/meat plate.  Let's begin with the cheese. You may have remembered I'm a huge cheese-head! Absolutely LOVE cheese of all kinds. I haven't met a cheese I didn't like yet. And today was no exception.  I had never even heard of most of the cheeses on the menu! The two we chose were gorgonzola with chestnut honey and barilotto (a kind of semi-firm, ricotta-style buffalo cheese). Gorgonzola, I've had before. I've even had it with honey. But this was amazing. The entire world stopped on my first bite.  The barilotto was really good too. It had a soft mild flavor similar to fresh mozzarella and was lightly drizzled with olive oil.

Bread, cheese plate with round crusty breadsticks, charcuterie

delectable cheese (gorgonzola on the left, barilotto on right); honey also had pieces of apricot

For the charcuterie plate, we chose lomo, lardo, and boar cacciatorini.  Obviously, we all know what boar is.  This boar cacciatorini was very thinly sliced salami.  Nice salty meaty flavor.  But lomo and lardo? Lardo, you can probably take a good guess.  Its basically pure fat.  Like down in the south people cook their beans with fat-back.  This is kind of like that, but just a strip of fat on a plate.  I have to admit, I wasn't a fan. To me it tasted like I just had a spoonful of Crisco.  But Superking enjoyed it, so good for him! Thats why we call it a food adventure!  Lomo is cured pork loin, sliced paper-thin, you can almost see through it.  Light porky and salty flavor. Delish!

Left: lomo; Middle: boar; Right: lardo

gorgonzola spread on the bread...yummy

The whole atmosphere of the place was adorable. There was this old-world European charm to it, from the wooden tables to the single brick wall and the quaint little bar area with its wall of wine.  Even the bathroom was charming and clean.  Located in an area of DC called Cleveland Park, not far from Georgetown, it was definitely an Italian neighborhood gem.  When you're in DC and have a craving for pizza, this is the place to go!

there was even a hostess with pink hair