Of all the Washington, D.C. places to brunch, Tabard Inn excels at being that perfect place of quiet with green vines climbing the brick patio walls, tables nicely spaced, and warm, homemade doughnuts as the (expected) immediate order that arrive with whipped cream and berries.

(Note: This is the last of eight posts from this road trip. You might start at the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, or seventh post.)

Karen ordered French toast as we sat in the garden (a good way to end the pancake quest),

and I had the Eggs Benedict with housemade Tasso ham (harder to find in Brooklyn) as we recalled all our favorite moments of the week on the road.

We then set out for the Dupont Circle farmers’ market, watching the usual stranger interactions along the way (intersections are awkward in this place),

and crossed the circle to the busy vendors selling peaches and goat cheese.

At a great loss to Miami, my wonderful friend Holly (at right) now lives in the area, and she guided us to her favorite sellers and their finest varieties, bubbling over with her infectious zeal for local food.

And, just a few hours later, we arrived back in Brooklyn.

I stood with Karen (after she helped me unpack the car) and we smiled at the thousands of miles we had driven together, at the gifts of the road, and stories we’ll tell of our adventures,

especially as only Karen’s suitcases are in focus in this image, ready for the next time the road calls and we answer…

Last night, I finally journeyed out to Flushing for noteworthy Chinese food with new friends, starting the night with Qingdao at M & T 美而特 Restaurant.

We were fortunate to have Tricia Wang in our party; besides being an incredibly enthusiastic champion of certain dishes, she made sure (in Mandarin) that we ordered the freshest dishes, like the squid below (the point here is texture).

The rest of the table—

next to Tricia, the Mustachioed Man of Mystery Ben, then Kathy, who is a choreographer and professor, her husband Steve, a writer of wit, and Kevin, who coordinated the dinner—was open to every menu suggestion, almost sparring with chopsticks to try all of it as we poured TsingTao beer (it’s the yearly festival of this beer from the same area as the food).

We heard how just yesterday morning, a television crew had filmed the restaurant scrambling eggs with clams (this is a wonderful, simple dish) that will air in early September,

and the dishes kept arriving:

this pork head one became the table’s favorite,

the Ma Po Tofu that Ben ordered went almost as quickly,

I liked the sauce on the braised cabbage,

and Tricia showed us the best way to eat Qingdao pasta with special sauce (“very special,” we were told),

the noodles of shaped jelly stirred into vegetables around the sauce.

Tricia ordered one of her favorites, Chinese chives—which is a crunchy vegetable rather than an herb, (and one I plan to cook with more often, especially for the traditional eggs with Chinese chives.)

And as Ben and Kevin continued to regale us with stories, Steve seconded the idea to continue on, so Tricia led us to Imperial Palace for their sticky rice with crab.

We filmed some of our fun with the Lazy Susan on the table that I’ll link to later when it’s posted.

Extracting meat from the claws, we all agreed this was a Cantonese dish worth traveling to an outer borough for:

We were the last table at Imperial Palace, and before they started turning off the chandeliers, Kathy explained Steve’s shirt—

This is how great Friday nights go, with friends old and new, shared plates, sartorial explanations, and tellings of games, code words, and historical triumphs…

A few Sundays ago, I left Santa Cruz early to drive down Highway 1, that dreamy coastal road that happens to hold a cluster of restaurants in Big Sur as attractive as the waves crashing by its side.

Big Sur Bakery is hidden from the road with trees and shrubs, the better to conceal the apricot strudel,

and citrus morning bun from the bakery inside.

With pastries further beautifying the drive, I continued on to the elephant seals and walruses playing,

and pulled over a few hours later to investigate Andersen’s theme restaurant in Buellton, CA. The theme? Pea Soup.

One of my friend Ben’s special skills is in making soup, so I secured a pack of the peas and the recipe for him to test and tweak.

I find the Pea Soup characters (Happea and Pea-Wee) that appear on billboards hours before the restaurant exit endlessly amusing as they smash the peas for the famed split pea soup—you can see them splitting peas blurred in the background here.)

Driving on, I met Ben and Jeremy at Carpinteria Beach with some friends of theirs who also add to the brain trust at Cal State LA,

and found Ben leading the charge with a bright ball as trains rumbled by in the distance behind the beach.

Jeremy obligingly dove to return Ben’s serves (in dramatic fashion) into the late afternoon,

and then we three drove to Santa Barbara, walked down the wharf,

didn’t let Jeremy captain a pirate cruise,

so that at the Santa Barbara Shellfish Company,

we could instead toast with a Bloody Mary or two to the scholastic year ahead, their move to a new apartment, and the (usually) warm weather of Califas…

Ben and Jeremy, I’ll miss the fiery Chinese restaurants in your old neighborhood (we may need to journey back, though not for a frog leg hot pot), but am very much look forward to seeing your new place—

A splendid breakfast makes everything right.

Two weekends ago, my sister Kat and her boyfriend Reid visited me in Brooklyn, filling the apartment with their energy, Kat’s vast knowledge of chocolate, and Reid’s curiosity about design in real life. I expect great things from both, of course, and they proved my expectation well-founded with a breakfast they made one morning with tomatoes and tomatillos from their Portland, Oregon garden.

My kitchen full of family, they let me record the Adirondack potatoes roasting (from Evolutionary Organics at the Union Square Greenmarket), the shallots and garlic divided into small piles, the eggs scrambling…

It’s a family tradition to bring local food when you travel (I flew to Oregon last Christmas with ripe tomatoes from Miami), and the chanterelles deftly folded into the eggs made for a morning feast we spread across the living room floor.

It was, I think, their first time in Brooklyn, so we walked through the Ft. Greene neighborhood to General Greene, where we ordered half the menu (all kinds of lovely vegetables to order) and battled with forks over the quinoa – preserved lime perfumes the simple dish, elevating the ancient grain in a way we three are working to replicate in our kitchens.

On Saturday, Kat and I strolled to the Brooklyn Flea, talking more about chocolate and choices, sampling cannoli with fresh ricotta and noticing the same thing at once, just smiling at each other the way we always have.

Reid’s cousin Galen Zamarra is the chef at Mas (farmhouse), which again, raises expectations, and we were treated to an incredible sequence of dishes the night before they left.

The service was perfect (two servers glide over at once, whisking away), and Chef really was cooking for us, sending out an enormous scallop, a new fried rabbit cake he’s playing with (imagine rilletes formed like salmon cakes and topped with frisée), Long Island duck, and his signature tuna with crispy shallots in a butter sauce that loyal patrons won’t let him take off the menu. (“I know I always order this, but how can I not?” a woman seated near us laughed as the server nodded sagely.)

For a very polite neighborhood, everyone around us relaxed into the space that somehow feels bigger than it is, and Galen emerged to sit with us as we pretended to share the different desserts—salted caramel ice cream with milk and dark chocolate, nectarine sorbet in a fruit soup with glistening berries underneath,

and my favorite, the olive oil cake crispy on the edges, with a clear brittle studded with pine nuts.

Although they managed to visit almost every Brooklyn neighborhood and most of the museums in Manhattan, I hope Kat and Reid will begin planning their next Brooklyn trip soon; we will return to Bark for veggie dogs and then, we will seek out new places to explore…

Last Saturday, my friend Jenne and I embarked on a quest for the elusive mooncake, the traditional food of the Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋節) made with lotus seed paste and an egg embedded in the center (the egg is for the full moon). The mooncake is eaten to remember the woman on the moon, Chang’e, and some intriguing stories about the occasion figure the cakes as steganographic food (ask me in the comments).

We began with modern sweets; I was overwhelmed by the cheery packaging in an Asian grocer,

but Jenne managed to find Hello Kitty strawberry marshmallows with little jelly centers (surprisingly good),

and we walked off part of Momofuku Milk Bar‘s pork buns and “volcano” finding the Pickle Day celebration.

Sampling pickle truffles that almost worked, we admired Pickle fashions (not many people had dressed accordingly, and yes, I was wearing green),

before learning about the Pickle Time-Space Odyssey (one gentleman was studying this intently).

Venturing toward Chinatown for more ethereal notions, we found a bakery where Jenne explained pastries and I spotted icing pandas holding fish;

Jenne bought me a peanut pie that I ate very slowly later that afternoon (the furry coconut enrobes a jellied inside and the red dot is important).

We found moving and reconsituted seafood everywhere,

and finally succumbed to burnished ducks hanging in windows; Jenne decided we needed noodles and beef and food I cannot pronounce but am so happy she knew to order—

And later that night, I unwrapped a mooncake, only to learn that the sweetest part of this quest was in the seeking with a close friend who tapped her secret stores of knowledge to navigate…

This weekend was the fourth of July as well as the fourth weekend I’ve spent living in Brooklyn. It began with a market (see previous post) and continued with Superfine portobello sandwiches, my wonderful friend Andrew, and the restored Jane’s Carousel, which was playing “Battle Hymn of the Republic” as it spun.

A few doors down, the new Jacques Torres ice cream shop—next to his chocolate shop—was similarly dizzying in its superior sugared goodness (and you wonder why I work in the DUMBO area of Brooklyn?) that carried us to the New Museum’s “Younger Than Jesus” exhibit and then Pier 17 for Here We Go Magic, part of the River to River Festival.

Andrew folded the boat in the program (he’s always been good with the origami and the paper airplanes),

while we listened to opener Bachelorette from New Zealand. Andrew’s name for the paper boat references the recent Voice article we read while waiting for the bands, where Mike Powell skewers Wilco.

here’s the larger version

And hearing about the artistry at Locanda Verde (I’ll return for the breakfast menu instead), we topped our dinner there the next morning with new red potatoes from the Prospect Park Farmers’ Market,

that provided a base for baby onions, fresh corn, red chard, flowering thyme, and Parmesan.

We discovered that pheasant eggshells are blue inside,

and headed off to find more visual fabulous in “We Know The Secret of the Colors,” an ambient Manhattan adventure that started here,

led to a piece by Paul Richard,

paused for a public fountain,

directed us to look up,

at a nest on the side of a building,

to unscrew the cap of a fire hydrant,

pass a park with a rusty bike,

that gleamed almost at brightly as Kee’s incredible confections at Kee’s Chocolates, where Andrew and I forked from the ambient adventure for one involving tasting the fennel and the tiramisu truffles (the truffle oil macaron is sparkly, but go for the truffles that didn’t last for a picture).

Then we developed our own progressive dinner tour—snacks at the Park Slope Food Coop, sandwiches from the lengthy Bar Reis menu (there are 95, and yes, each is a thesis unto itself), and then pizza at Franny’s with local beer.

It was a day where we spied Shel Silverstein’s name etched where the sidewalk did, indeed, end,

under red leaves that sheltered birds calling out from hidden branches,

where even plastic strips forming a curtain to a receiving area were noteworthy,

and a stationary mailbox encouraged taking risks.

So we climbed to my roof, listening to sparklers going off in the streets below, and talked about the subtle explosions of everyday life, the small events that trigger cycles, in the way old friends observe patterns—Andrew’s toasted to four jobs with me now, and I heard the little crackles portending his meteoric rise through the worlds of science, policy, and (perhaps, perhaps) epidemiology…