Present in Falls Church, VA

This was a banner weekend for eating, what with the organic produce, pie, and our trip to Virginia for Vietnamese food. On Sunday, we returned to our favorite suburban dining destination, Falls Church, to try out the much-celebrated Present.

Notice Julia's yoga pants- I finally got her to come to a class with me!

One of the more hilarious (and exciting!) parts of Tom's review was what we could expect of the staff: "The restaurant's staff is uncommonly suave and articulate, even Ritz-like at times (make that the fabled Ritz of yore, not today's brand)." The Ritz on a CESDB outing! The fabled Ritz at that!

Our waitress was certainly up to the task. As soon as we sat down and said we'd never been there before, she launched into explanations and recommendations, noting good dishes for sharing, and telling us that if we wanted something healthy, we could get our food steamed, but if we wanted something delicious, to get it deep-fried. I mean, my god, woman, it's like you can see into our souls.

Papaya salad with beef liver jerky

"Autumn Rolls:" seafood and pork deep fried in rice paper wrappers.

As you can see, the Brigade took on a guest member this week: Felipe is an exchange student from South America. He is very interested in learning about new cultures.

With Tom's and our waitress's suggestions, we ordered papaya salad, autumn rolls, deep fried tuna with mango ("Tuna Swimming in the Mango Grove"), duck in a tamarind sauce, and some sort of delicious beef dish called Cow in an Open Field.

Felipe is intrigued by the radish flower.

We really liked the food, particularly our two appetizers and the beef dish. Our least favorite was the duck, because the tamarind sauce was a little too sweet, but this was only relative; it was still really good. The sauce for the tuna was also delicious.

Action shot of Julia in the mango grove.

Present had a lot to live up to in its competition with the nearby Four Sisters for best Vietnamese restaurant in the area. And although we struggled with the decision, we're ultimately giving our vote the the latter. And one of the reasons for that is that even though we ordered about the same amount of food as we usually do, we left a little hungry. The portions at Four Sisters are a lot more generous.

Brigade members do not deal well with hunger, so we made a game time decision to continue the outing by trying to find some dessert at a Vietnamese bakery. Where better than the Eden Center,wondrous playland of all things Vietnamese and delicious?

We went into a few places to check out the selection, and I don't remember where we finally ended up. We made the poor lady behind the counter explain the contents of almost everything, and settled on a mung bean bun and coconut macaroons.

Felipe had never seen anything like the Eden Center and was a little overwhelmed.

 I think the Brigade might going on hiatus for a little while, since Easter and finals are coming up and people are going out of town. Adam is already mired in finals which is why he couldn't join us. (He also had quite the weekend.) But hopefully we can squeeze in an Urban Outing...we do have some Groupons that are about to expire...