Tag: business

Planning to move outta the basement

This is more a testament to how small this city is because I got wind of it from my co-worker. Our favorite Thai in a basement carry out is making plans to expand to a spot on 9th St. It would be a bigger spot. It wouldn’t be anytime soon, possibly not even this calendar year, because as you know, speedy and slap dash are not the Thai Xing way. Slow and tasty, is more like it. Taw did confirm that sometime in the future he would move to a bigger space. He asked me if I still would come to a new location. Admittedly, 9th Street is a bit out of my lazy walk zone. Hopefully, he may have a delivery guy.

Thai-Xing now open

It’s open now.
Thai X-ing is LeDroit Park’s (as it is on the northern side of Florida Ave) newest hole in the wall restaurant. There are tables and in theory you can eat inside but there isn’t a lot of room so you’d best just take your curry and go.
I tested the waters with larb gai, minced chicken with onions and cilantro in lemon juice. It seems wrong to compare Thai X-ing’s dish with the other Thai places further down on U, but I can’t help it. Compared to down the street, there is room for improvement. It is not bad, please don’t get me wrong, but I can get hung up on one element of a dish, that one element was what I think is dried garlic. I want all my ingredients fresh, or cooked long enough that I don’t notice that it was fresh or not. The cilantro, good. Onions, great. Chicken, fine. Lemon juice, good have had more. Lettuce, ok. Small golden nuggets that might have been dried garlic….. not happy with.
I’ll try Thai X-ing again after Easter when I’ll try out the only one Thai dish that matters, Pad Thai. I have a feeling that Thai X-ing might be the restaurant I go to when I’m too lazy to drag myself the 7-10 extra blocks for the other Thai places. We’ll see.
Anywho I typed up (I’m so nice) an abbreviated menu of Thai X-ing’s offerings so you know what you can get before you step foot in there.
UPDATE= Got a electronic menu from Thai-Xing and here it is.
Thai X-ing, 515 Florida Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20001. Phone: 202-332-4322, fax: 202-332-4401. Hours: M-Sun 11:30am to 10:30pm. Free Delivery with min. order of $15. Major credit cards accepted.

Note: The links are no longer active. However try here http://www.jess3.com/blog/2007/02/thai-xing.html

Restaurant Review: Windows Market & Deli

I’m going to try something, restaurant reviewing. I will attempt to go to places in eastern Shaw or on the border of Shaw in LeDriot, Bloomingdale, Eckington, or within a 4 block radius of my house. The general criteria is that there must be seating and cannot be a carry out. The list of places to go is very short.
Yesterday I wandered over to the corner of 1st and Rhode Island to the Windows Deli. It is a very new looking place. I was attracted to it by its big windows that looked out on to Rhode Island Avenue and it’s bright interior. Inside the decor says Ethopian/ Swedish, mainly because I recognize the furniture being IKEA and the staff is pretty much Ethopian. In the corner there is a display case of tiny coffee cups and an African(?) vase. You have a choice of about 3 blonde wood tables to sit at or two other chairs sans table. The table near the window is good for people watching.
The menu is extremely limited. Basically you have coffee, tea, and cold sandwiches made to order. This is more coffee shop than restaurant. I had a tuna sandwich. The tuna was ok, a little heavy on the relishy ingredient and a bit more soupy than I am accustomed.
Looking around and thinking about it a bit more, the place seems very cabbie friendly. If your main thing is to sit, wait, get coffee, leave, then this is a suitable spot. Sunday, when I spotted this place, I noticed a decent mixed crowd sitting, reading the paper, drinking coffee.
Up the stairs (3 steps) is the market part of Windows, which is a quickie mart with drinkable wine and a few veggies. I saw tomatoes and onions. I didn’t look too hard at the wine, but it wasn’t Boones Farm or wino wine (that I can recognize easy). Not to be too out of place there were some ghetto drinks and single cans of beer for sale in the refrigerated cases.
I hope this business does well. It is good to have a big windowed people watching coffee shop so close. I wanna ‘nother, closer to my house.

Next time I might try B&J or BJ’s on 3rd and Rhode Island.

In Shaw field trip

Went on a little field trip to take a quick peek at gentrification elsewhere. It is the same everywhere I guess. When there is a housing crunch, where the housing stock is not enough for the population, people with some money begin moving into neighborhoods where poorer people are. But there was cool stuff too, which I’ll share in pictures.
Went through Harlem. I don’t know where the gentrification began there. It is pretty near the Park at 110th. Which I think is the bottom of Harlem. I could understand the reasoning behind paying big bucks to live near Central Park. The further north you went from the Park, the less gentrified it looked.
I wandered through the East Village. What jobs do odd looking goths have to afford these crack fueled rents? What jobs do to the people of Greenwich Village have to afford any of these NYC rents? Yeah, yeah, NYC greatest city in the world, blah, blah, blah, known for high rents, but still $4,000 a month for a 3 bedroom walk up? Crazy.
The good things I found in the city, besides decent buskers on the subway, were the thousands of little grocers thoughout the city. My roommate thinks DC needs more of these kinds of stores. Even in the less nice parts of Harlem you will find stores with fresh veggies and fruits, like this one, where people can get the ingredients to make meals from stratch. Scratch, instead of some high in sodium, fat and sugar prepackaged crap that is sold in many a DC quickie mart, next to the 40s.
Also walking around the city that never sleeps….. well it does sleep, on a Sunday morning ’cause that’s the time to find a parking spot…. I digress. I noticed some great architectural details. Not just on the buildings of note but the everyday ones. I say doors and ironwork that was just inspiring.

Eating in Eastern Shaw: Ella’s

Ella’s.
I finally gave them money in exchange for food and drink. And it was good.
I didn’t go for brunch as I had already done brunch in Georgetown and really wasn’t up to plopping down $12 bucks. I just wanted something light. I had tea and a waffle. Yes, I know, throwing my low carb, let’s now call it mid-carb diet out the window.
I had my meal out on the patio so I could observe the street traffic and ponder the New York Avenue-Florida Avenue-Gaulludet University-Your Name Here Metro station. There were some potential dangers of sitting outside. The first that went though my mind was harassment by beggars. That was not the case as this is not one of those neighborhoods. There are homeless but I think it is a given that begging may just be a fruitless business in this area. Second, getting ignored by staff. It times I wondered, “hey where’s my bill?” Maybe people don’t sit out there often. Out of sight…. Last, bugs. For the past few weekends, my outdoor meals have been hampered by aggressive wasps. It is very hard to eat all you can eat when there is a frickin wasp between you and your food. Luckily, no bugs.
While pondering the yet to be open but already has a horrible long name metro station, I people watched. I watched an Anglo family of three try to hail a cab. After a while they gave up and hopped the 80 Kennedy Center bus. Traffic violations, that’s another thing to spot. If anyone has forgotten… it is illegal to have your cell phone to your ear and drive in DC.
I guess I should talk about the food. Waffle good. Waffle $3. It had cinnamon and sugar on top and I had syrup on the side. I also had tea. Tea is tea. They had English Breakfast, that’s all I care about as I don’t want some stinkin’ herbal and I don’t care for Earl Grey.
Oh, another good point. Ella’s takes credit cards. I like a place that takes cards, as I typically avoid carrying cash.

A walk down 14th St

After work I was determined to get 1 bag of rice from Fresh Fields (now Whole Foods). 1 bag. So out the U Street metro I wandered down 14th St. 14th Street is the way cool street of Shaw. It’s not my part of Shaw, but it is Shaw and it is way cool. The sky seemed almost ready to wet itself and me so I didn’t have time to fool around, but there were some stores that just begged for a walkthrough.
I haven’t been in Home Rule for the longest. I think the last time I was in there was to buy the organza curtains for what is now my roommate’s room. They still have those curtains, they are still $30 a panel. There are several neat kitchen things in bins that screamed “take me!” “no, me!” If it weren’t for the $15 price tag I may have actually bought the kitchen frangrances they were selling.
I skipped Go Mamma Go, Pulp and that new 100% Mexican store. I really need to go into the Mexican store. But I did not pass The Garden District I passed through it. They still got herbs, like I need more herbs. I bought my passionflower vine from them, the one taking over the fence.
Okay, Fresh Fields, bag of rice.
I also passed all the new condo construction on 14th and P. This area is going to get so crowded once all this is done. Goodbye to finding any parking. Part of me is happy people want to live in Shaw, and that Shaw is becoming hip/cool/ whatever, but how much is too much? How many more non-garden style/ high rise condos are going to be built? And really are there that many people with $300K-$700K to spend on a condo around?
***
I did get my bag of rice, and some granola.