and their history.

Mannequin Pis (Olney). Widely regarded as the best Belgian restaurant in the area, but this, I now know, presupposes a fairly wide definition of "area." Leaving Arlington at 6:50 to make a 7:30 dinner, I got there at 7:50. It's not much quicker later at night—it's nowhere near a highway, and requires a bit of navigation of surface streets, plus there's no way to make a left-turn into the strip mall that it's in. The place is known for its mussels, but no one in the group got those; but the rump steak, bison, and chicken were all superb. The frites were a bit of a let-down; I had high expectations after going to Belgian frites shops in LA and NY, but these didn't seem distinguishable from any above-average shoestring fries. Good service, great selection of Belgian beers.

Old Siam (8th St. SE). Competent Thai food, willing to provide some degree of heat in the spicy food. I'd eat here again if I had occasion to be in the neighborhood (and there are Thai restaurants in my neighborhood I won't say that about it), but there are too many better Thai restaurants in the area for this to be worth a special trip.

Sangam (Ballston, in the Comfort Inn on Glebe Road). I'm a sucker for an $8.95 Indian buffet. I like this place better than the popular and well-known Delhi Dhaba, but I think that's just a function of my severe distaste for styrofoam, so I can't really recommend it. The butter chicken was watery, the chili chicken's jalapenos overwhelmed the rest of the dish, the tandoori is unexciting, and the naan was doughy (I view that as a feature, rather than a bug, but I imagine most others differ). A decent saag paneer is occasionally there, though it wasn't when I last went. The chicken itself was tasty, which isn't always the case in an Indian restaurant. The restaurant has been through a couple of iterations (the new neon "pizza" sign is disquieting), but the service there is consistently, er, leisurely at best.

My general rule of thumb is to date women born during the Johnson or Nixon administrations, with one notable disaster of an exception from the Ford administration. Twice, I dated women born in the Carter administration, but I thought the age difference was too unreasonable; my father thought I was crazy that I was insufficiently attracted to keep dating one exceptionally good-looking Upland woman commuting to USC. She went off to date an even older Munger Tolles litigation partner before marrying a CIO, perhaps providing another data point for some friends' hypotheses that I'm too picky.

I'd been jdate hot-listed by a 23-year-old. With me on vacation, and her on a day off, a day trip to the museums seemed to be a fairly costless riskless sociological experiment. I don't have any new data, however, on whether a Reagan-administration baby is a plausible dating candidate such that I'm inclined to break my rule in the future. We had just parked when she got a cell-phone call at 10 am on the dot requiring her to take a 12-12 shift at her unspeakably secret defense-contractor job, and we turned around after jogging through a few rooms at the National Gallery.

This is a completely unrelated link, I'm sure.

What to do with the rest of the day? I'm not sure I'm going to last to July 1 with this unemployment thing. There had been a discussion of BBQ at and after Tyler Cowen's lecture the other week, and someone recommended Willard's Real Pit BBQ in Chantilly. Am I crazy enough to undertake a 53-mile round-trip just to try a BBQ restaurant for lunch when I have the day off?

You don't know me very well if that's a controversial question.

Willard's is in perhaps one of the most desolate strip-malls one has ever seen, just a row of affectless stores rising out of the concrete in a flat and empty area by a busy road. A nice Proustian olfactory memory of Texas hits one upon entering, though the place also offers KC burnt ends, various "pulled" dishes, and an array of homemade hot sauces. I think my BBQ palate has been desensitized from 17 years in Boston, Chicago, NY, DC, and LA, but I did like the place, even somewhat better than I like Capital Q downtown. Excellent sausage, fairly good brisket and burnt ends, acceptable sauce that was a bit too sweet. Side dishes were uneventful, and the cornbread was far too dry. Reasonably priced: $14.90 for a three-meat platter with two sides, cornbread, and a drink, with leftovers for another meal, plus they have more plausible lunch options if one is not following the Cowen rule of always over-ordering. Next time, I just order meat in bulk, but I'm leaving for Europe in a few days, and need to empty my fridge. Unlike a certain Thai restaurant, I'm not sure it's worth the drive since I usually make it back to Texas once or twice a year anyway, and there's absolutely nothing else in the area (other than the new air-space museum); worth the side trip if I was already going to Dulles and wasn't in the mood for Thai.

Bobby Van's, 15th between H and Eye. My first time here, I had a flawless porterhouse that was the best in town; this time, I was persuaded to share another one at my firm's good-bye lunch, but it wasn't quite up to the previous standard. I'm probably going to stick with Ray's The Steaks from hereon out. The company was good.

Hamburger Mary's, 14th and Rhode Island. As $9 burgers go, the "Queen Mary" was excellent, plus the campy gay atmosphere was fun, with the check served in a ruby-red high-heeled shoe. The French fries were uninteresting, and I wasn't thrilled about the smoke from the bar wafting into the non-smoking section. Probably won't be back; too many other interesting things to try if I'm in that neighborhood, and if I'm going to have a burger, I'd rather go to Five Guys.

What with them losing millions of dollars of business to a fraud scheme, I felt a moral obligation to partake an extra meal or three at Wendy's (K between Connecticut and 18th; Lee Highway). The side-Caesar salad is a spectacular bargain at 99 cents, and may end up comprising a weekly meal in my new frugal budget. The Mediterranean chicken salad is both less of a bargain at $4.80 after tax, and worse, less tasty; the chicken was dried out, the dressing was too sweet, and I never understood the appeal of cherry tomatoes. Plus, I had forgotten how abysmal the service is at the Arlington Wendy's on Lee Highway. After three minutes without the line moving, I got back into my car, ordered through the drive-thru, and went back into the restaurant, probably saving myself five minutes.

This recipe (via Taylor) looks suspiciously like the Marcos green sauce, rather than the Ninfa's green sauce, but it's a recipe I'm going to have to try since green sauce is not available in this area and, besides, my teenage palate was crazy enough to prefer Marcos. Can I just say I've been craving green sauce for a decade?