DC restaurants

As a New Yorker, I'm ashamed to say I'm a bit snobby about other cities' restaurants. So when I came to D.C. to visit Sarah C., I have to say that I envisioned some evenings out at TGI Fridays and some lunches at Hooters (which is, in fact, what did happen). But lo and behold, for dinner, we decide to go to a swanky Italian restaurant called Matchbox, where one can hear the following conversation take place at 9:00 on a Saturday night:

customer: How long is the wait for 4 people?
host: 2 and 1/2 hours
customer: OK. Put us down.

What?! I have very rarely waited that long for a table, even in NYC. In fact, I think I've only done it a few times: at Supper, uber-hip East Village restaurant, and Pastis, uber-hip West Village restaurant. Anywhere else, forget it. But not in D.C. apparently.

So we are told it will be 45 min for a table. Of course, we go straight to the bar. We have one drink. After another hour, it becomes the kind of situation where one goes to the bar and makes orders such as, "I'll have one Mango Madness, one Now and Later, and one Pink Margherita." The dinner, once we sat down, was uneventful tho delicious.

Lunch at Hooters was much less lascivious than I'd hoped. I thought I would witness some misogyny, sexism or at least sleaziness. Instead, our waitress told us that she was in DC on an "academic internship," and was quite eloquent. Though there was much hooting about the numerous football games on the multitude of TVs scattered about, there was really very little attention paid to the bar's namesakes. In fact, there was nothing for me to deride, mock or protest. :+(