I mentioned the other day how much I liked my neighborhood in Arlington, Virginia, when it turns Mediterranean at the first touch of the summer heat. Arlington is a suburb of DC, right next to the capital city, on the other bank of the Potomac. As a matter of fact, it just takes a bridge from Washington (the key bridge), to reach Arlington. I live—still for a week—in the courthouse neighborhood, which actually shelters the courthouse and a jail. That alone would not speak highly for the area, and when I landed here, I was slightly uneasy at the idea of being surrounded by the dullest state operations. My first walks around my building and passed the main entrance did not improve the first impression. At the very best, I would walk around new condos, nice in their own neat anonymous way, but without particular charm or interest of any sort. At the very worst, I would find constructions in progress, parking lots and the ambience of abandonment that goes with them.
I was not unhappy though. Finding myself in the midst of this concrete forest felt so typically American to my European habits. The location was particularly convenient too: cleaners around the corner, supermarkets, lots of restaurants, and even a movie theater just downstairs, right next to the metro station. This, and the amenities of the residence (including a gym and a pool on the roof), was sufficient to please me. I had not realized that the real interest of the area were not to be found around the main entrance, but rather when I would go through the back door. Once this discovery made, and for the—too short—months I spent there, I became a local explorer of sorts, chasing for the treasures that my first errands had not allowed me to discover.
Right off the rear entrance, there was an American restaurant, soon replaced by a sport bar. I went to the former, to have my load of corn bread, and have never cared to find out how the latter fares. I have more regret to have ignored the Thai restaurant next to it. But the two jewels of these immediate surroundings are a Lebanese Restaurant, matching the best food I have had in Lebanon, and one of the best steak places in the DC area. Its façade is so anonymous that it took me a while to understand that it was a restaurant, and I would not have suspected that it was actually a good one, if I had not been brought there by friends from Washington. On my way to the metro, or to the movie theater, I pass a Korean convenience store where more than once, I have picked Saporo beer, donuts or ice-cream.
Two main roads border my place, roughly parallel before slowly drifting away to the North: Wilson and Clarendon bvd. The North route takes me to Georgetown—I have walked there a few times, it takes me about 40 minutes. I cross a street, pass by a 24/24 drugstore, and find an area of small buildings crowded with a series of restaurant. I have checked a couple of times the local café, which enjoys an excellent reputation, but there is always a line, even when the place is apparently not crowded. It did not carry donuts, breakfast items (that is what I would tend to use a café for) were not fabulously original, and I could not identify for sure the different sorts of salads and the kind of sandwiches they were serving. A little further on, I would pass a Chinese place (that I never checked, having many other Asian food eateries on my top list) a rather expensive south American place, where I celebrated a new position with superb cocktails, a couple of shops (including a not so spectacular stationery place) a very good Mexican fast food that I patronized more than once with pleasure and a Post office. The atmosphere, like the one in my building, is mostly of a young urban professional type, with a touch of ordinary people. Across the boulevard a little market place and an Office Depot complete the shopping experience one could have in my immediate surroundings and a Wendy’s accommodates my regular American fast-food needs.
From there, I would walk in an indecisively middle class area of small buildings, some with rather charming gardens. In the little local mall one finds the best Pho place in the area, which made more than once my days in the winter) a burger place now famous for having among its patrons president Obama, and a café. More to the North, the ambiance tends to be more run-down, with a rather sad and ugly Safeway supermarket before improving and becoming all tall glass and concrete buildings, in more corporate settings. One finds a well-known Asian fusion restaurant (where I ate) a well-known Italian restaurant (where I did not eat). In one of these corporate-type buildings, one finds a remarkable dim-san place—by far the place where I have been eating the most often, and where I said good bye, in one ultimate lunch, to my Washingtonian life, and my Virginia residency. Then, you reach the Potomac and, off the Key bridge—the one leading to Georgetown— a track that leads to the Teddy Roosevelt Ireland and memorial.
The South route, leading to the neighborhood of Clarendon and Ballston (too far to be easily reached by foot, but where there is what has been for years now my favorite local American restaurant) is quintessentially different. Buildings are smaller, the atmosphere more day-to-day life with upper middle class families from the nearby condos having a walk from time to time with their kids or their pets (and often with both of them). One can walk south on Clarendon or Wilson boulevards: the roads are parallel. A first remarkable joint is a Five Burgers place, a burger chain, where I took my daughter when she visited me in February and where President Obama (obviously hooked on burgers) took his staff in May (but not in the Arlington joint). I have also used the nearby Papa John’s Pizza place, but definitively, they are more used to delivering pizzas than to taking orders from walk-in customers. No need to go there, just pick your phone. A couple of blocks further on, we are already at the border between the courthouse and Clarendon neighborhoods, where a paradise-like supermarket welcomes once or twice the week the yuppie I have apparently become with organic and high-quality food as well as bread and wine. However, I would rather buy my bottles from the nearby Winery, where I have found the best crispy white wine of Virginia—a good relief from years of fake woody taste that had corrupted American Chardonnays. As for bread, whenever my ordinary ration of bagels would not suffice, I could go to the Pain quotidien, of more Belgian than French inspiration, where they sell “baguettes” which are in fact more the traditional loaf we call “pain” (loaf, bread) or “flute” (sometimes, baguettes are called flutes too). In the very same area, I will not say much of Harry’s an American food restaurant slightly expensive and without either charm or problem. I would on the contrary underline the glorious presence of my second favorite American place: a Cheesecake factory where portions of greasy food are madly too big, and the cheesecake is definitely good. I bought once one to go, and had it for dessert along with a sweet white Jurançon wine. A mall accommodates a curious place dedicated to anything that helps you to properly put your things somewhere: the storage store. I bought there many curious items, including clips for socks (so that pairs do not get lost in the laundry) and an especially designed case that avoids wrinkling shirts in the luggage when you travel. I also went more than once to the local Barnes and Noble though I am ashamed to admit that I have never patronized the independent bookstore just off my street (I still cannot understand why).
Pushing off to the Clarendon Metro station, I find two remarkable places in an area that I have hardly explored: the Silver diner, and its old vintate décor where I once enjoyed a delicious ice-cream on brownie, with a gloriously good looking friend, and the Hard times café which specializes in Chili in a more Western ambiance. They serve it on their puffy corn bread, and it is damned good.
