Okay, I know this is a very belated report, but the computer gods need not be this harsh - this is my third go at this! We went and came and here are a few chosen reflections. 1. The plate-by-weight buffet on Conn near Veazey (sorry, forgot the name): This was near our hotel, so the players went there a few times - I, once. Seemed okay, looked clean, and the food was not bad, for what it is, a non-pretentious buffet. But it seemed odd that around 1pm on a Friday, which is when I was there, there were only a couple of other customers. I am always wary of sparsely populated restaurants. As it turned out, I was right to be wary. Appearances can be deceiving. For egullet legal reasons, I can't be more precise, but let's just say that it will be a cold day in hell before any of us go back there again! 2. Tony Cheng's: I know it was after 9:00pm on a Saturday night, and the crowd was petering out, and the staff must have been tired, but that's just no excuse. Cheng's was absolutely awful. As the two of us entered, we were asked to choose from the Mongolian 'buffet' on the main floor, or the Chinese order by menu restaurant upstairs. We were cordially asked to take a look at the Mongolian first so that we could decide. Well, the food bar where the ingredients for the 'build your own stir-fry' were kept was absolutely a pigsty. There was food spilt everywhere - on the counters, floor, ... The scene looked and smelled stale. Half the cooking staff were leaning up against a back wall, exhausted looking, daring us to extend their misery. We declined, and opted for the upstairs Chinese. Standard menu, standard ordering. What was remarkable about the glop we were served was not that the stuff was made badly or anything, but that the ingredients were so stale. Even drowned in the usual strong seasonings and sugar, everything from the broccoli to the chicken was old. We ate enough to satisfy our hunger, I prayed enough for my sensitive stomach to withstand the assault, and we took our enormous leftovers back to a friend with a lead stomach. I suppose it's customary to give restaurants a second shot, but I certainly won't be going to Tony Cheng's again. 3. Addis Ababa Restaurant (8233 Fenton St, Silver Spring) I am intimately familiar with Ethiopian cuisine, and what I would say about Addis Ababa is that if offers, by DC standards, decent Ethiopian fare. About twelve of us arrived without a reservation towards the end of the lunch buffet. It's always a bit of a pain waiting on twelve, especially without time to prepare, but the waitresses did well. Half of us partook of the buffet, and the rest ordered off the menu. It's remarkable that there aren't more lunch buffets at Ethiopian restaurants as Ethiopian cuisine is very conducive to buffets. Out of the two dozen or so typical items on a menu, only a handful can be described as made-to-order. So kudos to Addis Ababa for their buffet, and the food was not bad at all. I would say that if you're going to go to an Ethiopian restaurant in DC, Addis Ababa is not a bad choice. Just don't park in the adjacent parking lot with hard-to-notice signs about no parking allowed as you'll get your car towed to a lot somewhere out near Gaithersburg or something. 4. Saving the best for last, Whole Foods. I've been a fan of Whole Foods for nearly a decade now. What American cities would be like without Whole Foods I don't know. Absolutely top class. I went with a friend (from DC) to the Sunday morning breakfast buffet. I'd never been to the breakfast buffet before, and, how good was it? Well, suffice it to say that they even managed to get buffet scrambled eggs to taste remarkable! There's some serious planning and quality control going on back there, I think. What I like about Whole Foods is that there is plenty of choice and quality. Hungry, not-so-hungry, on a diet, vegan, want a complete meal, something to take back to your kitchenette, whatever, there's something for you there. Anyway, for any visitors to DC or a similarly equipped US city or Toronto, I would say that you can't go wrong in eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner at a Whole Foods!
