Phil Hargis – A Man Of Many Interests

Not Crazy about Kora

I just ate the worst lunch I’ve ever had over at Kora.  Boy, what a buzzkilling disappointment that place was.  First off, we got there and asked to be seated outside and then probably waited about 10 minutes for the waiter to arrive and announce that fresh bread was on the way and take a drink order.  Then when the bread arrived (which was quite crispy and tasty) and it’s accompanying dipping station of olive oil and spices, we ordered some calamari.  The waiter left, presumably to put that order in, came back and took our food order.

The calamari never arrived and then the food came out (albeit, rather quickly).  I had ordered the half order of the  spaghetti and meatballs, not wanting to get loaded down with a pound of pasta.  Instead, I got served about 2oz of spaghetti and 2 golf ball sized meatballs.  The dish had no flavor, in fact, a high school cafeteria can make a better bowl of spaghetti then the nastiness they served up here.   The pasta was floating in a watery pool of disgustfullness and the waiter never returned until it was gone (but that was fast, since there was only like 5 bites of spaghetti and meatballs to eat), so I could request some salt, pepper and parmesan cheese to add any kind of flavor to the dish.   It really was one of the worst things I’ve ever eaten.   How hard is it to understand that pasta, the blandest thing in the world, needs to have a ton of explosive flavor for it to be good.

I was still starving after eating this little plate of pasta that I came back to the office and ate again.

The waiter was really friendly, just totally incompetent, which is a shame.  He realized he botched the calamari and offered us an espresso.  We had to get back to work, so he comp’ed the 2 sodas we had amongst ourselves to atone for the mess up.  But for me the damage was done and I couldn’t wait to get out of there.

One of the others in the group tried to order the tuna sandwich to no avail, since they were out of it…..she settled for the portabella sandwich instead, which she seemed to like.  Another in the group had a chicken confit pizza that she claimed to like and looked pretty good.   And the other guy had a sandwich, not sure what it was.

There just are not any good Italian restaurants in the DC area….anywhere.  It really is quite mind-boggling.

Due to the visually disgusting presentation of my meal…no pictures are attached.

Fireworks Pizzeria Delivers a Grand Finale of Flavor

I was fortunate enough to get an invite to a pre-opening event of the new Courthouse, Arlington, VA location of Fireworks Pizza.  For the past few months, as I drove by this place, I couldn’t help but think what a dorky name that was for a pizza place.  This location is opening on August 23, 2010 and I went to the preview last night.

It was awesome.

If this place is as on-point as they were for their preview guests…..it will do great.  The pizzeria specializes in local farm fresh ingredients.  As you walk in to the main bar you feel a blast of heating to your right and immediately notice that’s where the pizzas you are about to eat and all kinds of other tasty looking appetizers and dishes emerge from.  As you proceed through the spacious bar area you can notice a nice sized dining area, a nice outside patio dining area, and even more private dining in the back.  Towards the back was a large fireplace to add a little ambiance to the setting.

I grabbed a spot at the bar, grabbed a menu, and before I could take it all in I was being greeted by a smiling friendly bartender ready to take my drink order.  I had to put him on stand by so I could arrive at the right decision since there was so much to choose from.  There are 40 bottles of wine to choose from 18 red, 18 white and 4 local VA wines.  I was in the mood to test their lengthy beer list.  So, I started with the Lagunitas Pale Ale (sp?) and started going through the menu.

I was definitely in the mood for pizza since I was trying to carb up for a 16 miler in the morning….so the apps were off limits tonight.  There were so many amazing toppings to choose from, all fresh, local and screaming at you “choose me”,  I really just wanted to do a large 14″ cheese pizza but the bartender jokingly scoffed at me and I ended up going with bacon, in particular the Smokey Blue pizza.

The pale ale was gone.  For me it was a milder pale ale than I typically like, I would have liked it to be  a few degrees cooler too.  They have this glass rinser that blasts each glass with warm water…which causes an immediate rise in temperature which is unfortunate….but presumably you are getting a sterile pint of beer.  Next beer up while I was waiting was the Tupper’s Hop Pocket.  This one I liked better, more flavorful, a little hoppier, darker.

Then the pizza arrived…..I wanted to inhale it when it arrived.   Beautiful presentation and it had a generous portion of bacon, gargonzola, onion, rosemary and a basalmic drizzle all over.  It was the perfect ratio of crust to topping and a beautiful char on the bottom.  Flavorful and amazing….I got it all down except the very last slice.

The bartenders were on top of things and covering the bar and the bar floor area.  There was an army of servers in the front of the house….and managers and owners were ever-present.

The one time I was in the rest room….I walked in and a manager was in there wiping everything down, checking to make sure supplies were fully stocked.  You can’t beat that attention to detail and commitment to excellence.

There is a lot of pizza competition getting inserted into Arlington…this one vaults to the top of my pizza rankings aside Pizzeria Orso.  I can’t wait to go back and explore the rest of the menu.

Mad at the Mad Fox Brewing Company Food

Apologies in advance for the lengthy write up….but you need to know the full deal.

Last Friday, I went to Mad Fox Brewing Company for the first time.  I was so stoked to have a nice, fairly upscale version of Sweetwater Tavern dropped into downtown City of Falls Church.

When I got the menu, I wanted to order everything…..it all sounded sooooo good…but with careful restraint, I opted for the tuna tartare and bloody mary mussels, and managed to squeeze in tastes from around the table on the pizza, the chick pea curry soup of the day and the pretzels.

The tuna tartare was good and came along with a pretty generous portion of meat.  It was served with 4 measly fried crisps to put it on, so make sure to ask for a few extra of those.

Then a pretty generous portion of  blood mary mussels obviously came out in a tomato broth…however the celery element of these mussels demolished all the flavor of the mussel….basically leaving you soaking off the mussels of sauce to enjoy the meat.  That said you had some nice pieces of bread to soak in the broth…so what you end up with is a pretty expensive dipping station and  a side of mussels.

The grilled cheese was a failure and last I checked is now my lowest ranked grilled cheese on phargis.com.  I opted for the addition of the Nueske bacon which I was excited to see on the menu as an option, but when they loaded up the thinly sliced bread with all that cheese and some undercooked bacon and squashed the living hell out of it you are left with a flimsy, greasy mess.   The smart move of the night was substituting the brussel sprouts for the fries.  The sprouts were good and tasty and seasoned pretty well.  There was a pittance of a portion, presumably because of the substitution.

In bites I stole from others…the pretzels were great, but geez, how do you mess up a pretzel.  It was probably the best thing I ate all night.

The soup of the day was like a chick pea curry inspired soup which was good and had good flavor.  I would’ve liked a whole bowl for sure.

Then the pizza….oh the pizza….shoot….not good.  Great sounding list of ingredients…just really plain crust and flavor lacking sauce.  I was offered a 2nd slice and said “no thanks”

Beerwise, I started off with the summer ale, which was good, not great, and better than most…then I had a porter to finish things off and was disappointed in the lack of complex flavors that I would have liked to expect in such a strong beer.  There was no pale ale on the menu and aside from the porter, everything on tap was seasonal.  For a place, who’s hype was built on home brewed beer…I was terriblly disappointed in the beer selections.

I found myself there again 2 days later…so decided to give Mad Fox a second chance.

This time, we ordered the pork belly and fried green tomato apps along with the 12 item super garden salad or something (with tuna added on).  I ordered the brisket sandwich with a side caesar salad.

The fried green tomatoes were horrible.  They had so much breading on them, they looked like fried zucchinis and it killed any of the flavor of the tomato.  They were served with some tomato chutney mess that actually tasted pretty good, but I really think it needs some kind of a creamy sauce to go along with all that damn breading.

The pork belly came out looking flimsy, not crisp, the texture looked strange, but the colors looked good.  I had no idea what the dish would taste like and despite the weird looking texture….tasted good.  Probably the best tasting thing I have had there to date.

The super salad she ordered was hosed down with a super soaker of dressing and was a nasty soaky mess and if it was in fact all local ingredients…I would love to know where the local kalamata olives are grown and get my own.

I got the brisket sandwich and porter BBQ sauce.   It was good and served on a nice bread and I loved the porter BBQ sauce.  It fit the bun well and I would definitely order it again….but there is WAY better brisket places to go.  I got a super soaked caesar salad instead of fries due to a misunderstanding between me and the waitress.  No big deal

Both times I went, the service was great.  The bar area was packed at prime happy hour time, but we were able to secure a full service bar table as a group was just leaving.  Mike was our waiter and was always there to replenish the drinks and order my next course.  The 2nd time was on a Monday night…not nearly as crowded…This time got great full service at a table over looking Broad Street.  A sweet and friendly waitress was there and was very attentive.

Let me recap
tuna tartare:  good
mussels: bad
pretzels:  good
pizza: bad
grilled cheese:  bad
soup: good
fried green tomatoes: bad (really bad)
pork belly:  good
super salad:  bad
brisket: good

That’s a 50% success rate on food…..but 100% success rate the way it sounds on the extremely well written menu.  If it all only tasted as good as it sounded.

It will be a hard sell for me to ever want to eat anything there again.  What a shameful disappointment.

Perfect Pizzeria Orso

Good pizza is hard, check that, impossible to come by inside the beltway in Virginia.  There is nothing besides your mass produced high fructose corn pizza garbage served by Dominos, Pizza Hut or Papa Johns.  It has been pitiful up to now.  A few new challengers have tried to penetrate the Falls Church market such as Flippin Pizza (decent pizza) and most recently Mad Fox Brewing Company (terrible pizza btw)…but Pizzeria Orso is the only one that has anything worthwhile.

We walked in, were greeted by a friendly hostess and immediately escorted to our seats near the pizza oven.  It was a Saturday lunch and not very crowded at all.  The pizza maker noticed my Dream Theater concert shirt on and we talked some rock and roll briefly before sitting down for lunch.

Starting off we went for the Suppli al Telefono (fried risotto balls).  As the picture here on yelp shows…you get 5 golf ball sized balls packed with tasty awesomeness.of buffalo mozzarella.  We both love them.  I also got an Arancini (another form of fried risotto ball)…It was not quite fried all the way, so was still just  a small tad cold on the inside which consisted of pretty much just risotto and totally lacking on the mushroom ragu and peas.

We decided to share a pizza and see if we wanted another after that stanza of feasting….so having a 10k race in the morning, I was looking to avoid the meat pies and get one with veggies and or cheese so we settled on the succulent sounding Vesuvius pizza which is one of their specialty folded pizzas with tomato sauce, the biggest leaves of fresh basil you will see, grana cheese (a strong, hard Italian variety) and creamy burratta cheese (an Italian cows milk cheese).  The pie came straight out of the over and onto the table.  We were told that the 4 ton pizza oven cost about $4,000 and $15,000 to ship over here from Italy and produces temperatures from 850 degrees to over 1,000. That the pizzas take 60 to 90 seconds to make.  Pretty awesome stuff.  The pizza needed more than the 2 leaves of basil they put on it and I would have liked more grana cheese on the pizza.

Tip:  When the pizza comes straight from the over to your table you will be better served to let the pie sit and rest for at least 5 minutes maybe 10 before you eat it….that will bring out the flavors better.

Yelpers have been slamming this place for their service…which was not the case for me.  We did wait a little bit longer than we should to be greeted and get water but after that the waiter was plenty attentive, the water glasses were always full and the pizza maker told us all about the oven and pizzas.

Such wide variety here, I can’t wait to go back over and over and over again.  I might even go back right now.

Z-Pizza (Arlington Location)

By Phargis.com contributing guest Pheaster Steve Lopes

The Z-pizza in Arlington is located in a little strip mall along Washington
Blvd with a Mexican restaurant to one side, a dry cleaner and a run-down
7-eleven two doors down. I had heard good things about this pizza chain,
but given the external appearance of the restaurant, we approached Z-pizza
with some mild trepidation – but as is usually the case, the best food is
often camouflaged by the surroundings. We entered just after the noon lunch
hour, so there was no crowd and it led to questions of how good this pizza
would be. The menu is simple – pizza, sandwiches, salad – yet complicated
at the same time. They have the “pizza standards” including Pepperoni -
classic cheese topped with lower-in-fat, MSG-free pepperoni; and the Sausage
& Mushroom – cheese with mushrooms and Italian sausage. Salads include the
classic Caesar salad and an Arugula salad that I’ll be sure to try on my
next visit. The sandwiches also look like they’d be worth a return visit,
especially the Pollo Latino Sandwich – marinated lime chicken breast,
lettuce, salsa and avocado.

But for this visit, I focused on the pizza by the slice and the daily
special – 2 slices and a soft drink for $6.49. There were three pizzas to
choose from and I zeroed in on the pepperoni and the Casablanca – roasted
garlic, mozzarella, ricotta, mushrooms, artichoke hearts, and parmesan. The
crust was cooked to perfection, crisp and browned on hot bricks, and
toppings were nothing short of excellent. Z-pizza uses unique and natural
ingredients. The certified organic dough is crafted daily, the tomato sauce
is 100% certified organic, and the Mozzarella cheese is rBGH-free. Z-pizza
is definitely worth the visit. (the man spinning the dough said the Mexican
restaurant is also worth a visit)