Posts Tagged ‘Arlington’
Maryland’s Magnificent Chicken
Many Washington, D.C. residents bemoan the fact that this area doesn’t have an indigenous cuisine to its name. Because of the transient nature of this town, it seems there isn’t a food for Washington to call its own.
That may be a blessing in disguise. Because of the constant influx of newcomers, the D.C. Metro area has a great number of ethnic restaurants.
From authentic Thai to fantastic Middle Eastern food, there is no dearth of meals from any different country.
The best though, might be in a little shop on a main drag in Wheaton, Maryland that channels the flavor of Peru.
El Pollo Rico serves just one dish, which reflects its nomenclature: the most delicious, decadent chicken in town.
The décor in the restaurant is sparse, with white vinyl floors, plain tables and chairs and bright walls, painted in red, yellow and green.
However, when one first walks into El Pollo Rico, the simple decorations are the last thing that people notice. Instead, it’s the overwhelming smell, a combination of sweet and savory spices that please the senses.
The scent comes from the store’s secret spice rub, which is heavily patted over the hundreds of chickens that are roasting in plain sight. Just behind the register sit large brick rotisseries. Sunk into the walls these ovens hold massive heaps of ashen coals, fires that have been going all day and are constantly being stoked.
Above them are approximately fifteen spits, all sitting on a giant wheel. Each is laden with ten to fifteen birds. Each row spins on its individual spit, while the entire contraption constantly rotates, bringing the birds to within inches of the scorching flame then whisking them away. It creates a crisp and crackling skin, but prevents them from being burnt.
These chickens are the only item on the menu and they come in only three portions. A quarter chicken, a half or a whole.
And while all those portions may seem large, the birds are too irresistible to stop eating. The flesh inside is thick and juicy, and a quarter chicken goes down faster than you think. With any order comes a choice of sides: a soupy coleslaw, steamed white rice or thick cut French fries.
Order the fries — they pair amazingly with the restaurant’s two wonderful dipping sauces.
The two sauces come complimentary with any order, and are an exercise in contrast. One is a thick, mayonnaise-based sauce; the other, a biting, vinegary blend of diced jalapenos. Stir the two together for the perfect match, a smooth, creamy yet spicy sauce that tastes wonderful slathered on top of fries or chicken.
El Pollo Rico has one other location in Arlington, VA. At either restaurant, be sure to bring cash. It’s not that the meals are expensive, fifteen dollars will get you a whole chicken and two sides, it’s that neither location takes credit cards.
And even if it requires a trip to the bank, it is worth it to enjoy an out-of-this-world bird.
-David
Ballston’s “sweet” New Spot
There are several different movements going on in the world today, and one local restaurant stands at the forefront of a couple of them.
Combining the best of the sustainable Earth movement and the healthy living push is salad restaurant sweetgreen, and luckily for people in the Arlington area, a new location opened up last month in Ballston.
Sweetgreen began in the D.C. area three years ago, and the Ballston shop is just the seventh restaurant the company operates.
The restaurants eschew pizzazz, instead favoring a sleek, simple design. And the new Ballston location conforms to that mold.
The floor is sealed concrete and ceilings are nonexistent. Instead, sweetgreen leaves pipes and ducts to be exposed, drastically reducing the amount of building materials used.
The space is decorated with bright, reclaimed wood and uses plain energy-conserving fluorescent lights to give the restaurant a bright glow.
And that ethos carries throughout the salad shop. Sweetgreen is environmentally conscious in every element of its eateries. Every utensil and serving dish is 100% biodegradable and almost every ingredient in the store comes from a local source. A large chalkboard next to the register allows hungry patrons the opportunity to see exactly where their food comes from.
The farthest away an ingredient on a recent menu came from was southern New Jersey; and meats, cheeses and vegetables all come from a variety of local farms in the Washington D.C. area. The restaurant refuses to use preservatives, meaning every ingredient is as fresh as possible. That freshness helps create utterly delicious salads.
The restaurant also skips the typically back-of-house preparation for most ingredients, instead Sweetgreen lets its customers see exactly what’s going into their meals. Purchase sweetgreen’s version of a Cobb salad and one can watch as an employee cuts open a fresh avocado and scoops the green flesh directly on to waiting lettuce. Order a Caesar salad and marvel as the person behind the counter shaves fresh parmesan cheese from a large hunk straight on top of leafy Romaine.
All salads are prepared out in the open by friendly employees. And while sweetgreen offers eight suggestions, one can always pick and choose whatever they want in their meal.
After a healthy yet filling meal, sweetgreen offers a tasty, low-fat dessert right in the restaurant: a frozen yogurt bar, replete with numerous unique and different toppings: fresh blackberries coconut shavings, and granola are offered, along with typical staples like sprinkles.
The yogurt, just like everything in the restaurant, is all natural and amazingly good. And it leaves a patron feeling fantastic. Not just for having had a delicious meal, but for doing it with as minimal a carbon footprint as possible.
- David
MyLife in Metro DC: Last Minute DC Shopping Secrets Revealed!
Tis the season to be jolly… and unfortunately in DC… to be stuck in the Holiday shopping madness!
Tysons. Pentagon. Fair Oaks. Take your pick. They are all packed with the same crowds, same lines and same frustrations. And with the “12 Days of Christmas” countdown already on the second day, the days left to shop are quickly running out!
It took only one afternoon waiting 20 minutes to park, pushing through angry crowds and standing in lines that had no end for me to decide there HAS to be a better way to shop during the Holidays in DC.
Since I know I’m not the only one trying to avoid the mall mayhem, my Holiday gift to you is my top three “mall alternatives” list; helping you find the perfect gifts for anyone on your list while steering clear of the crowds.
photo credit: www.marketcommonclarendon.net
I love living in Arlington and this shopping center has by far been one of my happiest discoveries! Whether I’m trying to nab the latest Apple gadget or cross a fashionista off my gift list, I can do it all here.
Located at 2800 Clarendon Blvd across from Whole Foods, there are ample parking options. There are two pay to park parking garages (one by the Container Store and one across from Whole Foods). Or if you are lucky, you can sometimes find a spot on the street (meters on Clarendon Blvd stop charging at 6pm). There is also the Clarendon Metro stop is located just two blocks away.
Some of my personal favorite stores to find gifts at are: the Apple Store, Crate & Barrel, Ann Taylor LOFT, South Moon Under & Free People. While you’ll most likely have to pay to park, for me, it’s worth it to drop in after work and shop in peace at well stocked stores without the masses.
photo credit: www.mezzogiorno.us/
When I’m looking for a unique gift for “the person who has everything” on my list, I take a trip to Old Town Alexandria. All along King Street and Old Town’s “Boutique” District you’ll find adorable stores filled with home décor items, jewelry, fashion apparel, food and wine and a plethora of other gift ideas.
There are a number of parking garages and street spots available or if you are feeling adventurous (and are bundled up) you take the metro and then hop on the free trolley that runs along King Street.
The best part of Old Town is that sprinkled in with all the boutiques are delicious restaurants you can stop at to grab a bite and re-energize for the rest of your trip!
Some of my favorite stores: An American in Paris, Barkley Square (for the Dog/Dog lover on your list), Bellacera, Silver Parrot and the Potomac Bread Company.
Ok, by now I’m sure you are saying, “Those are great suggestions Kristin, but it’s FREEZING OUTSIDE – I want to stay warm while I shop!”
So for those of you trying to avoid the frigid winds on the streets of DC, I give you my last, but certainly not least, suggestion – Etsy.
photo credit: Pear & Peacock, Lisa Hopkins & Tiffany Roundy for Hipchicks Knits
This is by FAR my favorite place to shop any time of the year for the ultimate original presents. Plus, I’ve snagged the MyLife in Metro DC readers a few discounts**!
Etsy is a website that provides its customers with the ability to search for goods created by artisans all around the world on a single site. Simply type in what you are looking for or browse through showcased items and you’ll find one of a kind treasures that will make the perfect gift. All of this done while sitting in your favorite chair in the warmth of your home.
Three of my favorite vendors on the site are: Pear and Peacock, Lisa Hopkins Design, and Hipchicks Knits.
I love Pear and Peacock not just for the jewelry but also for the extra thought that is placed behind each piece. Designer Erin McCloskey uses earth friendly, non-mined, recycled metals along with vintage beads and components to help lessen its impact on the environment. I think its great to give a gift to someone knowing that designer went the extra mile to be eco-friendly while creating it.
Lisa Hopkins creates etched silver jewelry featuring hand lettered calligraphy and artwork. She takes pride in each of her pieces and is more than willing to work with you on custom orders. I personally have purchased some of Lisa’s jewelry and wear my ginkgo necklace everyday – I absolutely love it.
Finally, there’s Rachel Gallager’s Hipchicks Knits. Rachel started selling hats when she discovered her passion for knitting could be used for good. She learned that a baby loses 80% of his or her body heat through the top of their head and wanted to do her part to help. All of the hats featured on her site are hand knit by Rachel and for every hat you purchase she knits and donates TWO for charity. What an awesome opportunity to help to a baby in need while sharing warmth with a child on your gift list!
**Special MyLife in Metro DC discounts: When making a purchase on Lisa Hopkins Design enter in the coupon code: MERRY2010 at checkout and receive a special 10% discount from now till the end of 2010 and when purchasing from Hipchicks Knits enter Coupon Code: Holiday10 at checkout to receive a special 10% off all her hats! Thank you both for the Holiday specials!
Well there you have it. My DC shopping secrets – revealed. Hopefully you’ll read this early enough for to skip the lines and be able to spend a little extra time enjoying the Holiday season. Happy Shopping!
To share your shopping secrets, learn more about MyLife, view pictures, videos, post comments, and suggest adventures “Like” MyLife on Facebook!
-Kristin
Arlington County Market Report – 9/17/10
Arlington continues to be a favorite location for many reasons. There are so many varied neighborhoods to be found throughout the county. The more established, higher priced neighborhoods are in North Arlington. These communities have easy access to the downtown areas of McLean and Great Falls and are just a short drive across Chain Bridge to Upper Northwest D.C. South Arlington offers more affordable homes and is convenient to Crystal City and Old Town Alexandria. The Wilson Blvd. corridor from Rosslyn to Ballston is filled with high rise and garden Condo’s, more older, established neighborhoods , and trendy restaurants and shops.
The dog days of summer kept the real estate market relatively stable in August. The significant statistics were literally unchanged from August of 2009, and showed a slight decrease from the previous month. The total number of units sold was exactly the same as in July. The days on market increased by a few days , and the average sold price decreased slightly. The market seems to have paused at this average price level and the Market Action Index shows that conditions currently favor buyers. Both prices and inventory levels are unchanged in recent weeks. Buyers seem to have taken another wait and see attitude. Despite historically low interests rates and stable or decreasing prices, there has not been an urgency to enter into the fray. The government reported recently that 1 in 7 Americans are living near the poverty level. Fear of loss of jobs has stopped otherwise ready buyers from moving forward. I suspect that until after the November elections there will not be much activity.
These are the days that in 5 or 10 years we will look back and say we wished we had bought when the prices and interest rates were so low. Despite all the gloom in the forecast, owning your home is still the wisest long term investment you can make.
Commentary and analysis provided by Charlie Carroll, Managing Broker, Avery-Hess, Realtors
Find Your Home. Plan Your Life. www.averyhess.com
MyLife in Metro DC – In Search of the Perfect Condo
300 seconds.
That’s all the time it took for my new landlords to rent their condo. In those five minutes, not only did I contact them, but they also had six other inquires about their home. How did they do it?
The Internet.
The days of sitting down with the Sunday paper to browse for a new place to live are over. The Internet is now an extremely powerful tool to help people search for a new place to call home.
Personally, I’ve found my last three apartments online. With everything right at my fingertips it’s easy to search and sort through hundreds of listings, view pictures, take virtual tours and contact someone for more information all within minutes.
I planned on starting my search for my new Arlington condo the same way. This time around I’d have a roommate, and we both had our own top 3 “Must Haves” for our new place. I wanted my own bathroom, a gym and a parking spot. He wanted a place close to the metro, a gas range (I’ve quickly learned having a great cook as a roomie is AWESOME), and it had to allowed pets (see below for a picture of our incredibly awesome pup – Nattie).
Nattie - The Incredibly Awesome Pup
And so the search began…
My “go to” search is Craigslist.org. It’s like the Twitter of apartment searches. Listings are constantly being added and posts from a week ago are ancient history. As I started to search, I became hooked. I’d check Craigslist every ten to fifteen minutes for new posts…I couldn’t bear to think I might miss out on a potentially amazing apartment. I had to be “in the know.”
But just like Twitter, everything you read is not always as it seems.
I looked at listings that boasted of the apartment’s hardwood floors and gorgeous city views. The post’s professional photographs made me feel like I was turning the pages of House Beautiful. The price seemed too good to be true and the landlord called back right away to set up a viewing.
Then I’d arrive at the apartment.
The hardwood floors were old and splintered. The city views were of a back alley, complete with a gathering of the local homeless shifting through the dumpster by the master bedroom window. The Landlord admits the pictures might be a “bit outdated” and tells me the rent actually has some “extra” fees and an outrageous security deposit, but the place is a real “steal” for the location.
Yikes.
Weeks of this went on and time was running out – I was starting my new job in a week and still had no place to live. We had found nothing but dead ends, disappointments, no pets, no parking and nothing but electric ranges. I started to feel like our perfect condo didn’t exist.
One Last Look…
Then, that Friday evening, I decided to break from packing up my apartment – I couldn’t fight my urge to check Craigslist one last time before going out. And to my delight a new listing had just been posted three minutes prior. I read the listing almost in disbelief…it was …the PERFECT CONDO. Two bedrooms, two bath, located two blocks from the metro. It had a pool and a gym and came with a garage parking spot. Then came the last line, it read – “One small to medium sized dog is welcomed – no cats, reptiles or other pets allowed.” It was like the listing was made just for us!
I emailed, five minutes has past since the listing was posted. The landlord called back immediately and from the very start of our conversation, I got a great vibe from her. It was a welcomed surprise to find out their unit was in a building we had previously visited and loved. I excitedly set up a viewing for that Sunday.
My roommate was on a sailboat, in the middle of the bay all weekend, so I when ahead and visited the place without him. As soon as they opened the door fell in love both with the condo and our future landlords – the place was adorable, they were two of the nicest people I’ve ever met and they too had an incredibly sweet dog. I made the bold decision of paying the deposit without my roommate ever even seeing the place, but I knew (or more so hoped) he’d agree that I had finally found the right condo for us.
Luckily, after seeing it for himself, he did agree. So did Nattie. Three weeks later we all moved in.
So after endless hours of searching, it all came down to 5 minutes. 300 seconds. In the world of Internet searches, it’s all about being in the right place at the right time…maybe with a little bit of luck sprinkled in too.
View of Arlington and DC from our Living Room
- Kristin
MyLife in Metro DC – New Beginnings
When you decide to embark on the tumultuous journey of finding the perfect job, it can feel like a cycle of lost hope and endless rejection. It’s like going through a bad break up… on a weekly basis.
“What do you mean I’m not good enough? Why won’t he call me back? Does this mean you want to see other people?”
And then, right when you’ve reached rock bottom, when you are ready to settle for mediocrity, to work as one of the masses in a dead end job, it happens.
As you stare defeated at your computer screen, hidden behind the banner ads and posts for terrible sales jobs, you find it. The endless hours submitting applications and scrolling through job posts suddenly all seems worth it; you’ve found – the ONE.
You walk down the street to your interview, birds start chirping, everyone stops to say “hello,” the Starbuck’s barista even gives you your coffee for free. This is it, the day you knew would one day come, the day you’ve been waiting for – Utopia found.
There is nothing better than this feeling; all your hard work has finally paid off. For me, as I floated around on my cloud of euphoria, I quickly remembered accepting the perfect job meant moving to Metro DC. From past experiences, I knew finding the perfect city to call “home” was just as challenging as finding the perfect job…thus my journey continued…
Choosing Your Perfect City
Trying to decide on what area of a new city to live in is an extremely important decision. The area you choose can totally influence how comfortable you are, shape the first experiences you have in your new city and affect your overall happiness– this makes it crucial you pick the right place.
I was very fortunate during this part of my journey. A huge benefit of moving to DC was that I already knew plenty of people in the city. This was extremely helpful when it came to finding the perfect part of the city to call home. I thought about the cities my friends lived in, the ones I enjoyed visiting and started calling old friends and classmates to find out how they liked where they were currently living. From these chats, I came up with the three most important things for me to consider when picking my new city.
1) Traffic – Morning commutes in Metro DC can be some of the worst in the country! My office is near Tysons Corner, which as many know can be a maze of endless traffic that stretches on for miles. I knew living in Tysons wasn’t where I wanted to be, so I was looking for other cities that had a “reverse” commute.” (In Metro DC, this means it only takes 30 minutes to go 5 miles instead of over an hour…)
2) “Walkability” – There’s something irresistible to me about having everything you could possibly need within a few blocks from your house. I love being able to park my car on a weekend and not see it again until Monday. Being able to walk to everywhere, to the grocery store, friend’s houses, bars and restaurants was critical in my city choice.
3) Active – I’m a 26 year old single female. I was moving to a new city, wanted to meet lots of new people and was not ready for the “burbs” (and don’t know if I ever will be…). I wanted to find a city that had an energetic social scene with people my age and lots of options of things to do.
For me, Arlington became a clear winner. It’s a quick (again quick in DC is a relative term) reverse commute on 66 West to Tysons, you can walk everywhere (if you can’t, you can just hop on the metro), and there is an abundance of “20 somethings” living in the area that partake in the endless choices of happy hour specials. The next chapter of my journey was now complete and I hopped back on my cloud and floated happily along.
New City – Check.
My advice to you – Come up with a list of three or four characteristics that are critical for your new city, then start researching. Talk to your friends, family members, and new coworkers. Google cities until you can Google no more. As you do this, places will start to eliminate themselves, leaving you with a few great options. Before making the “big move,” visit these places and see which city fits you best. I guarantee one will stand out from the rest and be perfect location for you to call “home.”
- Kristin
Sunset in Georgetown overlooking my new city - Arlington
Up next: Finding a Condo and Making the “Big Move”
