Logan Tavern

After our sweeping day at the Folklife Festival, my friend and I finished up at the Smithsonian, passing by all the Kentian, Senegalese, Virginian, Southeast Asian and Northern Irish artisans waiting for the bus back to their hotel. We went back to his hotel room (um, to freshen up; now get your mind out of the gutter), and then hit the Metro Red Line from Judiciary Square to Dupont Circle. We walked past a very cool wine store that I have to check out again the next time I'm down that way. I had a taste of this awesome dessert wine that I never bothered to pick up, but will do so at some point.

We debated which bars and restaurants to visit - anybody in this bar? Nope. In the mood for a burger? Nope. Want to check out the real estate? Sure. So we meandered from Dupont Circle and eventually wound up closer to Logan Circle. A few restaurants around here, including a mediorcre Ethiopian place, a pricey tapas place, a Caribou Coffee and a Whole Foods.

Right across from said Whole Foods was a restaurant that my friend had enjoyed before: the Logan Tavern (see the review in DC's Metro Weekly; also see these user reviews from Yelp.com). It sounded good, and in we went.

The Logan Tavern is on the fringe edge of the Dupont neighborhood, the heart of gay DC (another is Adams Morgan, though that's more all-around cosmopolitan than specifically-LGBT). That would explain all the young gay waiters, of course. We were seated by one such waiter and served by another, who gave us some crusty bread and olive oil.

The two of us looked over our menus. There was a lot of good stuff to order, a little pricier than I usually go for. For appetizers, I leaned toward the fried green tomatoes with peach preserves and lime cream sauce ($7), but compromised and instead we both went for the ginger flash fried calamari ($8). Delicious, sweet, crispy in spite of the ginger sauce, and not spicy at all. I'd eat this again for sure.

We went different ways for our entrées. He got a large salad ($13) which he liked a lot. I opted for the horseradish-crusted rockfish ($18). I didn't taste the horseradish - maybe I should've gone for the wasabi-crusted meatloaf ($13) instead? I didn't regret the choice, though; all the rockfish needed was a wee bit of salt to bring out the flavor. It lay on top of spinach and a thin tempura mushroom, which I found - sadly - to be a bit more flavorful than the rockfish.

Our dessert was a tasty apple crisp with vanilla ice cream ($5.50), which we split between the two of us. Not the best I've had, but better than most.

Our grand total as $82, which we split down the middle. This included our appetizer, dessert, entrées, two lemon basil mojitos (he just loves those mojitos), a Diet Coke and a Guinness. Plus, I saw our waiter do something I've never seen done with a can of Guinness. He poured it into the glass in such a way as to preserve the head, much like the proper way to pour Guinness from the tap. It wasn't exactly the same, but it was closer than i've ever gotten to draft Guinness from a can. Blasphemy, I know.

Other photos:

Here are our festival artisans that I mentioned earlier, waiting for the bus. There were a lot of folks from the Mekong pavilion on the far end, next to the petrified tree in the back.