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Washington DC: Jaleo

Luckily, my friends from the University of Maryland have good taste.  For my visit, they took me to dinner at Jaleo (plus a cupcake emporium I'll report on next).  Jaleo is the flagship restaurant of a nationally-known chef (Top Chef judge, etc.).  It's a tapas restaurant that, unlike the garden variety of tapas bars, actually pays homage to Spanish food.  

Unfortunately, my camera went on the fritz so I don't have photos.  We tried a total of nine dishes.  We discussed after dinner what we liked most and I think we had a rough consensus, but here are my top picks.  Head and shoulders above the rest was the bacon-wrapped fried date---need I say more? An egg with caviar was a pleasant surprise in its presentation.  The egg was a very light souffle, although it seemed to have a soft yolk.  The caviar served to add a salty note and some toast helped us to eat it.  The rabbit came with a red sauce that was almost like that one would see in a beef stew, although it wasn't beefy per se, and the rabbit self had no hint of gaminess.  We tried the ham, which was fine, but I don't think anyone was overly impressed with it.

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Jaleo

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