Restaurant Review: Standard

Standard is a beer garden. Sadly, this does not mean that beer grows on trees here. It means that it consists solely of a bunch of outdoor picnic tables, and beer is available. (There is no indoor area.) In my opinion, this is not nearly as sweet as an actual garden of beer...a Willie Wonka-esque paradise for adults.

If you consider yourself a DC "hipster," you have no doubt already experienced Standard. It is absolutely teeming with Wafarers, skinny jeans and mustaches. And you WILL wait for a table here. It's on my running route and from what I've seen, if it's open, it's packed, no matter the weather or temperature. This is why I try to avoid Standard, even though it's a mere three blocks from home.

They have a small but satisfying selection of draft beers, and if you're on the wagon, a handful of great sodas...like Coca-Cola with real sugar. Mmmm.

We attempted to order a beer in every color.

The food is good, although there's not a large selection and definitely not tailored for anyone counting their calories. You'll find no salad here. You WILL find doughnuts, brisket, bratwurst, pulled pork, onion rings... Bring your Tums and enjoy!

Standard is a great choice for anyone who never sat at the cool table in high school. All those kids are probably here at Standard, and you'll be squeezing right in there next to them, enjoying a big German beer and fried delicacies.

On an unrelated note, I tried the interval workout again and saw some improvement. 

Restaurant Review: La Tagliatella, Arlington

I might be biased here. This restaurant moved into the location recently vacated by Restaurant 3...a bacon restaurant. Those are some huge shoes to fill.

The (confusing) menu at La Tagliatella does indeed include bacon. And cream sauce. And pesto. And cheese. But check out the menu and Command-F chicken. That's right, there is NO CHICKEN. What the hell kind of place doesn't serve chicken??

I got over the absence of fowl quickly when I noticed the prosciutto pizza.

While we waited, our waitress brought out a dish of the tiniest olives I've ever seen in my life. They were the size of small blueberries. And we got like eight of them.

The Caesar salad has actual anchovies on it. I guess that's pretty Italian and stuff, but I find anchovies to look like little dead aliens.

Our food finally came. Well, MY food finally came...a good 10 minutes before any of the other five people in my party. So I sat with this thing in front of me:

Note the small plate containing anchovies and the smallest olives ever.

This was not the prosciutto-mozzarella-tomato deliciousness I expected. It was a huge nearly sauceless, nearly cheeseless crust COVERED in a layer of prosciutto. And it wasn't cut...instead, it came with a pizza cutter shoved between the pizza and the plate, so you can do it yourself! Fun! No. NOT fun, since the edges of this thing hung over the sides of the normal-sized plate by two inches all around, making it impossible to cut with the completely dull pizza cutter. I ended up eating it by ripping pieces off. Seriously, they couldn't take five seconds and fucking cut this ridiculous thing for me?

No one else's food was much better. The lunch portions of pasta were like 10 pieces of pasta on a tiny plate. 

It's impossible for me to tell what kind of vibe this place is going for. The decor is just like a wannabe-fancy Ruby Tuesday's. I kept expecting to find a salad bar somewhere, complete with those brown croutons that look like miniature brownies. 

Are those brownies on your salad??

I will say, the desserts looked pretty good.  Unfortunately, since it was a business lunch, there was no time to partake, but the lemon gelato was tempting.

This place is just shitty Italian. And I feel like it's really hard to make Italian shitty. (I mean, come on...how do you screw up a pizza or pasta?) But seriously, Olive Garden beats this place by a mile. At least they have breadsticks.