Eat, Drink, Be Merry

We're two days removed from the Iron Fork and my hunger is finally starting to return and my sodium levels feel like they're back to normal. Slightly kidding, but Thursday was basically the second annual Derek and Tracy Eat Their Faces Off Day -- a.k.a the City Pages' Iron Fork event at International Market Square. We had so much fun last year that we had to go again. This year's outing was also enjoyed with friends Steve and Katya, proving the more the merrier when you're eating and drinking with abandon. Where to begin...

As Derek previously explained, the centerpiece of the event was an "Iron Chef"-style competition between top local area chefs. This year's secret ingredient was chocolate. I heard the announcer mention some unique combinations, like chocolate and mushrooms, but that's about as much as I can recall -- we were waaay too busy sampling the dishes from the more than 20 different restaurants at the stations surrounding the competition.

As for my favorites, it's hard to say...I love this event because, like last year, you discover new restaurants and dishes that you would have otherwise not known about or considered. Here are a couple of highlights from the night:

The Tommy Bahama Rum Servers - These ladies wandered the floor with trays of (free, of course) mini shot-glass-sized martini glasses filled with various rum concoctions, including the crowd-favorite mojito. The only remote problem we had with this was keeping the eating up-to-speed with the mojito-drinking. This turned out to be the perfect apertif-- along with the sample glasses of Leinie's Honey Weiss -- as we waited in some of the longer lines for the more popular restaurants of the night, including the back-to-back-to back stretch of three restaurants, including...

Marla's Caribbean Cuisine - Was that Marla dishing me up the spicy red beans and rice? Not sure, but the somewhat exotic-tasting comfort food stuck to my bones with the extra kick reserved for the more adventurous. Coupled with Jamaican jerk chicken and cocktail samosas, I could have stuck to this restaurant alone for the night and been happy. We tried Marla's last year at this event and talked about going to the restaurant all year long, but never did. Maybe this will be the year, finally..

Holy Land - I've always enjoyed the Holy Land staples, including their pita bread that you can buy at about any grocery store in town. In recent years, though, I've become more of a fan of Grand Avenue's Shish, a similar restaurant that I find often tastes a bit fresher and cleaner. Both Shish and Holy Land were at last year's Iron Fork and we went back to Shish much more than Holy Land. Well, Shish was absent this year, but Holy Land made up for it by tasting better than ever. Pita chips, silky-smooth hummus, grape leaves and falafel were enough to bring me back for seconds -- ahem, thirds...

Dancing Ganesha - There's this awesome vegetarian Indian restaurant, Nala Pak, in a distant land called Columbia Heights. Nala Pak is so good that I'm willing to make the drive on 694 to an area I otherwise never go to. Well, Nala Pak's new sister restaurant is Dancing Ganesha, and from what I can tell, it's the sassier, hipper, meat-lovin' sister, as well. And delicious! DG served up some delicious pastry-style, samosa-like items called poories. Excuse my ignorance -- they're actually called Sev Batata Puris, which are poories topped with yogurt, mango and red onion with tamarind and green chutney. Yep, and I ate about three of them in the same time it took me to spell all that out. The other item DG offered was one of the best desserts I've had in a while -- chocolate samosas. These pieces of heaven had white and dark chocolate, as well as coconut and carrots, and were topped with caramel sauce. I ate one of these in the middle of eating all of the other dinner items and almost had to call it a night. But wait! There was more...

Pizza Luce - What can I say about this crowd favorite? Potato pizza. Genius.

In addition to these highlights, I also enjoyed the not being on crutches like I was at least year's event. It made the eating a lot easier -- more trips and free hands to carry more food! I recall also avoiding partaking in all beverages at last year's event out of fear of a) balancing liquid in a cup while crutching around and b) compromising my shoulder-crutch-one legged balancing act. It was a lot easier this year!

As my hunger starts to return, my thoughts are already turning to next year's event...In the meantime, we'll have to check out Dancing Ganesha and Marla's Caribbean Cuisine. And maybe I'll mix up a couple of mojitos here at home.