#13: Fire Works

Date Visited: 25 May 2008

Meal: Dinner

Diners: 2 - Me & Wendy

Experience: On Sunday night, after enjoying a wonderful lunch at Xuan Saigon, our dinner thoughts converged on pizza, and I suggested Fire Works, which I had noticed on our previous visit to Jasmine. Fire Works is located next door to Tuscarora Mill (not visited/blogged yet) in historic Market Station. It was a beautiful evening, and we got outdoor seating.



Our first look at the menu told us we were in for a treat - this was no ordinary pizza place! I ordered the House Salad ("Local greens, Tomatoes, Pine Nuts, Gorgonzola, Dry Cranberries"), and Wendy got the Classic Greek Salad ("Romaine, Cucumbers, Feta Cheese, Olives, Tomatoes, Red Wine Vinaigrette"). Both were deliciously fresh. For our pizza, we ordered the Smokey Blue ("Gorgonzola, Wood Roasted Onions, Local Smoked Bacon, Organic Tomato Sauce, Rosemary, Aged Balsamic Glaze"), which was enthusiastically endorsed by our server, Stephanie. This was possibly the best pizza I've ever had - no kidding. Something about the combination of the gorgonzola, bacon, and whatever was in the glaze was just super!

Fire Works is also evidently a beer drinker's heaven, judging by the length of the list in the menu. I had a Heavy Seas Red Sky ("Clipper City’s Bright and Crisp Belgian Style Saison. A delight to drink"). I'm not much of a beer connoisseur, but it was good. I overheard several other guests ordering equally obscure-sounding but mouth-watering brands.

Fire Works seems to be one of Leesburg's hidden gems. It's also a great place to take friends and share.

Location: 203 Harrison St. SE, Leesburg, VA, 20175

Web site: http://fireworkspizza.com/

Total bill: $35.48 + $7.00 tip = $42.48

#12: Xuan Saigon

Date Visited: 25 May 2008

Meal: Lunch

Diners: 3 - Me, Wendy, & Alicia

Experience: Sunday after church is a great time to explore new lunch restaurants. In our case, the third service at Cornerstone Chapel usually goes until at least 12:30, so when it's done we're ready to eat! Today we visited Xuan Saigon, described thus by their web site: "Our establishment is family owned and stands as the first Vietnamese Restaurant in Leesburg - still the first since 1999." In Vietnamese, Xuan means "spring", and Xuan Nguyen is the name of the chef of the family.



We started off with two orders of Spring Roll appetizers ("A1" on the menu). They were very nice and crisp, and came with a tangy sauce to dip in. I had Pho #10 ("Tai Chin - Pho Noodle soup with slices of steak and well done brisket"). Wendy had Pho #17 ("Pho Ga - Rice noodles and slices of chicken served in a hot chicken soup broth garnished with spring onions, cilantro, and onions"). All the pho dishes come with a "fresh plate of basil, bean sprouts, jalapeno peppers, and limes", so you can customize it any way you want, and make it as spicy (or not) as you want with additional sauces on the table. We both enjoyed our respective soups very much; the ingredients were fresh (especially the basil) and deliciously prepared. The service was also pleasant and welcoming, like a family-owned restaurant should be. You can also tell you're in an authentic Vietnamese restaurant when there's Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce on every table, and I certainly availed myself of it... :-) I also had a Vietnamese Iced Coffee, and it was great! Predictably, Alicia got Chicken Fried Rice ("C5" on the menu). She said the eggs were "light and fluffy", and the bean sprouts (from our plate) were very good and fresh. She ate it all, and that's a good sign.

I can heartily recommend Xuan Saigon; there's something for everyone, and we'll be back often.

Location: 11 Fort Evans Rd. NE, Leesburg, VA, 20176

Web site: http://xuansaigon.com/

Total bill: $29.43 + $6.00 tip = $35.43

#11: Market Street Coffee

Date Visited: 15 May 2008

Meal: After-Dinner Coffee

Diners: 2 - Me & my friend Gary

Experience: Where do you go when you want a good cup of coffee? All too often, the automatic response would be Starbucks or an equivalent clone. Fortunately, Leesburg provides a much nicer, locally-owned alternative.

Market Street Coffee bills itself as "Leesburg's Living Room" and I think they fill this role elegantly. The place is not big, but there are always comfy places to sit, sip, and talk with friends. You can get all the hip coffee-based beverages, both hot and cold, such as lattes, cappuccinos, espressos, and such. Their iced blended drink specialties include the "Mocha Marketccino (blended coffee drink with special chocolate)" and the "Caramel Marketccino (blended coffee drink with creamy caramel)". I've had both and they're great! Most of the time, however, I just have a regular latte or cappuccino.

Market Street Coffee is one of my regular hangouts, where I meet biweekly with my friend Gary and talk about software development, theology, evangelism, and parenting. He has a very cool blog called The Calvinist Cajoneador - prepare to be challenged and check it out!

By the way, Market Street Coffee qualifies as a restaurant (for blog purposes) since they actually do have some food items (muffins, cookies, pastries, baked goods) as well as coffee, tea, and smoothies. They also host concerts featuring local musicians. Support your local coffee house and visit Market Street Coffee!

Location: 19 W. Market St., Leesburg, VA, 20176

Web site: http://marketstreetcoffee.com/

Total bill: $2.77 (just for me)

Sad News: Restaurants I'll never get to blog about

Restaurant: Casa Gonzalez

What Happened: My favorite Mexican restaurant in Leesburg, has closed for good on 20 April 2008. They were victims of expansion by the Loudoun County Sheriff's Department, with whom they shared a building. There are no plans to reopen elsewhere. The food was excellent, prices low, atmosphere relaxed, and service great. Sometimes they had mariachis serenade us during dinner. I will always remember the "Guadalajara Special", but alas, order it no more.

(Former) Location: 37 Catoctin Circle SE, Leesburg VA 22075

Web site: http://casagonzalesmexicanrestaurant.com/

---

Restaurant: Johnson's Charcoal Beef House

What Happened: A Leesburg landmark for 45 years has also closed for good on 14 May 2008. The Chevy Chase bank across the street bought the property and will move there (full story in the Loudoun Times-Mirror). Johnson's food was average, but the atmosphere was priceless. It was a place to just hang out and feel like you were in the 1970's. The last time we visited was for breakfast a couple months ago (before I started this blog). We will miss this Leesburg icon, but more for what it stood for than it's food.

(Former) Location: 401 E. Market St., Leesburg, 20176

Web site: none

#10: Red Hot & Blue

Date Visited: 13 May 2008

Meal: Dinner

Diners: 2 - Me & Alicia

Experience: Alicia and I found ourselves in need of dinner because we had to be out of the house for Wendy's Book Club meeting that night. After a brief discussion of our options, we decided that barbeque sounded pretty good. In Leesburg, that means Red Hot & Blue. It's a chain restaurant with locations in nine states.

Our family visited the Leesburg Red Hot & Blue shortly after it opened a few years ago. It wasn't very good then, and was significantly inferior to my favorite barbeque place, Famous Dave's (too bad they don't have a Leesburg location!) We had three poor experiences in a row ("three strikes and you're out") and haven't been back. Alicia and I decided to give them a chance to redeem themselves.

On this night, the restaurant wasn't very busy, so I was hoping for good service. It was OK, but a little unprofessional for me (e.g., waiter talking excessively with friends, some cursing). At one point, someone in the back dropped a tray full of dishes or something and there was a loud crash - at which the rest of the staff stood and applauded!

On to the food. First we got the Onion Ring Loaf appetizer. It's a big mass of deep-fried onion rings, in the shape of a cube or cylinder (it's kind of hard to tell). If you love onion rings like I do, you'll love the Loaf. For the main course, I had the half-rack of St. Louis-tyle Sweet Ribs, which came with BBQ beans, cole slaw, and cornbread muffins. It was much better than our original experiences, and the ribs were very tasty, with plenty of meat falling off the bones. Alicia had the Southern Fried Chicken Crispers, which came with Memphis fries and cole slaw. She ate everything but the cole slaw, so it must have been good!

One thing that makes a visit to Red Hot & Blue fun is the background music - it's all classic blues, my favorite! It helps make up for other deficiencies.

An interesting thing about this location is the history of restaurants that have come and gone before. When we first moved to Leesburg in the late 1980's, it was a Bob's Big Boy and a great place to eat. A few years later it closed, and a Shoney's opened up there, and was not as good as Bob's. A few years later, it too closed, and was replaced by America's Best Diner. It was an attempt at a 1950's-style hambuger place, but we called it America's Worst Diner. And that brings us back to the present: Red Hot & Blue.

Will I go back? Well, when the barbeque urge strikes and Famous Dave's is too far away (Sterling location is the closest one), yes.

Location: 541 E. Market St., Leesburg, VA, 20176

Web site: http://redhotandblue.com/

Total bill: $34.13 + $7.00 tip = $41.13

#9: Papa John's

Date Visited: 8 May 2008

Meal: Dinner

Diners: 3 - Me, Wendy, & Alicia

Experience: I'm sure this has happened to you - an unexpected change of plans, last-minute errands to run, and your original dinner plans are history. What do you do? Order a pizza, of course!

In this case, Alicia had a track meet that went a bit long, and nobody felt like taking the time to cook dinner. So I was sent on a mission to go get some. We all like pizza, and the choice of restaurants was left to me. Almost every town has plenty of pizza places to choose from, and my favorite in Leesburg is Papa John's. (It used to be Little Caesar's, until they closed several years ago, but that's another story...) I ordered at the restaurant because... well, I don't know, I think it's just the way I was raised - you never have pizza delivered to your house, you go and pick it up.

Anyway, I ordered two 14-inch larges. One was a specialty pizza called "The Works (Pepperoni, ham, spicy Italian sausage, fresh-sliced onions & green peppers, baby portabella mushrooms and black olives)". The other was just pepperoni. But Alicia doesn't like pepperoni, so she takes them off. We do this because I just can't bring myself to order a cheese-only pizza. Weird? Maybe. Wendy and I usually finish off one large between us, but Alicia doesn't come near finishing the other one, so there's always some leftover pepperoni for my lunch the next day.

While writing this blog, I visited the Papa John's web site. They have a pretty good restaurant locator, so you can find the closest one to your house. I was wondering how many locations they have, and where they are concentrated, when I noticed a link at the bottom of their home page labeled "International Restaurants". I clicked it and was quite surprised; there are locations in about 27 countries! Just for fun, I clicked on the Pakistan location, and found out there are actually two there, one in Karachi and one in Rahat! The menu has fewer choices than the ones in the states, but they also have local specialties like "Papa's Tikka (Chicken Tikka & onions)". Interesting!

Location: 525 E. Market St., Leesburg, VA, 20176-4171

Web site: http://papajohns.com/

Total bill: $30.36

#8: Anita's "New Mexico Style" Mexican Food

Date Visited: 5 May 2008

Meal: Dinner

Diners: 3 - Me, Wendy, & Alicia

Experience: It's Cinco de Mayo, and we have to go to a Mexican restaurant!

We settled on Anita's, another one of the newer restaurants in Leesburg. It's the newest in a chain of eight locations. Anita's specializes in "New Mexico Style" Mexican food. They also do quite a bit of catering and take-out. Their take-out Breakfast Burritos are big sellers.

Since it was Cinco de Mayo, appetizers were 1/2 off. We ordered the Gringo Nachos, which were topped with chorizo, frijoles, chile con queso, tomatoes, chives, olives and sour cream - yum!



For the main entree, I had one of the specials, the Chicken and Steak Fajita Quesadilla. Wendy had one of the other specials, the "El Matador" - red chile cheese enchildas. Alicia made a daring move and ordered the Pollo Enchilada. It was all pretty good, but not our favorite kind of Mexican food. It's that New Mexico thing, I guess.

Service was a bit slow, but not unexpected because of the holiday. There was a little confusion with the bill, as they could not figure out how to take the 1/2 off the appetizer. So we ended up with two separate bills: one for the appetizer, which listed the discount as "Police Officer 50%"(!), and one for everything else.

Location: 5 Fort Evans Rd. NE, Leesburg, VA, 20176

Web site: http://anitascorp.com/

Total bill: $44.66 + $9.00 tip = $53.66