Food Pics of the Week (FPOTW): J. Hollinger's Waterman's Chophouse

J. Hollinger's Waterman's Chophouse

8606 Colesville Rd, Silver Spring, MD 20910

J Hollinger’s Yelp Link: ***

Life kinda has being life’ing, so I have not had much time for updating this thing. Perhaps, I should change this to Food Pics of the Month (FPOTM). ;) For today’s FPOTW, we’ll go back to an oldie but goodie spot. Well, I guess this post technically should be Drink Pics of the Week (DPOTW) because this entry primarily features a cocktail from J Hollinger’s.

Smoked Peach Colesville Crush:

Below, we have the Smoked Peach Colesville Crush, which is a delicious cocktail that has a mix of Crown Royal Peach, smoked peach puree, lemon juice, and (since it’s a crush) crushed ice.

 
 

This cocktail is a delightful twist on classic Crown Royal, with hints of peach combined with by a rich, smoky peach purée. Each sip of this cocktail has the right mix of sweetness from the smoked peach and boldness from the whiskey. This drink goes down so smooth that you will not realize when you have had a few. Hell, this beverage is so delicious that I’ll break my no dark liquor before sunset rule to have one or three. Fortunately for me, sunset happens earlier because of the recent time change, so I can enjoy this beverage around 5 pm.

Some food:

Ok, so my recent visit was not all about this beverage. Whenever I stop by J Holligner’s, I always grab a half or full dozen of oysters.

 
 

closing remarks:

I’ll reiterate that J Hollinger’s probably is one of my favorite spots in downtown Silver Spring because the restaurant has a VERY GENEROUS happy hour special. One of these days, I really should check out their weekend brunch. The restaurant’s happy hour is from 4 pm to close, Tuesdays to Sundays, which comes in handy. I think this is one of the few restaurants whose happy hour extends past 6 pm and occurs on the weekends. In addition, to the generous hours, J Hollinger’s has great food and drink deals - wine and most cocktails are around $9-10 and small bar bites are about $10/plate (depending on what you order). Also, I really appreciate the fact that the clientele is super diverse and pretty chill. This also goes for the service team. One a few occasions, I’ve visited J Hollinger’s alone, but ended chatting with folks for 2+ hours.

Food Pics of the Week (FPOTW): Home Cooking

Home Cooking (Casa de Kwablo)

Silver Spring, Maryland

I realized that I have not made a FPOTW of the entry in quite some time. This FPOTW entry will feature some of my homemade cooking with a side of drama/f*ckery.

I'm in a learning Spanish Meetup.com group, and one of our recent events was a potluck fiesta. I decided to take a Spanish tortilla for this event. I'll say that I (probably like most folks) get really nervous when trying out a new recipe especially for folks that I do not know too well. Also, the nerves were even more intense because I pretty much had one shot to make the Spanish tortilla. The funny thing: the husband who is a chef from Spain offered to make the Spanish tortilla for me, but I told him that I could make it myself. As some may already know, a Spanish tortilla essentially is a large egg omelette with potatoes and onions. Ok, that doesn't seem too difficult to prepare. Unfortunately, flipping the large omelette, which in my cases contained about 2.5 pounds of sliced potatoes, can be quite dramatic. For example, check out this Spanish tortilla fail.

My result:

Fortunately, I did not have a flip fail, but I didn't I put enough oil in the pan because I had a patch in the top layer.

 
 

My tortilla was a little darker compared to the ones that the Spanish husband makes, but it had the same color (more or less) of the one from the website where I found the recipes. So I'll take it as a win.

 
 

Not to toot my own horn, but I (and the husband) thought my tortilla was very delicious. Before actually reading through the recipe, I just assumed that you mixed some eggs, potatoes & onions and threw them into a pan, flip it, and cook the other side. However, there are a few tricks to the trade:

  • Letting the potato slices sit in water for at least 10 minutes.

  • Using a mandoline to slice the potatoes . . . fortunately, I did not lose any fingers using the mandoline.

  • (Tip from the husband): If you use an online recipe for a Spanish tortilla, you should add 1-3 additional eggs. I definitely will have to use this tip next time, because I like my tortilla to be a tad running.

  • Once you mix the eggs, onions and potatoes, the mixture sit for at least 15 minutes.

  • Trust yourself and try to flip without any hesitation.

Meetup Drama:

The organizer of the potluck fiesta indicated that he would let use know the location of the event via Meetup.com's messenger. I figured that made sense because I do not think that I would want have my address listed in a public group. The morning of the event, I was a bit concerned because a couple of the guest and I had not received the address. So, I sent the organizer a message through the app inquiring about the location of the event. I carried on making the tortilla throughout the morning. Long story short, I never received a response, and by 2pm, I was over it. I guess it kind of worked out for the best because earlier that morning a friend from NYC texted me to tell me that she was going to be in DC for the day and asked if I could meet up (no pun). Rather that attending the dumb potluck, I hung out with my friend that I had not seen since running NYC 2022's marathon.

Food Pics of the Week (FPOTW): El Mercat Bar De Tapas

El Mercat Bar De Tapas (***)

101 Gibbs Unit C Rockville, MD 20850

 
 

I think hubby and I have found our go-to Spanish restaurant in our part of Maryland. Olé! This place has it going on - amazing food, great service, nice decor, delicious cocktails, and decent prices.

Calamari, pan de tomate, and Spanish Spritz (basically a gin tonic). Although the Spanish Spritz was really satisfying, I wished the restaurant had more gin-based speciality cocktails especially since gin-tonic (or gin-tonica, or ginebra con tonic, etc.) is a popular beverage in Spain. Oh well, I guess you can't win them all.

 
 

Croquetas and papas bravas. All good in the hood with these two tapas.

 
 

Gambas al ajillo (shrimp with garlic). While this tapa was delicious, I was a bit disappointed that the shrimp were headless. I don't think that I've ever had headless gambas in a Spanish restaurant. Eh, I guess there is a first time for everything.

 
 

Seafood Paella with black rice. Sorry, I forgot to take a picture when it first arrived to the bar. Although this was very delicious, the Spanish hubby did not care for the green peas in the paella. He even sent a picture to his mom, and she was like WTF.

 
 

Martini de Granada. Ok, so I went a bit out of my comfort zone . . . I probably was feeling adventurous from all the gin tonics. While the cocktail looked pretty, the combined ingredients (orange vodka, pomegranate licor, egg whites, orange, and vanilla bitters) were an acquired taste for me . . . even though I do love egg whites in a cocktail. Like TLC said: don't go chasing waterfalls (in this case, new cocktails); please stick to the rivers and lakes that you're used to (in this case, gin tonics).

 
 

All in all, I have a feeling that we will visit this place a few more times over the next few months.

FOOD PIC OF THE WEEK

Since it was too hard to pick one favorite food pic or restaurant while vacationing in Spain, I figure that I would put my top meals in one post. This way, the next five entries “Food Pics of the Week” will not be food entries from Spain.

MADRID, PART 1

Bang Cook

Bodega Maribel

Santander:

La Casa del Indiano

Restaurant: ???

Restaurant: ???

Barcelona:

Restaurant ???

La Mar Salida

Madrid, part II

El Brillante

Going forward, I probably should take pictures of the restaurants’ names and menus so I can 1) know the name of the restaurant and 2) know the actual names of the dishes. I did try to check in to these places on Yelp, so they would be in my recently checked in folder. However, many of the spots we visited did not have Yelp listings, and I was not trying to create new Yelp listings for these places

Quarantine Home Cooking

Tapas Night

Because of COVID-19, I have not been able to check out local restaurants and be one of those people who takes pictures of his food before devouring it for the sake of posting on social media. Until I’m allowed to mingle with my fellow foodies, I’ll have to post food pics of things that we are making during our “new normal”. BTW, I hate the term, new normal. Here goes.

 
 

A satisfying meal of fresh octopus, tortilla espanola, and ham croquettes. Although I did not prepare the meal, I did make a significant contribution by opening the bottle of wine. I will say that during this quarantine we have been saving money eating in. Had we gone to a Spanish restaurant we probably would have spent $80 (at least) for 1/4th of the food.