A Visit to the Red Toque Restaurant

The other day I visited the Red Toque restaurant, a new eating place in the vicinity of the local public library where I'd been tanking up on books to read over the holiday week. I espied the bright red door of this new place and said to myself that it would be good to get a snack there! So I ordered a lentil soup and got a cup of red chai tea with a glass of water for about $6 total.  The lentil soup was totally delicious and I would go there again for it. I think they made the chai tea with milk that was slightly off as it just didn't taste right.  When I finally sipped it I was no longer at the restaurant and was on my way home and didn't want to be bothered turning back and complaining. So I tossed it onto the garden to feed some trees well.

But the lentil soup was aromatic and spicy but not too hot and sharp and was made with a good stock.  The service was very good -- but then again, I was the sole customer at 3 in the afternoon! -- and there is a great view from the windows of the restaurant, right onto the street and passing cars. And I sat there and snapped a couple of passing vehicles as I supped. The picture windows themselves are a treat as they are the old-fashioned metal casement window frames that have hinges on the side and will likely be opened when the weather is fairer. Painted a shiny black they add great ambience to the cheery yellow painted walls, the high ceiling and surprisingly comfortable dining chairs.  On the walls hang framed black and white photos of old Washington, DC showing trolley cars and buildings long since torn down.  It's worth going in there just to see these!  This space used to be a bike repair store but that appears to have moved or perhaps went out of business.  I think the menu is Middle Eastern or Mediterranean and I hope to go back and try some of the other things. I'm also not sure why it's called "the Red Toque" but I think that's a hat or something.

Glossy Glassy Buildings

There seems to be a run of an architectural style in DC recently where the building is completely sided with sheets of glass that hang as scales on the frame. There are no walls really, since the walls are glossy gleaming sheets of glass hooked together with some metal latching system. You can almost see into the offices quite easily but light and reflection don't let you get too far. Besides, people put desks and plants up against the glass walls so as to create psychological walls for themselves, or so I imagine. One of these days I'm going to go into one of these buildings and see what it's like to be in one of the street view rooms with just a sheet of glass for the wall. Is that what they mean by transparency? Or do people just hide even deeper what they don't want anyone, even God, to know about themselves?

Glasses Needed for Views Reading

Image via Wikipedia

No matter how I try to keep track of them I lose my reading glasses. The solution has been to have multiple pairs in multiple locations since they are cheap enough, usually less than $20 a pair and in some cases I've bought three for a dollar! For cooking and detail housework I only need 1.75 or 2.00 magnification but for reading print I need 2.25. Anything higher tends to make me a bit nauseous. But this morning, all I could find were the red 2.25's kept together with staples at the hinges and which I only use for reading in bed. Why do the hinges break so easily! If the pins come out I can put a staple through and hold the hinge together that way even if the raw metal ends do occasionally catch on my hair or a scarf or something. I did come across two pairs of usable reading glasses on the way down the stairs but one was missing the ear holder and the other had mysteriously got two cracks in frame around the lens. And they were my favorite as they had rhinestones in the frames! So I ended up at CVS buying some dark pink ugly things so I could at least read what the number on each dollar bill is! My best organizing tactic is to put any glasses I find in the little drawer in the dining room side table and hope they all migrate there instead of underneath pillows, at the bottom of handbags or underneath the bed. This includes the various sunglasses I have collected over the past few years and which also seem to be experiencing a bout of lost lens or busted hinges or cracked lens holders. You'd think plastic things would last longer! But Thank God for glasses (or was it Benjamin Franklin?)