This fall break, my friends and I decided to turn our staycation break into Food Break, during which we would go to restaurants that we had always wanted to go to in DC. I love food and DC has so many great choices that packing a bunch into one weekend seemed like a delicious idea. Although I am sure that I consumed far too many calories, it was definitely worth it. Food and friends defined this fall break, and I can’t wait to explore the DC culinary scene further!

Starting Thursday for dinner, we decided to try Boloco, a chain from Boston that is relatively new to the DC area. We took the red line up to Bethesda, and in no time were sinking our teeth into “globally inspired burritos.” We decided to get 4 different mini burritos and split them in half. After some agonizing at the menu (there were a lot of delicious sounding choices), we went with Bangkok thai with tofu, tikka masala with tofu, the summer with veggies, and Mediterranean with veggies. Although they were all pretty delicious, my favorite was definitely the Bangkok thai. The peanut sauce was really good…

The next day for lunch, we headed into Tenleytown to go to Masala Art’s $10 lunch buffet. I’m a sucker for Indian food, so an all you can eat buffet for only ten bucks is a no brainer. After sampling a bunch of different Indian food and eating far too much naan (when it’s bottomless, why not have 3 pieces…or four…or five), we left fully stuffed.

Me and Emily enjoying our Indian food

Plate 1 of 2! Sooo yummy!

After our gigantic lunch, we thought we’d go a little lighter for dinner and headed down to Crystal City to meet a friend for tapas at Jaleo. Jaleo is a restaurant owned by the locally famous Spanish chef José Andrés. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), the tapas were just too good to eat just one plate, and we ended up polishing off about eight plates of tapas between the four of us. My favorite was the “Patatas Bravas,” which were potatoes with spicy tomato sauce and aioli. Yummy.

Although still in a food coma, the next day for lunch a bunch of Global Scholars and I trooped down to Capitol South to go to We, The Pizza, another iconic DC establishment. Warning: The pizzas here are enormous! After eating three giant slices of pizza with delicious toppings (spinach and artichoke was my favorite), they practically had to roll me out of there!

Caroline, Aarathi, and Ronah enjoying some spinach and artichoke pizza.

Food break was a huge success and visiting all the restaurants let me see a lot of the city. Even though I didn’t leave AU this fall break, I still managed to visit two different states, see the Capitol building and the Library of Congress! DC is awesome!