Cheery Observations

We are embarking on the next chapter of our lives and moving to Brooklyn, NY in a week.  We’re both excited and anxious!  I have been spending a bit of time reflecting on places, both retail and food related, in the Washington, DC area that I would consider to be the ‘best of the area’ (and thus, places that I’ll miss going to on a regular basis!).  I’ll start with ‘retail’ tonight and then write DC area food and restaurant post early next week.

Tabletop:  Tabletop should be considered the DC area’s go-to interior decoration store.  They tout themselves as selling ‘functional objects for all surfaces’.  The shop is full of wonderful items from a variety of designers, such as Jonathan Adler, Marimekko, Eva Zeisel, and Orla Kiely.  As its name would suggest, if you’re looking for a place to liven up your apartment or house, this is the spot:  creative and eclectic shower curtains, place mats, furniture, books, frames.  Tabletop sells designers that are not easily found at other locations in DC.

Le Village Marche:  The store is located in Shirlington Village, which is charming and walkable, though lacking in retail.  Le Village Marche (also owner of the new Verbena, a paper store) is like stepping into a pseudo-European boutique (as if there is such a thing!).  The owner loves all things French, specifically Parisian, and the store is packed with vases, plates, glasses, wrapping paper, candles, and soaps all designed to alert your senses and evoke France.  Both Tabletop and Village Marche are great places to go if you (or your home) needs a pick-me-up, or if you’re looking for a unique gift.

Bellacara:  Located in Old Town Alexandria, Bellacara carries cosmetics, hair products, and general beauty products from Molten Brown, Mario Bedescu, Kiehls, Fresh, Paula Dorf. etc.  These are all products that you could find at a variety of other stores in the DC area, but it’s quite nice to have a locally owned stored for one-stop shopping.  The store’s layout is very welcoming and is pleasingly arranged, with all the products available for a quick sample.

Hill’s Kitchen: We enjoy William Sonoma for its sheer quantity of amazing kitchen products.  If given the choice (and if we had lived a little closer to Capital Hill), we would have done of all our kitchen and food related shopping at the gem, Hill’s Kitchen.  Located in a historic rowhouse right across from the metro, the owner Leah Daniels is a born and raised Washington, DC-er and is extremely proud of her community (and store).  This pride is completely justified:  Hill’s Kitchen is stocked with hand picked and hard to find kitchen products, from Mauviel to Emile Henry that are often harder to find in a store like William Sonoma.  Leah is always readily available to make astute recommendations or talk about new products and how she uses them.  The second floor of the rowhouse is used for amazing cooking classes.  We were lucky enough to attend a Knife Skills class and feel much more useful in the kitchen because of it.

Kramerbooks:  DC is home to two exceptional bookstores:  Politics and Prose and Kramerbooks.  Politics and Prose is a wonderful place to spend some time browsing (or to go see a book talk—in the Spring we went to see Eric Kessler, author of ‘The End of Overeating’, speak).  Unfortunately from our vantage point in Arlington, it can be difficult to get to Politics and Prose as it’s located far up on Connecticut Ave.  We are much more familiar with Kramerbooks, in Dupont Circle, which is lively and accessible at all hours of every day.  Kramerbooks carefully selects its display books to be current and unexpected:  they go beyond the New York Times bestsellers or Oprah’s book club.  I always leave with either a bunch of ideas for future books to read or a bag full of books (this is more likely).  Kramerbooks has a wonderful kids, religion, and travel sections.  They also have both a café and restaurant, making it a really fun place to browse and hangout.

Lost Boys: (Justin’s recommendation and review) DC may be America’s political capital, but it’s often not a leader in men’s fashion: over-sized black suits, double-pleated pants, and white dress shirts constitute the majority of men’s clothes sold here.  Thankfully, there’s been some great editions in the fashion scene here in the last few years, and Lost Boys has been at the forefront of that trend.  Lost Boys is hardly a “secret discovery”, but that doesn’t change its extremely welcoming feel. The Lost Boys collection is lovingly maintained by store owner Kelly Muccio; visit Lost Boys while she’s there, and she’ll gleefully outfit you head-to-toe in the latest fashions from New York and LA. You’ll have a tough time affording your outfit, but leaving with just a few pieces is bound to increase your style.

After our mini-moon, Justin and I had to take an unexpected trip up north to Massachusetts.  On the way back, we decided to spend a night in Brooklyn.  We’ve been talking about doing this for many months and figured ‘there’s no time like the present’.  We stayed at seemingly the only hotel in Brooklyn (which certainly keeps the ‘tourist presence’ low) and had an amazing time exploring Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, and a brief walk around Dumbo.

On our first afternoon, we immediately stumbled upon The Greenmarket Borough Hall Farmers’ Market (which takes place on Tuesdays and Fridays).  It was a low key market, with WONDERFUL looking tomatoes and breads, nestled in a courtyard with a view of the Brooklyn Bridge.  On Sunday we were also able to walk around Greenmarket’s Carroll Gardens’ market and sampled some Hudson Valley wine.

Downtown Brooklyn

There are far too many cute and quirky shops and restaurants to list all at once and we obviously only had a chance to try a few.  Here are some highlights:

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Driving home last week, exhausted after our two weeks away, and very sick of being in the car, we were approaching the final stretch of road before D.C.:  Gettysburg and Frederick.   As I was aimlessly staring out the window near Gettysburg, a homemade (but very legible) sign on the side of the road caught my eye:  ‘Small Farmers Love Their Jobs’.  ‘Okay’, I thought…’interesting’.  About a half mile down the road, there was another sign—something along the lines of ‘And You’ll Love Their Food’.  This immediately perked me up.  The signs continued for the next 3 miles, with phrases like ‘We have the ripest plums around’; ‘Do you like Tomatoes?’; ‘We have tomatoes!’; ‘Sweet Corn!’; ‘We sell pottery too’; and‘You know you want a mug…’.

Gettysburg Countryside

Needless to say, I started reading these signs out loud to Justin.  The final sign said something like ‘If you want the freshest fruit AND amazing pottery, turn here.’  Uhh, okay!  Yes, we eagerly turned off the exit, in anticipation of what we might find.

We drove about a mile down the road and came upon an amazing set up:  two homes and a huge farm stand.  One home was where the couple lived (more about them in a few sentences…) and the other one was completely dedicated to their pottery store/studio.  Outside of the studio was a wealth of fresh fruit and vegetables (watermelons, plums, peaches, cucumbers, tomatoes, etc).  There were also numerous shelves set up around the yard full of pottery.  Before we even had a chance to look around, we were immediately offered a plum and a peach to try because ‘they were amazing’.  Okay, first the original signs on the road and now free fruit?!  We were completely taken with the whole operation.

Lion Potter's Green Tea Shallow Dragonfly Bowl

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