Eating is not always about the food

I like good food and don't like to eat bad food, let alone junk food, particularly when I go to a restaurant. But sometimes there are other priorities than just the food. I meet regularly with a couple of groups of writers and it is the company rather than the food that makes the meeting worthwhile. In fact, the food takes a decidedly back seat, and we trade the comfort and convenience of some oldline eateries for fancy fixings.

The one meeting is with a group of about 70 published authors in the DC area convened a couple of times a year by Dan Moldea. It's a group that fits with a little squeezing into the Rathskeller at Old Europe, a Washington standby that hides its Bavarian identity behind a European facade. Dan has a deal with the restaurant for a prix fixe menu at $25, with a choice of pork schnitzel, trout, chicken or steak in the entree, preceded by salad and followed by apple strudel for dessert. This is not award-winning cuisine and if it is Zagat-rated, I'd probably rather not know the rating. But I like a breaded pork schnitzel and the cottage fries and red cabbage that go with it and it's the chance to mingle with a group of writers that counts.

More recently, a smaller group of us, a kind of subset of the Moldea group, has begun meeting for lunch on a monthly basis. The initiator of this group picked Hamburger Hamlet, a pre-franchise hamburger joint on Old Georgetown Road. It is the kind of place where only the brave venture any dish besides the namesake hamburger, which is pretty good, has all the fixings and decent fries. Someone else suggested a Portuguese restaurant which has white tablecloths and a more sophisticated menu, but he was voted down, unanimously.

An earlier writers group I belonged to met regularly at the Democratic Women's Club, an historic building at Dupont Circle, which served a hot meal buffet style for just $16, but they had to shut down their kitchen operation and the group itself is fairly moribund.

Bottom line is that for some meals, even when the creative muse is involved, humdrum food can fill the bill. It's easy, quick and doesn't distract from the purpose at hand.