Assaggi Mozzarella Bar

Assaggi means "tastings," though for a while I thought it meant just plates because of the nice collection of ceramic plates on the wall. The specialty is a mozzarella plate with buffalo mozzarella, buffalo ricotta and burrata along with condiments like grilled zucchini, roasted peppers and green tomato marmalade. This is ideal for sharing and the four of us also shared the salumi plate with prosciutto, salami, speck and a couple of other cured meats.

The cheeses were creamy and delicate and paired very nicely with the condiments. While the portions were not huge, the combination of plates was enough to make us all comfortable with just ordering pasta as a main course. I got the dill tagliolini with Dungeness crab meat and green peas, which was different and tasty. Others seemed quite happy with their choices as well, though I didn't taste any of them. The hard crust bread was delicious and they brought more when you asked.

We accompanied with a very nice Aglianico, a black grape varietal from the Basilicata and Campania regions of southern Italy, which I don't think I'd ever had before. It was among the more moderately priced selections (the online menu doesn't have it so I don't have the details) and turned out to be very good value, with a rich, mineral taste, quite velvety. We liked it well enough to order a second bottle.

It's a testimony to the richness of Italian cuisine that this Bethesda restaurant can carve out its own distinctive niche among Italian offerings and introduce us to things that are new. All in all, very pleasant and worth revisiting. Note to those who care about this, it is fairly noisy and we even had a table at the end of the bench that was not in the noisiest part of the restaurant.

Falafels

The best falafel I've found in Washington is at the Ali Baba's Falafel stand in Bethesda, on the corner of the Women's Cooperative Market. The owner is Egyptian and makes his falafels with fava beans instead of chickpeas. The main thing is that they are fresh, with flavorful spices, fried fresh and accompanied with enough salad and goop to really make a meal (stick with the small size, the big one is too big).

On a second trip, I tried the beef gyro and that was terrific. The beef was marinated, grilled and matching anything from Moby Dick or any of the other gyro purveyors in town.

I'm told there is a great falafel at the place on P Street, at about 22nd, but I haven't gotten down there to try it yet. I'm always searching for a falafel to match my memory of the Sunday falafels on Rue des Rosieres when I lived in Paris. There was one stand in particular that took the little croquettes fresh out of the fryer, still sizzling with grease, and put it in the pita bread with red cabbage and a couple of great sauces. Divine.

Someone who visited Rue des Rosieres recently said it had lost much of its character, which is inevitable, I suppose. And the falafels probably were never as good as they remain in my memory. But I will continue my search.