Restaurant – Farewell to Poste

It’s amazing how a place can evoke a feeling.  How being there, or sometimes even just thinking about that place will bring back memories.  Today, I’m going to talk a little bit about a restaurant that is closing in a little over a month, and what it has meant to me.

I’d been to Poste before – happy hour with friends where we drooled over the truffle fries.  So when the boy and I were planning our first date and were trying to find a good central location, we thought of Poste.  During that time was doing a 100 Happy Days photo project, so convinced the Boy to let me take a picture of part of our dinner (and also of his very handsome elbow).  We bonded over loving macaroni and cheese and being tempted to order it in every restaurant we visited.  I also gushed about the truffle fries, and so we had an order of those as well.  I had mussels as a main course (my favorite!) but was so nervous to meet a wonderful guy that I was hardly able to eat anything.  But Poste was terrific – we showed up close to 8, and stayed so late talking that they had to ask us to leave.  On a Thursday.  It was amazing, and felt like the kind of first date you see in movies or read about.

Poste became our go-to – if we had theater tickets and wanted a delicious pre-show meal, we went to Poste.  We went there for my mom’s birthday, and then exactly one year after our first date, we had theater tickets again…and went back to celebrate.  It was pretty wonderful.

So when I found out a month ago that Poste would be closing on May 31, I knew we had to make at least one more return trip.  Luckily we had theater tickets, so we were able to have one of our favorite shared hobbies coincide with our last trip to Poste.

Upon arriving, I ordered a cocktail, because their drinks are usually very yummy.  I ordered the Dickel & Berries – not just because I have the sense of humor of a 12-year-old boy, but because it was cinnamon-infused whiskey with lemon and blackberry – some of my very favorite flavors.  And it was so good.  This is the kind of cocktail you could drink and drink until suddenly you’re swaying on the spot and never have felt the alcohol.

Since it’s traditional for us to order mac & cheese, we did so.  Poste’s is so good.  I’m sure there’s a not-too-difficult for truffle mac & cheese out there, I’ll just have to find it, and start making it myself.

The boy had the honey glazed eggplant, which is one of the vegetables he likes to order when we go out since I don’t like eggplant and so never make it at home. While he said it was super tasty, there wasn’t a lot of it, so thank goodness we had the mac & cheese to supplement his dinner.

I, on the other hand, needed very little supplementation.  I ordered the Cavatelli, which was delicious.  It had a lamb bolognese sauce (I ADORE lamb, so it was hard to resist there), and was made particularly interesting by the addition of a vadouvan curry in the sauce.  It was quite delectable, and it’s a good thing there was only one portion – given the option, this is a dish I could eat for days.

We were able to eat dessert before we left, but I don’t seem to have taken a picture, and looking at the menu, I can’t for the life of me remember what we had.

Saying goodbye to a favorite place is hard.  I know that if they remained open, we would have had many happy dinners there in the future.  But the restaurant business is a fickle one, and you can’t always have everything you want.  As the boy likes to remind me, the building isn’t being torn down, and while the place where we first sat and talked for hours on end will likely be gone, we’ll have the memories.  And someday in the future, as we walk through a downtown DC that is different than the one we know today we will stop and look at the place where it was and say to each other, “This is the place.  How magical was that night?” and then continue walking with nothing but happiness in our hearts.