Dinner in DC

I’m up in Washington for what I call a blizzard and my friend from New England says is a dusting of snow. Yeah, five inches.

I am an intellectual bigamist. When I’m in Palm Beach, I dress like the natives and am indistinguishable from the rest of the poseurs. Then when I come to Washington I don my journalistic garb, a ratty jacket and scruffy shoes, never leave the house without my hands stained with ink, pepper my conversations with the word “fuck” and snarl greetings to anyone outside my sacred circle of journalists.

In Palm Beach, there are more Italian restaurants than there are in Rome. At dawn the trucks laden with pasta make their way onto the island. In Washington, there are Ethiopian restaurants by the score, Indian takeouts on every corner, Thai places squeezed among Vietnamese restaurants and hardly any Italian restaurants. Oh there is an Italian chain restaurant. It starts with an “M” and that’s all I’m saying. The portions are gigantic, at least four times what a normal person would eat. They don’t give you plates. You line up at a trough.