7:58 p.m. Magpie and the Tiger, a brand new restaurant serving Korean American meals, is on the high of each my and my boyfriend’s “to eat” listing, so we ebook our Saturday date night time reservation there. I haven’t eaten a correct meal all day, and we find yourself ordering nearly all of the menu. For drinks, I order the Matcha Sundown, a cocktail with grapefruit, yuzu, habanero, and matcha that comes virgin off the menu, however is now not that after I add soju to it ($9.00 virgin, $16.00 with alcohol). My boyfriend orders a bottle of Hana Makgeolli Takju ($48.00), a Korean rice wine, for us to separate. Starters embody the focaccia di recco ($13.00), which is harking back to a scallion pancake, and the mala tteokbokki ($16), a very spicy model of the Korean rice-cake snack. These are adopted by the yachae bokkum ($15.00), product of bok choy, mushrooms, and a 63-degree egg, and the lobster ginger-scallion guksu ($47.00). The noodles have a softly chewy chunk and will not be doused in a heavy sauce, which actually permits them to shine; they’re a number of the finest noodles I’ve had in latest reminiscence.

The star of the present is the entire rib kalbi ($68.00), which serves the meat sliced off the bone and comes with umami rice, ssamjang, and red-leaf lettuce. I grew up consuming ssäm at house, however that is the tastiest Korean barbecue lettuce wrap that I’ve encountered. I have to’ve stopped participating in dialog, as a result of my boyfriend tells me “you simply entered a unique world” after my third wrap. I do know this dish is a winner as a result of my boyfriend, whom I’ve by no means seen take leftovers from a meal, requested for this to be wrapped (no pun supposed). Dessert is the ube hotteok ($9), an ube ice cream on high of a heat doughnut. Our examine comes with two shortbread cookies within the form of magpie birds, and is $306.24, $20.00 of which I’ve already paid for after I made our reservation, and the rest of which is roofed by my boyfriend. Once more, relationship fairness.

11 p.m. Our remaining cease of the night time is at L’Annexe, a cocktail bar in Georgetown that serves probably the most distinctive drinks I’ve seen. We normally run into our pals right here, and have additionally befriended its administration. We regularly partake in a “workforce assembly” (a spherical of tequila pictures) with the bar employees once we come. I as soon as introduced pandan and activated charcoal as drink components, simply to see what L’Annexe might provide you with. (I feel the latter is benign in small doses, however beware that it may be a drugs disruptor.) Quickly afterward, they had been each on the menu—the pandan in a drink known as Spruce Banner, which incorporates gin, arak, mastiha, chartreuse, cucumber, lemon, mint, and the activated charcoal in a drink named Esmoquin, that includes mezcal, crème de cacao, and orange bitters. I’m not saying I’m chargeable for this, however I’m not not. One of many cooks at Chez Billy Sud, a close-by French bistro, even favored it a lot that he requested the L’Annexe employees how this drink got here to be—after which he got here as much as me within the bar to thank me for serving to create it. Tonight, the bar supervisor brings us a spherical of champagne upon arrival, and it’s this service and familiarity that retains us coming again. I put in an order for Honeydew You Love Me ($18.00), a frothy gin drink with notes of melon and a mushy inexperienced hue, which can now be my favourite drink of all time. I seize the examine for the each of us and tip additional, so it comes out to $50.00.

Saturday whole: $70.00

Sunday

8:40 a.m. For concern of waking up my boyfriend at an ungodly hour on a Sunday morning, I take my morning Americano and work conferences within the hallway exterior of my rental. I return to seek out him already awake and watching golf—the ultimate spherical of The Open is on.