Jack and Jackie, Abe Lincoln, and the Reduced Shakespeare Company

What a pleasant surprise it was to see the plaque in the picture above when we sat down to dinner Friday night at Martin's Tavern. (Click here to see a larger version of the picture.) The restaurant, in Washington's Georgetown neighborhood, bills itself on its Web site as "one of the few Washington, D.C., establishments at the heart of the city since the Great Depression."

My friend Walter, who lives in Connecticut, and I have met in D.C. each summer for the past few years. Two years ago, our friends Dottie Lu and Les, who live in southern Maryland, began driving into D.C. to meet us for an evening. We've known Dottie Lu since the 1960s, and her partner, Les, has been a welcome addition to the gatherings.

This year, Dottie Lu and Les joined us for an enjoyable two-hour Segway tour that visited spots in D.C. associated with Abe Lincoln and his assassination. I had written a paper in college on the purported role of boarding-house owner Mary Surratt in the assassination plot, so I was eager to see her house, which still stands in what is now Washington's Chinatown. Other interesting stops on the tour were Ford's Theatre, where Lincoln was shot, and the Petersen House across the street, where Lincoln died the next morning.

(History buffs will remember that at 7:22 a.m. on April 15, 1865, Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, who was present in the house when Lincoln died, announced, "Now he belongs to the ages.")

We had left to Dottie Lu and Les the decision about where to go for dinner. Their choice was Martin's Tavern. When the Segway tour wrapped up shortly after 9 p.m., we headed to Georgetown. All four of us were surprised to be seated in the booth in which JFK had proposed to Jackie. Dottie Lu told us she had requested the "best table in the house" when she had made the reservations months before, but she hadn't known that we'd be in this particular booth.

The table made the evening even more memorable for me. So did the food. I opted for a tavern special, Brunswick stew, expecting what I would get if I ordered the same thing in Richmond. The Martin's version, while quite different, was unexpectedly good. Instead of a thick, eat-it-with-a-fork stew, what Martin's serves is more akin to a soup. Although it was made with the usual fresh tomatoes, corn, butterbeans and chicken, the broth was thinner and laced with butter and cream. I tasted it with trepidation and then ate it with gusto -- and with the most delicious bread I've had in ages.

Other highlights of my weekend in D.C. also centered on food, especially a pizza Saturday night at an Italian restaurant on Pennsylvania Avenue. The menu listed a pizza Margherita. On a trip to Florence several years ago I tried one at a tiny place near the train station. With a crispy, thin crust and fresh tomatoes, mozzarella, basil and extra-virgin olive oil, it was one of the best pizzas I had ever eaten. I had two more on successive days. But the pizza Margherita at the Washington restaurant included tomato paste. Nuh-uh! Not what I wanted. But there was a create-your-own option, so I selected a white pizza with diced tomatoes, mozzarella and basil. Voila! An excellent pizza Margherita -- or at least as close to it as I have come in the States.

I also enjoyed a performance at the Kennedy Center's Terrace Theatre of "Completely Hollywood (abridged)" by the Reduced Shakespeare Company. Or should I say I enjoyed what I got to see of it? For another take on the performance, be sure to read my friend Walter's blog entry titled Two Strikes and You're Out and a follow-up titled Manning Up.

The Reduced Shakespeare Company apparently has a Google alert on its name and quickly responded to Walter's scathing criticism of the performance with a tweet to its followers. Don't miss the post-tweet comments to Walter's two blog posts: they're probably the best parts. After reading his first post, RSC described Walter as an "a**hole." That was a shoot-from-the-hip criticism that, while true from RSC's point of view, does Walter a minor injustice. Like onions, we are all made up of many layers, and I am familiar enough with his varied and interesting layers to ignore gratuitously insulting opinions.

For example ...

One day while we were in D.C., I showed up for lunch wearing khaki shorts, a purple T-shirt and white tennis shoes. After I insisted that Walter explain his incredulous look, he told me I was dressed like trailer trash. No problem: Walter is often disconcertingly direct, and his comment rolled off like water off a duck's back. All I had to do was silently repeat my usual mantra: Consider the source.

The Reduced Shakespeare Company would have been wise to do the same.

NOTE: In my blog post of July 2, I wrote: "[D]oes anybody really expect that people will flock to the [Virginia Museum of Fine Arts] on Christmas, New Year's, July 4th and Thanksgiving, days on which VMFA has historically been closed? Not me. My guess is that you'll find very few, if any, people at the museum on those holidays." I was wrong in my prediction. I am told by my sources at VMFA that more than 1,000 people showed up on July 4.