The Reef madness (Tell Your Children)

I was starving and freezing up there on the third floor and still dazed from the handful of Sam Adams that had helped me get through the male beauty pageant known as "Mr. SAIS," where surprisingly toned, Speedoed and Spandexed classmates gyrated on stage and made clever economics jokes ("If you got a problem set, yo I'll solve it/check out the graph while my TA revolves it"). Still, even sober, toasty and un-PTSDed, I would have appreciated the food at The Reef (2446 18th St. NW).

Adams Morgan on a weekend night is more fraternity party than foodie paradise. And The Reef, with its fish tanks, bouncers and low lighting, looks deceptively like a bar/nightclub. Still, it lives up to its boast that its chef, who favors locally purveyed, seasonal vegetables, free-range poultry and meats and fair-catch seafood, "keeps it real." I tried the bison burger ($12), six ounces of New Frontier buffalo from Virginia topped by caramelized onions ($0.25) and blue cheese ($1), and the special fries, seasoned with lavender and sea salt. Delicious.

Bisontennial

I go in with the best intentions. Salad fixings, like an avocado, cucumbers and a "spring mix," that's all that's on my shopping list. But last night and again tonight, Whole Foods, that evil temptress, lured me to its butcher shop, where the buffalo meat is deeply discounted, and delicious.


Simmering some ground bison beef last night, I made a meat marinara and a pound of pasta, and I hoped that would be the end of my flirtation with at-home omnivoring. After all, after a year of eating almost nothing but steak in Uruguay, I have been trying to transition to tofu. Ah, but tonight the bison skirt steak caught my eye, and so I gathered up some green beans and onions, raided my roommate's Thai sauces and marinades, boiled yellow rice with frozen peas, and soon I was munching on the flesh of my childhood friends from the Bronx Zoo, those furry, lazy, regal creatures that my father, since July 4, 1976, has always called the "Bisontennial."