As a Mount Pleasant resident, I'm so sad that Nana is closing the brick & mortar shop. I loved having them in the neighborhood. You never know what you had till it's gone, eh? They threw a fun Valentine's-themed pop-up on Saturday (as written about in R29) with jewelry, cards, hipster accoutrement, and live music. What a charming scene!
The stenciled, hand-painted fabrics from DC Etsy seller Printed Wild totally won me over. A little cosmetic bag came home with me — more on that later! Didn't purchase anything for anyone else, only Valentine's Day presents for myself.
I chatted with the employee who rung up my purchase, and she said Nana has the space till the end of February, so there will be one last hurrah party in Mount Pleasant. But Nana will keep doing similar pop-up marts around the city, which is something fun to add to your calendars this spring. And this is complete scuttlebutt, but I heard a gourmet grocer might be coming to the Nana space. We shall see.
On Friday, I headed one neighborhood over to Adams Morgan for a Restaurant Week dinner with friends at the much-hyped, Obama-approved Mintwood Place. Wouldn't it be crazy to pick out the DC places where the President goes for date nights? I'm pretty sure Obama isn't constantly refreshing his food blog reader, so someone must have that job. "Barry, the kids on Yelp are going crazy for the escargot hushpuppies at this place."
Anyway, big thanks to my friend Carolyn who scored us the reservation. She's so with it. I took note of the globe light fixtures at Mintwood, after reading on Eater that ne'er do wells keep stealing them. People are so weird. The City Paper too just ran an article about how apparently everyone pockets copper mugs in restaurants. What? If you frequent PX and Bar Pilar, you can afford to buy your own dang mugs. I guess people will steal anything that's not nailed down, or even if it is nailed down, in the case of the light fixtures.
This one inside Mintwood Place is safe though, phew! We loved the atmosphere, and all four courses of our meal lived up to the hype, as Carolyn's boyfriend Alex noted. I was partial to the burrata and kale starter and the baked Alaska. Can't wait to go back! Even a cocktail at the bar would be fun.
After dinner, I made Joe watch the film "The Loneliest Planet." It has Gael García Bernal in it, Cup of Jo blogged about it, and it involves a couple dealing with a fluke encounter on a hiking trip that shakes their entire relationship. Sounds interesting, right?
Well, to give you an idea of how snail's pace slow this film was, there would be a wide shot of the couple hiking starting in one corner of the tv screen and then you'd watch the entirety of their walk to the other side of the screen. I felt I could go to the bathroom and return and they still wouldn't have reached the television's right side.
With the last scene, I told Joe, "Sorry to make you watch this. I thought it would be a little more fast-paced than people taking down a tent in real time."
"It's OK. They're actually pretty quick at taking down the tent, I'll give them that," he said.
So the landscape was beautiful, but you could compress the action into about five minutes. I'm alright with slow movies, but this felt like it never built to anything and people didn't talk about things like normal humans. Also, the girl annoyed me. OK, rant over. Have you seen it? Am I showing my gnat-like attention span or do you agree? It got good reviews. I suppose I prefer more of a plot and dialogue.
Those are my weekend highlights. I also watched "Couples Retreat," which is a sentence I never ever thought I'd write. That one was not my pick.
