A + B = C

It's a dilemma: where do you take a food-loving friend when he visits from out of town?

Our original plan to meet at 2:30 had been pushed forward to 5:30 and by then our options had changed a bit.

After meeting at my apartment (because how can you truly know someone until you've seen how she lives?) I showed him my Jackson Ward digs and we headed out.

Unsure where to begin given the limitations of Restaurant Week, my decision was made when he said he was craving a Negroni.

I threw caution to the winds and took him directly to Bobby at Bistro 27, knowing he'd supply something Negroni-like without being merely a Negroni.

Bobby delivered and my friend acknowledged that the beautifully orange and unique concoction would please even a non-Negroni lover.

Score one.

Just as the masses began arriving, we moved on to the Roosevelt so that I could show him how we do it Richmond style.

My favorite bar stools were empty and we slid into them like they'd been reserved for us while my companion began checking out the new-to-him space.

As I'd hoped, the all Virginia wine list pleased him as much as it does me, and he was amazed at the wine pricing.

He went with the Gabriele Rausse Rosso and I predictably began with Virginia Fizz.

If you can't celebrate seeing a D.C. friend with some bubbles, it's time to reevaluate that friendship.

No reevaluation was required.

He was enraptured with the menu, as pleased with its creativity as its pricing.

After last night's feast of two bellies, I bowed to his choices for tonight's meal.

He chose Lee's fried chicken slider, the chilled cucumber, avocado and buttermilk soup with jumbo lump crabmeat and lemon oil, and baked South Carolina polenta with slow cooked egg, grilled asparagus and stewed tomato.

According to him, and he's a pro, a vegetarian dish is the best measure of a kitchen's capabilities.

It took only one bite of the slider for him to start rhapsodizing about it; he thought the simple white roll was perfect, noting that a D.C. restaurant would have gone for a fancier roll (brioche, perhaps?) and killed the slider's beautiful simplicity.

Pshaw, I said, I've had that slider to start brunch just because it's there.

The soup's island of jumbo lump crabmeat gave some heft to the delicately flavored dish, while the egg imparted a richness that belied the vegetarian dish's simple ingredients.

I get such a kick out of taking first-timers to the Roosevelt and watching them fall in love with it all.

That's probably why I keep doing it.

Like those before him, he was charmed by the feel of the room, bowled over by the wine list and menu pricing, impressed with the music, loving the ambiance and friendly vibe and reveling in the lack of pretension.

Yea, yea, just another night out in River City.

Actually it wasn't because we hadn't gotten together for months, meaning we had lots to share, both ancient history (lockers and short skirts in high school) and more recent (young editors and hometown arts districts).

As sunlight gave way to evening, he noted the change in the room's feel and we started considering dessert options to go with my Gabriele Rausse Vin de Gris.

Like anyone who lives north of northern Virginia, he couldn't resist the siren song of the Coca Cola cake and I had to admit I'd never had it.

It took barely two bites for the Coke flavor to register but actually it was the frosting I liked best.

My friend demurely kept his bites to a few while I ravaged the cake in that way I tend to do when I like a sweet.

I attribute that trait to my mother, who always taught us that no matter how full you are, there's always that little corner of your stomach empty for dessert.

By the time I finished the Coca Cola cake, there wasn't a centimeter of my stomach left empty for anything.

Score two.

Given the need for the out-of-towner to hit the road soon, we made one last, brief stop at Secco, presuming we'd missed the restaurant week crowd.

We had, although the bar was still hopping.

I dug into the secret stash, getting a glass of Domaine de Bagnol Cassis Rose after tasting its bone-dry minerality and seeing it as the ideal way to end my evening.

My visitor chose Commanderie de Peyrassol Rose so as not to duplicate my choice while we snacked on fried chickpeas and Gorgonzola-stuffed fried olives.

Not because we needed to, but because they're bar food of the highest order.

Hell, we could even justify the chickpeas as protein and believe it.

Leaving just as the Byrd let out, Friend commented how much like a university town it felt with people everywhere on the sidewalks and music being played just down the street.

Oh, this old town? We've had it for centuries.

Score three.

It's really no dilemma at all. Take a visitor to the places I like and if they like me, they'll like my favorites.

And if not, they never have to invite me up for dinner again.

Bet I get invited back up.

We Hold These Truths To Be Self- Evident

Poetry is the way we live.

Three minutes is enough for certain mollusks.

Ottowans will expect neighborhood wine shops.

Go ahead and leave, but you will return with a new appreciation for here.

No film school is required to make films.

If you're dying of a mysterious illness, never take something from a bottle labeled "The Cure."

Act One

The scene: Bistro 27

The players: Yours truly and a wine-savy friend

The food: Three-minute calamari in a basil tomato sauce over Byrds Mill grits. Cheese-stuffed empanadas with pesto aioli.

The surprise guests: A Canadian couple here for a real estate conference. They were impressed with how friendly people here are and appalled at their inability to find wine shops within walking distance of their hotel (I told them about The Hoppy Dog, a block away).

The conversation: Holding grudges, how a certain bass is a metaphor for a woman and a new winery.

Act Two

The scene: Firehouse Theater

The reason: "Days Gone By," the debut film of John Zhao, who was not a film student and had never made a film. After someone tried to rob him on Broad Street, he took refuge in the Firehouse where Project Resolution was showing local film shorts and he was hooked

The hook: The film was shot in digital, analog and on film.

The sentiment: After having moved to NYC (like countless other Richmonders), he's returned and acknowledged how much he missed this town and how satisfying it was to be back.

The surprise: The short film shown first, made by an HIV-positive black gay man who told his life story and thoughts via spoken word and a desire to make his life poetry, despite every societal strike against him.

The plot: Despairing boyfriend watches girlfriend dying and hallucinates along the way, with a few "A Clockwork Orange" moments thrown in for good measure. Oh, and some David Lynch.

The conclusion; King Family Viognier is good. Drugs mixed in a blender with alcohol and a stuffed animal are bad. Never fall for a girl just because she dances alone and you watch her.

The sweet ending: Limoncello, dark chocolate-drizzled pineapple and cheap laughs for language geeks.

The past, the present and the future walk into a bar.

If my life is a poem, I am hoping it is a rhyming couplet with the slyest of humor.

It was tense.

Too funny...and not at all the way I live.