A Comedic Birthday Dinner

Katie Laramore and Troy Clark save a parking space.

On Sunday, my daughter Katie and husband Kevin Laramore arranged to take Ken and me along with Sean Hatch and Troy Clark to Ethan Stowell's new restaurant on Capital Hill, Rione XIII, to celebrate my birthday.  Katie sent a flurry of brief text messages to me and Sean to make all the arrangements.  And as we all know, because of their brevity and sometimes incomprehensible abbreviations, text messages are often a challenging communications tool.  At one point, I thought she had cancelled the whole evening whereas she had meant to say that she was only cancelling a portion of the afternoon.

Kevin Laramore, as valet.

She planned an early dinner because she thought she would be bringing her two young sons, three-year-old Cutter and eighteen-month-old Bode to the celebration too.  So our instructions were to meet them at Sean and Troy's home in Madison Park for a cocktail at 3:30 pm and then proceed to dinner at Rione XIII.  As it actually turned out, Kevin's parents, Jill & Rick Laramore offered to take the boys for the evening so the dinner turned out to be for adults only.  This was a good thing since it turned out that the restaurant is really not set up to be child friendly.

Kevin Laramore, Troy Clark, Ken Hatch

It was pouring rain when Ken and I pulled up in front of Sean and Troy's dark house.  Their home is always decorated perfectly for each season and though we could see the red ornaments hanging in their courtyard trees, none of the Christmas lights were on and the blow-up holiday Shrek lay in a limp lump in the courtyard.  Katie called us on my cell phone to say to stay dry and not get out of the car and that she was trying to locate Sean and Troy.  Just a few minutes went by and she called again to say that she had just reached Troy and that they had been in the garage so we should go ahead and come inside.

Cathi Hatch and Katie Laramore

We met Katie and Kevin in the dark courtyard and then trooped into Sean and Troy's house ready for our pre-dinner cocktail.  Troy seemed confused as he opened the door into their dark house and hung our coats in the closet.  Finally, we asked where is Sean and Troy responded that he was in Washington D.C.  At that point, we finally figured out that when Katie had texted Sean about dinner on Sunday, he assumed she meant the following Sunday!

Making a wish!

So at that point Katie decided that we should just kidnap Troy and all go on to the restaurant and arrive just a little early.  Of course it is virtually impossible to find parking on Capital Hill and when we arrived, I was trying to get Ken as close to the entrance as possible so he wouldn't have far to walk and finally parked halfway into a no parking zone.

We then spent the next hour watching the street and each time a car pulled out, Kevin, taking the role of valet, would run outside and move our car into a more favorable position until about the fourth time he moved the car, he was able to pull up right in front of the restaurant into the space that Katie and Troy were saving for him.

Loved the chandeliers!

The restaurant interior is comfortable, yet sophisticated. The food and service were both excellent.  For an appetizer, we shared deep fried risotto mozzarella balls with housemade tomato sauce and we virtually licked the plates clean.  Katie and I shared an order of fresh pasta with a carbonara sauce and Ken ordered sweetbreads which none of us wanted to share.  He said they were great but we were not interested in trying them.

We ran into friend Elisabeth Bodal along with her family and they seemed to be enjoying Rione XIII just as much as we did.