Jill and I were over in the Virginia suburbs buying a wedding present for our friends Matt Cutter and Maureen Creedon who are getting married this coming weekend. Since we had eaten in on Friday--the night we normally go out for dinner--we had agreed to dine out after our shopping experience, and the mall had one of the Legal Sea Foods restaurants in it. On checking with the hostess, however, we discovered that the wait, even at 9pm at night, was an hour long. I'd had my fill of the mall so I said forget it.

The only problem with making the kind of decision that late at night is trying to decide where to go. One possibility was J. Gilberts in McLean, VA, a kind of steak and fish joint that we first went to a month ago, and that I like, because they have my current favorite weird martini garnish: the blue cheese stuffed olive (try it before you think me crazy). But Jill had also talked recently to one of the people at the stable where she keeps her horse and got a recommendation for a restaurant on MacArthur Blvd. called Starland Cafe. Jill had thought it was out Cabin John way, but I had googled the address and found it just off Arizona, our normal route to-and-from the northern VA area.

Starland Cafe is a neighborhood cafe, which in the District means that you have to find a parking place on the street. As we were doing so, we were surprised by the number of restaurants in that general area that we had never known were there. One looked like a family-style Italian restaurant; another, named Bambu, had a grand opening banner out front. We were slightly worried that Starland wouldn't be seating for dinner still at 9:30pm, but on Friday and Saturday they are open until 11pm.

The atmosphere is casual, albeit the room wasn't as loud as some of our local restaurants like 2 Amys or Cafe Deluxe (or maybe the amount of people at 9:30 was just less). The tables have "Palisades" on the top, as if they were bought bargain sale from another restaurant, and the chairs are a mixture of wooden and wicker/plastic (deck or backyard type lawn furniture). There's not much of a distinction between bar and dining, and of course the barflies were smoking like chimneys.

Given all that, you'd think the experience would be a downer. But the food was surprisingly good. We went cheap on the wine and just got a couple of glasses: a Hardys Chardonnay for me (too sweet by far, but at $5 what do you expect) and a Hogue Cabernet-Merlot for Jill. We spit the chop house salad, as it was a vegetarian version of that staple, with diced vegetables and blue cheese over romaine lettuce. It was good, but needed a touch more dressing as I thought it was too dry.

For entrees, Jill got the Portobello Mushroom mignon over mashed potatoes with a side of asparagus. I didn't have a bite, but it looked scrumptious, and she ate every last bit of it. I splurged on the Market Fish special, a Halibut over sushi rice with bok choy, swimming in a soy soup-like sauce. Both entrees were presented very well--better than the decor of the restaurant itself.

While the prices weren't as high as the normal District extreme (my fish was $17 while Jill's portobello was $13), they price this restaurant out of being a weekday visit (when we usually try to keep the bill under $30), but as one of our Friday night stops, we expect to return sometime--especially since they're so close to us. That's recommendation enough, I think.