It's no secret I love a good deal, some would call me cheap but I call it being smart. Saving in some places affords us the ability to splurge in others. Chris however would like nothing to do with coupons or deals, it is just an added hassle to him. So you can imagine my surprise when he purchased a Living Social deal and was all giddy about it. He called me up all excited that he bought 2 Living Social deals for a 5 course beer paring at Birch and Barley. I'm 100% positive the only reason he bought this was because he saw the word BEER... and because he loves Birch and Barley. When talking to him about the deal I asked, how much did you pay....uh.... "I don't remember was his response" ok... well honey it sounds good and we left it at that.
A couple days later I get a call from Chris saying... "remember that deal I bought... well I didn't read the fine print and a friend I know that works for Living Social just pinged me about what day I was going" He then proceeded to explain what he purchased; the deal was for a pop up resturant cooked by the chef from Birch and Barley located at the new Living Socials building 918 F Street and it was only good for a few days.
Luckily we caught this two days before the deal expired and was able to make a reservation, if we had missed it I would have been pretty livid. We arranged for Grandma and Grandpa to watch Virginia and were getting excited for the night out in the city. Then it started to dawn us that we would be drinking a lot and how were we going to get home? We came to the conclusion we would need to stay the night, lucky for us we have a few free nights with Kimpton hotels due to the conferences we plan at their hotels, so Chris booked us a night at the Hotel George for free:)
This was really shaping up to a be a fun night and all for a good deal (or so I thought)
We arrived at the hotel George checked in and then hopped in a cab (cha ching) and headed over to the REAL Birch and Barley for a pre dinner beer, Chris briefly mentioned this part but I wasn't really listening, the reason we were going on Thursday night was because he planned a Tech happy hour that night and wanted to kill two birds with one stone. We kept trying to explain to people at the happy hour that we were going to a Birch and Barley dinner but not at the restaurant, this new concept was a little confusing to most.
After sipping a few pre diner brews we hopped in another cab (cha ching) and headed over to this infamous 918 F street.
First impressions were quite impressive, I loved the architecture of the building and of course Chris loved the HUGE screens.
We were greeted at the door by young hip Living Social staff sporting the Living Social tshirt and then proceeded to the check in table. We will say this was a little odd, we were in the mood to have a 5 course dinner and something about someone in a tshirt with a huge logo on it threw us off. But when they explained that a yoga and painting class were also going on the building we understood the casualness of the tshirt.
A history lesson on the way up to the 3rd floor, this building houses the last caged elevator in the District.
Now onto why we came, the food and beer! Yes I was that girl that took a photo of every course, so if you were there and kept seeing a flash go off now you know why.
I'm not a huge foodie so I don't want to critique this menu too much, all I can say as an average person is that I was slightly disappointed in having an all pasta meal for $85! But Chris did keep reminding me that the beer we were drinking alone made up for it.
I took photos of the beer too, but honestly they didn't turn out, so I'll just share Chris's notes. After he tasted each beer I asked for his comments, these notes are exactly the words he said, no editing. For your reference here are the beers:
3. Pepe Nero
4. McChouffe
5. Aventinus
As a nice take home treat they ended dinner with this lemon poppy muffin for breakfast the next morning. Because this is run 100% by Living social no payment beyond the $85 is expected, we even asked if we should leave a tip and they said no it's all covered. So...all in all I guess it wasn't that bad of a deal.
Chris just couldn't get enough Birch and Barley so after taking this cute pic and saying good bye to the Living Social staff we walked off some of that beer and walked back to Birch and Barley to see if the happy hour was still going on, sadly it wasn't but that didn't stop us from enjoying one last beer (cha ching), we did have a hotel after all.
We cabbed it back to the hotel (cha ching) passed out and woke up to a $48 valet parking bill (cha ching)
Oh well, I can't say this night was a deal but it sure was fun pretending I was young again living in the city. By 10 am on Friday I was back to my normal life at a play date with Virginia.
Oh and the fish tacos were one of the best we've had, we just wish they served 3 instead of 2. Chris rates these a 4 1/2 out of 5
The owner can thank her very talented Architect husband Bill 
As many of you know my husband is a huge beer snob so when he came home from the Reston Wine Festival with 1 ½ cases of wine I was in shock!!! I had sent him there with Adam to get him out of the house while I studied for my ARE exam and when he came back he was raving about all the great wine he tasted. I was jealous and upset that I had missed all that great wine, so when Aimee his wife invited us to dinner at a new wine bar in Reston, I knew we were all in. Located in the new Weston Heights, Vinifera had just opened a week before and we didn’t know what to expect, Zagot had raved about the food but didn’t give much detail about the place as a whole. As always Westin didn’t disappoint (as Aimee knows being the highest level Starwood member). The place was beautiful with its high ceilings and modern feel, however it was missing one key thing, people. Besides a large group of Asian travelers we really were almost the only ones there. We immediately glanced at the menu looking for the sample wines or flights as most wine bars call them, nothing….. This was a huge disappointment but after one visit from the sommelier “Buddy” we were back on the right track. We had explained that we came for the wine and wanted a complete tasting, we even offered to pay for a tasting but Buddy refused and proceeded to bring out a full tasting of both white and red. He explained everything about each wine, me not knowing much about wine just smiled and drank, some I loved and others I passed on to Chris. My favorite part about the whole thing were the glasses they served the wine in, it was a combination between a stemless wine glass and a shot glass. I was also impressed when they poured our wine into a decanter before serving it to us, very cool... Here are some decanters from 
