It was strange and yet so very familiar, as I waited in front of the bookstore for Brandon to pull up, and there was Bridgit in the passenger seat. Deja vu, really. And I sat, and we all said hi, and off we went, looking for bars. Bridgit had one she wanted to hit, but there was another I suggested, along the way, which was Voila!, and so that was the first we went to. Along the way, we shared a delightful apple, and drove through the dark Arboretum, and then we were down by Madison Park, and had found our way to the bar. The apple was finished on the street, and as there was no garbage can, we were forced to leave it to fertilize a shrub.
It used to be Gitano, and before that Gypsy (which is just Gitano in a different language, but it was a totally different place) and something else long before that. Now it was Voila!, opened by the same people who had run Figaro Bistro. The space hasn't changed much since Gitano, although there was new paint, and the bar was a little different. It seemed more open, as well, but that might just be false memory, because it's a small space, and it can't be that open anyway.
We sat right at the bar, because there was room for us there and not really anywhere else. The place, although small, was rather full, and the waitstaff was hustling to keep up. As a result they only said hello, and that they would be with us in a moment, and then bustled off. There was a lot of that, as we sat, and the staff hurried to this and that, and we chatted, before we got helped. While normally this might count against them, they had two things going for them, which were that we could see they were really busy, and that we all wanted, I think, to catch up. So we had our chat, and didn't mind at all about the slow service.
I got a vodka tonic, while there was wine for the others (I think...I may be confusing this with the next bar, or there may have been wine at both, which is, I think, the accurate case). We drank and chatted some more, about the bar, about Bridgit and cooking school and marriage and New Orleans and so on, and about nothing in particular as well, which is really why Bridgit was always one of our favorites to go out with, because it was so easily possible to just chat forever with her.
Voila! was nice, a good place to hang out if you weren't in a hurry, and the food was probably rather good, but we didn't get any, because we were saving ourselves for the next bar. I think I might have liked Gitano better, but there's no use crying over lost bars, and Voila! is certainly good enough to visit.
After a time, we were ready to go, because we had another bar to hit, but the staff was still busy, so getting the check took some while. But it was eventually obtained, and then we headed out into the night again, on our way up to Capitol Hill, and the new restaurant/bar Via Tribunali, which will be, if you're clever, your summer lunch spot of choice.
Posted by Jason at February 13, 2005 10:08 AM