After having dinner in Reston and staying overnight at the AC Hotel, we visited the Meadowlark Botanical Gardens in the morning. We saw the preparations for the Winter Walk of Lights as well as various flowers and a few birds. After, we had lunch in Vienna and visited the Leesburg Premium Outlets before returning home via Frederick.
Centreville
After visiting a friend in Virginia, we drove over to Centreville to visit the Matcha Cafe Maiko.
There was a sign explaining that there is currently a matcha shortage and that their matcha is not from their usual supplier. We ordered one matcha soft serve. It tasted a bit different, less strong than usual. Unfortunately, we’ve found that none of the Matcha Cafe Maiko franchisees are as good as the original store in Waikiki. But generally still better than anything else in the region.
We considered having dinner in Centreville but ultimately decided to continue on to Reston.
Reston
We drove right to the AC Hotel in Reston to check-in. Parking is in a garage under the hotel and can be accessed via interior elevators. This property opened earlier this year in January.
It was getting dark when we got to our room. There isn’t really much to see here from our north facing room in suburban NoVA.
The interior design was modern and similar to other new build Marriott hotels.
The bathroom was similar in design.
We headed outside to walk to the northern part of the expanded Reston Town Center development. There was a pedestrian bridge that crosses over the Washington & Old Dominion Trail, a former railway that has been turned into a pedestrian and bicycling trail. This was the view looking back to the south with the AC Hotel just left of center.
Matcha Lychee Lemonade
Matcha, Lemonade, Lychee Juice, Fresh Lychee, Lemon Wedge
We decided to have dinner at Jinya Ramen Bar, which we’ve visited once before. This local chain was founded by a Japanese chef who had some restaurant experience in Japan.
We ordered a Matcha Lychee Lemonade mocktail as it isn’t too often that we run into a drink with lychee in it. The most interesting aspect of this drink was that the matcha is whisked at the table by the waiter. This is done with a traditional bamboo whisk but rotated by an electric device that rotates the whisk. That’s not something we’ve seen before.
Juicy fried chicken thigh with an original garlic pepper served with mixed baby greens and JINYA’s original ponzu sauce.
For food, we started with the Crispy Chicken, or Karaage in Japanese. It unfortunately was not good. The five pieces were unevenly sized, which meant that the smaller pieces were extremely overdone, almost like jerky. Overall everything just felt over fried as well. We also don’t know why ketchup was served with it.
Fusion of Mexican Birria and Japanese Ramen! spiced beef and chicken broth, slow-cooked birria beef, red onion, green onion, cilantro and lime.
The birria ramen was interesting as it was like eating a taco! Not bad, but also probably not for everyone and without the real depth of flavor that you get with good ramen.
pork broth: pork chashu, kikurage, green onion, seasoned egg*, nori dried seaweed, red hot chili oil, spicy bean sprouts >>served with thick noodles Choose your preference of spicy level from 1-10. If you choose higher than level 6, an additional $1 will be added.
The red tonkotsu was surprisingly spicy for what was described as a medium level of spice, 4. If this was Japan, it would be 10. For the US, definitely spicier than medium Buffalo wings, which is the only comparison I can think of. This level of spice takes away from the flavor.
A manager did happen to come out of the kitchen and ask how our food was after we had finished eating. He comped us the mochi ice cream as a result. The mochi ice cream is best described as supermarket quality.
During our first and only other visit here, we just ordered their two non-spicy tonkotsu ramens. That seems like the safe thing to do here.
We decided to walk around a bit, although it was late enough that only the restaurants were open.
While walking back to the AC Hotel, we passed by a Shake Shack. It’s been years since we’ve been to one so we decided to order something. Definitely a very good fast food burger, though the competition in the fast food market is mostly pretty terrible. It seems this location just opened recently and currently holds an abysmal 3.0 rating on Google Maps.
We also noticed that Yahoo is a tenant in one of the office buildings here. It seems that after being bought by Verizon, they have been sold off. Its a bit surprising Yahoo is even still around as a corporate entity here in the US given how irrelevant the company is these days here.
The Sunday morning view from our north facing room before checking out.
Meadowlark Botanical Gardens
We drove over to the Meadowlark Botanical Gardens, just 15 minutes away on local roads, and arrived not long after the 10am opening time.
We were happy to see that there were some fall colors on the trees!
This large tree in particular looked very impressive!
There was a definite mix of colors on the various species of trees.
While there were flowers to be found, this time of year is not the best.
We didn’t see many birds at first, just some Canada Geese. We did hear other species though but didn’t have any luck actually spotting them.
We continued to walk our typical path, heading down the hill to the south of the entrance. Up ahead, we saw a tree with some very red leaves.
We also started to see more flowers.
We even saw coneflowers! Well, we actually just saw two of them. This was the better looking of the pair!
We saw some of these orange flowers.
Quite a bit of purple!
This plant is interesting, its flowers are not at the end of the long stalks.
Upon reaching the entrance to the Korean Bell Garden, we came across these pink and white flowers. Although they weren’t in the greatest condition, they were still quite numerous and looked pretty nice.
There are many examples of this species here.
These flowers have a pattern on the portion of the flower that is on the inside of the bell.
Finally, we managed to actually spot a bird that wasn’t a Canada Goose! This is an Eastern Phoebe, a species that we see somewhat frequently during our visits here.
The water level in the ponds was pretty low. We spotted some House Finches on the opposite side from us. They seemed to be foraging in the mud.
We also spotted a male Northern Cardinal. There sounded like there were others around as well as we often heard their distinctive ticking. There is also a bonus bird here. There is a Gray Catbird to the bottom right of the cardinal! We didn’t see it until looking at this photo.
In the eastern pond, Lake Gardiner, we spotted a pair of American Black Ducks. We had just been talking about how we see so many Canada Geese here but don’t always see ducks.
Looking to the east across Lake Gardiner, we could see that the lilies were all done for the year.
Looking to the west, we could see the bell pavilion within the Korean Bell Garden.
Looking back to the east, we spotted something unexpected. A male Wood Duck! The fanciest of all local duck species for sure!
The male Wood Duck swam along with the pair of American Black Ducks.
Just a nice scene at the water’s edge…
The big tree that we noticed at the beginning of our visit, now to our west as we continued to walk next to Lake Gardiner.
Some additional fall scenes as we crossed over the little island in Lake Gardiner and continued counter-clockwise along its southern side.
We spotted a Song Sparrow with we were at the easternmost edge of Lake Gardiner. They blend in pretty well during this time of year.
A closer look at the Song Sparrow.
Again, a grassy scene…
As we continued walking counter-clockwise, we spotted a Tufted Titmouse in a tree above us. It was trying to break an acorn to eat the seed inside.
A bit of yellow in one of the smaller trees along the path.
As we approached the northern end of Lake Gardiner once again, we noticed an additional male Wood Duck!
We started to walk back to the entrance to end our visit.
Vienna
We decided to eat at Chef Tan in Vienna. The restaurant just opened in August so it’s still pretty new.
Overall, everything was pretty good. We probably ordered one dish too many though!
Leesburg
After lunch, we headed over to the Leesburg Premium Outlets to see if there were any good deals and to walk off our lunch a bit.
Frederick
On our way home, we stopped on the southern side of Frederick near I-270 to visit Chatime, a Taiwanese bubble tea chain. We noticed that the development Chatime is in contained an Ugly Dumpling Express as well. Ugly Dumpling has a number of locations in the region as well as the NYC suburbs.
The Ugly Dumpling chain seems to have come out of nowhere. It seems to be the same corporate owner of KPOT, which has also recently expanded rapidly, so there’s big money behind this chain.
Unfortunately, it’s pretty disappointing. The xiao long bao are nowhere near as good as Nan Xiang or the local Dumpling District, which seems to be a franchisee that broke away from Nan Xiang and still uses the same recipe. But, good xiao long bao are still pretty rare in the US, and this definitely was still OK in comparison.
We visited Chatime afterwards. Not as good as actually getting tea in Taiwan but pretty good for the US.