I spent an entire summer living in the Oakwood apartments in East Falls Church, convinced that Northern Virginia, or at least everything within walking distance of my apartment, was a wasteland. Especially culinarily.

This is particularly embarrassing to admit because literally abutting the parking lot of the Oakwood complex is the Eden Center-- a massive complex of Vietnamese restaurants and shops (I believe some other Asian nationalities are represented, but not to the same degree). Forget Chinatown in downtown D.C. (convenient though it may be to my commute). This is the real deal.

Anyway, it turns out that the Eden Center is a food mecca so after a Jones Day project took me to Falls Church, I decided this would be the perfect place to grab lunch. It was, in fact, not quite perfect, but it was quite close, and I am already tempted to go back in order to see how much closer it can get.

We went to the Viet Bistro, eating caramel fish, lemongrass chicken, and a sampling of appetizers. The winner of the appetizers was the crispy spring roll, with the garden roll a close second. (We disagreed about the best sauce-- I nominated the peanut sauce. My girlfriend, who joined me out in Falls Church, picked the fish sauce.) The caramel fish was shockingly good. At first I thought it was slightly too sweet, but the addition of a little bit of spicy sauce cured that perfectly. The chicken was a shade tougher than I wanted it; next time I will lobby for the pork. (Or, better yet, the shaky beef.)

Tyler Cowen says that nobody ever goes to the Eden Center just once; I can see why. I already want to go back, and am already saddened to think of the proliferated mediocre pan-asian restaurants throughout New Haven.

I discuss two of the Court's end-of-term cases, here (Clark) and here (Hamdan) over in the Supreme Court symposium at De Novo.

I had the good fortune to attend the official arrival ceremony for Prime Minister Koizumi on the White House lawn on Thursday. The most amusing moment was the President's joke that while Koizumi was ostensibly here to pay his respects to the President, he was really here to see The King.

The two took a trip to Graceland, reported here (link via Dan Drezner).