Eating Across Vienna: Nominate This Week's Dish

It's no secret Vienna is home to 

We're out to find out where (and what exactly) it is. And we're turning to readers for help.

Here's how it will work:

• Each Monday we'll ask Vienna Patch readers to nominate their favorite dishes in Vienna.
• Each Wednesday, we'll open those nominations for voting.
• By Friday, the winning dish will be announced.
• Tune in the following Monday to read our review of the dish, and, nominate another.

We have just a few rules:

• The dish must be from a local restaurant (No chains).
• The dish must be under $20.
• You must name a specific dish, not just the name of a restaurant.
• A dish cannot "win" more than once.
• Don't worry: if your dish was selected one week but didn't win, you can nominate it again.

Nominate your favorite dish in the comments below.

Past Winners:

• Week of Jan.9: Pure Pasty Review Coming
• Week of Jan. 16: Wolftrap Cafe ()
• Week of Jan. 23: , Maplewood Grill (
• Week of Jan. 30: Church Street Pizza (

• Week of Feb. 6: , Maple Ave Restaurant.(Review Here)
• Week of Feb. 13: , Plaka Grill
  Review:The gyro special at the Plaka Grill was definitely tasty. The meat was grilled to perfection. It made a nice mess in my plate, just as you'd expect a well-done gyro. I really liked the tzatziki sauce, and if I weren't in public, I'd probably would have licked up the leavings. I spared my companions that spectacle. Plaka Grill stuffs their gyros with french fries, which strikes me as a bit odd. Their gyro is the only one I've had with that starch infusion. The special comes with a plate of fries to boot. That's a lot of deep-fried potatoes for one meal. It helps that the restaurant has really good fries. Still, my next gyro will come without them. All in all, I definitely recommend their gyro. - Doug Tallman, Regional Editor
• Week of Feb. 20: General Tso's Surprise, Sunflower Vegetarian Restaurant
  Review: My first taste of General Tso's chicken came sometime in elementary school: As a reward for a good report card, or a treat after a late doctor's appointment, my mom and I would have a "mother-daughter" date at the local Chinese Restaurant. We'd almost always get the buffet, and tI'd almost always go for the General Tso's chicken first.
  It was a perfect compromise between the sweet and sour chicken (which I thought was too sweet) and the chicken with a kick that made my eyes tear and  my throat burn. It was tangy, crunchy and made a mess of my hands, plate and everything else I touched for the next 15 minutes.
  
  If I didn't know any better, I could easily mistake the restaurant's take on General Tso's chicken for the real thing. If it hadn't been a vegetarian restaurant, but had been marked as a meat-free meal, I probably would have sent the dish back to the kitchen, convinced it was actually meat. The texture of Sunflower's "chicken" is spot on — the "meat" is all white and shreds away from the center at the scrape of a fork, encrusted by the perfect "fried" crust that makes or breaks the dish for many of its enthusiasts (though it was less greasy than the real thing). The General Tso's sauce — described on the menu as hot kong-pao sauce — was sweeter than I remembered, but not so sweet that it compromised the dish.
  As a whole, the dish is impressive. For $12, I counted at least 16 large, round pieces of "chicken" and two dozen pieces of broccoli, along with several handfuls of sliced carrots. The ratio of vegetables to chicken was much higher than in traditional versions, but one could argue that comes along with the territory of a vegetarian restaurant. The brown rice added a nice nutty, chewiness to the meal, a flavor and texture with which white rice couldn't compete.
  Sunflower seems to have created the grown-up (and likely healthier) version of the Chinese restaurant staple — and while die-hard fans of General Tso's might say they'll stick with the "real meat" version, I'd go as far to say I like this better than the real thing. - Vienna Patch Editor Erica R Hendry

While we discourage manipulating a vote, our current voting system can't prevent the practice. So, until our engineers make tweaks, strategize as you see fit. Patch's "Restaurant Commissioner" holds the right to make changes and decisions as necessary.