Our second suggestion this week is Moe’s Southwest Grill situated at 667 Potomac Station Dr NE. For being part of a chain, the food was surprisingly good. After being greeted by the traditional “Welcome to Moe’s” yelled by all employees when someone comes in, we picked a ground beef taco meal and a pork salad from the menu. Both portions were huge and the taste and spices were excellent. The taco was so full of meat, guacamole, salad and pico de gallo that I had a hard time not getting any all over my shirt. The pork salad is made with pulled pork meat and was dressed with our choices of ingredients : cheese, pico de gallo, beans and cilantro. Of course it did not replace a trip to New Mexico or South Texas, but it was good southwest food for Northern Virginia.

Finally, we made a nice discovery during our First Friday outing. We sampled some of the products (apple cobbler, beignets, hushpuppies and cornbread) from Woodpecker Farm Foods. This Virginia company was founded in the early ’90s by the great grandson of Betty Washington, George’s sister. The gourmet batter and dough mixes are made with simple, natural ingredients.  You add a little water to the mix, stir, bake or deep fry and voilà! Their products, very affordable (between $3.50 and $4.50 a bag) can be found at The Pink Shop or online.

Our second small but nice restaurant is Lesher’s Hot-Dog at 26 South King St. You better look up for the sign to not miss the place! First of all, we have gone several times to this place and it’s always super clean and the staff is very friendly. The menu is not very large (3 kinds of hot-dogs and 2 choices of burgers if I remember correctly) but the food is good. I really like the chili hot-dog. They burgers are well cooked and juicy. Unfortunately they do not serve fries, but they do have a variety of chips and sodas. I hope one day this place will add a few mores items on they menu like more toppings and some side dish. That would make it a lot more interesting place. But you can get 2 hot-dogs and a soda for about $5.30, which is not bad for lunch.

Spazaroo has had a great on-line presence for quite some time, selling boards and gear through their web site at www.spazarooskateboards.com. Their new store front offers all of the same equipment from their web site, plus some seriously knowledgeable staff to help get it all assembled and tuned.

Not being a particularly competent skateboarder, you might ask why this post is on LeesburgTalk. In addition to supporting businesses in Leesburg, we’re big fans of merchants that go out of their way to engage the community. Spazaroo is providing a lot of events for local kids, including a game of SKATE every Saturday at the Catoctin Skate Park, as well as field trips to other parks and competitions around the area. Best of luck to our new neighbors and keep up the good work with the kids!

A quick “tasting” follow-up to our story on Shoe’s Cup and Cork Club. I went back yesterday and tried both a café americano and a latté. The coffee in both drinks was very good. I like it much better than the darker roast that Starbucks serves as their house blend. Very nice!

If you are looking for something really different to do today, you should check out the Flying Circus Airshow in Warrenton. The show starts every Sunday afternoon at 2:30 PM. We’ll be visiting soon, so check back for a more detailed report.

Right now, the best way to characterize Shoe’s is as a local coffee shop, very much in the pattern of the old Market St. Coffee, but with a significantly wider selection of coffees, teas, smoothies,  and fruit drinks. Add to that the freshly baked pasteries and sandwiches and salads made on the premises and you can start to see where it goes beyond the “just another coffee shop” label. And best of all, their coffee is organic and fair-trade and they are trying to stick to local, organic ingredients in the food they serve.

The decor is fun, with walls of shelves, a floor to ceiling chalk board, big tables with board games, puzzles, and rack of magazines to entertain. Not to be missed is the overhead light fixture made from antique shoes, complete with a 1928 ladies shoe found in the wall during renovations. And as we walked in, one of the baristas was adding live music to the mix with her guitar and pleasant vocals. There’s also free Wi-Fi, but it was hard to tell what the power outlet situation was for road warriors needing a quick bite and a cuppa.

We tried several things from the menu, selecting the Shoe salad (a bit of an antipasto-topped garden salad), the Italian hoagie, and the grilled portobello and mozzarella sandwich. The sandwiches were good, and though already made, they were happy to stick them in the sandwich press to toast them up for you. The ingredients were great, with the roasted peppers and fresh mozzarella, fresh greens, and nice breads adding a lot. Beverages we tried included the Shoe smoothie (normally peach, but made with pineapple for us), the blackberry smoothie, and the lemonade. All were very nice, freshly made, and as a pleasant surprise, not very sweet with the tartness of the fruit supplying a little extra zing to the drinks.

While we were dining, we were treated to a preview of the menu to come once the beer and wine license wends its way through the Virginia ABC bureaucracy . A nice small plate, including goat cheese stuffed peppadew peppers and some grilled focaccia with melted cheeses would go very well with a glass of wine, and we look forward to these sorts of additions to the menu.

Sandwiches were followed up by coffee and dessert, with a nice blueberry scone and a large cup of café mocha rounding out the meal. Due to a complete ordering failure on my part, we didn’t get to try the unadulterated coffees or teas, but that’s just an excuse to go back soon.

In short, Shoe’s is going to be a wonderful addition to the downtown dining scene. They are open every day from that first wake-up cup of coffee to the late evening dessert run or glass of wine. The staff were all very helpful, the decor is a treat, and you can’t beat the location for convenience. See you there!

So my question to Chief Price, John Wells, and the town council is this. How many more robberies, assaults, and god forbid, worse have to happen before you people stop making excuses and put some police on the ground instead of tooling around in their cars? There are all sorts of arguments and hand-waving made in the past against doing this, but there are a few in favor of it that you cannot argue against.

First, Leesburg is a community. Yes, there’s  a community policing program, mostly implemented and staffed out of the goodness and dedication of a handful of town officers. But for the Leesburg police to feel that sense of community that the residents and merchants expect, they need to walk the streets. Stop in the stores, visit with merchants, greet citizens on the street, and add that extra added bit of confidence and security to our streets that just cannot be had from behind the wheel of a cruiser. The presence of one or two officers in an area full of pedestrians, transient traffic, and lots of commerce would do wonders in several ways.

Skate punks in the town garage would likely find another place to play that didn’t result in damaged vehicles and town property. Gang members looking to tag private property or intimidate residents out for an evening walk might consider another venue. People looking to rob local merchants might think twice if they notice that police on foot are watching alleys, visiting shops, and generally making themselves immediately available to residents and merchants. Scofflaws who block traffic in the middle of town during rush hour with illegal left turns, vehicles violating the prohibition on through trucks, etc. would be greatly reduced by an officer visible on King or Market. And for officers who don’t live in town (as most don’t), providing that direct, daily contact with people they are charged to serve and protect builds a relationship with the community that a small town like Leesburg deserves and those relationships don’t come from behind the wheel of a police car.

We all know that riding in a comfortable, air-conditioned vehicle is greatly preferable to walking a beat around downtown. It’s drilled into officers that getting put on foot patrol is some kind of less-than-desirable duty. But nothing could be further from the truth. I guarantee you that the residents and merchants of downtown would welcome these officers with open arms and immediately make them part of the great community that revolves around the pedestrian areas of our town.

And honestly, the incremental cost to assign two officers to this part of town on foot instead of in a car has to be offset by savings in vehicle costs and the reduced loss of business, property, and bodily injury. We pay taxes for this kind of service. Our town deserves it. It’s time for the council and town leaders to stop making excuses and do what the citizens have been asking for years. Put police officers on foot patrol in the downtown area. Now.

As an added bonus, it’s right across the street from Nichol’s Hardware, which is a must-visit-once-a-month blast from the hardware past. If you’ve never been, you owe it to yourself to see this bit of Americana.

This week’s second adventure includes picking black raspberries at the Mackintosh Fruit Farm in Berryville. This nice little family orchard is on the far side of Clarke’s Gap and has blackberries, raspberries, blueberries, apples, peaches, and lots and lots of different vegetables according to the season. Their prices are about half of what the more touristy Great Country Farms charges. They have a very nice picnic area, lots of locally grown and baked/cooked/prepared foods, and acres of stuff to pick. This week is probably the last week for raspberries, but the blackberries looked like they’d be ready to pick any day now.

Finally, Red, Hot, and Blue on E. Market St. in Leesburg got a quick lunch visit. As usual, the meat was good. But all things considered, you’re better off searching for more authentic barbecue a bit further afield. Good, but only occasionally.