July 13, 2007
The Weekly Feed: RunningOurTitlesTogetherEdition
Veg D.C. Names Best Veggie Restaurant
VegDC.com has tallied the votes for the area's best vegetarian restaurant, and the award goes to Java Green, the downtown eatery that serves a wide range of vegetarian and vegan cuisine (and really great coffee drinks) in the Farragut North area of downtown. Even an avowed meat-lover like me can find something to enjoy at the busy restaurant; the fake meats they use taste and feel nearly like the real thing, and their preparations with fresh ingredients result in savory dishes that everyone can enjoy. It's also a great destination for you celiacs out there, as wheat-free offerings are clearly marked and abundant. What's more, the café makes an effort to run with the smallest carbon footprint as possible, buying wind power to run the restaurant and offering only biodegradable carryout containers.
Runners up for the award go to the Vegetable Garden in Rockville, and Vienna's Sunflower Vegetarian Restaurant. Congratulations to all the winners!
Pizza Comes to Columbia Heights
Amidst all the heated discussion of new businesses in Columbia Heights, an unassuming pizzeria has opened its doors on the corner of 11th and Park, NW. RedRocks FireBrickPizzeria started serving traditional and gourmet pizza to customers last night under the supervision of Executive Chef Edan MacQuaid, late of Staccato and 2Amys.
The Pizzeria will provide a late-night dining option in the neighborhood by staying open until midnight on weekdays and 1 a.m. on weekends. It'll also meet your micro- and Eurobrew needs by serving up Chimay Triple and Allagash White on tap, and 30 other microbrews by the bottle. An additional draw will be the restaurant's patio, which seats 35. DCist will be sure to swing by the new pizza place; keep on the lookout for a first look.
Photo of RedRocks' fare from Mr. T in DC.
Um, Tomorrow's Bastille Day. Forgot About That…
So, tomorrow's Bastille Day—somewhat of a big party day for Washington—and we totally forgot. The French instructor I had at the USDA graduate school may be rubbing off on me; she maintained the French Revolution was a "horrible" event, and expressed great sympathy for "that poor queen." Guess that whole "rights of man" thing wasn't worth it for her. At any rate, there's a charge de bateau worth of events going on. The Going Out Gurus have already done the legwork; check them out.
Restaurant Week is Just Around the Corner…
…and some places are already booked. The Washingtonian has its own guide of places to hit the week of August 6. Not too bad, but I'd steer clear of both Butterfield 9 and Taberna del Alabadero. Both are notorious for poor performance during restaurant week.
Farmers' Market Roundup
Things are really getting cooking for area farmers' markets. Practically everything's in season, and it's easy to buy more than you can carry home. If you still haven't made it out to some of the local farmers' lines, here are some inducements:
Eastern Market Getting Tunes
Despite April's fire, Eastern Market is still going strong. Many of the indoor vendors have moved to the sidewalk, and almost all of the original farmers' line vendors are set up across the street. The new, temporary building for the market will be delivered by the 19th, and should be up by the 24th. Additionally, there will be free music in the plaza on 7th and North Carolina Ave. SE starting July 22nd.
14th and U Market Dog Friendly
Now that the Dupont farmers' market has shunned dogs, the new market at 14th and U is making a play for you folks whose canines rule the roost. Not only has the market extended its hours (9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays), but they are actively welcome dogs. One vendor, Smith Meadows, is even offering doggie treats made from grass-fed livestock. No mad cow disease for Fluffy!
Dupont Market will be Italian Themed
Those of you who look for the demonstrations (and subsequent samples) at markets will be happy to see that Cesare Lanfranconi from Spezie will be cooking his brand of Italian at this Sunday's Dupont Market (9 a.m. to 1 p.m.; demonstrations usually happen around 10:30 or 11:00 a.m.). Author Faith Willinger will also be signing her new book, Adventures of an Italian Food Lover.
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Any news on whether Java Green has decided on a second location in DC?
The market at 14th and U is 9 a.m. - 2 p.m. for the next two Saturdays only, then they're switching permanently to 9 a.m. - 1 p.m.
That's disappointing. Java Green was better when it first opened than it has become. They courted GW meal points and raised their prices accordingly, a double annoyance. The last meal I ate there was inedibly salty, and I haven't been back since.
There are better vegetarian options than the three listed above, although Vegetable Garden is the best of the lot. Yuan Fu is a great vegan place and worth the extra schlep up the Pike. Joe's Noodle House and A&J (also in Rockville) are also excellent veggie options. Nirvana and Amma's in DC are good South Indian vegetarian places. I'm still undecided on Vegetate, but it's stylish and has its strengths.
I get tired of apologizing for the tastes of fellow vegetarians. Promoting mediocrity doesn't help bring better options to DC.
Forgive me, but aren't vegetarian restaurants really just gimmicks anyway to help promote the cause? It seems the true ideal is for every 'normal' restaurant to offer good vegetarian options, so that you have the complete freedom of choice to dine anywhere. Or maybe I'm missing the point...
Re: Butterfield 9. I had a pretty solid experience there during the last RW. As with all restaurants, there are good nights and bad nights.
Um... Butterfield 9 has been a very popular spot during RW for good reason... they do it well and often extend to accommodate the crowd.
Forgive me, but aren't vegetarian restaurants really just gimmicks anyway to help promote the cause?
Uh, no. Vegetarian restaurants are there to provide vegetarians with a variety of options, which means more than one crappy toss-off entrée--ideally without resorting to pasta or portobello mushrooms.
It seems the true ideal is for every 'normal' restaurant to offer good vegetarian options, so that you have the complete freedom of choice to dine anywhere.
You would, think, wouldn't you? Sadly, many local chefs act as if if having a vegetarian entree is beneath them.
Case in point? When a certain Georgetown eatery, specializing in California cuisine, (oh, the irony) appointed a new chef, he was there a whopping ten minutes before he killed the only vegetarian entree. His response to a customer request for another?
There are plenty of vegetarian appetizers.
Unfortunately, he is not alone in his apparent scorn for vegetarians.
DC is about 20 years behind the rest of the country in noticing that vegetarians have money, and we like to eat.
Don't forget that Sunflower Cafe now has a location at 7 Corners in Arlington (I *think* that's Arlington). In any event, it's a hell of a lot closer and convenient than the Vienna location. Same great food.
How many vegetarian restaurants offer meat dishes for patrons who prefer to eat meat? Meat eaters have money too.
yeah, they do.
they also have choices, um, everywhere.
sorry. not buying your woe-is-me.
Yeah, guest #10. There's a steakhouse every two blocks around here. Cry me a freaking river.
I would be perfectly satisfied (as a vegetarian) if every restaurant offered at least a modest variety of vegetarian options. I don't object to breathing the same air as meat-eaters. Most ethnic restaurants, for example (Indian, Afghan, Ethiopian, Mexican, even Italian) are both meat- and veggie-friendly. But as guest #8 pointed out, a good number of highbrow DC chefs seem to think that it's beneath them to even make the effort. Hell, I'm satisfied with only one option, as long as it's creative and well-made. Think Restaurant Nora, think Georgia Brown's, think Majestic Cafe before the recent make-over / reinvention. But more often we get nothing, or our one option is the blandest dish in the house (1789--vegetable lasagna? For $26? That's the best you can do?)
I wouldn't say that DC is 20 years behind the rest of the country. We have a pretty good number of veggie-friendly dives and ethnic joints. But certainly LA and New York are both more veggie-friendly when it comes to fine dining. Which around here invariably means some variation on steak or seafood.
"Invariably means some variation ... " Makes sense, but it probably shouldn't.
No need to agologize; I'm not selling any woe-is-me.
You just can't expect every non-vegetarian restaurant to accommodate vegetarians, if not a single vegetarian restaurant has the courtesy to accommodate non-vegetarians.
I must be missing something, guest14. Are you required to eat meat and only meat? Not being vegetarian doesn't mean you can't eat vegetarian meals. Do we need to diagram this?
Um, guest #12, the reason there is a steak house every two blocks around here, is because there is an extremelly large number of people around here who love the eat steak.
No river-crying required.
The number of people who refuse to eat meat is much smaller.
Adam, yes, you are missing something.
If I go to a restaurant, and that restaurant doesn't serve the kind of food that I like to eat, I don't get angry at that resaurant, I simply go to a different restaurant, one that does serve the kind food that I like to eat.
See how simple that is? No diagram needed.
That's fine, but I assume you eat vegetables or other non-meat items from time to time. If so, a vegetarian restaurant would indeed accommodate you, or any other non-vegetarian who can manage to choke down some greens without a bacon chaser.
Everyone goes to the restaurants that serves the food he likes to eat. That's exactly why there are vegetarian restaurants; people like to eat there. I don't see why you'd expect them to serve meat when you can get meat almost everywhere else.
You're still missing something here.
I don't expect vegetarian restaurants to serve me dishes containng meat.
And if I were a vegatarian, I would not expect non-vegetarian restaurants to cater to my vegetarian diet.
Nor do I would expect Italian restaurants to serve me Chinese dishes simply because I like to eat Chinese food.
Vegetarian isn't really any kind of special cuisine. It's just dishes without meat. All types of cuisine and cooking can be vegetarian, it's just that a lot of chefs phone it in when they're not cooking with meat. I'm glad I do eat meat, otherwise I'd be getting really tired of grilled portabellos, pasta primavera, and an inevitably butter-drenched "melange of seasonal veggies."
Your argument about Italian vs. Chinese doesn't make any sense. It would correlate if Chinese food was really just Italian with something extra added. But, this isn't the case. Let me try to reword it so we're comparing apples to apples.
"I wouldn't expect a Chinese restaurant to serve me less spicy Chinese dishes simply because I like to eat less spicy food."
Why not? That's a reasonable expectation; they can just take out some spices.
Google "lacto-ovo".
Again, my point is that one should not expect every restaurant to cater to one's every need.
If the restaurant can cater to one's needs, fine, eat there; if they can't, eat somewher else.
Guests #21, 19, 17: Spoken like members of a comfortable majority. I mean, gosh. I didn't realize that all I had to do was go somewhere else. I'll remember that the next time I'm in a strange city, or the next time I'm out with friends or associates munching on arugula and bread.
This isn't about "not having food I like." No vegetarian is so idealistic that he expects the whole world to bend to his will. But there's a tacit criticism of vegetarianism in very talented chefs refusing to offer even one option, or offering a throwaway option. I knew a chef once who told me: "I don't see how you can make good food without meat." Among highbrow food types, I don't think that's an uncommon sentiment. Go back and read guest #8's post again: "vegetarian appetizers?" That's what rubs us the wrong way. There's an element of scorn there, and it's perfectly reasonable to complain about it. Just as it's perfectly reasonable for people with allergies or people who avoid pork for religious reasons to complain about a lack of information or choice. The world will never be perfect, but a little bellyaching isn't unwarranted.
Also, as long as we're on the topic of the free market and cuisine choice: all of this was in response to a question about the existence of vegetarian restaurants. They don't (necessarily) exist to promote a cause. They exist so that vegetarians can "go somewhere else" and be assured that there will be something (even more than something!) on the menu.
When I need to do my annual "de-coking" procedure, I always hit Udupi Palace in Langley Park. Gimme a couple masala dosas, a bucket of curried okra, cauliflower, and chickpeas, and I couldn't care less there's no dead flesh in the house. Great food and no preaching a cause. The steakhouse and burger crowd should check it out. No portobello mushrooms or pasta either. A branch in Shaw or H Street would make bank.
Guest #22: Thank you.
What rubs me the wrong way are people who choose, for whatever reasons, to be vegetarians in a basically non-vegetarian culture, and then complain about how inconvenient it is to be vegetarians in a basically non-vegetarian culture, and about how non-vegetarians don't go out of their way to make their chosen vegetarian lifestyles more convenient for them.
If being a vegetarian is so difficult, you might want to rethink your decision, and determine if it's really worth it.
If so, suck it up and deal with it, preferably in silence.
If not, head to Stoney's right now and have nice medium Stoney Burger, and let the juices run down you arms to your elbows.
"But there's a tacit criticism of vegetarianism in very talented chefs refusing to offer even one option, or offering a throwaway option. I knew a chef once who told me: "I don't see how you can make good food without meat.""
As a meat eater who's favorite restaurant is, ironically, Amma's, I suspect it's not about being "highbrow", it's about the chef not having some combination of talent, vision, or training. Really. I grill and bbq with the best. I don't need to go out for that- I can do it both better and cheaper at home. But good and satisfying veg? God help me, I'd be lost cooking that. That's why I go out for the dahi vada, channa and chapati, and salty lassi.
Guest #26: Stepping back from my revolutionary instincts, you're probably right. It probably has more to do with tradition and training than secret contempt. Any vegetarian will tell you that there is a period of mental retooling when you first drop meat from your diet. You have to change the way you think about planning meals, because they can't revolve around meat anymore (e.g. chicken with something, beef with something.) Planning a vegetarian meal seems obvious once you've attuned yourself to it, but it does take some getting used to, especially if you come from a meat-eating culture. So I can imagine that asking a chef who has spent years perfecting a particular type of cuisine to suddenly cook without meat is a bit like asking Jimmy Page to do without the guitar for a while. Which is why so many ethnic restaurants are so good at providing a healthy mix: vegetarianism is an important part of Indian culture, a lot of Central American is rice-and-bean-based, which lends itself well to vegetarianism, etc.
~ Guest 22 (and 23)
It does take some getting used to, and some vision, and some thought, which is why every chef who bothers to do vegetarian food well is one I admire.
I've been to a couple of foodie places (not in DC, unfortunately) that had fully-developed vegetarian tasting menus served right alongside the animal-based ones. Chefs who do that are real chefs. The others are wusses.
I come back to my point. Vegatarian restaurants are currently necessary because most chefs don't give proper attention to the vegatarian diet. If they did, there would be no need for 'special' restaurants that focus in on meatless dishes, right? The goal in the future is to have a variety of restuarants that cater to a variety of diets, not separate restaurants for every single special dining need. That way we don't all need to 'go somewhere else' to find what we're looking for. Oh, and I'm assuming that the reason vegatarian restaurants don't serve meat is 1) because by definition they would cease to be vegatarian restuarants (which I think would be fine), and 2) they would then lose the elitist sensibility that comes from deciding to become a vegatarian. Personally, I'm fine if all the pompous vegatarians want to go eat somewhere with their own kind, but then I don't want to hear anymore about how every restaurant in the world doesn't cater to their life choice.
Actually ended up at Red Rocks Fire Brick Pizzeria on Friday, the day you posted this article. Unfortunately, their second night of operation left a lot to be desired.
Inside the restaurant was chaos, with a lot of beleaguered employees doing their best but a complete absence of organization or leadership. There was a backlog at the credit card machine, although snafus like that are to be expected. Not expected was that the meat slicing machine was down too! How does that happen? Did they buy it second hand?
Otherwise, service was slow and unorganized, but the staff was trying their best. No sign of the owner or head chef, and no sign of anyone running the show. We got a table but it was never wiped down, the food was slow, and beer orders were usually forgotten.
The worst part: The food ranged from unimpressive to bad. I ordered the parmesan, oregano, and garlic pizza. I should have realized this meant seasoned toast, but I didn't. It was dry and tasteless.
If they did, there would be no need for 'special' restaurants that focus in on meatless dishes, right?
Okay, so are you looking for confirmation on this from a tried-and-true vegetarian? Fine. Yes. That is pretty much correct. If every restaurant had a variety of good veggie options, there would be no reason for vegetarian restaurants.
I agree with guest #28; any chef who does not offer the exact food that I want to eat, cooked exactly as I want it cooked, is a "wuss".
to #14
Green Zebra in Chicago was one of the most celebrated new restaurants (veggie or otherwise) in Chi in years, and their menu is about 80% vegetarian.
It would be nice if there were good veggie options at every restaurant -- that would sure make it easier to dine with meat eaters. But there's something really enjoyable about going to the Vegetable Garden or Yuan Fu and knowing I can choose anything on the menu without having to worry about the ingredients. I think there will always be a market for vegetarian and vegan restaurants.
Not every vegetarian or vegetarian restaurant takes a doctrinaire position on the matter. There is social currency around food, and it often seems like the vegetarians are expected to accomodate and sacrifice when dining with omnivores because of their lifestyle choice. Eating just about anything can be viewed as a choice.
I'd be far more accomodating if more restaurants made even a minimal effort to accomodate a broader range of dietary preferences. Some great DC restaurants do make this effort (Maestro for example), while others display contempt (Restaurant Eve).
Vegetarian restaurants are generally inclusive, and open minded omnivore friends often appreciate being exposed to something new, even if they mostly prefer meat and fish. At Cafe Flora in Seattle recently, both the omnivores and vegetarians in my party were blown away. It was a great meal, but also a depressing reminder that DC has nothing on this level.
The last meal I ate there was inedibly salty, and I haven't been back since.
As a non-vegetarian who occasionally cooks from vegetarian/vegan cookbooks, I have what may be a naive observation/question: most vegan recipes I have seen call for ridiculously small measures of salt (in addition to other spices).
Is this a political thing (i.e. salt mines have poor working conditions)? Or do vegans just hate tasty food, in addition to the enviro/political considerations?
to #36
That's a pretty wide generalization. Which cookbook(s) are you using? Like any field of cookbooks, there is a wide range of quality and crap among vegetarian cookbooks.
Is this a serious question or are you just being smart-assed?
to #29
There are many reasons why exclusively vegetarian or vegan restaurants should exist. Any certified vegan restaurant is de facto kosher and hallal. Toss in some Darmic observers, 7th Day Adventists, etc, and you may actually see a successful business model.
And then there are some of us who just don't find it necessary to sustain ourselves by killing living creatures. That's not being judgemental, just honest towards our beliefs.
to #30
I wish I had read #30's comments before trying Red Rocks last night (Sunday, I guess their fourth day of operation?) while already extremely hungry. It took us about 20 minutes to get seated, even with an open table right in plain view. Apparently, three employees hadn't shown up, and they did not handle it gracefully. We all had the greatest of sympathy for the beleaguered host, but I think it says something about the establishment that they employee a host who does not appear to know how to handle this type of situation. He just kept making promises like "I'll send a server right over" and not doing it. We were forced to fend for ourselves.
Another half hour or so later we finally had a chance to order. On the plus side, our three pizzas came out surprisingly quickly; on the minus, they were just warm (nowhere near hot), one was missing an ingredient and another included hot peppers which were definitely *not* ordered, and all three had slightly burnt crusts.
Alcoholic drinks were pricey but fairly delicious.