Food and Drink: February 2009 Archives

If you're anything like me, you can come up with a good excuse to eat out pretty much anytime. (Unfortunately, most of these excuses are simple variations on my own personal laziness. Hey, at least I'm honest.) But on March 5, everyone's got a perfectly valid reason to take in a meal outside of your own kitchen: fighting AIDS, cancer, and other life-threatening ailments.

Where: My Bakery, Don Arturo's, Llajtaymanta.

             

Local cheftestant Carla Hall’s bid to be named Top Chef in the hit TV show’s fifth season came to an end late Wednesday evening. Despite a rally through recent challenges, Carla faltered and Hosea—unexpectedly but convincingly—edged out a snooty Stefan for the win. DCist joined Carla, several dozen of her closest culinary partners and friends, and several students from the CulinAerie cooking class she taught just prior to the finale's airing. Check out our gallery for the evening in photos and captions.

Drink in the Details is a monthly column highlighting spirits and classic cocktails written by DC Craft Bartenders Guild members Adam Bernbach (Bar Pilar) and Chantal Tseng (Tabard Inn).

Carla Hall, the Howard accounting major turned model, turned chef, took a summer off from her Silver Spring catering company to compete as one of 17 cheftestants on season 5 of Bravo's popular Top Chef. Hall has made D.C. proud, cooking her way into the final three.

    

Last winter, four co-workers canceled on me for Restaurant Week lunch in the course of one morning. Instead of moping and microwaving some soup, I headed to TenPenh’s bar, just steps from my office, for lunch on my own. This Restaurant Week, I’ve reveled in the art of solo midday meals. Reservations, coordination, and flaky friends are not needed. Free seats at the bar are almost always plentiful, though last week, I could have also had my pick of tables. I found several empty seats at most every dining room I visited—perhaps a function of the stumbling economy—regardless of what OpenTable had to say. Show up after 1 or 1:30, especially at a larger dining room, and you’ll likely never have a problem getting seated anywhere you'd like.

Via Ezra Klein's twitterfeed, this list of America's top 10 healthiest fast food restaurants indeed does not seem so much the healthiest list that could be assembled. By my count, the D.C. area features four of these heart-healthy-in-a-hurry options: Au Bon Pain, the Corner Bakery, and, ahem, Chipotle and McDonald's.

Where: Acadiana, Breadline, Johnny's Half Shell, Bardia's, and Hank's Oyster Bar

     

The Washington dining scene is known more for its glut of tapas than its pan Asian cuisine. But tapas and pan Asian restaurants are similar in some ways: The best examples are inventive and exciting, and the worst are watered down and overpriced. If you tend to be a purist, pan Asian cuisine can seem rather unnecessary. Why pay more to have all your favorite Japanese, Thai, and Chinese flavors muddled together on a plate? In the wrong hands, it can be a disaster. But, in the spirit of Restaurant Week adventure, I decided to give pan Asian a chance and booked dinner at TenPenh.

Love it or hate it, it's officially Restaurant Week. Participating restaurants are offering dinner for $35.09 and lunch for a recession-friendly $20.09. If you haven't booked your reservations, there's still time to do your civic duty and stimulate the economy. A number of choice spots will be extending their menus into next week or for the rest of the month. Check out DC Foodies for a complete list.

Breweries in this area are becoming more and more scarce. With Old Dominion Brewery moving to Delaware, we're left with our local brewpubs and not much else. Baltimore is one option, but for a more scenic beer getaway, heading down into the area around Charlottesville is the way to go. In the last couple years, some new breweries have sprouted up and others have expanded. The result is a vibrant beer community that emphasizes local ingredients and fresh, tasty beer. It's a roughly 2.5 hour drive out to Charlottesville, but if you want to break up the drive, a detour to Sperryville to visit Copper Fox adds only 20 minutes to your driving time.

Where: Whole Foods

Here's a story we missed last night from WJLA: as of January, bars in D.C. that are caught selling alcohol to minors for the first time now get a warning instead of a $1,000 fine and a two-day liquor license suspension. In a surprise twist, the change in the law pits Jim "Shut 'Em Down" Graham against the D.C./Va. chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), with MADD expressing concern over becoming too lenient on liquor sales violations, and Graham insisting the new law is more fair. Repeat offenders are actually penalized more now than they were before, Graham notes.

With the holidays and Obamauguration solidly behind us, it's time to ditch the gimmicky and focus on the delicious. Winter is typically my favorite beer season of the year, but the overspiced and generic "winter" ales can tend to wear on a beer lover after only a few weeks. Now is the time when the good stuff really comes out.

There's just something about dumplings. From Italian ravioli to Swedish kroppkaka to Tibetan momos, most food cultures around the world have their own signature version of unleavened dough filled with meat, cheese, or vegetables. Eastern Europe enjoys one of the heartiest dumplings of them all: the pierogi. Originally peasant food, pierogi are boiled or fried dumplings often filled with mashed potatoes, sauerkraut, onions, or cheese. They are commonly served with sour cream and fried onions, making them an ideal winter comfort food.

Dish of the Week: Chinese hot pot

      

The idea is a simple one: close your eyes and imagine playing putt-putt golf. You played when you were a kid, but there aren't exactly tons of courses close to the city, so it's been a while. Still, you remember: the colorful balls, the tiny pencils to keep score with, the fanciful courses with themes like pirates or dinosaurs. Now, imagine you can combine all of that with your love of booze. Because really, what goes better together than alcohol and golf clubs? Erm, we'll get to this later.

Remember 2020 Martini, the three-story, 10,000-square-foot brick oven pizza/pasta/sushi/martini restaurant and bar planned for Old Engine Co. 12, the 112-year-old firehouse at 1626 North Capitol Street? We were deeply skeptical of the concept when NextGen Development first announced its deal with Twyla Garrett of Cleveland-based Garrett Entertainment Corp. last year, and now it seems with good reason. The Bloomingdale blog reported recently that the deal has long since fallen through (hat tip to Arts & Real Estate), and the building is now on the market, listed at $1.5 million.