Who needs a cellphone camera when you have a pen and paper? Drawn to Flavor highlights local dishes and drinks in vivid watercolor. In these posts, Illustrator and journalist Josh Kramer tries to honor all the energy and creativity that goes into making food beautiful and delicious.

By DCist Contributor Josh Kramer

Maketto (1351 H Street NE), H Street’s new multi-brand experiment, has been years in the making. The food/retail hybrid is in its first few weeks, and the modernist black and white paint job is practically still fresh on the bricks and steel i-beams. Maketto is different things at different times of the day, including a coffee and pastry bar, a boutique streetwear shop, and Cambodian and Taiwanese night market for lunch and dinner.

Fans of Chef Erik Bruner-Yang’s ramen spot two blocks away, Toki Underground, or his myriad pop-ups, will appreciate the food at Maketto. The dinner menu is divided among small plates and larger entrees intended for two. For two diners, your server might instruct you to pick two small dishes to start and a single large plate to share, as mine did.

The cocktails are interesting, and of note are the drinking vinegars in flavors like beet and hibiscus. You can add soda to these shrubs or have one made into a cocktail. If you like sour, they are definitely worth trying.

For dinner, I shared the Taiwanese-style fried chicken. Sure, crispy, deep-fried chicken breast on top of milk bread with maple syrup is reminiscent of chicken and waffles. But five spice, slivers of ginger, and Thai chili peppers make this dish unique. Both in terms of the delayed construction process and the hordes vying for the limited dinner seating, Maketto has proven to be worth the wait.

Illustration by Josh Kramer.