Earlier this week at The Atlantic, Damien Ma took D.C. proper and Chinatown, in particular, to task for having a "wholly disappointing Chinese food scene." And as anyone knows, it's been like that for well over 20 years, as the area's increasingly affluent Chinese community fled to the suburbs. Ma rails against the American food chains that have taken over Chinatown and argues that Chinatown could be an ethnic food paradise, recommending that China subsidize restaurants as a method of diplomacy. I completely agree with the assessment that Chinatown lacks what I consider to be good Chinese restaurants. But this failure is not solely a result of big bad chains pricing restaurants out of the area. more ›

Driving to Green Olive Buffet & Grill is like entering another world. The restaurant sits about halfway between Old Town Alexandria and Mount Vernon, an area little known to most Washingtonians. A 30 minute drive from downtown D.C., this stretch of Old Richmond Highway is a mix of newly developed shopping centers, chain restaurants, and relic motor lodges advertising vacancies and modern conveniences such as A/C and free HBO. That and the best old-school Chinese/American buffet in the region by far. more ›

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Eating Chinese food in D.C.'s Chinatown is frequently an exercise in disappointment. The English menus offer Americanized Chinese fare, and few of them do it well. In this sea of mediocre Kung Pao and General Tso, there is a shining light: Fried Good Dale. more ›

While there are many blogs out there that are little more than self-indulgement ramblings or highfalutin attempts at taste-making, according to a post I just read on Boing Boing, we can actually use this populist technology to engender social change, or something like that. So if you were as bewildered and disappointed as we were by the results of the Post's Best Bets poll last year, we ask that you rally behind a noble cause and help us ensure that the world knows that DC has more to offer than Ikea and Fuddruckers. more ›

Back in our college days, a friend managed to both impress and horrify this DCist by eating not one, not two, but three Chipotle burritos in one sitting. This Takeru Kobayashi-esque feat wasn't accomplished by a friend of unusual heft, but a relatively slender female athlete who'd been claiming she was capable of it for months. It was amazing to see the three foil wrapped monstrosities disappear in just under 45 minutes, washed down by a diet Coke. We weren't with our friend later that evening, but heard that she was suffering from some variation on Chinese Food Syndrome. more ›