Yes, that’s beet flavored yogurt. (Alicia Mazzara)Dish of the Week: Blue Hill Yogurt
Where: Whole Foods
Doritos Loaded aren’t the only new and horrifying-sounding item to hit the D.C. food market recently. Last week, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia Whole Foods began stocking the latest frontier of cultured milk products: vegetable-flavored yogurt. In the name of intrepid Internet journalism, we had to investigate.
This line of savory yogurt is the brainchild of New York’s famous Blue Hill restaurant, known for its commitment to local, farm-to-table dining. If you’re a food nerd, you’ve probably read about or
watched chef Dan Barber wax poetic on his sustainable approach to cooking. And while that’s all well and good, the real question is, can a James Beard award-winning chef give Chobani a run for its money with parsnip-laced grass-fed milk?
Blue Hill makes yogurt in six flavors: beet, butternut squash, carrot, parsnip, sweet potato, and tomato. You’ll notice that root vegetables feature prominently for their natural sweetness, and technically speaking tomatoes are a fruit. And indeed, Blue Hill Yogurt is surprisingly sweet — for a yogurt made with vegetables. The beet flavor tastes a bit like raspberries, but has an unmistakably earthy beet finish. In other words, great if you really love beets, but probably horrifying for everybody else. (Full disclosure: I really love beets.) The sweet potato flavor is milder and saltier than the beet version, and a touch of maple syrup gives the yogurt a bit of depth. The backside of the foil label also features a message from the cow that made your yogurt. My sweet potato yogurt was produced by Tulip, a 7-year-old Normande cow, who encouraged me to try stirring in chopped pecans and apples. Yoplait, this is not.
The whole thing sounds like a Portlandia sketch, but I have to admit that I actually thought the vegetable yogurt was surprisingly tasty. If you don’t like the corn syrup bombs that normally pass as yogurt, this is a good alternative. And as you might imagine, it has lots of applications in the kitchen, mixed into soups, sauces, or marinades.
Small Bites
Cleveland Park goes Hawaiian
The Hula Girl food truck will be popping up in the now vacant Pulpo (3407 Connecticut Avenue NW) space in Cleveland Park. Starting tonight, the restaurant will transform into The Hula Girl Bar & Grill, complete with surfboards, grass skirts, and spam musubi. Stop in over the weekend for a pig roast brunch for $35 including beverages, a perfect culinary escape from this interminable winter. The pop-up will run until mid-March.
A special whiskey for The Passenger
Attention whiskey fans: The Passenger (1021 7th St NW) has teamed up with Maryland’s Catoctin Creek to produce their very own run of rye whiskey. The single-barrel Roundstone Rye was specially aged for the bar and tastes of butterscotch, caramel, and oak. You can try a glass on Saturday night at The Passenger’s Catoctin Creek fifth anniversary party starting at 8 p.m. If you can’t make it to the party, there should be enough whiskey left to order it off the regular menu for the next few months.
Moar pasta
Good news for fans of Adam Morgan’s Pasta Mia (1790 Columbia Rd NW).The quirky Italian restaurant, known for it’s arcane rules (no credit cards, no reservations, and no pasta substitutions) was originally scheduled to close at the end of this month. PoPville reports that the owner has decided to renew the lease and keep the restaurant open through 2015. Now that’s just 11 more months to eat your weight in carbohydrates.
