Photo by Josh Novikoff.
Dish of the Week: Red Beans and Rice
Where: Bardia’s New Orleans Cafe, Bayou, Acadiana
If you didn’t grow up with red beans and rice as a staple of your diet, you at least sang about it on the floor at every party you’ve ever been to. And you know Sir Mix-a-Lot fancies a girl that “red beans and rice didn’t miss her.” Mix extols the amount of booty consumption the dish can bestow.
Calorically dense as it may be, there’s not much added fat that goes into a pot of the stuff. Well, unless you follow recipes like Emeril Lagasse’s, stewing your beans with bacon grease. Otherwise it’s just the fat from the slices or chunks of andouille sausage in the pot along with beans, diced vegetables, and cooking liquid. Making a hearty pot of it this week, I substituted chicken sausage for pork which makes a serving even healthier. Though I felt like a little something was missing. Maybe it could have used some of that lard.
But the bigger error may have been thinking that I’d come out with a dutch oven full of something I’d be excited about eating for a few days. Its’ Louisianan cousins jambalaya, gumbo, and étoufée are more likely candidates for a satisfying entree. With jambalaya, the rice is cooked with its sausage, chicken, and/or seafood, and other seasonings. With saucy gumbos and étoufées, the rice merely something the main course is served with, not featured itself in it’s plain form.
That’s why you’ll see red beans and rice usually available as a side at New Orleans-inspired restaurants here like Acadiana or Bayou, or thought of as a starter at Bardia’s. Look at the menu of the legendary Mother’s Restaurant in the Big Easy. Yeah it’s on the plates section of the menu. But it doesn’t stand on its own; you get to choose a meat and two sides to come with it, whether sausage or some of their famous Debris (au jus roast beef) instead. And one of those sides choices? Red beans and rice.
Small Bites
Mango Tree
Another glitzy restaurant took root in the gleaming CityCenterDC complex yesterday. Mango Tree DC opened for dinner service Thursday, the first U.S. outpost of a contemporary Thai brand that got it’s start in Bangkok over 20 year ago and has . The original Mango Tree opened in Bangkok twenty years ago serving upscale, multi-regional Thai cuisine that has made its way to cities across Asia as well as London and Dubai. Go and you’ll find a a menu that runs circles around your neighborhood Thai place in creativity as well as price. Entrees go from the $20 grilled portobello mushroom topped with red curry and apricot range to the $36 baked Maine lobster dresser in yellow curry powder, egg, and onion one. That in a highly stylized 6,800 square foot, two level space, “Thailand with a twist of European sophistication.”
Boss Shepherd’s
Boss Shepherd’s has been lauded for the restaurant’s fried chicken, among other Southern-inspired classics. That chicken gets a little cheaper the last week of this month thanks to a promotion celebrating the Boss’ January birthday, and the year he was elected to office—1873. Prices won’t drop to 1873 levels, but the chicken will cost $18.73, with $1 whiskey shots with each chicken purchase.
Partisan
The meatheads at Partisan have announced a a whiskey dinner pairing their menu with six whiskeys from Willett Distilling Company. The cost is $95 plus tax and gratuity for the February 23 dinner. A flight showcasing the effects of aging on rye will open the dinner, pairing a two-year, seven-year, and eight-year rye, with different slices of chef Nate Anda and Ed Witt’s aged charcuterie. Whiskey-braised pork belly comes as a main course, with a bourbon barrel-aged barleywine from Bluejacket. And Witt is putting together a trio of desserts, each paired with a different taste of the brown stuff.
G Cooking Classes
Mike Isabella’s restaurant group has announced a monthly cooking class series to be held at his G Sandwich Shop kitchen at 14th and W Street NW. Graffiato chef de cuisine Jose Adorno is the first instructor, demonstrating Puerto Rican Classics on February 9 and 10. Class tickets are $75. Current Top Chef competitor and Kapnos toque George Pagonis is up in April teaching how to put together a Greek Easter meal. Nothing is on the calendar from Isabella himself.
Black Squirrel
In Adams Morgan tonight, Black Squirrel is encouraging drinkers to cast away their new, aspirational healthy habits with a Just Say No…To New Year’s Resolutions party featuring suds from Bell’s Brewery. They’re encouraging those going for an alcohol-free January to make an exception, as they’ll have ten of Bell’s beers available including less common, specialty stuff. If you’ve kicked tobacco, you can take comfort in their duck confit-laced cigarette spring rolls, or if you’re ready to trash your diet, a belly-expanding burger that counts bacon, pork belly, and macaroni and cheese as toppings.
