Kitchen Remodel
With area chefs, turnaround is fair play.
Young & Hungry By Tim Carman
The Beerspotter
Ten dollars, four beers, one solid Russian kick
Beerspotter By Orr Shtuhl
Flour Cut
No more daily bread from the city's top supplier
Young & Hungry By Tim Carman
Higher Ground
Spike Mendelsohn still has a lot to learn, but not about burgers.
Young & Hungry By Tim Carman
La Dolce 'Rito
Carman dishes on Mixtec's Italian roots and made-for-TV Barton Seaver
Young & Hungry By Tim Carman
Out of Eden
Dishing Expedition to Four Sisters, Fairfax style, plus: lobsters at Tackle Box
Young & Hungry By Tim Carman
The Beerspotter
It's like chai, but will get you drunk.
Beerspotter By Orr Shtuhl
Dropping Acids
Take that, corn-syrup lobby!
Young & Hungry By Tim Carman
Kitchen Management
What happens when a restaurant owner thinks he's a chef
Young & Hungry By Tim Carman
Making the Rounds
Food critic takes D.C.'s bagel problem into his own hands.
Young & Hungry By Tim Carman
The Beerspotter
Spotted: Redhook Late Harvest Ale
Beerspotter By Orr Shtuhl
Coming of Sage
News Bites: Checking in on the old Red Sage. PLUS: Ann Cashion and drama on H Street!
Young & Hungry By Tim Carman
Pierogi Berra
An Arlington sports bar knows how to pick the wieners.
Young & Hungry By Tim Carman
Meals and Spiels
Why you should get tanked at lunch
Young & Hungry By Ruth Samuelson
In Weenie Veritas
Why wine-lovers should avoid wine bars
Young & Hungry By Tim Carman
Boss Sauce
The VIP condiment that isn't even close to soy
Young & Hungry By Tim Carman
Shack to the Future
Want a great lunch in Old Town? Better hurry.
Young & Hungry By Rachel Kaufman
Restaurants, Briefly
Komi
Contemporary
Dupont Circle: 1509 17th St. NW, Washington, DC
$$$$
Some raters’ descriptions of the Komi experience verge on being NSFW: “An unforgettable four-hour tryst,” one calls a visit to the Dupont gastro-temple. “From start to finish it builds to a crescendo and along the ascent you encounter ingredients that appear deceptively simple and thoughtfully plated.…It seems as though the chef artfully builds on the previous dish and eases every part of your being and senses into the experience....it's as though he can anticipate your innate needs, if not he convincingly guides you along.” Better launder that napkin thoroughly. Most folks dwell instead on a more everyday concept of service, which is uniformly rated as excellent. “Every member of the wait staff visited our table at least once during service, and our primary waiter visited 20+ times. This might seem excessive, but is necessary considering the 8 plates served before the meal.” “The service was impeccible (I never feel that way).” “Waiting on a pair of foodies (who aren't shy about asking questions about ingredients and preparation) isn't easy, but they were patient and capable of answering 7 of 10 questions without going to the kitchen for answers. We were impressed.” Those same foodies say “The food was much more Greek and Mediterranean than we expected” and say they were “perplexed…not from a portion point of view, but from a tasting point of view” that “the kitchen brought each diner a different pasta course, but that we shared a single meat course without a fish course present.” Well, every love affair has its ups and downs. But at least a night of edible congress authored by Chef Johnny Monis ends with a house-made lollipop. “I also enjoyed the lime vanilla lollipop a few days later, and it brought back memories.” “Ours were banana saffron mmm.”
Thirsty Bernie Sport Bar & Grill
American, Burgers/Bar Food
Arlington: 2163 N Glebe Rd, Arlington, VA
$$$$
If I’m in a sports bar, I want to eat like a linebacker. I want a ridiculous, stupor-inducing amount of calories; I want to become a semi-breathing doorstop. Jamie Stachowski can help. The former toque at Restaurant Kolumbia is a no-bullshit Pole who was raised on a farm outside Buffalo where butchering animals and nose-to-tail cooking were a way of life, not a cookbook concept. Thirsty Bernie looks like almost every other sports bar in America—wood wainscoting, sports posters and memorabilia hanging from any vertical surfaces not already smothered by one of 15 TVs—except for one important detail. Stachowski’s menu, which is outfitted with a butcher board, pierogi, wiener schnitzel, four-cheese lasagna, kielbasa, and bratwurst. And almost everything is made in-house. Stachowski smokes his own pastrami, makes his own pasta, and even produces his own version of the half-smoke, that D.C. staple. You get the feeling he’d skim his own sea salt if he lived by the ocean. This kind of fastidiousness comes at a price alien to most sports bar patrons, though: This is sports-pub grub at FedExField prices. But after years of dropping $8 for a Sysco-brand chicken breast or $10 for a scrap-meat burger, I am only too happy to shell out nearly $20 for Stachowski’s wiener schnitzel, two breaded, milky-soft veal cutlets pressing down on a tangled mess of braised red cabbage, whose subtle tartness balances out the unctuous creaminess of the brandied mushroom sauce. This is not just fine-dining-level schnitzel, this is Faustian-deal schnitzel.
(Washington City Paper review: Tim Carman)
Brasserie Beck
Belgian, French
Downtown: 1101 K St. NW, Washington, DC
$$$$
For years, the only way to sample Robert Wiedmaier’s cooking was to don a monkey suit and head over to Marcel’s, the chef’s West End fine-dining temple. Last year, however, Wiedmaier opened the less-fussy Brasserie Beck, which introduced the chef’s French cuisine “flavored with a Flemish Flair” to a much wider audience of eaters. This was a good thing, no doubt, but I was just as excited by Wiedmaier’s decision to, ahem, tap into his Belgian roots and offer only beers from that country of legendary brewers (and drunk monks). From saisons to lambics to Flemish red ales, in-house beer specialist Bill Catron’s list is bottomless well of outstanding suds. Is it any wonder that it won City Paper’s Best Beer List honors this year? It’s pretty easy to eat heartily at Beck without securing a bank loan (as if!). The charcuterie board is a gorgeous, almost artistic arrangement of sliced meats and pates, only some of which are produced in-house. It’s also filling enough to serve as a meal in itself—well, if you wash it down with a few Trappist brews, I guess. I’m also fond of Wiedmaier’s take on the classic Belgian combo, moules frites; his mussels are meaty, never fishy, and sufficiently infused with your chosen broth (I can’t seem to steer away from the fennel and chorizo), and his frites are thin, crisp, and impossible to stop eating. I’ve also found several keepers on the appetizer list, including this underwhelming-sounding combination of toasted garlic baguette, poached egg, and fricassee of mushrooms. This thing is packed with enough rich, earthy flavor to choke a truffle-hunting pig. I have to admit, I’ve eaten and drank so well off of Beck’s appetizer, seafood, and beer lists that I’ve only once ordered an actual entrée, which the server forgot to punch in to the computer. I was so full, I was grateful for his incompetence.
(Washington City Paper review: Tim Carman)
Palena
Italian, American
Cleveland Park: 3529 Connecticut Ave. NW, Washington, DC
$$$$
Winner of City Paper’s Best Restaurant award for 2008, Palena still has its problems. The dining room has a sort of aging austerity about it—some of the chairs are chipped, a few tables are scratched, and the surreal, black-and-white artwork feels incongruent against the colorful classicism of former White House chef Frank Ruta’s cooking. The dinner service has its drawbacks, too. You won’t receive an amuse bouche or any other treats from the kitchen during the course of your meal. You order four courses, you get four courses. But for your money, you’ll get four of the most thoughtfully composed plates anywhere in town. Ruta’s genius is not his presentations, which are more conventional than whimsical. His particular genius is for constructing flavors; like a poet who chooses every last word for both sound and meaning, Ruta builds dishes in which every single ingredient has a rightful place, maybe for texture, maybe for flavor, maybe both. Subtract just one, and the entire plate suffers. Take, for example, a recent second course of Atlantic fluke; by itself, the crispy flatfish has a moist, delicate flavor, but by adding a few seemingly simple ingredients—tiny florets of lemony cauliflower, little bulbs of spring onion—Ruta has discovered the fish’s deeper possibilities. The combined flavors are so bright, fresh, and alive that it seems as if Ruta has extracted the very essence from each ingredient. Ruta is not a chef who leaves anything to chance—or outside sources. He makes his own bread. He makes his own pasta. He cures his own meats. He even makes his own desserts, now that his long-time business partner, Ann Amernick, has retired from full-time pastry making. Just as important to Washingtonians with limited bank—and doesn’t that pretty much include us all these days?—Ruta has become as much known for his informal café in the front of Palena as for his fine-dining restaurant itself. And why not? The first-come, first-served café boasts not only a mouthwatering truffled cheeseburger but also the juiciest and crispiest roast chicken in the entire metro area.
(Washington City Paper review: Tim Carman)
Restaurant Nora
Contemporary
Dupont Circle: 2132 Florida Ave. NW, Washington, DC
$$$$
Self-described as “America’s first certified organic restaurant,” Restaurant Nora is a place to splurge—on the check, that is. You can still eat relatively healthy—think caviar sabayon, dried cherries, and lemon-leek emulsions, rather than butter- and cream-heavy sauces—but come prepared to pay. Several entrees top $30 and salads hover at $13 each. Still, “the best organic restaurant in the city” can be an “amazing experience. Very few times I have eaten and enjoyed food so much in my life.” In addition, there’s an “excellent” wine list, although the staff doing the pouring can, like some wines, be alternately “warm” and “stuffy.” Chef Nora Pouillon, author of 1996’s Cooking With Nora, has been on the seasonal food train almost as long as Alice Waters, but judging by a very recent visit, her kitchen’s still serving up “a superb meal,” even if it is “slightly on the expensive side.”
