1789

"Is this your first time dining with us?" asked the personable bartender as I perched on a seat at the bar to wait for my always-tardy friend S. When I answered "yes," he lit up, and after serving me a crisp glass of Albarino (and carding me, the way to this nearly 30-year-old girl's heart), he went on to tell me the history of the famed Georgetown restaurant. Founded over forty years ago, and with a new chef this year in Nathan Beauchamp, 1789 Restaurant continues to earn accolades from Gourmet magazine, and three stars from Washington Post food critic Tom Sietsema.

"So, what should I get?" I asked the bartender. "What's Chef Beauchamp's best dish?" I had heard fabulous things about the lamb chops, but wanted another opinion. Without missing a beat, my bartender broke into a grin. "The rabbit. Do you like rabbit?" Now, rabbit's one of my favorite dishes, so this was a great sign. "Love it," I said.

Next thing I knew, the bartender had disappeared, going off to make sure the rabbit was still available that night. "There's one left," he said when he returned. "It's yours if you want it." "Absolutely," I said gratefully. Never in the twenty years that I've known her have I been so glad that S was running late...

I continued to enjoy my Albarino, and watch my new friend make champagne cocktails, dirty martinis, and even a Shirley Temple for a young man who didn't pass the carding test. And eventually, in walked S.

We moved on to our table, where our extremely friendly and witty server greeted us. She read us as a table that might spend some time chatting before we settled on our dinner choices, and made us feel entirely comfortable taking our time -- talking about our weekends, showing each other our manicures, and laughing about our inability to master yoga. It felt a little weird to be chattering away about such silliness, in a solemn and historically-inspired room. But somehow, it worked.

Unfortunately, I wasn't as blown away by our meals. My chilled tomato soup with fresh shrimp had vibrant cilantro flavor, but the tomato didn't sing. And in July, when I've had bright, summery tomatoes at every turn, that left me disappointed. S enjoyed her crabcakes, and the bite I stole from her plate was tasty, although no better than those I've had elsewhere in the city. But the real disappointment was the rabbit, slightly overcooked, and served with pasta that stuck to itself in an unsatisfying way. Our meal ended on a good note, as the lemon miroir, served with raspberries, was one of the best lemon desserts I've ever enjoyed. It was perfectly light and fresh, with just the right amount of tart lemon flavor.

We had a beautiful evening, and enjoyed a fun setting in which old friends can catch up and be taken care of by perfectly attentive service from start to finish. And the summer special 3-course dinner for $35 is hard to beat. But purely for the taste and quality of the food, I'd probably choose to go elsewhere.

1789 Restaurant
1226 36th Street, NW
202-965-1789

So you think you can cook

"It cracks me up that you're so into food and cooking now," G said to me when I was visiting her and her husband in Texas earlier this summer. "I remember when you didn't know how to chop a green pepper!"

It's true. As a kid, I was unsure in the kitchen. And even as a young adult, I picked up knives with trepidation, sure I'd chop off a finger; and only rarely experimented with recipes, certain that I'd mess something up and wind up having to order a pizza. (G, on the other hand, is a natural in the kitchen -- I think she was born knowing how to whip up her dad's red sauce, her mom's jambalaya...)

But somehow, over the last couple of years, I've picked up some confidence in the kitchen. Maybe it's because what I've learned is, there's no better way to become more proficient in the kitchen, than to just get in there and cook. Helping me along with that are cooking classes at L'Academie de Cuisine's recreational school in Bethesda. There, aspiring home cooks learn everything from basic knife skills, to Asian appetizers, to risotto. The combination of a great instructor, tasty recipes, and the camaraderie of classmates makes the evening fly by.

Take enough classes, and you may just find yourself comfortable enough to jump into your kitchen one summer Thursday night, and throw together a dinner of salmon with fresh basil, and a summery tomato-corn-mozzarella-basil salad. And peach sorbet for dessert. Mmmm.

L'Academie de Cuisine
5021 Wilson Lane
Bethesda, MD
301-986-9490

Zaytinya

Entertaining the parents on a hot and sticky DC summer afternoon can be tricky. When they visit we usually pick a neighborhood or two and wander somewhat aimlessly, poking our heads into interesting-looking places and just exploring... but last week's oppressive heat wave shrunk our tolerance for being outdoors. So we settled on visiting a few museums in the morning, and catching a movie in the afternoon. And in between, we stopped into Zaytinya for lunch.

This was an interesting choice, because I'm normally not a fan. I don't love their somewhat pretentious scene in the evenings. I don't love that I've been overcharged there more than once. I don't love that a request for (admittedly excellent) bread is always turned down until after we've placed a food order, even when we've ordered $100 worth of drinks, and even when we're clearly in the process of ordering food.

And I generally don't love their food, finding it decent but nothing special.

So I was shocked to find that I enjoyed, I mean really enjoyed, our lunch there last weekend. It may have had something to do with the air conditioning and large glasses of water, both of which were much appreciated after our overheated morning. But it was more. It was the horiatiki salata, summery sweet tomatoes tossed together with cucumbers, red onions, and green peppers. The saltiness of the kalamata olives and the tang of the feta, mixed with the fresh herbs in the vinaigrette, made this a salad we couldn't get enough of. It was the seared salmon, served with sundried tomato Israeli couscous and a yogurt dill sauce. The fish was prepared with an easy touch (lightly seasoned and lightly cooked), which surprised and gladdened me. It was the baba ghannouge, to my palate the best version of this standard in the city, not meek or merely a hommus substitute, but exploding with smokey eggplant flavor.

There were still some misses. The arayes, billed as grilled pita stuffed with ground lamb and tahini, had only a smattering of the filling, which may have been a good thing, since it tasted sour and unappetizing. And as much as the baba ghannouge bursts with eggplant flavor, the imam bayildi does not, its eggplant base completely lost beneath heavy tomatoes and onions.

Zaytinya
701 Ninth Street, NW
202-638-0800

ISO: Southern Victuals

Many people in DC like to tell me that our fair city is the South. As we all know, JFK famously called Washington a "city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm." "And it's below the Mason-Dixon line," folks say. "And have you noticed how hot and humid it gets?" (Note to complainers about heat and humidity: Try a summer in Louisiana. Hell, try twenty of them. Then come back and talk to me about "hot and humid". Although I'll admit that today's hundred-degree sauna was pretty miserable...)

But please. The South? Washington? Where's the accent? The bless-your-heart "politeness"? The real down-home, honest-to-goodness, stick-to-your-ribs Southern food? By and large, it's not here.

There are some exceptions. The shrimp and grits at Colorado Kitchen? Tastes like home, Creole-style (with tomatoes) with a mildly sweet biscuit on the side. And I enjoyed a plate of fried catfish with corn cakes and collard greens at Busboys and Poets last week -- although served a little fancier than fried catfish should ever be (it's a fish with whiskers, a bottom-feeder, for goodness' sake! I'm used to enjoying it at a Friday fish fry, wiping my hands and mouth on paper towels and pulling a beer out of the cooler...), the fish was delightfully crispy and I devoured it. But the greens couldn't have been cooked by a southerner, as I don't think a pork product came anywhere near them at any time. And as I've said before, collard greens aren't collard greens without pork.

And corn cakes? What I wanted was hushpuppies, those delectable balls of fried cornmeal laced with peppers and onions (if savory) or a touch of honey (if sweet)! As the story goes, they got their name from the cooks' practice of tossing them to the dogs in the kitchen to quiet them down, but I think they could be called hush-children, or just plain delicious! Back home, no seafood feast was complete without an order of hushpuppies (my favorites, at Drusilla Seafood in Baton Rouge, are still only twelve for a dollar!), but here, I can't seem to satisfy my craving. According to Tom Sietsema:

Kitchens that know their hush puppies: Majestic Cafe in Old Town, which serves 'em with remoulade; Jackie's in Silver Spring, where the snack is on the brunch menu; and Vidalia downtown Washington. Indigo Landing in Alexandria, which I'm reviewing in this week's Sunday Magazine, serves hush puppies made with ... foie gras!

Foie gras hushpuppies? This southern girl's not buying it. They may be very tasty, but hushpuppies, they're not.

And one more piece of evidence for the "DC's not the South" file -- no self-respecting Southern city would fail as miserably at sweet tea as our nation's capital does. But here, at least, there's an easy solution. If preparing a separate pitcher of sweet tea is too much to ask, please don't suggest that I just add sugar to a glass of iced tea. No! Anyone who's ever taken a chemistry class can tell you that sugar crystals don't easily dissolve in cold liquid! I could sit there for a half-hour, diligently stirring sugar into my tea, only to find a layer of sugar sediment laying at the bottom of my glass when I rest my spoon. Instead, follow Firefly's example, and offer simple syrup to sweeten iced tea. It's an idea brilliant in its simplicity...

Colorado Kitchen
5515 Colorado Avenue, NW
202-545-8280

Busboys and Poets
2021 14th Street, NW
202-387-POET (7638)

Drusilla Seafood
3482 Drusilla Lane
Baton Rouge, LA
225-927-8844

Firefly
1310 New Hampshire Avenue, NW
202-861-1310

About Books: The Ruhlman Trilogy

I'm a sucker for food writing. I read the blogs, I read the online reviewers, I subscribe to more than one culinary magazine. And amazon.com emails me every time a new book about food, cooking, or restaurants is published. (Sometimes I think I single-handedly keep them in business.)

So it should be no surprise that I recently read my way through Michael Ruhlman's "chef trilogy" -- The Making of a Chef, The Soul of a Chef, and The Reach of a Chef. Ruhlman is a journalist and self-professed "hobby cook" who peeked inside the world of professional cooking in America and invited us along for the ride.

In The Making of a Chef, Ruhlman takes his reader to the Culinary Institute of America, and gives her a taste of what it might be like to be a student there. (Maybe not "might be like" -- my CIA-trained friend tells me Ruhlman's account is spot on.) And that taste is at the same time exhilirating, exciting, and scary. Could I hack it? Unclear. Do I want to find out? The book leaves me unclear on that too, at moments sending me to download the application and hone my knife skills, at others leaving me feeling old and tired and lacking the ability to do much more than my desk job.

The reader's next journey, in The Soul of a Chef, is behind the scenes at the Certified Master Chef exam (seven chefs begin, how many will pass?), and in the kitchens of two top American chefs, Michael Symon (of, most famously, Lola, in Cleveland, OH) and Thomas Keller (of, among other places, French Laundry, in Yountville, CA). The best passages? Those telling us Keller's story, his passion for food and restaurants that leaps off the pages and makes the reader want to sign up to be a part of whatever Keller does next. (Of local interest, we also get a glimpse into Eric Ziebold's time as a sous chef at French Laundry. He's now chef de cuisine at CityZen here in Washington, a restaurant high on my list of places to try.)

Two books completed, I could hardly wait to pick up The Reach of a Chef. But unfortunately, Ruhlman's luster seemed to be wearing off. I noticed repeated stories. "Yeah, yeah," I found myself thinking. "I remember this one. Move on. Tell me something new." Perhaps it's an unfair criticism, as new readers will enjoy the background stories, and the books are not necessarily designed to build one off of the other like the Harry Potter books or the Star Wars movies. But doesn't it seem logical that much of the audience for Ruhlman's third "chef" book would overlap with the audience for the first two? There must be more graceful ways to bring newbies up to speed without alienating faithful readers of the two earlier books. The final book in the trilogy was worth reading -- I came away with new thoughts on the role of a chef, as artist, scientist, and businessperson -- but it didn't transport me into another world as the first two did.

I couldn't help but compare these books to a book about another passion (fantasy baseball) written by another journalist (Wall Street Journal writer Sam Walker) I read around the same time -- Fantasyland. Suprisingly (because food and cooking are my passions, and going to culinary school my daydream... and fantasy baseball, well, not so much), Fantasyland came out on top. It was compelling and well-written, and I couldn't put it down. (And I don't care about baseball. Really. Not at all. Talk to me again in basketball season.) It's the sign of a truly gifted writer when a reader who couldn't care less about the subject of a book cannot put it down -- and I'm not entirely sure Ruhlman's "chef" trilogy would pass that test.

Palena on the Move?

Conflicting reports abound...

As reported by Todd Kliman in yesterday's chog...

Frank Ruta and Ann Amernick, Palena's owners, are preparing to sign a lease to take over the Westinghouse Mansion (2000 Massachusetts Avenue, NW) in Dupont Circle within the next year.

As Kliman reported, "the move to new digs spells the demise of the restaurant and cafe 'as we know it.'"

But Tom Sietsema, in today's chat, dispelled that as rumor...

Washington, D.C.: Hi Tom!

What have you heard about the probable Palena move in the near future?

Tom Sietsema: "News to me," says Frank Ruta, who, as Palena's chef, should know.

Palena still has five years to go on its current lease, Ruta tells me, and even if it didn't, there are several obstacles in the way of any imminent move.

One of them is a liquor license: Good luck trying to secure one in Dupont Circle, which is where an investor in Palena recently bought a building, Blaine Mansion, setting off the "Palena is moving" rumors. Another is the property's historic status; and still a third reason Palena won't be relocating anytime soon is the chef's commitment to doing things the right way -- slowly and deliberately, never rashly.

We'll have to keep digging to find the truth of the matter. But one thing's for sure -- those of us who live closer to Dupont than Cleveland Park are rooting for a move, so we can enjoy the wonders of Palena far more often!

It's about the people, Part II

"It's amazing what a difference service makes," my friend said. "Bad service can ruin good food, good food can't save bad service."

I think he may be on to something.

My favorite and most memorable dining experiences are not comprised merely of good food. Nope, it's more complicated than that -- they are a combination of fantastic food, welcoming service, and those intangibles that delight my senses and leave me yearning to return. They are an escape from the niggling stresses of my day-to-day world, almost a vacation of sorts. Good food is certainly necessary, but it is far from sufficient.

And this is why the same restaurant can be the site of wide-eyed delight on one visit, and mere adequacy on another. The evening my server answered my request for a suggestion with a smile, the comment that it's easy to work there because he truly loves every dish on the menu, and a specific recommendation (accompanied by a promise to quit his job on the spot if I wasn't happy -- oh! the pressure!) -- I had a delectable cut of lamb served with mouth-wateringly tantalizing potatoes. The night my server (different server, same restaurant) badgered us about taking too long to order, and answered my friend's request for a not-too-dry red wine with the suggestion of a chardonnay (a red chardonnay?!) -- I noticed my friend's slightly overcooked steak, and my must-have-been-plated-too-soon side dish.

Is it possible that the kitchen was having an off night the night of the fateful chardonnay recommendation? Perhaps. But I think it's also possible that once the tone had been set, I couldn't escape and fully enjoy the chef's cooking.

And setting the tone can start long before I even step across the restaurant's threshold. The pleasant chat and laughter I shared with the woman calling this afternoon to confirm my reservation left me counting the minutes until dinner tomorrow night. All this, before I even walk in the door, because of the exchange of a few pleasantries!

What do you think? Is it all about the food, or do the extra touches make all the difference?

It's about the people

Food's about the people.

True, food's good for keeping us going, giving us the physical sustenance to live. And it brings us some of the finest fleeting sensory pleasures, through decadent tastes on our tongues and enticing smells tickling our nostrils.

But I love food because it binds us together as communities, big and small, and creates indelible memories that can be triggered by the slightest taste, smell, sight, or thought. Gathering in a St. Louis kitchen with an old friend, trying time after time with only limited success to get the bread dough from Mom's recipe to rise, but then remembering that recipe, the one for those peanut butter treats from third grade, and making those instead! Picking peaches in the Virginia countryside, and returning home to make pie after pie, and gallons of peach ice cream, because we may have gotten a little overzealous and picked a few too many ('cause they're so good!). Joining the crowd in the kitchen to make sandwiches and bake brownies for the annual fundraiser that introduces Louisianians to New York deli. Going back time and again to that French restaurant in Tokyo, the one where the chef knows us, and gives us little tastes of everything (oh, that pear tart) (and teaches us some Japanese -- skoshi -- along the way)! And picking oranges in the Florida sun, the sticky sweetness as I sample each kind dripping down my arms, but the next morning declining the fresh-squeezed OJ made special for me because I don't like all that pulp.

Food's about the people. And the memories. Happy birthday, Grandpa. I miss you.

Happy Independence Day

There are few things better than a day off of work in the middle of the week. Especially one with bright sunshine above, fewer tourists than expected around, and the company of two good friends.

I met my pals this morning, bottles of water in hand, in an attempt to fend off the dehydration that is likely to come on a 99 degree day. We made our way down to the Mall to check out the Smithsonian Folklife Festival (which last year was devoted in part to culinary America -- I was so happy!). As we dashed across the Independence Day parade route, M said she was hungry. "Of course," said our other friend. "Isn't food the whole reason to come to these festivals?"

I knew I liked him for a reason.

So we took a look around to see what we could sample. Did we want bison burgers, courtesy of the Alberta exhibit? Or maybe fry bread from the Native American kitchen. And we shouldn't neglect the New Orleans delicacies, or the Cantina Latina. The Big Easy chicken wings were delectable (how can fried chicken wings not be?), although the collard greens didn't seem to be cooked with pork (and they call themselves New Orleanians?) and the red beans and rice needed some more heat. We also tried the Native American fry bread, which was a tasty treat, and left me planning a trip to Mitsitam, the cafe in the National Museum of the American Indian, soon.

No sooner had we finished this bite, than M noticed some folks wandering around with watermelon. Not small slices of watermelon, no way. But larger-than-life hunks of sweet, fresh, juicy goodness.

So we had some.

Sitting under the shade of a tree perfect for a pinata, watching the kids go round and round on the carousel, listening to a bluegrass band, munching on the watermelon, and slurping down the mixed berry smoothie and mango lassi (courtesy of Indique)... a summer afternoon just doesn't get much better.

Happy Independence Day!

Smithsonian Folklife Festival
National Mall
June 30-July 4 and July 7-11

Dupont Circle FreshFarm Market... or, how I discovered that I love fresh veggies

Mom would be amused.

When I was a kid, I hated vegetables. Salad was some iceberg lettuce, maybe a carrot stick or two if I was feeling particularly adventurous. I'd eat veggies if they were of the corn or potato variety (that low-carb craze was never gonna catch on with me). But green things? You must be kidding.

Until I discovered the Dupont Circle FreshFarm market. There's something exciting and fun about spending a Sunday morning wandering through the stands, seeing what's fresh and in season, discovering new vegetables I never knew existed (purple cauliflower?), maybe sampling a taste of a bright yellow pepper or a deep ruby cherry, chatting with the farmers, and crafting a menu for Sunday dinner based on what looks best.

Like a couple of weekends ago... when I snagged some sweet sugar snap peas, fresh mint and cilantro, a baguette, and mango sorbet. Dinner that night? I snacked on cheese, olives, that baguette, and Provencal olive oil, while cooking up sugar snap peas with mint, couscous with cranberries, cilantro and walnuts, and salmon with mint and cilantro. And some of that sorbet for dessert. With a glass of a crisp riesling, a fantastic summer dinner.

Or last week, when I grabbed some white peaches, raspberries, and blueberries... and had homemade smoothies for breakfast every morning.

Mom's coming to visit in a few weeks, and I'm hoping to find lots of fresh green things to cook. But I don't want to shock her too much -- I might have to pick up some corn and potatoes so she doesn't wonder who this veggie-loving imposter is, pretending to be her daughter.

Dupont Circle FreshFarm Market
20th Street, between Massachusetts and Q
202-362-8889