Our Picks

You should do some research on what has been going on in the Maryland General Assembly regarding the conflict between wholesalers and small local breweries.  Essentially, the big money has flexed their muscles to prevent the little guys from having viable tap rooms (even the bigger local guys like Flying Dog).  

You're goddamn right there is. It's nowhere near the wine world in it's sophistication (and budgets) but it's absolutely there and growing rapidly.

THE HABIT BURGER GRILL SPICES UP FAN-FAVORITE WITH NEW SRIRACHA LIME SPICY GREEN BEANS

This article has a picture of them.

Don't know if you have them at your local Habit, but mine does!!!! And they are GOOD, especially if you like the crunchy, spicy, mayo-ey, ridiculousness of an over-topped sushi roll.  They say it is a limited-time item but I hope it sticks around for a while. 

Made a reservation after seeing Chef's Table on Netflix. (I'm sure these restaurants featured *love* this kind of thing--probably boosts attendance considerably) The duck carnitas are still very good. Never saw such a pice of duck. Also the herbed guacamole is excellent. Probably the best I've had anywhere. So fresh and flavorful. There is an amazing Mexican granache on the by-the-glass menu (not appearing in the online menu), though I cannot recall the name. It was quite a find. We were told it's produced specially for Cosme. 

I'm not sure this is the best value at the price point, but we loved it. 

We went to the bar here last night and found it utterly bizarre. As suggested above, the insistence on local is non-uniform and therefore arbitrary: "yuzu oil" in one thing, but no tequila because it's not locally sourced. Could not find a drink that did not sound, from menu description, over-complex and over-sweet. Sorghum is a clever notion; but a whisky cocktail with sorghum etc etc would have been awesome if poured over hot oatmeal but otherwise blech. The building is cool, though, and everyone was nice! Order liquor neat and enjoy the experience.

Had a delicious lunch today during my first visit to Bom on 18th st in the heart of Adams Morgan.

You're goddamn right there is. It's nowhere near the wine world in it's sophistication (and budgets) but it's absolutely there and growing rapidly.

My wife and I met a friend in Oaxaca this past week, and spent four nights there. It remains one of my absolute favorite places to visit. It's beautiful, and such a vibrant and alive city, and extremely walkable. I also don't know that it's possible to eat better anywhere in the world. Here are some restaurants and bars we visited while there:

We had lunch in the newly remodeled EMP a couple weeks ago. It was our third visit in four years; we have now been for dinner, lunch and dinner in the bar. As it is in the neighborhood, we have also popped in for their uber-excellent cocktails on special occasions. The food and service was impeccable, but for intangible reasons that I can't fully articulate it wasn't quite as enjoyable as our past meals. 

Yes.  They assembled a team with big hitters with lots of home runs and had a good run:  A surprising run because they hadn’t been to the playoffs  since the late 90’s (with Mussina)

This article describes the Orioles “braintrust” and who is in charge.

That's quite a group of athletes.

At the risk of digression, a story or two....I met Yogi at a baseball card show in Richmond about 20 years ago. Shaking his hand was like shaking a catcher's mitt. It was very thick and very strong. I'm assuming strong hands and wrists contributed to his success against pitches out of the strike zone.

Closed.

I've been meaning to write about Texas Jack's for a while now, but the WaPo listing reminded me. It's in my neighborhood and I've gone off and on since it opened (I've been going about 2x a month recently). I think Don can remove the "warning" from the title at this point. It has had some consistency issues, but the good/great has largely outweighed the disappointing.

I have had a lot of great steaks over the years, many of them at Ray's. One of the best steaks of my life was the 20 oz dry aged, bone-in rib eye I had on Saturday (and again on Sunday). Ray's cooked it a perfect medium rare (warm, red center) with a crackling crust.

At McDonald's, check out the mini-chocolate croissants called chocolatines.  Only 79 cents so it is small but satisfies the chocolate/sugar fix.

Figured I would bump this up since we had such a great meal here on Sunday.

Dorjee Momo

The Pupatella model. Really - this is exactly what they do at Pupatella (if you're lucky an employee will point out an open table, but you can't count on it - everything's the same, from getting your own water, to getting another glass of wine, to busing your own table - Pupatella does, however, have runners that find the little plastic "sandwich-sign" number you've taken at the counter where you ordered). 

Pupatella (as well as the San Francisco example) may have pioneered the "serverless model," but restaurants - and I'm thinking of two DC-area restaurants in particular - pioneered not only the "chef-less" concept, but also the "free-PR" concept (and guess who their "tool" for free PR was?) 🤔 Well, take what you can get, I suppose. Anyway, the "chef-less" model demands a strong figurehead as owner who essentially designates a line cook to be the "chef," although doesn't necessarily advertise it as such - the first time I noticed it, I was amazed, but the truth is: Even though someone obviously leads the kitchen at any given moment, a restaurant can save itself six figures a year by not being "chef-driven," even though the general public thinks it is. And that line-cook chef? The name is, invariably, Latino (a separate issue, but certainly tangential to other conversations we've had going on here).

Truth is, regarding GM and Chef de Cuisine, an active owner who knows something about food can eliminate both positions, and serve as owner, GM, and even Chef de Cuisine at a very high level, although obviously it would be impossible to work the line during rush hour. This leaves these types of restaurants with *extremely* low salary costs - the primary expenses are food/beverage costs, rent, equipment, utilities, etc, and you can bet your bottom dollar that any of these restaurants in DC would have been a strong "NO!" on Proposition 77 - which bring us to the free-PR aspect, now known as "social media."

They are now selling at the Thursday afternoon Penn Quarter market.  Picked up a full loaf of the Pain, damn that is good bread. 

Pretty sure they renamed/rebranded The Cereal Bowl as "Milkbar."  😉 

A weighty opening last night at NMWA.  18 of the 20 artists were in attendance, which is very cool. 

Have been back here several times for lunch specials and dinner - service, food and atmosphere continue to be solid.

It is a small place so it fills up quickly, but it is nice to have a decent Greek place without driving to Tysons area.

From the Washington DC Restaurants and Dining Forum:

From the Baltimore Restaurants and Dining Forum (just above):

This can be very confusing, especially because we use the Howard-Montgomery County Border (Patuxent River) to separate our Baltimore Forum and our Washington DC Forum. Fasten your seat belts:

A few random notes about traveling in the Azores. Probably really random.

We had a lovely dinner here this weekend. one thing that i particularly appreciated is that though it's a hard res to get you'd never know that from being there--the tables aren't too close together, there's not a line of people waiting to get in, and service is not rushed. i think they do a good job of spacing out the reservations (or the food just comes fast meaning you finish dinner more quickly than usual).