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Thank you for the question Eric&Blueboy! It made me realize it needs to be more clear. Lula is cooking all those days and all events are opened to the public via a regular reservation, except the Media Event, which is by invite only. All these events are caz and fun centered, by the way! Please make sure to say hi to Manuel and Karla the owners. They love and value the Rock.com community and are always open for suggestions! Thank you for your interest! March 10th - Kick off fundraiser in support of the Spanish Catholic Center, 6:00PM March 11th - Mexican Embassy Dinner, 7PM March 12th - MexiRico - Urban Puerto Rico and Mexico Happy Hour, 6:00PM March 13th - Mexican Gala Oh, and yes. There will be a special menu you can order from....We are thinking of roasting a lechon Mexican style on Friday [instead of Puerto Rican style], thus why we are calling it the MexiRico Happy Hour!

We will be hosting a young, hip, Mexican rising star chef on 10-13 March. Her name is Lula Martin del Campo from D.F. [Mexico City]. I have attached some material about her, and must apologize as most of it is in Spanish, but it will give you a feel for her style. She represents our focus on Urban Latin American Cuisine at MIO, which in essence is our intent to hopscotch directly to the largest cities throughout Latin America to learn and then showcase what their young and/or leading edge chefs are doing in their own markets. Our idea is simply raise consciousness, and have a lot of fun along the way, that modern Latin American cuisine (from its original source throughout the region) is producing really inspiring food and techniques. We will invite other chefs throughout the region and keep you posted. We are having alot of fn with this concept and hope you join us along... 20FEB MIO Lula.pdf

Had lunch on Tuesday at Againn and ordered a BLT and drank four Bloody Marys. BLT was made with pork belly and house sun dried tomatoes. Well done indeed. Crusty, grilled bread. Fatty/meaty belly blended perfectly with the inside part of the bread. Bloodys were accompanied by snappy boiled shrimps. I plan to return tomorrow and only have three Bloody Marys. Hit the spot on a slow, snowy day at the office...

... a King Cake with a bearded baby....[sorry, sliced off the tip of one of my typing fat fingers yesterday...]

To Nawlins....Drew Brees & Reggie Bush - what a kick ass athletes should be like -- my Saints, my fading memories of living on South Carrollton Street, next to Camelia Grill, Cooter Browns, Maple Leaf Bar and Muddy Waters.....and buying my Kink Cake and crawdads at Christiana's...

Super H Mart in Fairfax for sure.

Don, The Lechon will be in the oven and ready for tomorrow's our Puerto Rican Friday. Would love to see you and your friends at MIO ! Guests will receive a complimentary shot of Chichalito. Below our promo e-mail....

Good afternoon from MIO! Just a quick update that we will open at 3PM and will offer the menu below. Given our location we expect our regular neighborhood clientele and hotel business and, as other stated, we ask that you please exercise extreme caution when traveling, if you must, across the city. Winter Storm 2010 $35.10 STARTERS (Choose One) Octopus Anticucho, Chickpea Puree Tiradito de Tuna Soy, Limes, chiles Bacalaito Coated Shrimp, Avocado-Tomato Salad MAIN ENTREE Beef Tenderloin, White Bean Puree, al Seco Cabrito a la Piruana Goat, Squash, Potatoes, Ajíes Stuffed Cornish Hen, Congri, Amarillos Plancha Seared Salmon, Creamy Quinoto, Loroco DESSERT Flan de Coquito Moose de Lucuma

Don, We have a saying in Puerto Rico when talking about a disoriented person - "He is more lost that a cross-eyed crab!" ["Esta' ma' perdio' que un juey bizco!"]- that kind of summarizes by navigational skills in any blog site. My apologies and my fault. I am getting better at it and I promise you to be the first post!

Don, We had a pleasant surprise this week when CNN en Espanol used MIO as a backdrop for the recent federal economic report signaling an up click in the economic recovery. Our revenue growth correlated fairly close to the reported numbers and Manuel's wife, Karla, was interviewed for the perspective of a small business owner. We have had a fairly strong end of Q4 and Jan10 and are holding out hope this recovery is sustainable for our industry. We hope to have represented the industry well in this interview and wish all of our colleagues our most sincere best wishes as we weather through this economic environment. Good luck in 2010! Attached the link to the CNN piece: My link

Good morning Rachel, Tienda.com [in Williamsburg, VA] sells them. They are a reat online store and usually dleiver to D.C. w/i two days. Have a wonderful day! Pedro

We cook flan in a pressure cooker. My mother used to use the tin cans where the danish cookies used to be sold in the drug stores during the holiday season [you know the kind?]. It is highly effective. I will get the recipe and share as soon as she arrives from the island today.

We use pressure cookers quite a bit in Puerto Rico, especially for softening beans and, most importantly, for making stews with low-grade meats, like chuck, or softening a flank steak so it may be shredded easily and make the Cuban dish vaca frita. It is also used to fry chicken for exceptional crispiness. I make a chicken fricassee in it, finishing the cooking uncovered to reduce the sauce. One risky way of using it, and I do not recommend this to first time users and it goes against every warning in the manufacturers book [and admittedly common sense], is for making dulce de leche quickly, where daring folks put the closed cans inside the cooker [with water, of course] and cook it for 20 minutes or so. This is meant as an anecdote, and not a suggested use [yes, I have done it successfully once, but kept a safe distance from my stove]. Pressure cookers save a tremendous amount of time and energy, it extracts natural flavors exponentially [great results to get a very flavorful chicken stock]. As a trivia point, Fidel Castro handed out pressure cookers by the thousands throughout Cuba as a way to conserve energy during the oil price crisis several years ago.

Don, Greetings and Happy New Year! I am including a quick posting of our RW menu. I will provide additional information and contextual explanation on the same on a subsequent posting but wanted to make you aware of the same. It follows our repositioning as an Urban Latin American Cuisine restaurant now into its fifth month. We are glad to report the response has been positive. My best to you and your community. Pedro

You are correct, and transferred to the suburbs of Rungis. I looked at the scale of the market and it is breathtaking. Here is their site.... http://www.rungisinternational.com/

My "real" job as VP of an IT federal contractor requires me to have business lunches about three times a week. Inevitably, the commentary on the table by my guests is that they like to eat light, fast and in a quiet environment so they can talk business. Among my industry friends who take food seriously, we often say D.C. is an "expense account" dining market. Does this impact the level of commitment or perception by these celebrity chefs when they decide to open a restaurant in D.C.? I think so. But I agree with edwinsux' comments. I think more can be done to understand the regional sourcing possibilities and committing oneself to supporting artisanal products, much the same way Europe assimilates a direct rural supply chain into its urban markets with limited third party intervention and processing [think the Les Halles central market in Paris]. I have not eaten in many restaurants in D.C. but I like what places such as Blue Ridge [in my neighborhood and I have no affiliation with it]attempt to do by highlighting regional products So, the intersection of my two points is the following, I find it difficult to grasp that a restaurant can maintain its focus and purpose based solely on the reputation of its celebrity chef unless he/she is intimately involved with its region and has firsthand relationships with suppliers.

Hope to see you this Friday!! I have included the menu with some "editor's notes" STARTERS Lechoncito asado con todo y cuerito: Typical Puerto Rican seasoning. We are roasting the COMPLETE pig SLOWLY and bring out to our grill station for customers to see. Crispy skin is included on all servings! Yucca Soup, Sofrito, Crispy Plantain (1) This creamy soup captures the essence of yucca and we add the Puerto Rican base of "sofrito" as a stand alone condiment MAIN Serenata de Bacalao Arroz con Pollo y aranitas Guinea Hen, Rum Reduction, Celeriac Puree(1) This dish was actually conceived by Augusto Schreiner, one of our guest chefs from Puerto Rico and part of the "Saborea Puerto Rico" promotion. He is Austrian and has lived on the island for over 40 years. Nothing like hearing spanglish with an Austrian accent! Arroz con Gandules con Pasteles de Yuca o Masa Asopao de Mariscos, Hearty Classic Puertorican Seafood Stew(1) Mahi Mahi, Chorizo Sauce, Yuca en Escabeche(1) Another Augusto creation!

Puerto Rico Horned Dorset Primavera in Puerto Rico. It is a Relais & Chateaux. http://www.horneddorset.com/home.html http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g264369-d275172-Reviews-Horned_Dorset_Primavera-Rincon_Puerto_Rico.html

We will be serving "Coquito" as part of our Puerto Rican Christmas Special Menu. This concoction is our traditional version of mainland "eggnog" except with a coconut and rum base. This is a deceivingly potent after dinner that is often drunk in Puerto Rico as a substitute of dessert. It is often enhanced on the island with other spirits like brandy or cognac in addition to rum. Dark of white rum is used in very generous quantities which cuts on the traditional "egginess" but the smoothness is maintained by the coconut milk.

BTW, the "Al's Backyard" in the article is most likely El Batey, as I recall the owner's name was Al.

Hunter S. Thompson's Puerto Rican Rum Diary This article was written by Emma Stratton Ron del Barrilito Distillery Hunter S. Thompson was 22 when he began work on The Rum Diary, a novel based on his own experiences working as a journalist in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1959. Not published for another 30 years, the book chronicles the turbulent, alcohol-imbued times of Paul Kemp, a young American journalist working for a floundering English newspaper in San Juan. At the time, many Americans went to Puerto Rico in search of a piece of action in "America's Caribbean." The island was considered by tourism companies, developers and banks to be an undeveloped goldmine and suddenly, large sums of money were pouring in from all directions. The American journalists were there to report and, hopefully, to get caught in the currents. It was a certain kind of journalist that was drawn to this situation. Puerto Rico was like another West, where people dreamt of staking out a piece of paradise and getting rich. Young Hunter S. Thompson tried to get a job at The San Juan Star, but was rejected by the editor, William Kennedy, who went on to become a successful writer and recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for his novel, Ironweed. (Despite rejection, the two remained lifelong friends.) Still desperate to get down to San Juan, Thompson accepted a more dubious position at El Sportivo, a fledgling English weekly about sports, and relocated in 1960. Mirroring Thompson's experience, Paul Kemp arrived at a newspaper that was like a sinking ship. Despite the money floating around San Juan, the Daily News was on a destructive path to bankruptcy, heralded by its clan of disgruntled, volatile, and boozy journalists. Kemp notes that while money was tight, rum flowed freely: There was no shortage of free liquor for the press, because all hustlers crave publicity. No occasion was too small for them to give what they called a "press party" in its honor. Each time Woolworths or the Chase Manhattan Bank opened a new branch, they celebrated with an orgy of rum . . . In a good week we would hit three parties and average three or four bottles for each half hour of painful socializing. It was a good feeling to have a stock of rum that would never run out, but after a while I could no longer stand even a few minutes at each party, and I had to give it up. Hunter S. Thompson had front row seats to the American tourism boom in Puerto Rico and all the subsequent excess and corruption. It was also a clash of cultures as the rich Americans moved in on destitute Puerto Ricans. Ice was still a commodity, bringing in twice the price of a bottle of rum. Today, the San Juan metro area sprawls for miles, at times resembling Miami with American chain stores, strip malls and shiny SUVs. The main tourist drags of the Condado and Isla Verde are long-established homes to Ritz-Carlton, Wyndham and Hilton. Yet the beautiful colonial district of Old San Juan is very much the same place where Paul Kemp regularly drank rum for breakfast, quarreled in bars, and tried to squeeze paychecks out of his broke editor-in-chief. Kemp's seedy journalist haunt, Al's Backyard, may not exist, but tourists can still walk through the narrow, cobbled streets and experience Thompson's descriptions of Old San Juan: the cool, morning breeze off the ocean, and the hot, stifling noon that continues until nightfall. Several times in the book, Kemp walks up the hill in Old San Juan and looks out on the harbor for which Puerto Rico is named, mulling over this Boomtown of an island. He would have seen on the other side of the bay, the Bacardi distillery in Catao, and a popular destination for those arriving by cruise ship. However, Bacardi originated in Cuba and is not authentic Puerto Rican rum. Those seeking the real thing will have to catch a ride to the nearby city of Bayamon, home of Ron del Barrilito rum. For almost 100 years, the same family has made the best rum on the island in the exact same spot. A visit to the Ron del Barrilito factory is like a trip back in time to the lost days of Thompson's Puerto Rico. The factory does not officially give tours but the owner and grandson of the founder, Manuel Fernandez, is happy to show people around the plantation grounds during business hours. Ron del Barrilito's roots go back to the late 1700s when Fernando Fernandez was awarded a large plot of land in Puerto Rico by the Spanish government. He built a Spanish style villa, started a sugar plantation and distilled his own rum from the pressed sugar cane juice, storing it in great oak barrels for his family's consumption. The rum was so good that soon neighbors began dropping by the Fernandez household in order to sample some of the rum from the barrel (which translates to Ron del Barrilito). When Fernando Fernandez's son went to university in France, he discovered cognac. Upon returning to Puerto Rico, he invented a rum recipe that rivaled the best French cognacs and decided that now the neighbors had to pay for it. In 1915, Ron del Barrilito was born. Off a busy freeway, the Fernandez plantation is only an eighth of its original size. Ron del Barrilito's offices are located in the base of an old brick windmill that once pressed sugar cane juice. The Spanish villa with its grand, sweeping staircase lies to one side of a termite-ridden wood building with a patched tin roof, home to the first distillery. A rare sight today, wooden houses constituted the majority of Puerto Rican homes in the fifties, but now, everything is made of concrete to withstand hurricanes. Across the grassy lawn punctuated by palms stands the Ron del Barrilito manufacturing plant and cellars. Only 11 employees work here, three of which are Fernandez family members. Ron del Barrilito is a 'rectifier,' which means they do not distill the alcohol themselves. After prohibition, the local Puerto Rican government placed heavy restrictions on distillation in attempt to rein in the profligate rum-making going on in the island. Alas, this did nothing whatsoever to curb the moonshine. Caita, Puerto Rico's official unofficial rum, is just as popular today as it ever was. Only the commercial giants Bacardi and Don Q can afford to have distilleries, so Ron del Barrilito takes distilled alcohol from Bacardi and mixes it with ingredients and sets it to age in large oak barrels. Only the family knows this secret recipe of ingredients that makes Ron del Barrilito so good. It is not written down anywhere. Ron del Barrilito's cellar contains rows of charred oak barrels containing 10-, 20-, 30-, even 40-year old rums. The barrels are stacked in a dark, two-story room that resembles an ancient wine cellar. The air is humid and mosquitoes are everywhere but it is this climate that makes one year of aging alcohol in Puerto Rico equal to three years in Scotland. Of the many barrels, the oldest was corked on November 23, 1942 by Manue'ls grandfather, a staunch Puerto Rican nationalist. He decreed that this barrel--named La Dona or "The Lady"--would not be opened until Puerto Rico became an independent nation; on that day, it would be brought into Bayamon's town center and free for all to drink. Today, the rum continues to age in the barrel, its proof climbing to around 100. In The Rum Diary, Paul Kemp swills rum over ice like water. Manuel Fernandez agrees that this is the best way to drink his rum, perhaps with a twist of lemon to bring out the flavors. He abhors the notion of mixing it with Coke but patriotically allows the occasional pina colada (the Puerto Rican national drink) for especially hot days. Hunter S. Thompson's manic alcohol-fueled stint in Puerto Rico only lasted nine months before he decided to pack it in and head back to New York City. From that distance, he began writing The Rum Diary, hoping to do for Puerto Rico what Hemingway did for Paris. The book is often called his long lost novel because of the stretch of time between the manuscript's completion and publication; though some might argue it is because of its subject, a long lost Puerto Rico. Note: The Pina Colada was invented in 1954 by a bartender at the Caribe Hilton named Ramon Monchito Marrero. It took 3 months for him to reach his goal of capturing all the flavors of Puerto Rico in a glass. As good as the drink is, he did not prosper financially.My link

I am very excited that you have a posting about Barrilito because we are very proud of this rum in Puerto Rico. You are correct about your commentary on the artisanal approach. This rum is aged in used oak barrels brought from Europe. Edmundo ages the rum in Bayamon, a municipality next to San Juan which is both highly industrial but with pockets of rural zones [kind of like how New Yorkers think of New Jersey]. Bayamon is also the "House of Chicharron" [craklin pork skin] which is actually sold in street carts like you would see for snow cones. I've attached a photograph of a typical chicharron cart. You would stop your car and buy a plastic bag full of chicharron which is accompanied by very soft bread rolls. Back to Barrilito....what may take 12 years for fine scotch to finesse, Barrilito accomplishes in a few years because of the heat and humidity of our island. The house where it is aged is a typical colonial plantation house and, if you go into the "cellar", you are overwhelmed by the strong odor...and flies. As a funny story, Johnny Depp just wrapped up filming "Rum Diaries" in Puerto Rico a few months ago, the book written by Hunter S. Thompson based on his short time living on the island trying to make it as a journalist. He lived in Old San Juan, where my favorite watering hole, El Batey, is located. El Batey redifines "hole in wall". When I was younger, the owner, an American expat, would tell me stories about Thompson. Not sure if I believed them, but he swore Thompson lived in his bar and all he drank was Barrilito. We, at MIO, hosted Rums of Puerto Rico last month as part of a promotional road trip of "Saborea Puerto Rico", a culinary festival scheduled for April on the island. They brought a lot of three star Barrilito. I will suggest to Manuel, the owner, to see if we can invite them back and will let you know. We do have several bottles of Barrilito in the bar if you care to come by and taste again.

Don, My first post here and my sincere apologies for any glitches that may occur. I somehow skipped the whole blog generation. In full disclosure, I am a Puerto Rican friend of Manuel Iguina, owner of MIO, and have been working closely with him in developing a Puerto Rican component to his repertoire. Coincidentally, this Friday marks the kick-off of our "Navidades de Puerto Rico" [Puerto Rican Christmas] Fridays. I don't intend to "plug" the event here, but rather would like to offer some context and explanation of the menu. Among the planned items are, of course, Lechon Asado [roasted pig]. It is marinated with "sofrito", a creole base of culantro [not cilantro] which is the "DNA" of Puerto Rican cuisine, aji dulce [they look like hopscotch peppers but have absolutely no heat but rather a cubanelle sweetness and "other" herbs and spices. We try to recreate the taste of Guavate, a small village outside of the municipality of Cayey [some 40 minutes from San Juan] which is now kindly referred to in the US as "Lechon Village". Andrew Zimmern actually profiled this place in his Puerto Rico episode and called it the "best pig he has ever had" [though I sense he and Bourdain always say that - pig epiphanies always happen every time you bit into a crunchy skin, regardless of where you are, I suppose]. Manuel and I grew up eating in Guavate with our parents. It is what you do on a Sunday. Simple stuff. Formica tables, "repurposed" stools and school chairs, open space and very loud vitrolas playing old school salsa. I am sorry, but there is nothing fancy about the experience, other than being surrounded by good people, smoke from charcoal embedded with the lechon smell and cold beers. I hope you can someday be there. Other items will include Arroz con Gandules [Pigeon Peas], Pasteles [Puerto Rican "tamal", if you will, but the dough is made of either "yautia", green plantain or yucca. Intead of corn husks, we steam/boiled this wrapped on plantain leaves. Serenata de Bacalao, a salt cod cold salad with tropical roots [it marinates in olive oil, a bit of vinegar, alcaparrado, onions, and other ingredients]. Very old school dish from the island. There will be typical fritters and a few other dishes, possibly "Asopao de Mariscos", a typical seafood stew. At any rate, please accept my sincere apologies if this blog is too lengthy, or borders on a "plug". Our intent is to finally bring an authentic taste from Puerto Rico to D.C. as a component of our menu. Our friends from Puerto Rico are very nostalgic about it. Buen provecho and Feliz Navidad to you and your community.