Kitchen Wench

Belgian food is starting to quickly become an overdone fad in DC. However, having spent most of my life in the Midwest, deprived of moules and frites, I just can’t seem to get enough of them. Plus, trying new restaurants gives me an excuse to eat french fries, even though I know they’re bad for me.

Two weekends ago, Lee and I made reservations for any early dinner at Brassiere Beck. BB opened about a year ago amid serious hype. Reviews seem to be mixed, but BB also keeps popping up in various best new restaurant lists. While that’s enough to make one a little hesitant, Brasserie Beck definitely exceeded my expectations on several counts.

Lee and I each ordered a salad ($13) to start - bibb lettuce with roasted beets and frisee with lardons and poached egg. I’m sorry there are no salad shots — I was so hungry that I forgot to take a picture. The beet salad arrived with thin slices of beet arranged in a circle and a little pile of lettuce leaves and minced red onion in the center. As an avid beet fan, I have eaten many a beet salad. This rendition was perfectly acceptable but not very memorable. The mustard dressing was very mild, and I thought the raw onion overwhelmed their delicate flavor. I think a gentle dressing works will with tender bibb lettuce, but a little more acid would have brought out the sweetness in the beets.

The frisee salad, on the other hand, was divine. Like, eyes rolling back in my head, weak knees, drooling a little divine. The presentation was also delightful - the mound of frissee was topped with a parmesan toast crisp and a perfectly poached egg. I love this flavor combination, but in the past I have noticed that this salad can become overpowered by the sherry vinegarette and becomes soupy once the egg yolk is mixed into the greens. What is notable about Brasserie Beck’s salad is that the salad is dressed just lightly enough to impart a vinegary pucker that is smoothed out by the richness of the yolk. But the best part is the addition of little deep fried shallots, which opens the salad up to an entirely new level of flavor suggestion and gives it greater textural interest. I would go back for this salad alone. Read the rest of this entry �

In case you didn’t know, Westend Bistro is the brain child of pouty-lipped chef Eric Ripert. If there is any doubt about this, please visit the Westend Bisto website. You can listen to some horrific ambient electronic music, accompanied by a giant headshot of Ripert. There is also this “thought-provoking” quote by Ripert: “A cook and a chef are different entities. “Chef” is a title… but when you are a cook, that is who you are. It’s your spine and soul.”

So, is Ripert a cook, a chef, or both? Wait, do I actually care?

No. What I do care about is how my food tastes. Last night, I went to Westend Bistro for Lee’s birthday dinner. I had done some research via Don Rockwell and had learned that Westend Bistro was good but perhaps not awesome. (I also learned that Don Rockwell members are incredibly snotty.)

To start, we ordered two seasonal appetizers: rabbit rillettes with apple and celery and soft shell crab on a watercress, fingerling potato, and caper salad.

The rillettes were a bit over salted and one note. Mostly, you tasted salt, then the rabbit pate. The delicate apple and celery shavings were completely overwhelmed. As a personal bias, I’m just not that big a fan of spreadable meats. The mushy texture doesn’t do anything for me.

On the other hand, the soft shell crab was very good. I was a little skeptical of the flavor combination, but was very pleased when I tasted it. I am a die-hard soft shell crab fan, and this crab was perfectly dredged and fried. Very light and crispy, though a touch too salty. However, the light, tangy flavors of the salad balanced out the richness of the crab. This was one of those dishes in which you must eat all the components together on your fork to get the full experience. Apart, they are a bit pedestrian, but together it’s quite wonderful.

For our main courses, I ordered the braised veal cheeks with potato puree and wild mushrooms (pictured above). Lee had the special, roasted shoulder of lamb with white beans and pine nuts.

My veal cheeks were tender and served in a very rich pan gravy. Again, the sauce was a bit too salty. There was not enough potato on the plate to make up for the richness of the meat and sauce. The mushrooms were earthy and bursting with roasted flavor; the carrots were tender but not mushy and the sweetness was a nice contrast to the meat. If this had been served with more potato and carrot and a hair less salt, I think it would have been successful. That said, I don’t think it was anything earth-shattering–it kind of tasted like an upscale beef stew. Given that spring has officially arrived in DC, I think a dish like this is a little too heavy. I probably should have ordered fish or something lighter.

Lee’s entree was much more seasonally appropriate. I only had a bite, but the lamb was perfectly roasted: tender and pink, but not bleeding. It did not have even the slightest bit of gamey taste, though the layer of fat on the outside did. Unfortunately, like everything else, it was slightly over salted.

Dessert at Westend Bistro was our best course. We ordered the rhubarb tart and the nougat glacé (pictured above), based on a tip from DonRockwell.

The nougat glacé is basically a little mold of very creamy hazelnut ice cream, served with an orange sauce and candied pistachios. The best part was the edges, which had melted slightly and were incredibly smooth and rich. If you have good self-control, I recommend letting the dish rest a few minutes so the nougat can melt a little. I have a bad habit of rapaciously attacking my desserts and, after nibbling at the edges, began hacking at it very loudly with my spoon.

The rhubarb tart was even better than the nougat. The tart was served with a scoop of strawberry mascarpone ice cream. It tasted as good as it sounds, especially since the strawberries were fresh and the mascarpone made for an extra rich texture. The tart had stewed rhubarb pieces atop a firm, pear-flavored custard. I was expecting more rhubarb flavor, but I actually really liked the combination of tart/sweet flavors and stringy/custardy textures that resulted from the rhubarb and pear marriage.

Overall, my reaction to Westend Bistro is mixed. I would definitely return for the desserts, and I was impressed with the soft shell crab appetizer. However, the entrees were a bit disappointing, especially considering that they were between $20-35 a plate. Starters are $10-15, salads and soups $7-12, vegetable sides $7-10, and desserts were $9. (Funny, because bistros are supposed to be cheaper…) If I’m going to pay that much for my main course, I can get better food elsewhere.

That said, I believe you can eat at Westend Bistro for a better price. We did not try any of the sides, but the couple next to us was eating the mac and cheese for two, and it looked delicious (herb and breadcrumb topping, served in a little cast iron dish). If I were go to back, I would stick with appetizers, salads, sides, desserts, and some of the cheaper entrees (the burgers looked good, and the mac is big enough to be a meal for one). The more expensive entrees simply aren’t worth it. The dining experience itself is very pleasant–the waitstaff are very attentive, the atmosphere is friendly, relaxed, and the decor is warm and modern. In that sense, it is exactly what a bistro should be.

Since moving here a year and a half ago, I’ve heard that H St NE (a small stretch of bars and clubs between 12^th and 14^th and H) is the next rapidly gentrifying hot spot. The two block strip, across from an Autozone and several fried chicken/subs/Chinese food/seafood carry out joints, is the baby of DC nightlife mogul, Joe Englert. You’ve probably gone all sloppy-faced at his joints and didn’t even know it (Lucky Bar, The Big Hunt, Pour House, DC9… the list goes on). For better or for worse, he knows what he’s doing.

My first trip to H St occurred several months ago in the form of dinner at Dr. Granville Moore’s and local band night at Rock and Roll Hotel. I’ll admit, I was kind of stressing out. I find that DC nightlife can be rather depressing due to certain breed of suburbanite that flocks to Georgetown and Adams Morgan on the weekend, acts like an obnoxious, then drives drunkenly home, thankful they don’t actually live in the scary city.

But I also keep reading about this mythical creature known as the DC hipster (or “hip-tard” by so-called suburban haters), mostly in the DCist comments threads. Since H St is still a little rough, I figured it might have just enough street cred to keep the striped shirt crew away. Like, there might actually be cool people there. People so cool, they would take one look at me and know that I wasn’t cool enough. I might walk into Granville Moore’s and encounter a sea of shrunken striped sweaters, unwashed hair, and Chuck Taylors. I obsessed that my poser status might be given away due to my lack of canvas messenger bag and 1970s ski vest.

It turns out that H St is cool. But not in the way I was expecting.

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JFK once described Washington, DC as “a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm”. Irony aside, once you start heading south out of the city, it really starts to look like the south. (To me, anyway. But I’m from the far north.)

Last weekend, I visited Front Royal, Virginia, about an hour or so outside of DC. I guess most people go to Front Royal in order to enjoy Shenandoah National Park and cruise along scenic Skyline Drive. I did neither. Instead, Lee dragged us to a vintage clothing store that turned out to be closed. But the afternoon was not completely lost. On our way into town, I spotted The Apple House. More specifically, I spotted a sign for the Apple House’s fresh, homemade donuts.

In college, we used to always pass an apple orchard on the drive down from Minneapolis. Occasionally, my parents would pick up a bag of hot, fresh apple cider donuts for me to bring back to the dorm. I like donuts as much as the next girl, but fresh apple cider donuts are a cut above the rest. Obviously I wasn’t about the miss another chance at apple donuts.

But this isn’t a story about apple cider donuts. It’s a story about pulled pork sandwiches and apple cider donuts. The Apple House is a quasi-restaurant/country store, selling jams, jellies, maple syrup, sparkling cider, and those horrible Vera Bradley purses. The restaurant only serves 2 things: bbq pork sandwiches and donuts. Seven dollars and fifty cents will get you an applewood-smoked pulled pork sandwich, coleslaw, beans, kettle chips, and a drink.

This is a fabulous sandwich. Pile on the sweet, yellow, creamy coleslaw, and you’ve got a mouthful of heaven. Sweet, smoky, mushy, saucy, creamy, and just a touch piquant. I’ve had a lot of pulled pork sandwiches in which the pork was flavorless, just smothered in some sauce. Here, the meat has a lot of salty, smoky flavor in its own right, topped off by a tomato-y sauce and sweet slaw. (Apparently the secret ingredient in this sauce is apple butter.) This is the kind of sandwich I fantasize about when my tummy starts a rumblin’. Finished off with a cup of cider and a cinnamon-sugar crusted donut, and it’s the perfect meal.

The Apple House
4675 John Marshall Hwy, Linden, VA
http://www.theapplehouse.net/

Labor Day weekend was my first real experience with the Orange County and Los Angeles, CA area. It was sort of everything I was expecting to be, all dry heat and sprawl, palm trees and highways, dirty and slick, revolting and yet strangely captivating as well.

Mostly, it’s not for me. I knew that, but this trip definitely confirmed it. Lee and I booked a cheap flight to LAX, rented a car, and headed across massive highways to Fullerton to attend Inspiration Weekend (not related to Jesus in any way). Downtown Fullerton is pretty cute, but it’s surrounded by industrial office parks, strip malls, and miles of asphalt parking lots. As we rode along in our rented PT Cruiser, belting out what few lyrics we know of “The OC” theme song (“Californnniiiiyaaa, here we caaaaaa-uhhhmme!”), it seemed eerily quiet. No one was out on the street. They were all in their cars.

There are subcultures in America and there are regional cultures. I am fully aware of how stereotypical it all sounds, but I walked away with a strange sensation of being surrounded by a lot of flash, but little actual substance.

But, enough of the creepy surface details. The only real saving grace about the OC (for me, anyway), was the food. Read the rest of this entry �

[Photo from Indradi Soemardjan/Wikipedia]

On Friday, Lee and I went out to eat Malaysian food at Penang in Bethesda. Penang is actually a small chain, and I’ve eaten at their restaurants in Chicago and New York. One of my favorite Malaysian dishes, which I first sampled at Penang in Chicago, is hollow vegetable (also known as water convolvulus) stirfried with chilies and shrimp paste (kang kung blachan). After some coaxing, Lee agreed to forgo beef in favor of this unknown vegetable.

However, when we attempted to order it, the waiter informed us that they didn’t have any hollow vegetable. We would have been satisfied with that answer, but the waiter went on to explain that kang kung has actually been banned in the US, which is why they don’t serve it anymore. Banned?! How can this be??? We ordered the beef rendang instead, and it was good, but no substitute for my beloved hollow vegetable. After dinner, I hit up the Google to find out if our waiter had been telling us the truth. Read the rest of this entry �

Let me begin by saying that I really wanted to like Cake Love. Before eating there, I did my research and sort of fell in love with the whole Cake Love story. It describes founder Warren Brown’s climb up the ladder of higher education, all the while secretly nursing his passion for baking. However, after selling his soul to the legal profession, he gave it all up to open a fabulously successful bakery and cafe in the trendy U St. corridor.

Today, Cake Love has two more locations in the DC metro area (Silver Spring, MD and Arlington, VA) and Warren has his own show on the Food Network, called Sugar Rush. It’s the quintessential foodie Cinderella story–who doesn’t dream of quitting their day job and turning a hobby into a successful business? By the end, I had decided that Warren Brown might be my hero and/or my black, male alter ego. Then I actually walked to U St and ate one of his cupcakes. Read the rest of this entry �

Lee and I have only recently discovered the wonder and DC staple that is Amsterdam Falafel Shop. A few weeks ago, on my continuing downward slide of holiday overindulgence, we wandered over to Adams Morgan and ordered a sampling from their entire menu. AFS only sells three things - falafel (regular or small, on white or wheat pita), fries (regular or small), and brownies. In a clear statement of cholesterol priorities, Lee and I ordered a small wheat falafel, regular fries, and a brownie, setting us back about $12.

AFS is not much of a restaurant; the cashier curtly informed me that they did not have any plates or utensils (and they were almost out of napkins). You order at the counter and are almost immediately handed a foil-wrapped cone of fries or falafal. There is a mind-boggling toppings bar for your falafel, from the standard tzatziki, tabbouleh, and tahini to pickled beets, corn, chickpeas, and cucumber and tomato salads.
For the fries, there is ketchup, malt vinegar, and something labeled “Dutch Mayonaise”.

“What makes it Dutch mayonaise?” I asked Lee as we took our seats at AFS small selection of tables.

“I don’t know,” Lee replied, and then proceeded to inhale half of our small falafel. I guess it was pretty good; I would say more, but Lee ate most of it in a mere matter of seconds.

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For my birthday, Lee took me to Makoto, a tiny Japanese restuarant reputed to be one of the best in DC. All I can say is, I never thought I’d love raw fish so much.

Makoto has seating for all of twenty people, crammed into a long, narrow room. Reservations with your credit card are required (trust me, it’s worth it). There is seating either at the counter or at a table, neither of which is particularly comfortable or more desireable, as there is hardly space to delineate each seating area. The restaurant is warm, bright in light colored woods and neutral walls. When we arrived (late, as Makoto is located in the western reaches of Georgetown), a kimono-clad waitress instructed us to take off our shoes and put on a pair of slippers. The slippers were, for some reason, only available in mens sizes and look like something my grandfather would wear. After this, we were escorted to a small wooden table. “Put coat and shoes in seat!” the waitress barked, and she lifted the seat of the chair to reveal a storage compartment underneath. While this was clever, these were perhaps the most uncomfortable stools I have ever had the displeasure of sitting on for an hour and a half.

However, the stools were the only downside of my dining experience. Makoto serves a strict fixed price menu, plus sushi ala carte and a wide selection of sake. The dinner menu changes daily, allows minimal substitutions, and is $49 for an eight to ten course meal. This is really reasonable for fabulous Japanese food, the sophistocation and quality of which is probably only available at a handful of US restaurants. If you’re looking for a meal that has been elevated to an art, in flavor and presentation, Makoto is perfect. If you come to a Japanese restaurant expecting your usual California roll and tempura, then please, take your money elsewhere. Now, for a brief description of my nine blissful courses: Read the rest of this entry �

The first time I visited DC’s Chinatown, I thought I was going to cry. Or maybe puke. In either case, it was an adverse reaction. “Chinatown” is a joke–a bunch of chain stores and restaurants with Chinese characters tacked on their neon signage. Most of the translations are purely phonetic (Clyde’s Restaurant is “ke si lai”, etc.) and in traditional characters, probably because someone on a city planning committee thought it looked more “Chinese” than simplified characters. This, of course, does not bode well for the state of Chinese food in DC. This fact has been a source of major disappointment on multiple personal and gastronomic levels.

Commercialization aside, there are still a handful of Chinese restaurants in Chinatown, including the much fabled Eat First. For some reason, white people think “Eat First” is a funny or clever name. The cranky Sinophile in me would like to point out that it’s actually a very common thing to say in Chinese, a culture that is so food-centered that the common greeting is not “How are you?” but “Have you eaten yet?” But I digress. Last week, Lee and I decided to meet up after work to try Eat First, which has been consistently ranked on various best bargain and best ethnic restaurant lists around town. Read the rest of this entry �