By Katie
‘Pink Goodness’
courtesy of ‘maxedaperture’
Another benefit of the cherry blossom season, aside from the gorgeous trees themselves, is the opportunity to take advantage of some good eats. Local restaurants play off the theme, creating delicious pink or cherry based food. For a sampling of the inspired dishes, click on through. Continue reading
By Katie
‘Smothered Fried Chicken’
courtesy of ‘Sabine01’
I’m a southern girl, I think I’ve made that abundantly clear on this blog. (Also, while we’re at it, let me just say, UNC is going to PWN you during March Madness, everyone. But I digress…) So what southern girl can’t love some Georgia Brown’s? A few friends and I headed there during my favorite week of the year, restaurant week, and were treated to some down-home food. I’ve been raised on southern cooking like Crook’s Corner and Mert’s Heart and Soul, so I was dying to find out if Georgia Brown’s lives up to it’s famous truly southern brethren.
I’m all about bread, I think I’ve also made that clear on this blog. If you start me off with some crappy bread, I’m going to be sad. It’s like a warm up jog before the workout, I need the bread starter to shine for me, gear me up for the meal to come. And boy, did Georgia Browns give me a run for my money. They sent out biscuts and corn bread and I’m not just warming up, I’m basically working out. They dished up biscuts with peach butter and corn bread – fresh, with actual corn in it. (Insert heavenly angelic aaaaah noise here!) Now that’s a way to start a meal. So I was sold right then and there, in my mind, there’s little you can do wrong after some biscuts and sweet butter… or is there? Continue reading
By Katie
‘proof.glass.2’
courtesy of ‘Ghost_Bear’
Situated on Farragut Square in the Downtown corridor, Equinox is unassuming on the outside. With a glassed-in atrium, it looks like it was once a lunch eatery or an after-work bar spot that has been transformed, to the best of an interior decorator’s ability, to an upscale dining room. After having a wonderful time at Equinox in the fall, partaking in the fall happy hour, I was dying to try Equinox for a full meal, and Valentine’s Day was the perfect excuse.
We were sat, and the meal started out with bread. I love bread – it has the potential to set the tone for the entire meal. Bread can be a warm welcome, a fabulous place for a meal to start, and unfortunately Equinox’s bread fell flat. Well, not the bread so much as the hummus that came with it. I’m a big fan of interesting spreads (hello, honey butter, yogurt dill cheese or herb butter) and so I was excited to try the hummus that came with a pastry puff bread and some sort of fruit and herb bread slices. It was bland. It was mostly tasteless, with sort of a weird aftertaste. I tried it with or without the bread, and have to say, that hummus was a mistake for the chef to send out. I could have gotten better hummus at Trader Joe’s. But luckily, the hummus was the worst part of the entire meal, and everything just got better from there. Continue reading
By Rebecca
flickr user: midstreammom
Get them while they’re hot! The Z Burger chain in Glover Park (not sure if this applies to all DC Z Burgers) is giving out free burgers tonight. These burgers seem less greasy than Five Guys and more like the homemade from your backyard barbecue type. Choose from a long list of toppings. I learned about the GP giveaway from this month’s Glover Park Gazette, which is always a fun neighborhood read.
By Katie
Recently, I had lunch in Dupont Circle with my work BFF. We chose Urbana as our spot because of the “Urban Lunchbox” deal they have going on – a full three course meal (+ coffee) for 11.95, with a dollar of that going to Arc of DC. (The Arc is a great organization that aims to improve the quality of life of all persons with developmental disabilities and their families.)
At Urbana, diners get a choice of the salad or soup of the day, plus any of the sandwiches or personal pizzas on the menu, and they’ll finish you up with a cookie for dessert. I LOVED it. The portions were very generous, and the fare healthy and well done. Urbana is chic, the service was impeccable and the deal was a complete steal. Normally, my pizza alone would have cost $13, but with the lunchbox I got salad, said pizza, dessert and coffee for that price.
Plus, I have a crush on every Kimpton Hotel, and Urbana is located in the Hotel Palomar on P street so I even got a peek at the stylish hotel lobby. Everything in that hotel is designed immaculately. Even the plates and dishware were trendy. Click through for a peek at my super-sleek coffee cup. Continue reading
By brownpau
Tyler Cowen’s Ethnic Dining Guide for the DC area has been updated for 2009. He starts off with a plug for his book, Discover Your Inner Economist, offers some rules of thumb for choosing ethnic food restaurants in general, lists some “must-eat” places, then launches into a grand, culturally-alphabetized list of restaurants of every regional and stylistic variety, with addresses and capsule reviews. The guide is huge and tirelessly comprehensive, definitely worth a scan if you’re hankering for an exotic dine-out this weekend.
(Link via Kottke. Pictured above: a traditional Filipino meal.)
By Katie
I believe I’ve already shared with everyone that I’m a regular reader of the local dc foodie blog Metrocurean. Matt and I were looking for a good date spot to celebrate Christmas together before I head home for the holidays, so I turned to Metrocurean’s “date spot” recommendations. Metrocurean author Amanda suggested a bunch of places I’ve been before, but one I’d never even heard of, Little Fountain Cafe. It’s getting pretty hard to stump me when it comes to good eats in this city. Between writing for WLDC and spending lots of time researching this town, most of the time I’ve at least HEARD of a place if it’s worth anything. But this one was new. A little googling, and an online reservation later, Matt and I were booked, and I was super excited. Everything I had read about said we were in for a treat.
Little Fountain Cafe is located on 18th street, right in the bustle of Adam’s Morgan. In the english basement below Angles Bar, Little Fountain is a hidden gem.
By Ben H. Rome
Swine in Swine, courtesy of bucklava
Our continuing coverage of the 100 foods a DC omnivore must try looks at sauerkraut.
My love affair with sauerkraut probably dates back to the decade I lived in Chicago. Heaping piles of this wonderfully shredded cabbage onto my foot-long hot dogs was a guilty pleasure of my high school and college years – much to the detriment of my friends’ noses, I’m sure.
Funny thing is, at the time I always thought kraut was just a condiment. Yes, yes, sheltered food upbringing here. I could bore you with stories of the oft-boring foods I devoured growing up, but I’m sure you don’t really care.
So when I moved to Pittsburgh and got married, I truly found out the wonders of this simple sour-tasting cabbage.
By Ben H. Rome
Jive Turkey, courtesy of F1RSTBORN
In town for the holidays and not a cook? Looking for some dining options other than wrestling with a big ol’ Butterball and your mom yammering in your ear? Hosting relatives and looking for things to get them out of the house? Or are you an international visitor and don’t celebrate with us Yanks?
We’ve got you covered.
Behold, a quick-and-dirty WeLoveDC look at dining and fun options for the upcoming four-day weekend.
By Katie
Equinox Cider Happy Hour by RSchley
The Oct. 22nd edition of the Dining Out email from Washingtonian had a tip about a happy hour that sounded like a November dream – Fall Cider Happy Hour at Equinox. Yum! I do love me some cider. And my partner in crime for happy hour, Rebecca, loves herself some fall. Fall is well known as her favorite season. So we decided this would be the perfect treat and headed over last Friday for “hard cider cocktails and complimentary snacks”.
Now, the first thing to note is that these Fall Cider Hours only happen on Fridays. And only between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m., and only until December 19th. (Then, rumor has it, the theme changes to chocolate! YES! Jenn, wanna set a date?) So if you’re looking to get yourself some “fall in a glass” (as Rebecca says), then scoot on over!
So we arrived around 6 p.m.-ish and the place was packed. So packed that we almost turned around again and headed for the door. But we were stopped by a bartender who practically forced us to stay, and took our coats and bags and put them in the check room. Which was fabulous, really, for those of us who hate to tote around all our gear while we drink. He gave us a menu and promised us he’d be back. And then the free food started coming around – we were handed some sort of glorious crispy spring roll type thing. My apologies for not knowing exactly what it was. But it was seriously good food. I was hoping the drinks would live up. Continue reading
By Katie
Nestled along Clarendon Boulevard in the Court House area, Yaku looks to be the perfect neighborhood hot spot. Two levels of glass and glowing lights, it always looks warm and inviting from the street. I live in Arlington, and have walked past Yaku almost daily since it’s conception as just an empty office space below my dream real-estate local, The Odyssey condominiums.
When it finally looked as if something was actually going to go in the space (that had stood empty since before I moved here in fall 2007), I got pretty excited. On my walk home, I ran up to check the posted licences to see what it would be. It’s the perfect location to be our new favorite go-to spot. Yaku, the signs said. Hmm… I said. That’s an odd name. A little googling, and I find that Yaku will be another restaurant from Latin Concepts, the same people who brought us places like Chi-Cha Lounge, Mate, Ceviche, and Guarapo (which is only around the corner from Yaku).
According to the Web site, “YAKU, is a “Chifa” restaurant lounge brought to you by Fraga-Rosenfeld. Chifa is the fusion of Chinese and Peruvian cuisine developed by Chinese immigrants to Peru in the late 19th and early 20th centuries… The name YAKU means “water” in Quechua (Incan Language) and is intended to capture Asian-influenced Andean culinary styles unique to the region.” Yaku is also, says our friend wikipedia, a town located on Yaku Island, Japan. So let’s just go with Asian-Peruvian fusion, and call it interesting… Continue reading
By Carl Weaver
Just not on election day. It’s a fine day for the list of sandwiches for people in line to go flying out of your coworker’s hand, isn’t it? It’s not enough that you had to spend your lunch hour(s) in long lines, but on top of it the person who made the food run screwed the pooch.
Did you actually get proper sustenance today or were you stuck in line with a bunch of other grumpy, hungry people?
Regardless, at least you did your civic duty. For that I thank you.
By Ben H. Rome
Green Market, courtesy of M.V. Jantzen
Ok, this project was inspired by a flurry of emails with some of the WeLoveDC staff and an idea.
Don spotted this list a few weeks ago and after some back-and-forth with several of our more foodie–focused people, I thought it would be an interesting series for our corner of the intrawebz.
Starting in two weeks, check out our DC 100 and the staff’s various experiences with food on this list. We’ll be tracking the list’s progress here and on my own website.
By Carl Weaver
I know the season has not quite changed yet, but to me it’s already autumn. The garden has stopped producing, and it was a bum crop anyway this year. Pretty much all I got were some freaky cucumbers (another example here) and a handful of tomatoes that started to grow and then got stolen by some animals who apparently loved my garden as much as I had hoped to.
On the bright side, I was able to get some rosemary well entrenched in place of a dead shrub and with luck my grapes will really take off next year. They say the third year is the magic one, so I hope to have a better report then. The roses did very well in their first year and should winter well in our mild climate.
It’s about time to slow down, pour a glass of wine and make a toast to the passing of summer and the coming of autumn. Who knows – next year at this time we may be celebrating a bumper crop of whatever I plant and snacking on grapes, whose perfume will waft gently on the cool evening air with the promise of a late, delicious harvest.
What culinary delights are you still enjoying from your garden?
By Carl Weaver
For those of you who haven’t seen previous posts about Murky Coffee, it does get mentioned here from time to time, as it turns out. The latest thing I can say I love about Murky is this sign I had probably seen a hundred times and not given any thought to. It both tickled and admonished me, delivering efficient coinciding messages. The biscotti are a favorite of my Lovely Wife and she claims they are right good. Me, I am not such a big fan of the hard anise-flavored breads. But my real question is whether I can get it iced. I thought about asking but then thought better of it.
By Carl Weaver
I wish the title of this post were a metaphor for something instead of a real description. When I was at the Marymount University library yesterday, I found peanuts in the sink, on the lip of the sink and on the floor. They led in a haphazard way to one of the stalls, where apparently someone had been a bit hungry. Dear Toilet Muncher – bathroom eating is bad enough, but if you are going to snack in the loo, can you at least be clean about it?
By Carl Weaver
Durian by US Pacific Basin Agricultural Research Center
Okay, so it’s not quite a scorcher today but you should make this recipe now in preparation for the big heat wave that is surely on the tail of this cold front. My friend Grace of Fearless Cooking TV asked me for the recipe after hearing that I was so brave as to make durian ice cream. What? You don’t like durian? Shame on you! You can use any other fruit instead, but not with the same unique flavor and scent.
You will need to follow your ice cream maker’s instructions on how to do it precisely, but here are the ingredients I used to make a quart of ice cream:
Beat together the eggs and sugar until it’s good and creamy. Then mix in everything else, put it in your ice cream maker and when it’s done, just freeze it for a day or so. It’s easy and delicious. Want to try durian ice cream? Just let me know. I have a quart of it and my lovely wife won’t go near it.
By Carl Weaver
My lovely wife and I did this review video when we went to the new Noodles and Company at Ballston Mall recently.
By Carl Weaver
Carl, screwing up a potentially nice picture
at Luray Caverns
Luray Caverns is a great little place to go and only about two hours away from DC. Here is how I recommend scheduling your time. You can drive to Luray, VA in about two hours if you go on I-66 to I-81. Tack on an extra hour if you opt to take the very beautiful Skyline Drive between Front Royal and Route 211, which will take you right into Luray. There is a $15 fee to take the Skyline Drive but it is worth every penny. Just do it.
The caverns themselves are beautiful, filled with stalactites, stalagmites, rocks and other things that are underground. The young woman behind us in line was scared of encountering bats but this is a squeaky-clean cavern, complete with lights, a paved walkway and tour guides who talk about the various things I would know more about, had I paid attention in my geology class. No bugs, from what I could tell, and thus no bats.
Continue reading
Oh my god. How is it possible that I missed the news about Butcher Burgers, the latest effort of Michael Landrum (of Ray’s the Steaks fame).
I’m going. Tomorrow. I shall report back with photos. Who’s coming with me? (Obligatory OMG NOM NOM NOM noise here.)
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