Former Hook chef Barton Seaver and I were trading e-mails on another subject when he hit me with this rant on truffle oil. It was so goddamn funny (and on-target) that I asked him if we could publish it on City Desk. He agreed.
Another rant for you off subject. Truffle oil. What the fuck!  I [...]

No matter how frustrated I get with the forced theatrics and contrived confrontations of Bravo's Top Chef, I always find myself curled up on the couch, watching the damn reality show. Some nights I hate myself for it. This season, though, we have a local contender gunning for Top Chef—Carla Hall, a Nashville native who [...]

You may not believe this, but I love a good vegetarian dish. I regularly order them—and not just to see how much care a kitchen puts into these notoriously neglected plates. Sometimes I order them because I want a break from meat. Sometimes I do it as a symbolic acknowledgment of the environmental problems that livestock farming can [...]

If you discount decor and valet attendants, (and I'm not sure why you would but go with me here) menus are a diner's first chance to seriously analyze a restaurant and its offerings. Menus perform many more functions than a mere listing of appetizers, entrees, and desserts. They create good will, they quietly announce a [...]

It seems that the wave of excitement over Barack Obama's election wishes to wash away anything and everything associated with W. Believe me, I can relate. But with regards to the speculation over the next White House chef, I think we need to get a grip. And who better to provide a hand rail than Palena's Frank Ruta, a former White House executive sous [...]

Earlier this week, the New York Times published a fascinating piece about a California couple who tried to live for a month on a $1-a-day food budget. Their mission was certifiably insane, but their motivation was noble. After all, as reporter Tara Parker-Pope noted, "The World Bank says nearly a billion people around the world [...]

The wife and I share a personal joke about our beagle mix, Coltrane (beagle crossed with pig, we say, but that's not the joke). We've created this whole belief system for Coltrane (also known as Meatsack) based on one incident: While we were walking our sweet hound one day, a stray bag floated by on [...]

The latest parlor game among local foodies is guessing who President-elect Barack Obama will tap as his White House chef. The main name being tossed around is Chicagoan Art Smith, Oprah Winfrey's former personal chef who recently opened Art and Soul on Capitol Hill. The Post's Tom Sietsema caught up with Smith this week to [...]

Call me a Communist. But I don't like turkey all that much. If I did, I'd eat some of those awful oven-roasted turkey sandwiches at the deli, but frankly I'd rather eat the plastic that encases the meat. Don't get me wrong, I've choked down (and sometimes even enjoyed) dry, tasteless turkey during Thanksgiving—if, of [...]

You just knew that those food-porn pics in cookbooks and newspapers were too good to be true. Maybe you assumed that the gorgeous plates were merely the product of good lighting or a great photographer. Well, turns out there's another paid professional working to make you feel small about your own in-home cooking skills: a food [...]

Serious Eats, Ed Levine's must-read site for food lovers, tested president-elect Barack Obama's Midwestern-style chili recipe. Its verdict? More salt please. Oh, it could also use some fresh chili peppers and more depth of flavor. In other words, it sucks.
Hey, at least it's not a cheeseburger pizza.

Kelly Young, City Paper's former operations manager and a beer geek nonpareil, took my original question ("Will the move out of the state affect your opinion and/or purchase of Old Dominion beer?") and gave me a master's thesis on the importance of drinking local. An edited excerpt is below.
Now there are myriad decisions I [...]

After visiting 16 bakeries, consuming 35 pounds of sweets, and ingesting more than 11,000 calories per taster, the Washington Post finally declared a winner in its Cupcake Wars contest. Georgetown Cupcake took the top prize after sweeping the first seven spots in the Food section's list of the highest-rated cupcakes.
Food Editor Joe Yonan and his [...]

I have a friend who hates cilantro, which tastes like soap to him. We've learned to cook around his fussiness, which, believe me, is a bitch when making a good salsa. I have another friend who claims to get headaches when eating anything made with non-organic oils. I don't cook for him anymore (only joking, [...]

It's been a historic time for Virginia. On Tuesday, the state turned blue, voting for a Democratic presidential nominee for the first time in decades. In March, the state will lose its signature brewery, according to Greg Kitsock, the suds guru for the Washington Post. The Old Dominion Brewing Co. plans to shutter its [...]