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 simply do not understand for the life of me why chefs, good chefs, use truffle oil. It is a fake product that smells like the distorted reality of a bad acid trip. The overwhelming majority of the truffle oil used is actually cheap oil perfumed with chemicals. Real truffles are too expensive to make oil out of them and are much better when used fresh. Do chefs really think that we the guest are fooled by this fake luxury? It's like buying your girlfriend a louis vuitton bag off the streets of Georgetown.

Mind you these are chefs who only use 'the freshest ingredients'. And oh, by the way, truffle oil tastes and smells like pure poo poo. I have had fresh truffles of every type and they are worth the money. But truffle oil is not a quality product. If it were it would cost lots and lots of money just like the truffles that it is supposedly made from.

Sorry for the rant but I nearly threw up in a restaurant because of truffle oil that I did not expect. It really is like morning breath. Gross.

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 now lives and works in D.C.

Starting on Wednesday, when Season 5 premieres, Hall will be competing against 16 other "cheftestants" (I did say that I sometimes hate myself for liking the show, right?) I'll be watching closely to see how far Hall goes. Will she make it all the way to the top? Or just far enough to create the kind of buzz that propelled Spike Mendelsohn into quasi-celebrity status and burger joint fame? I guess I'll be watching like everyone else to find out. 'Cause Hall can't say nothing about the show. Period. Can't even drop broad hints, like she wanted to claw Padma's eyes out after one episode.

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 cause. But I rarely order them because of some contest like the VegDC.com's Three Green Stars. 

The Green Stars were handed out last month by Compassion Over Killing (COK), a D.C.-based animal protection group. Some of the winners include Java Green (Best Vegetarian Restaurant), Amsterdam Falafelshop (Best Cheap Vegan Eats), Asylum (Best Vegan Brunch), Sticky Fingers Bakery (Best Vegan Dessert), and Meskerem (Best Ethiopian).  I'll be the first to admit that I've had quality meals at a few of these places, notably Java Green (which manages to impart some nice flavor to its mock meats) and the Falafelshop.

But here's my issue: At least two of the Green Stars winners---Java Green and Asylum---have worked with COK as part of the non-profit's Restaurant Outreach Program. Here's the pertinent paragraph from the ROP page:

Read More "Three Green Stars Awards: COK Rewards Its Program Partners" »

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 restaurant's target audience, they can even provide insights on the owner's philosophies and/or pet peeves.  Some menus, however, just go overboard.

In our new Food Issue, Loose Lips (otherwise known as Mike DeBonis who's been known to make pronouncements on food when not hounding council members), picks apart five different menus to highlight their meaningless regionalism, overzealous sourcing, or just plain stupidity. It's an amusing read. So why aren't you reading it yet?

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 chef and our winner this year for Best Chef?

"Boy, next White House Chef...did I miss something?" Ruta writes via e-mail when I raise the topic with him. "The Executive Chef doesn't usually change with administrations. At least that has been the case in the past. My feeling is that Chef [Cristeta] Comerford will stay on in her current position."

I e-mailed back and asked Ruta to provide a little more insight on the politics of selecting and/or changing White House chefs.

Read More "The White House Chef: A Little Perspective from Someone Who Actually Knows About the Job" »

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 live on a dollar a day, or even less..."

Here are the money quotes from the story:

The budget forced them to give up many store-bought foods and dinners out. Even bread and canned refried beans were too expensive.

Instead, the couple — Christopher Greenslate, 28, and Kerri Leonard, 29, both high school social studies teachers — bought raw beans, rice, cornmeal and oatmeal in bulk, and made their own bread and tortillas. Fresh fruits and vegetables weren’t an option. Ms. Leonard’s mother was so worried about scurvy, a result of vitamin C deficiency, that they made room in their budget for Tang orange drink mix. (They don’t eat meat — not that they could have afforded it.)

In other words, they had to live on crap, which helps you understand why poverty inevitably leads to a shorter life span. You can read all about Greenslate and Leonard's experiment on their---what else?---blog, http://onedollardietproject.wordpress.com

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 sidewalk, and Meatsack darted in the opposite direction, as if the sack were an invading army. Now whenever we see a bag, we both turn to each other and scream in the beagle's voice (c'mon, you know you have a "voice" for your animal?): "A baaaaaaaag!"

It's queer, I know. But it makes us laugh.

I should have guessed that bags were a real cause of fear and loathing among the folks who frequent farmers' market. In our new Food Issue, Anne Marson takes us deep inside this plastic-fearing culture, where it's not enough to buy organic veggies and humanely raised beef. You must bring your own eco-friendly bags to carry them in---or face the silent wrath of your fellow green do-gooders. It's a fascinating read. Check it out.

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 put the question to him directly. An excerpt:

Best known for having served as the personal chef for Oprah Winfrey for 10 years, Smith has already cooked several times for the future first family, who lives a few streets away from him in Chicago's Hyde Park. ("They like delicious, healthy food," reports the diplomatic chef.) On election night, Smith prepared a private dinner for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and about 150 Democratic stalwarts at Art and Soul. Earlier in his career, he was interviewed by the Reagan administration for the top cooking job. "I was way too young back then," says Smith, age 48.

The chef currently commutes between Chicago, his home base, and Washington. Would he be up for cooking for Obama and kin? "I'm happy my name is even in the circle," says Smith, who shows off his bipartisan nature by casually mentioning having had lunch recently with Doro Bush Koch, the current president's sister.

Who would you like to see cooking for Obama's state dinners?

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 course, it's drown in enough gravy. Yeah, yeah, I've read about the Los Angeles Times' great turkey recipe, but I don't see myself leaving a salted bird in the fridge for three days. Please. In this video, Alton Brown offers a simple, foil-based way to make crisp, tasty turkey that cooks the dark meat without drying out the white stuff. Sounds pretty good (though I do pine for the deep salty flavor of the Times' recipe). So what's your method?

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 stylist.

In our new Food Issue, Jule Banville and Darrow Montgomery take you behind the scenes as local stylist Lisa Cherkasky, a former cook and a smart sandwich blogger, prepares a plate of shrimp pasta for its moment in front of the camera. Read it. You'll realize you need a paintbrush and Scotch Guard to make your own food look so good.

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 make when purchasing brews. I like to try new and exotic things and explore this country and the world via its fermentables, but I always keep a special place in my heart for the local; after all this is, to me, what brewing is about at its core: a locally produced foodstuff. I think back to when I travelled frequently and there was nothing more disheartening than being at some far-flung locale and there being no local flavor at all. Stipmallism. [i.e., strip-mall-ism] One of the points of pride I had when visited here by fellow beer drinking brothers and sisters was introducing them to Tupper's or Oak Barrel Stout (still in production, sort of). We could lay claim to it as ours, a truly local product. You could go to the brewery and drink out of the fermenters. You could talk to the actual human beings that brewed your beer. Now if you want to drink Dominion out of the fermenter or talk to the human that brews your "local" beer it's 100 miles one way to Dover. BTW all their talk of environmental concern is bullshit. If they wanted to be truly green they'd leave ODBC alone and let them drive the 30 miles to downtown from Ashburn and sell their other product in Delaware. Bit of rant that.

Read More "One Beer Man’s Response to Old Dominion Leaving VA" »

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 team deluged readers with stats and tips (otherwise known as "commandments"), but they still didn't satisfy all of my questions about the paper's hard-to-resist eight-week series. Yonan was good enough to take my questions. His responses have been edited, paraphrased, and otherwise mangled, though hopefully not in a Deborah Solomon way.

What was your methodology? With two exceptions, the tasting team visited each bakery anonymously on Tuesday in the early afternoon. They'd buy one of every kind of cupcake available that day and bring them back to the office, where the sweets would be brought to room temperature (if necessary) and eaten within "a couple of hours" of purchase. This was not a blind tasting; logistics prevented such a tasting. The four tasters would each silently eat one quarter of a cupcake and make his or her evaluations on a number of criteria. Only then would the tasters compare notes and calculate a score. No bakery was ever visited twice. "The time involved would have made it just impossible," Yonan says.

Read More "Post’s Cupcake War Is Over, But the Battle Rages On" »

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, Kelly!).

These are the only phobias/allergies I have to deal with in my personal cooking life. The area's chefs, on the other hand, have to confront an army of hypochondriacs in their dining rooms, many of them merely faking allergies because they're too embarrassed to admit they just don't like certain ingredients.

In our new Food Issue, staff writer Ruth Samuelson talks to a few of these fakers---and to the chefs who wish they'd just act like grownups. It's a good read. So read it already.

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 facility in Ashburn and increase production at its other plant in---wait for it, wait for it--Delaware. (Hey, doesn't Delaware already have a famous microbrew?)

Local beer geeks are deciding whether they will remain loyal to the area's oldest microbrew once it abandons Virginia. What do you think? Will you continue to buy Old Dominion? Or will you tell it to kiss off, much like Old Dominion has done to the state after which the company took its name?

In the meantime, I suggest Old Dominion change its name to Small Wonder.