This week’s question comes from Kelly Cresap of Silver Spring who wants to know:

“I got a headache recently after having a salad with fried spinach and grilled chicken at a restaurant in Silver Spring. The headache is consistent with ones I’ve gotten from meals prepared with non-organic oils. Do you know which restaurants use organic oils? Or would it be easier for me to avoid foods that require oil in preparation?”

I’ve been putting off this question for weeks now, for mostly for one reason: Where the hell do I begin? Call all the restaurants in the area and ask if they use organic oils? Mix it up with allergists who’ll tell me I’m an idiot for trying to address someone’s potential food reactions without a better understanding of what’s causing the problem?

My first call was to Nora Pouillon, the godmother of organic in D.C. Pouillon’s place, Restaurant Nora, is certified organic, which means that 95 percent of everything that her kitchen produces is organic, including her cooking and salad oils. “I don’t think that anybody [else] uses organic oil because it’s much too expensive,” Pouillon says. “I get it delivered in 500 kilogram drums…because that’s the only way I can afford it. If you buy it in any smaller quantity, it’s prohibitive. I think most people just use regular oil.”

Pouillon has never heard of anyone experiencing headaches from non-organic oils, but she didn’t rule out the possibility. Corn oils, after all, may be processed from genetically modified corn, and some lower-quality olive oils use chemicals to extract the last drop of liquid. But she also wondered if the culprit may be something other than oils. She wondered if flavor-enhancers such as MSG, a common ingredient in restaurant cooking, might be causing the headaches.

I put Kelly’s question to a pair of doctors as well, one of whom didn’t want his name used. Dr. Victoria Goldsten, a doctor of naturopathy, has heard of people being allergic to “specific oils but not so much non-organic, because each oil, their structure is a little different.” Still, she believes “there’s probably some form of chemical in the [oil-making] process that [Kelly's] reacting to.”

The publicity-shy allergist was more blunt. He thought Kelly’s question was “almost impossible to answer” without testing. He suggested that Kelly take the potentially offending meal to a board-certified allergist, who can break it down and create a series of skin tests from its component parts, including the oils. He said there are a “million reasons” for someone to get a headache, but that “food allergies per se are not really at the top of the list.”

The bad news is that if you’re indeed allergic to non-organic oils—or maybe even just highly intolerant to them—your only solution will be to avoid restaurants, since most seem to prefer non-organic oils. As the good doc said, “There’s no treatment for food allergies other than avoidance.”

This week’s question comes from Washington City Paper news reporter Ruth Samuelson, who wants to know:

“I, like many other people, have family coming into town this week for Thanksgiving. We want to have a decent meal on Saturday night, but I’m having trouble coming up with a local restaurant that will, presumably, meet everyone’s approval. Mostly spicy cuisines are probably out, as well as highfalutin foodie joints with unrecognizable dishes. The budget is $25 to $35 per person, including drinks and possibly shareable appetizers or dessert. And, ideally, the restaurant wouldn’t be extremely loud.”

Maybe you’d like President Bush to stop by your table, too, with Dick Cheney in minstrel outfit frolicking in the background and playing “Hail to the Chief” on pan flute? What you’re asking for, Ruth, is a tall order, particularly because, as you said in a separate note, “the idea is definitely to impress” the family a bit. In D.C.’s ever-expensive restaurant climate, $35 doesn’t go very far, particularly if that price must include tax and tip. For example, I recently had lunch—lunch, mind you—at Brasserie Beck and it ran $38.50, without tip. My meal? One beer ($9), one brioche appetizer ($9), and one bowl of mussels ($17).

I’ve been combing through my recent receipts and checking various sources, trying to find some good, not-too-expensive restaurants that might impress your kin without being too noisy or too spicy. The list is not long, and it may require some sacrifices on your family’s part. You definitely won’t be able to have pre-dinner drinks or cocktails, which will likely add between $5 and $15 per person to the check. Nor will you be able to have more than two courses each. You may even have to split a bottle of cheap wine to keep your liquor costs down.

With those caveats, I’d suggest the following restaurants, both for the (general) quality of their food and for offering an environment, a vibe, or an experience that you won’t find elsewhere. In no particular order, I’d take the family to Oyamel (many of the antojitos at José Andrés’ downtown operation are not spicy, but just make sure to go early; it can get noisy later in the evening); Hank’s Oyster Bar (either the Dupont Circle or Old Town location), Rustico in Alexandria (try one of the Bites & Beer appetizers); Colorado Kitchen in Brightwood Park (you may have to share an app, since the entrees are often in the $20 range); Palena Café in Cleveland Park (the roast chicken and truffled cheeseburger are among the best in town, but go early, ‘cause it’s first come, first served in the front of the house); Dr. Granville Moore’s (the hip new moules et frites joint on H Street NE could cross your noise threshold, particularly if the jukebox is blaring); Old Ebbitt Grill in downtown (the powerbroker ambience and oysters alone make Ebbitt worth a trip); Comet Ping Pong on Connecticut Avenue NW (no ordinary pizzeria, this joint serves up uniquely handcrafted New Haven-style pies in a cool, industrial playground); Central Michel Richard on Pennsylvania Avenue NW (no lobster burger for you!); and, finally, if your family is a little adventurous, I’d suggest the Saturday dim sum at Hollywood East Café on the Boulevard (it may be the cheapest best meal in the area).

Ruth, I hope you and your family have a great Thanksgiving, regardless of where you choose to eat in the days after the feast.

This week’s question comes from Stephanie Mencimer of the District who wants to know:

“How much should we worry about getting food poisoning from buttercream frosting made with raw eggs? I took a class on cake decorating…at L’Academie de Cuisine and the instructor told us that the risk was low but also that all the sugar in the icing would inhibit the growth of bacteria. I find this hard to believe. What do you think?”

That’s a great question, and I’d say that even if you weren’t married to Erik Wemple.

According to the American Egg Board, which of course has a vested interest in the discussion, “Scientists estimate that, on average across the U.S., only 1 of every 20,000 eggs might contain the [Salmonella enteritidis or Se] bacteria. So, the likelihood that an egg might contain Se is extremely small—0.005% (five one-thousandths of one percent). At this rate, if you’re an average consumer, you might encounter a contaminated egg once every 84 years.”

Christine Bruhn, director of the Center for Consumer Research at the University of California, Davis, tends to agree with the Egg Board on those stats. But she notes that eggs can also become contaminated from sources far away from the farm—like from your hands (particularly if you separate the yolk from the whites using your dirty, filthy digits) or even from your refrigerator. Bruhn once did a study on how often people wash their fridge, including those little eggs slots on the door. “Most people acknowledged that they just wiped up a spill and they didn’t actually wash the refrigerator very often at all, once a year maybe,” she says.

The problem is, a little bacterium goes a long way. It doesn’t take much to make a person ill, particularly if you’re very young or very old, pregnant or have a compromised immune system. What’s more, bacteria tend to multiply like rabbits jacked up on Viagra, alcohol, and porn. The Egg Board claims that, “If not properly handled, Salmonella bacteria can double every 20 minutes and a single bacterium can multiply into more than a million in 6 hours.”

Sugar, believe it or not, acts as a sort of condom in this bacterial reproduction business. Those sweet crystals tie up the water that bacteria need to multiply. “Sugar is linking, chemically linking, to that water and…keeping it away from the bacteria,” Bruhn says.

Still, Bruhn notes, sugar (like Trojans) are not exactly fail-safe when it comes to prohibiting reproduction. A recipe, she says, needs to be about 80-85 percent sugar to inhibit bacteria growth, and even that won’t guarantee a 100 percent safe frosting, since there may be bacteria already “sitting there alive, just waiting to get you when you eat the product.”

The potential bacteria contamination of buttercream icing is almost impossible to determine, Bruhn says. “It could possibly [have] a high level of sugar that the bacteria would not grow, but it depends on how the person makes it…how moist the cake is, how long it has been sitting around, how hot the room, those various factors.”

In the end, though, the risk of Salmonella poisoning is pretty low, Bruhn admits, unless you’re a member of an at-risk groups. But Bruhn, for one, doesn’t like to take chances. “I would advise those people who are risk-adverse and love the people they cook for just to buy those little cartons of [pasteurized] eggs,” she says. “They can always use the egg white in other dishes like omelets or other cooked dishes later on if they don’t use it all for the frosting.”

Hungry? Curious? Experiencing violent mood swings? Send your most intimate questions about dining or anything else to asktim@washcp.com, and a real-live food critic will answer them!

This week’s question comes from City Paper webmeister Dave Nuttycombe, who wants to know:

“Just experienced a hot hand-dipped doughnut this afternoon at the oddly-named Fractured Prune. It’s apparently a chain, but I’d never heard of it….Has a supposed-to-be-cute story about the name—came from a feisty 19th century woman who beat men at sports. Or something. I was too busy devouring the doughnut. WTF?”

This is a sad week for me and many others here at the City Paper. Dave Nuttycombe is leaving the paper after 16 years of doing everything from typesetting to video blogs to organizing Nosh Mobs. Okay, he’s not exactly leaving; there simply was no room at the Loaf Daze Inn for a guy who can do anything, including posting what may be the funniest City Desk item ever (certainly the most vicious one directed toward a family member).

Well, apparently Dave can do anything but log onto the goddamn Internet. The Fractured Prune Web site has an entire page dedicated to its strange name:

Back in 1976 when Tom Parshall purchased Josh’s 46th Street Market, he was thinking about a new name for his enterprise. Several friends gave him suggestions, but he felt they all lacked imagination & individuality. He had been reading through the abstract of the land he purchased, and an unusual name caught his eye. Back in the late 1800’s a woman named Prunella Shriek had owned much of the land in that area. Tom didn’t think too much about it until one day he was browsing through the Baltimore Library and came across a book titled Ocean City Love. As he looked through it, he was thrilled to see Prunella Shriek’s name with a paragraph devoted to her.

Even though she was in her seventies, she was the only woman who competed with men in traditionally men’s sports such as ice skating races & skiing competitions. She was an excellent tennis player, and was county ping-pong champion circa 1895. Being older and somewhat brittle, she often returned from some of the more vigorous competitions in a wheel chair or on crutches. Thus the townspeople began lovingly to refer to her as “Fractured Prunella.” When Tom read this, a voice in his head said, “Hello”, he would name his enterprise after this wonderful & spunky old lady, and call it “The Fractured Prune® .”

I decided to call up the current owner, Sandy Tylor, and find out whether the story was fact or just marketing BS. “That’s what was told to me when I purchased it,” says Tylor, who bought the small-but-delicious doughnut chain in 1994 with her daughter and son-in-law. “That’s what I tell people.”

The truth is, after 13 years, she’s a little tired of telling the story, since people ask about it every damn day. (Thanks, Dave.) So each franchisee has a poster explaining the legend; some even have it printed on the back of their menu. Tylor calls it “absolutely the best marketing in the world.”

If you’ve never tasted one of Fractured Prunes’ doughnuts—each hand-dipped in house-made glazes and sprinkled with all manner of colorful toppings—you’re out of luck finding one in the District. At least for awhile. The location on P Street NW closed down earlier this year, not only because of ongoing construction in the Dupont Circle neighborhood but also because the franchisee needed to devote time to an ill family member.

The franchisee “does have the right to open in the District, reopen if he chooses to,” Tylor says, but don’t look for it anytime soon. Others have also expressed interest in opening a franchise in the District, but Tylor acknowledges that it’s “a long process for them to go through and be approved.”

In the meantime, you’ll have to get your Prune fix at the Maryland or Virginia locations.

You didn’t ask for this info, Dave, but I thought I’d give readers something they couldn’t find on the Internet.

This week’s question comes from Andre Dahlman of Bethesda, who wants to know:

“In Bill Buford’s book, Heat, an Italian butcher tells Mr. Buford that cattle who have been fed cheap grain will produce a waxy tasting meat. Specifically, that a diner will taste a waxy residue at the roof of their mouth when eating cattle fed cheap grain. Have you ever heard this?”

The evocative scene that Andre references begins on page 242 of the hardback copy of Heat, when the “most highly regarded butcher in Italy” stops at a Tuscan restaurant for steak, but it culminates on page 248 when Buford recounts the famed Dario Cecchini’s tableside tantrum:

“The roof of your mouth should never be waxy,” he reflected. “The waxiness betrays what the animal was fed on, which would have been cheap grain, to fatten it up.”

A serious-minded steak man once told me that American, corn-fed beef was “white bread with mayonnaise,” by which he meant that the cows were raised to produce “soft, character-less beef.” But he never mentioned, nor had I ever heard, the waxy argument before—until I read it in Buford’s book many months ago. At Andre’s urging, I put the question to Benjy Mikel, head of the Food Science, Nutrition and Health Promotion Department at Mississippi State University. Mikel knows cattle husbandry and meat.

Mikel agrees with the contentious Cecchini—to a point. Fat, a substantial amount of it, is what causes meat to taste waxy, the professor says, and “grain gives [cattle] a higher energy source, so they’re able to deposit more fat on their bodies than if they’re just consuming grass from a pasture.”

But it’s also about inactivity. “That’s one of the reasons that a lot of the feedlots have [cattle] confined to smaller lots sizes, so they don’t get much exercise,” Mikel says. “So that they use that energy from the feed to actually grow and then to get fat.”

“Just like with humans, the more we eat and the less we exercise, the fatter we get,” he adds.

Technically, Mikel says, such weight gain could happen with naturally foraging animals. “I have seen animals that the forage quality was so lush and so forth where they had just as much fat as grain-fed animals,” the good professor says. “That’s not the norm, but it can happen that way.”

Hungry? Curious? Experiencing violent mood swings? Send your most intimate questions about dining or anything else to asktim@washcp.com, and a real-live food critic will answer them!

This week’s question comes from Nancy Lawson of Sykesville, MD, who wants to know:

“I started to wonder about [wine vinegar] because I assumed that, given the roots of the word ‘vinegar,’ all vinegar was made from wine. The term ‘wine vinegar’ seemed redundant to me….This is probably a very stupid question, but all of this got me very interested in vinegar b/c now I know how tasty it can be! And also, I would like to know, what else can I do with different kinds and flavors of vinegars? What are good uses for it?”

Nancy, you are so correct in your etymology, if not your assumptions, about vinegar. The word “vinegar,” according to the Food Lover’s Companion, is derived “from the French vin aigre,” which means “sour wine.” But there’s a reason you find all sorts of adjectives attached to vinegars—apple-cider vinegar, fruit vinegar, malt vinegar, rice vinegar, and the like. It’s because each vinegar begins with a different base ingredient. For example, distilled white vinegar often comes from a grain-alcohol base.

Wine vinegars, of course, come from the grapes used to make vino. The good wine vinegars, those based on specific varietals, tend to have less acidity and less pungency than distilled white vinegars; they also have more flavor, as you learned when using one to make a killer vinaigrette.

But you can use wine vinegars in many other ways.

“I use them a lot to finish up my soups. I think a little vinegar at the end kind of helps,” says Jason Mousseau, sous chef at Firefly. “And definitely on top of proteins and entrees. A little dash of vinegar is like a squeeze of lemon or a lime, you know what I mean?”

Mousseau is particularly fond of sherry vinegar, which he uses for pureed soups (and some broth soups) to “give it that balance, kind of like an Asian thing: the salty and the sweet and the vinegary and the spicy, kind of all together.” He’ll also use wine vinegars for “quick pickled things,” like perhaps a fast pickling of cabbage slices, which can then serve as an accompaniment to your entrée. You can take a little wine vinegar, sugar, and some aromatic spice (like star anise seeds) and sauté your veggies in a pot for five minutes.

“It just takes a little crunch off the veggie and gives it a little background,” Mousseau says. “It’s something nice to eat with a piece of fish or a chicken breast or something normal that people are eating at home.”

Robert Weland, the chef at Poste Moderne Brasserie in Penn Quarter, is such a fan of vinegar that he used to make his own. Like Mousseau, he uses wine vinegars to make gastriques, which are merely thick sauces reduced from a mixture of vinegar, sugar, and sometimes fruit. Weland has a smoked squab on his fall menu in which the bird, first cold-smoked and then roasted to medium rare, is served with a gastrique of sherry wine vinegar, shallots, and honey.

“Vinegars to me have always been used to brighten things up,” Weland says. “Whether it’s lemon juice or a white wine vinegar or champagne vinegar, it always brightens up a sauce or brightens up a soup, especially this time of year.”

In the end, Weland says, Nancy “shouldn’t be afraid of it, and she should try new things. There’s a million different applications, really.”

A few of them can be found on the Vinegar Institute’s Uses & Tips page.

Hungry? Curious? Itchy? Send your most intimate questions about dining or anything else to asktim@washcp.com, and a real-live food critic will answer them!

This week’s question comes from Lou Cantolupo of the District, who wants to know:

“Do all you food critics hang out with each other on the second new moon of the year and collude who to target next?”

Attention Todd, Tom, Eve, and the rest of you: We’ve been found out! Run for cover into the nearest gastro-pub serving $16 hamburgers and double-fried frites with truffle oil and rosemary! I’ll e-mail you later on when it’s safe to reconvene our underground cabal.

Lou, your question carries a certain tongue-in-cheek tone, but I suspect you speak for many others when you wonder why the hell the same restaurants keep appearing in print reviews. A quick search of the archives reveals that the Washington Post and the Washingtonian have both weighed in on the following restaurants in recent months: Café du Parc, The Majestic, Comet Ping Pong, Brasserie Beck, Il Mulino, Oyamel, Central Michel Richard, BLT Steak, Hook, Bebo Trattoria, Farrah Olivia, and others.

Of that list, City Paper food writers have written about: Café du Parc, The Majestic, Comet Ping Pong, Il Mulino, Oyamel, Central, Hook, Bebo, and others.

It certainly looks suspicious, doesn’t it?

Well, it’s not—not really. You know, there’s a reason they call us a newspaper. We write about what’s new and interesting. Same goes for magazines. I think the real question is whether we food writers overlook the less-obvious new restaurants in favor of those with a fancy-pants chef and a noisy publicist. You might have a case there. But then again, I do see Todd Kliman writing about Moroni & Brother’s on Georgia Avenue NW and Eve Zibart chiming in on EN Asian Bistro & Sushi Bar in Germantown.

The thing is, it takes time and effort to find new, under-the-radar restaurants worth writing about. I can’t begin to count the number of restaurants I’ve eaten at once and never darkened again; I quickly figured they weren’t worth your time or mine. So we’re often left with this focus on the obvious, which, frankly, we’re all complicit in. The buzz that surrounds places like Beck and Central and Comet generates anticipation from readers. They want to hear professional opinions on the food. So we provide them because part of our role as journalists is service.

I checked in with Kliman and Tom Sietsema on this question, too. Both critics e-mailed back thoughtful responses.

“The short answer,” Sietsema wrote, “is I write for a general audience and aim to cover my territory—which seems to be getting bigger each year—with two reviews a month in the District (where most of the more interesting restaurants are concentrated) and one review each in Virginia and Maryland.”

“I never consult with non-Post reviewers about what my plans are, although it sometimes looks as if we’re all eating in the same places at the same time,” the Post’s critic continues. “That’s bound to happen when there are so many noteworthy restaurants launching at the same time; I think critics want to get to those places fairly early on, to let their readers know what the scoop is.”

The Washingtonian’s Kliman had this to say via e-mail as he prepared to board a plane:

“I think [the question is] getting at the idea that places tend to get reviewed around the same time, giving the impression that critics and reviewers are pack rats. But places open, and people want to know about them. Usually, a critic or reviewer will wait a few weeks before making a first visit, so generally speaking, you can count on seeing a raft of opinions about a place about six weeks after opening. I dislike this, as I think you know. But no matter how ambitious you get, a column or review is still bound to a certain service element.

“I try to break from expectations as much as I can—my review of Cynthia’s, for instance,” Kliman adds about his most recent long-form review. “It came out a year later, and the foodiesphere was taken completely by surprise.”

Except for Sietsema, who wrote about Cynthia’s in the Post Magazine on Sunday.

Got an itch only a food critic can scratch? Describe it in detail to asktim@washingtoncitypaper.com.

This week’s question comes from Erin Ferguson of Gaithersburg, who wants to know:

“Why does leaving the pit in the avocado keep it green longer?”

Because the avocado pit is so big and bad-ass the flesh can’t help but be green with envy? Okay, so a joke doesn’t answer your question, Erin. But, frankly, I’ve never thought the pit did much of anything other than take up too much room inside the fruit, which would be better filled with lush, fatty flesh. I came to my belief the hard way. I, too, once trusted that old wives’ tale about plopping the pit into freshly made guacamole if you want to prevent browning. Yeah, right, and strippers really do want you.

Well, I guess there’s a reason why I’m a food writer and not a food chemist.

Barry Swanson, professor of food science at Washington State University and a fellow at the Institute of Food Technologists, tells me that avocado pits actually do contain a group of chemicals—called flavonoids—that slow down the browning process.

Just don’t expect miracles from your pit. The truth is, once you disrupt the cells in the avocado, allowing enzymes to mix with substrates, the browning process is an inevitable as Viagra spam in your inbox. The pit, Swanson says, “will slow the browning reaction a little bit. So…for example, if [you] took a knife and cut it to the pit, it’s going to brown a little bit less probably in the center than it will on the outside.” Likewise, the pit will help slow browning in your guacamole “a little bit,” the professor says, “but probably not a whole lot.”

If you really want to keep your guac green—and I know you didn’t ask for this, Erin, but we’re all about service here at Ask Tim—Swanson suggests two things: The first is to blend your fat-heavy guacamole well and “get an emulsion going….If you blend it up really good, there’s so much fat involved” the enzymes and substrates may not get together to do their browning dance.

The second thing is to make sure to add lemon or lime juice to your guac, preferably lemon since it apparently has more of the acid you need to slow down browning. “Lemon juice containing citric acid is going to help you keep it much greener than the pit ever will,” Swanson says.

Of course, since just about every recipe calls for either lemon or lime juice, most guac makers will already have built-in safeguards against browning—unless, that is, you’re allergic to citrus juices and ignore those ingredients. Then I guess that leaves you in the pits.

This week’s question comes from Omari Wheat from the District, who wants to know:

“I was wondering if you know where I can get fresh huitlacoche in the D.C. area. Are there any stores, farmers markets, back yards, anywhere? I can find the stuff in a can, but it is obviously not as good as fresh. I know there are a few restaurants in the area that
offer it, but I want to be able to cook it myself.”

For the uninitiated, huitlacoche comes from ears of corn infected with a parasitic fungus, which swells the kernels to 10 times their normal size. Huitlacoche has been an ingredient in Mesoamerica cuisine long before Columbus hauled his ass over here looking for…well, anything but black, bloated corn fungus. Aztecs apparently used the kernels in their cooking; they even named them: According to the Food Lover’s Companion, “cuitlatl means ‘excrement,’ cochi means ‘black’” in the Nahuatl language. Modern restaurants, of course, tend to shy away from calling their huitlacoche dishes “black shit.” They have adopted more creative terms, such as Mexican “black mushrooms” or Mexican “black truffles.”

None of which helps Omari get his fresh huitlacoche. I contacted José Andrés’ THINKfoodGROUP, which serves up the corn fungus at both Cafe Atlantico and Oyamel. Laura Trevino, THINK’s director of communications and Andrés’ special assistant, e-mailed back with the bad news:

“I asked Joe Raffa (chef at Oyamel) and some of the other chefs. No one sells fresh huitlacoche in D.C. that they know of. They buy from a farmer in Florida. It is possible to find canned huitlacoche at Latin markets but the quality is not the same. An opportunity for some small gourmet market.”

I e-mailed Trevino back to see if THINK would share the contact info of its Florida farmer, but so far, I haven’t heard a peep. I suspect, like many restaurateurs, Andrés doesn’t want to reveal his sources. So I contacted James Muir, regional executive chef at Rosa Mexicano in Penn Quarter, which also features huitlacoche on its menu. Muir, unfortunately, had the same bad news: You can’t buy the stuff fresh in D.C.

But Muir is not as down on canned huitlacoche as the THINKfoodGROUP is. Muir uses the stuff at his own restaurant. He says you can buy canned huitlacoche at La Villa Food Distributors on 1265 4th Street NE (phone: 202-543-9677; hours: 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturady). La Villa sells it for $79 for a 12-can case. Individual cans run $6.58. Maybe the stuff at La Villa is better than the cans at those markets you’ve visited, Omari? Maybe it’s the same? I don’t know.

Price is likely the reason you don’t find much fresh huitlacoche. If the can version costs $79 for a case, Muir says that the same amount of frozen huitlacoche runs closer to $200. The fresh stuff, he adds, is even pricier. Short of buying white or black truffles, I don’t know how many people are willing to shell out that kind of cash for fungus.

This week’s question comes from City Paper contributing writer Arthur Delaney of the District, who wants to know:

“I’m dying to know what Tim thinks of this article in the current Atlantic magazine, slamming ‘the gourmet’s ongoing failure to think in moral terms.’”

This may be the most difficult question ever submitted to a food critic—particularly because Delaney’s link to The Atlantic offered only a few teasing paragraphs of B.R. Myers’ broadside against food writers and their questionable morals. I searched all over the place, from downtown D.C. to Silver Spring, to find a copy of the magazine that included Myers’ essay, titled “Hard to Swallow.” I finally had to convince former CP staff writer Dave Jamieson to cough up his copy, and it cost me a lunch.

I wish I could say my efforts were worth it. While I think Myers’ premise is important to consider—that gourmands accept all sorts of animal cruelty to satisfy their pampered palates—I found Myers’ essay to be fatuous and full of misleading characterizations. The piece is mostly a take down of two authors, Julie Powell and Michael Pollan, both of whom Myers repeatedly describes as “food writers.”

First of all, Pollan is not a food writer. I’m a food writer. Ruth Reichl is a food writer. Jeffrey Steingarten is a food writer. (Just for the record: I can only wish I were in the same league as Reichl and Steingarten.) Michael Pollan occasionally writes about food, among other subjects. Second, B.R. Myers’ moral concerns seem limited exclusively to animals, because he certainly doesn’t care about how he abuses Pollan’s and Powell’s copy. Should that not be an ethical consideration for a writer?

Myers waves a crooked old disapproving finger at Powell’s account of killing a live lobster (from Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously) by claiming it “is a prime example of food writers’ hostility to the very language of moral values.” That wasn’t how I recalled Powell’s account, which I found both hilarious and harrowing, an honest depiction of one person’s conflicted feelings over killing a crustacean. I checked Powell’s blog to see if she had read Myers’ essay. Here’s what Powell wrote in response:

Finally, someone gets me!

Seriously, though, I actually do feel like his point is fairly dubious. He seems to think that I’m all about mocking people’s sensitivity to the lobster killing, but that isn’t the case at all. On the contrary, my lobster chapter was all about the real hesitancy I had to boil the lobster, which I was doing at [Julia Child’s] explicit behest. Yes, I make with the funny. But I laugh at all manner of offensive shit—the lobsters are just getting the same treatment I give everybody else. Better, even; can you imagine the heights of crassness I’d have reached if I’d been writing about boiling Karl Rove?

Myers’ case against Pollan is even more absurdly reductionist. Myers mischaracterizes The Omnivore’s Dilemma so frequently that I won’t bore you with the details, save for the essayist’s final summation of Pollan’s justifications for eating meat:

“Pollan thinks that taking a hard look at human nature is more a matter of leaning over the museum rail at the caveman exhibit. Seeing only the painted mammoth on the horizon, so to speak, he derives the rightness of meat eating from the fact that humans are physically suited to it, they enjoy it, and they have engaged in it until modern times without feeling much ‘ethnical heartburn.’”

Did Myers and I read the same book? It’s next to impossible to encapsulate Pollan’s deep thinking on the subject to something blog-worthy, but suffice to say that Pollan looks at the macro-view of ecosystems vs. the micro-view of rights for individual animals. Two excerpts from The Omnivore’s Dilemma:

From page 323 in the hardback: “Predation is deeply woven into the fabric of nature, and that fabric would quickly unravel if it somehow ended, if humans somehow managed ‘to do something about it.’ From the point of view of the individual prey animal predation is a horror, but from the point of view of the group—and of its gene pool—it is indispensable.” (Pollan applies a similar logic to domesticated farm animals: He believes that human “predation” can benefit them as a species, particularly if we could move away from intensive farming systems. As he writes: “The surest way to achieve the extinction of the species would be to grant chickens a right to life”—page 322.)

From page 325: “Morality is an artifact of human culture devised to help humans negotiate human social relations. It’s very good at that. But just as we recognize that nature doesn’t provide a very good guide for human social conduct, isn’t it anthropocentric of us to assume that our moral system offers an adequate guide for what should happen in nature? Is the individual the crucial moral entity in nature as we’ve decided it should be in human society? We simply may require a different set of ethics to guide our dealings with the natural world….”

After reading Myers’ essay (twice) and comparing it to The Omnivore’s Dilemma, I have to say that I prefer Pollan’s earnest hand-wringing about meat eating over Myers’ pious, self-righteous scorn. I feel like Pollan came about his views honestly and fairly. I have no idea how Myers developed his. But, then again, maybe you shouldn’t trust anything I have to say on the subject, Arthur. After all, consider what the great animal rights activist Peter Singer once wrote:

“No one in the habit of eating an animal can be completely without bias in judging whether the conditions in which that animal is reared cause suffering.”

I take that to mean you can’t trust any meat-eater to have an unbiased position on this subject. He’s probably right.

This week’s question comes from Meredith Wade of Alexandria, who wants to know:

“So where can folks with hip sensibilities, but of a certain age, find a ‘nice’ stylish dinner and not have to yell at the person across the table? We have discovered that it helps a lot if we eat at 6 or 6:30, but we’d rather that not be the norm. Any place in Alexandria, Arlington, or the VA side of DC would suit us.”

You know, I think diners of every age find restaurants too noisy these days. My wife, Carrie, and I were in Oyamel recently, sitting at a tiny two-top near the entrance, and I watched stupidly as my spouse’s lips moved but nothing penetrated my eardrums. I was not having some male moment, either, okay. I love Carrie’s voice. It was just too damn loud in Oyamel.

The problem, I find, with recommending restaurants based on their noise level is that everyone has a different tolerance for racket. I mention this because, Meredith, in a separate e-mail to me, mentioned that she found the Majestic in Old Town too noisy for her tastes. Which pretty much ruined my first recommendation. It also told me that Meredith wants a place far quieter than what I’d consider acceptable.

With that in mind, my first suggestion is Indigo Landing on Daingerfield Island. It’s a cool place, designed to look sort of like Martha Stewart’s boat house, and it turns out good, often terrific, modern Low Country cuisine. Even better, as the weather turns cooler, you can sit on the patio at Indigo and enjoy the view of the monuments in the distance. It’s quiet there—well, except for the occasional plane taking off and landing at Reagan, but really, you don’t notice it much. Or maybe I don’t notice it much.

From there, some other affordable (meaning you don’t need to open a payday loan shop to go there) options include the underappreciated Tandoori Nights in Clarendon (with its wide berth between tables), Daniel O’Connell’s in Old Town (with its upper-level tables, far away from the maddening crowd), Monroe’s in Del Ray (if present, kids may cause an issue at this American trattoria), and Del Merei Grille (though you have to act as your own chef here).

If you feel like breaking the bank—or splurging, never a bad idea—you can always duck into the pillow soft environs of Restaurant Eve in Old Town, 2941 in Falls Church (with its own wooded, watery oasis right out the windows), and Willow in Arlington. On the D.C. side of the Potomac, I’d recommend either Kaz Sushi Bistro on I Street NW, if you’re into some good sushi, or Restaurant Nora, if you’re into healthy, organic foods that don’t clog your arteries or your ears.

You’ll have to give me an earful, Meredith, if you find any of these restaurants too loud. I may need to re-calibrate my own noise-meter.

Got an itch only a food critic can scratch? Describe it in detail to asktim@washingtoncitypaper.com.

This week’s question comes from Paul K. Ward of Takoma Park, who wants to know:

“How on earth can you possibly get decent French wine in D.C. given the exchange rate?”

It seems that if global warning doesn’t kill the French wine industry, the exchange rate will. Or perhaps the changing tastes of the international wine community. Or France’s refusal to change production methods to meet these changing tastes. Or even America’s perception of France as a bunch of surrender monkeys whose wine isn’t fit for a Yorkshire pig to roll in.

Yes, it’s a tough time for the French winemakers, and the dollar’s poor exchange rate with the euro is just one of the factors that makes French vino so pricy. As Ace Beverage wine manager Joe Riley points out, you also have a number of people and bureaucracies standing between you and your precious French wine, and they all want a piece of the action. Despite this, though, Cotes du Ventoux in the Rhone region still produces some affordable, drinkable bottles, he says, which Paul K. Ward himself can attest to. Paul told me that he recently bought a decent Ventoux at Rodman’s for $6.99.

Ventoux is “just a big area where a lot of perfectly decent, if not distinguished, wine comes from,” Riley says. The region’s undistinguished reputation and its flood of grape juice on the market combine to drive the wine’s price down. “People are only willing to pay but so much for wine from certain areas. I mean, if it’s more expensive from a big area like that, it better be really limited and seriously good. But there’s so much wine coming out of there that no one really feels the need [to pay] much for it.”

“Ventoux is an area, unless I’m mistaken, that wasn’t really well known by wine drinkers in this country at all until probably the 1980s, but there have been people who have sourced wine from there for quite a long time,” Riley adds.

So what producers from the region would you recommend? “If anyone’s going to know one in this country, it’s probably going to be one called La Vieille Ferme. They’ve had several bottlings under that label,” Riley says. “But the one that I saw was just called Bishop’s Selection.”

Like Riley, Terry Brown, wine manager at Schneider’s of Capitol Hill, believes there are decent, affordable wines to be had from France. It’s just a matter of separating the good from the plonk. This is where your friendly neighborhood wine store comes in, Brown says. It should do the work for you.

“The only way that I really can answer a question like this—and it really is not me trying to plug myself—but have a wine store that you can trust,” Brown says. “The inexpensive wines, like the $10, $15 price range or under, there are good ones out there, but you just have to taste through them all. And a good wine store that you trust should be able to help you with that.”

Except for the extremely expensive wines with limited production, Brown says he samples every vino in his store. So what French producers does he recommend for Paul? “Stay away from Bordeaux if you’re looking for inexpensive [wines]. Generally speaking that’s not a good place to go,” he says. “But I would say the two areas to look for in France, where you can still find pretty good deals, are Cotes du Rhones and Loire whites.”

To submit a question to Ask Tim, just e-mail me at asktim@washingtoncitypaper.com.

Specific recommendations for affordable French wines after the jump.
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This week’s question comes from Ray Ammon, who wants to know:

“I love crème brûlée, but have often wondered which is the best ’sugar’ to use to get the best results. Demerara, turbinado, caster, or just plain?”

Every week, it seems, I discover whole new levels of cooking geekdom. I mean, who outside of a pastry kitchen knew there were so many varieties of sugar? I did some serious digging—otherwise known as Googling—and found the sugar.org site, which lists these types of white, brown, and liquid sugars: regular white sugar, extra-fine white sugar, fine white sugar, fruit sugar, bakers special sugar, superfine, (also known as ultrafine or bar sugar), confectioners (or powdered sugar), coarse sugar, sanding sugar, turbinado sugar, brown sugar, (light and dark), muscovado (or Barbados sugar), free-flowing brown sugar, demerara sugar, and invert sugar.

I suspect the sugar geeks out there can add even more to this list.

They don’t come much geekier than David Guas, the executive pastry chef for Passion Food Hospitality (which includes DC Coast, TenPenh, Ceiba, and Acadiana) who’s striking out on his own next month with DamGoodSweet Consulting Group. Oh, yeah, Guas is also publishing a dessert cookbook and opening Bayou Bakery next year. The dude knows sugar.

Ray’s question certainly cracked the sugar glaze on Guas’ brain, which immediately overflowed with advice for the at-home pastry cook. In the end, Guas says, the “best” crème brûlée is the one you like, and any one of the sugars that Ray mentions would work fine, depending on your preference. He personally likes his brûlée to emphasize the custard, not the crackly coating. So he tends to avoid the brown and coarse sugars.

“I love textured sugars. I love the raw, the turbinado. I love all of that for certain things,” Guas says. But the brown sugars, he adds, “have molasses in there, so it’s going to burn differently and caramelize differently. You’re also adding a different flavor, so the sugars take on different flavors even in the raw stage that you can pick up on after they’re burned. So, for me, the most sort of neutral [sugar] to use [is] just a nice granulated sugar—a cane sugar.”

“It’s just the most cleanest sort of flavor,” Guas continues, “It’s the most mild. It’s not full-bodied because usually when I’m doing brûlée, the actual flavors are inside the brûlée, and I don’t want them to be masked by a heavier sugar.”

And though you didn’t ask, Guas has other advice for your brûlée, Ray: Avoid superfine and ultrafine sugars because the custard will absorb their sweetness, and don’t sprinkle too much sugar on your custard otherwise you’ll be “left with a quarter-inch glass force-field that you have to take a jackhammer to crack open.” Also, if you’re making the dessert for a dinner party, prepare each hard-caramel coating separately.

“Sprinkle the sugar on each brûlée right before it’s torched,” Guas says. “Don’t, like, sit there and sprinkle all of them and then start torching them, because the custard immediately begins to absorb some of the sugar…It [then] won’t torch properly. It won’t give the clean burn of the sugar. It’ll end up…torching the custard.”

Ray, if you have any more questions, I suspect David Guas will be happy to answer those, too. As long as you say please, with granulated, non-superfine cane sugar on top.

This week’s question comes from Robert Renner of Silver Spring, who wants to know:

When I go out for a nice dinner, I usually like to bring my own bottle and pay the corkage fee, if the restaurant allows it. Normally, when you buy a bottle from their list and you don’t finish it, you aren’t allowed to take the rest with you, at least in D.C. But what if the bottle that was opened at the restaurant was one that you brought? Can you take the rest home?

In response to your smart inquiry, Robert, I offer this rhetorical question: Who would have guessed that Maryland, with all its weird alcohol laws, actually is more progressive on this issue than D.C.? Last year, a new law went into effect in Maryland that allows diners to take home unfinished bottles of wine consumed in Free State restaurants. The only caveat is that you must transport the tightly recorked bottles in a locked glove compartment, trunk, or other cargo area. There’s even a company, winedoggybag.com, that sells tamper-evident bags for these take-home proposes. Hey, we can’t have you swiggin’ that vino as you weave your way home.

In D.C., however, you gotta suck down that bottle and hope to Christ you manage to avoid all the alcohol checkpoints. Cynthia Simms, community resource officer for D.C.’s Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration, says that the Alcohol Beverage Control regulations don’t allow diners to remove BYOB wine from restaurants. She read this to me from Chapter 7 of the general operating requirements for licensees (under the “corkage fee” section):

The holder of an on-premise retailer’s license may permit a patron to bring to and consume on the licensed premises an alcohol beverage that the licensee is permitted to sell or serve under its on-premise retailer’s license, provided that the alcoholic beverage is opened by an employee of the establishment. However, the holder of an on-premise retailer’s license shall not permit any alcoholic beverage opened on the licensed premises to be removed from the licensed premises.

So what exactly does a licensee do with a bottle of leftover wine? I thought I’d check in with Dean Gold, owner of Dino in Cleveland Park, which has one of the best Italian wine programs in the region (not to mention free corkage on certain days of the week). Does an unfinished bottle just get dumped down the kitchen drain, Dean?

“Something like that,” he jokes. “Maybe the staff [drinks it] or the owner. It depends upon if it’s an old Brunello.”

I wondered aloud to Gold if restaurateurs would try to lobby the D.C. Council to pass a law similar to the one in Maryland allowing diners to take home half-finished bottles.

“I don’t think there’s any movement. I think there should be,” he says. “For example, I know that I would benefit from it because I would have people come in and stage a wine tasting. They’d buy two or three Brunellos, drink part of them, and take them home if they could. I’ve had people tell me that. So I think it’s a great idea. It’s one of those things to put on the agenda.”

Do you hear that, D.C. Council? Such a law would likely cut down on drunk driving and benefit restaurateurs. It’s time to put your bottles down, councilmembers, and pass that damn law.

To submit a question to Ask Tim, just e-mail me at asktim@washingtoncitypaper.com.

This week’s question comes from Angela Potter of Takoma Park who wants to know:

“How the hell do you grill ANYTHING in a condo/apartment without the smoke alarm going off? We have a standard smoke alarm system and LOVE pan grilling everything from steak to asparagus. Our alarm has gone off more than a dozen times since we moved in six months ago. It’s a terrible nuisance. Advice?”

You mean advice beyond ripping the battery out of the alarm? Or taking a five iron to the damn thing?

Angela, your question is a pain to answer in a way that’s not already obvious—and in a way that can actually help you out. I called Kamal Ali, son of Ben’s Chili Bowl founders Ben and Virginia Ali, to get his take on it. After all, on a typical Friday night, the griddle at Ben’s must generate enough smoke and heat to light up Shaw. If anyone could help an indoor pan “griller”­—whose approach is actually closer in spirit to a cook at a griddle than pit-master at an outdoor grill—I thought Kamal might.

Well, Kamal wasn’t much help. He suggested opening windows and doors in your home to create more ventilation than you can typically get from those often crappy in-home hoods. But I suspect you’ve already thought of that—or least thought of it after your alarm started sounding like an EMS truck barreling through your kitchen.

So I called Roy Washington, a manager at Strosniders Hardware of Silver Spring, who points out that you can buy in-home alarms that are sensitive to either heat or smoke. He says that all the major brands carry heat-sensitive and smoke-sensitive models and that the packages are clearly marked which are which. Washington suggests figuring out what is your main issue­—heat or smoke­—and then buying the model that would allow you to grill beep-free.

And if that doesn’t help, I have an aluminum bat you can borrow.

To submit a question to Ask Tim, just e-mail me at asktim@washingtoncitypaper.com.