Prices shown represent the cost per ounce of each cupcake

Last April, Y&H interviewed Cake Love's Warren Brown about how the District's first gourmet cupcake seller was dealing with all the new competition in town. Brown defended his prices (cupcakes cost $3.25 at Cake Love—50 cents more than rival retailer Georgetown Cupcake, for instance) by citing some recent price studies he'd conducted of his competitors. Generally speaking, Brown asserted that "other places that have them for less money have a much smaller cupcake." On visual inspection, at least, Brown seemed to have a point.

Y&H recently decided to conduct its own price study to see which D.C. sweet seller offered the most cupcake for your buck. The mission: buy one basic-style cupcake from each high-end shop in town, weigh each one of them on the same digital scale and then tally up the price per ounce in order to obtain a more scientific comparison.

Here's what we found. The best deal in terms of size: Baked & Wired, where you're paying around $0.64 per ounce of the sweet stuff. That is to say, you're getting about an ounce and a half of cupcake for every dollar you spend. Compare that to the worst deal, at Georgetown Cupcake, which charges about $1.38 per ounce, meaning you're getting less than ounce of cake—about three quarters, in fact—for every dollar.

Check out the complete breakdown of the results of our sugary experiment after the jump:

Location: Baked and Wired
Cupcake: chocolate w/ buttercream frosting
Cost: $3.50
Weight: 5.5
Price per ounce: $0.63

Location: Sticky Fingers
Flavor: red velvet
Cost: $2.25
Weight: 3.2 oz.
Price per ounce: $0.70

Location: Crumbs
Flavor: chocolate w/ butter cream frosting
Cost: $4.50
Weight: 6.1 oz.
Price per ounce: $0.74

Location: Curbside Cupcake
Flavor: Red velvet
Cost: $3.00
Weight: 3.6 oz.
Price per ounce: $0.83

Location: Hello Cupcake
Flavor: chocolate w/ buttercream frosting
Cost: $3.00
Weight: 3.6 oz.
Price per ounce: $0.83

Location: Olivia's Cupcakes
Flavor: chocolate w/ buttercream frosting
Cost: $2.00
Weight: 2.2 oz.
Price per ounce: $0.91

Location: The Sweet Lobby
Flavor: red velvet
Cost: $2.75
Weight: 3 oz.
Price per ounce: $0.92

Location: Red Velvet Cupcakery
Flavor: chocolate w/ buttercream frosting
Cost: $3.25
Weight: 3.2 oz.
Price per ounce: $1.02

Location: Something Sweet
Flavor: red velvet
Cost: $3.25
Weight: 3.2 oz.
Price per ounce: $1.02

Location: Cake Love
Flavor: chocolate w/ buttercream frosting
Cost: $3.25
Weight: 2.8 oz.
Price per ounce: $1.16

Location: Sprinkles
Flavor: chocolate w/ buttercream frosting
Cost: $3.50
Weight: 3 oz.
Price per ounce: $1.17

Location: Georgetown Cupcake
Flavor: chocolate w/ buttercream frosting
Cost: $2.75
Weight: 2 oz.
Price per ounce: $1.38

Illustration by Brooke Hatfield

Tonight: As per usual on Friday's, some high-class vegan dining at Elizabeth's Gone Raw. Mention "Meat-Free Week" for a complimentary beverage and don’t forget to make a reservation. Need a drink after the long week? Check out the "Cupid's Not Stupid, Cocktails to Fall" competition at the Ronald Reagan Building as D.C. mixologists go head-to-head in a saucy competition.

Coming up: Area oenophiles won’t want to miss out on the International Food & Wine Festival, which enters its grand tasting phase on Saturday and Sunday, featuring some 500 varietals. On Sunday, L’Enfant Café is making dinner an event with a three-course meal and Valentine’s-themed comedy show. And we dare more adventurous tongues to check out the romantically themed hearts, cheeks and tongues (literally!) on special at Urbana.

For more info, scroll down and click on any link on the Y&H food events calendar above.

Got something tasty going on? Email tips, daily specials and event listings to hungry@washingtoncitypaper.com

"I don't know when we're opening," says proprietor Cizuka Seki, citing issues with gas service that make an exact target date a bit hard to pinpoint at the moment.

Seki is opening the restaurant with her father, Hiroshi Seki, a veteran chef of some 50 years who spent the most recent two decades running his own eatery outside St. Louis. "This is his baby," the younger Seki says, explaining that cooking in D.C., as opposed to the Midwestern suburbs, will allow her dad to "be creative and do whatever he wants rather than having to make food that he has to tweak to American tastes."

Like many astute restaurateurs these days, the father-daughter team bought the building. Public records show the $450,000 sale closed last July.

Seki does divulge a few details about the place: Plans for the first floor include a nine-seat counter looking out on an open kitchen. "Whoever is lucky enough to sit there gets to be served directly by my dad," she says. The second floor will serve as the primary dining room.

The menu hasn't quite been finalized. "But," she says, "it'll be food that he and I love, things we want to eat when we drink." Expect udon and soba noodle dishes (the latter variety will be shipped directly from Japan). But, no sushi (raw sashimi courses certainly, but no nigiri or maki.) No ramen, either (at least not at first, anyway). And, no bartender. "There's no space for a bar," she points out. But there will be drinks, including beer, sake and a curated selection of shōchū, a Japanese spirit that Seki hopes to become a sort of house specialty.

Expect a more modern look than your typical dark wooden izakaya-style joint in Japan, or even New York.

The overall goal, Seki says, is to offer the sort of high-quality cuisine at a mid-range price point that D.C. generally lacks. "I do think we're filling a gap that doesn't exist for casual Japanese dining," she says.

Photo by Chris Shott

Jellyfish with pork loin at New Big Wong

Operators of D.C.'s forthcoming snout-to-tail eatery The Pig insist the concept is not entirely about pork. Vegetarians might even dig it. We'll see. [Washingtonian]

The guys behind Town Hall and The Dubliner open their latest eatery, Sixth Engine, tonight inside the historic Engine 6 firehouse at 438 Massachusetts Ave, NW. [Citybiz]

Watch Rogue 24 guest chef David Posey of Chicago make some barley risotto with raw egg. [NBC Washington]

Graffiato's Mike Isabella dishes up his top 10 obsessions. No, pepperoni sauce is not one of them. [Food & Wine]

Are the Taylor Gourmet guys eyeballing D.C.'s abandoned Mixt Greens locations? [Prince of Petworth]

The verdict is in: Shaw's Mood Lounge is really noisy. [Borderstan]

Shake Shack is a fail-proof first date. Well, unless maybe your date hates standing in line. [WaPo]

Tonight: lots of late-night specials available, most notably deals on sushi at Kushi. Keeping it raw, you can always get oysters at a lower rate by heading to Hank's or Old Ebbitt after regular dinner hours.

Coming up: What? You really haven't booked a table for Valentine's Day? Fear not. We have a ton of options listed here, including some places where no reservations are needed. Take the Queen Vic, for instance, where it's first come, first served for an array of romantically themed dishes including the "Pork Sword" and "Pink Love Tunnel." Charming.

For more info, scroll down and click on any link on the Y&H food events calendar above.

Got something tasty going on? Email tips, daily specials and event listings to hungry@washingtoncitypaper.com

Image courtesy of Bruegger's

Burrata ravioli with caviar sauce at Mintwood Place

Psychoanalyzing the cupcake craze—you're all just "hungry for hugs." [WaPo]

Will new vending rules actually make things harder for food trucks? [Blade]

Here's something different: Darnell's Bar in Shaw morphs into a coffee shop during the day. [Prince of Petworth]

Mixtec, El Pollo Sabroso, Jolt 'N Bolt all get in trouble with the Health Department. [WaPo]

Restaurateur Stephen Starr is now hiring for his new bistro-style eatery on 14th Street NW. [Washingtonian]

A Cooking Channel segment on D.C.'s Toki Underground airs Feb. 29 [Twitter]

Brunch at The Getaway doesn't suck. [Bitches Who Brunch]

On a recent Friday morning, Bryan Duggan is asking the dozen or so people assembled in front of him what they think the grounds of an Ecuadorian roast smell like.

Self-professed coffee philistines and scruffy, plaid-bedecked twentysomethings I recognize as baristas at Filter Coffeehouse and Big Bear Café offer up “tamarind,” “sweet potatoes,” and “moss” to describe the coffee, dubbed El Gavilan. The weirder the descriptor, the more pleased Duggan seems.

We are in the light-filled, Ikea-furnished Counter Culture training center in Adams Morgan, where Duggan and his fellow customer service representative, Alex Brown, run free “cuppings” every week. Tiny clipboards with sheets of paper to mark down tasting notes have been distributed, and Duggan and Brown explain the various ways to understand coffee: the fragrance and aroma of the grounds, as well as the flavor, body, and aftertaste of the brew.

Don’t be fooled by the local address: Counter Culture’s headquarters are way out of town in Durham, N.C. Yet given the dearth of local roasters to compete with, the company has become the District’s dominant upscale coffee distributor.

A cursory examination of Counter Culture’s business model helps explains why: As long as a shop sells Counter Culture coffee exclusively, the company will provide that place with extra service—at no extra charge. Want your baristas trained in espresso-making and milk-frothing? How about your espresso machines installed or serviced? What about a course instilling staffers with the all-important fair-trade, single-origin, organic ethos? Sell Counter Culture, and only Counter Culture, and you get all that for free.

For so-called third-place businesses like cafés and coffee shops that encourage hanging out rather than rapid customer turnover, that package deal seems like a smart business decision. Rather than taking the time to close shop and train staff, operators can ship their charges off to Counter Culture for classes like “Beginner Espresso Lab” and “Brewing Science.”

For the customer, however, Counter Culture’s vast reach engenders a monochromatic coffee scene where two of every three cups from specialty java joints in the District taste the same. Even if you’re avoiding Starbucks, chances are you’re still supporting caffeine hegemony with every skinny latte you drink.

* * *

Counter Culture, which first entered the D.C. market in 2004 with a single account at the now-defunct Murky Coffee, supplies beans to at least 25 different cafés and restaurants in the city. Its clients include tiny indie shops, such as Peregrine Espresso and Big Bear, the Tryst-Diner-Open City triumvirate, and a number of big-name D.C. restaurants like Komi, Zaytinya, and Rogue 24.

In D.C.’s tight-knit café society, the company’s tentacles run especially deep. Peregrine owner Ryan Jensen, for instance, is also a former Counter Culture customer service representative. Jensen describes the company’s sales strategy as seductive—and, ultimately, matrimonial. “The way we set up our approach is much like a marriage,” says Jensen. “By being faithful to them, we get certain benefits. There are very clear discounts that you get if you purchase a certain amount per week. The more any of their accounts buy from them, you can get more savings. That adds up pretty quickly.” Jensen points to 2-percent discounts on orders between 30 and 100 pounds and 7 percent off those over 100; he estimates that Peregrine’s two locations go through about 500 pounds of coffee per week.

And just like a love affair, the initial wooing comes easy. “I knew the whole deal, the way they do their training and their service,” says Mike Visser, proprietor of Mount Pleasant’s Flying Fish Coffee & Tea. Before opening his own shop last year, Visser worked at Tryst, a Counter Culture client, as well as Baked & Wired, which served the same beans before switching purveyors about two years ago. “Machines are expensive, training people is expensive,” Visser says. “If you want it in a nutshell, it’s good coffee and it’s an unbeatable relationship, like, ‘We’ll service your machine for free if you serve our coffee.’ It was easy enough as a starting point because I knew what they offered from the help side.”

And again like a marriage, the structure of the client-supplier relationship promotes dependency and makes breaking up difficult. “I would always love to bring something else in when I’m better off down the road financially,” says Visser. “I’ve considered bringing in other local roasters, but that voids the warranty.”

Full disclosure: I, too, once worked in a Counter Culture shop—Annapolis’ Hard Bean Coffee & Books. But I never loved the coffee (I find it a bit sour and watery) and, since moving to D.C., have actively sought out shops that serve other beans. This exercise has made me notice just how extensively Counter Culture has saturated the local market. And I’m not alone.

“D.C. has an interesting relationship with Counter Culture. It’s kind of bad in a couple of different ways,” says Jonathan Riethmaier, who blogs about the city’s coffee culture at District Bean. “Some of the coffee shops here wouldn’t be where they are without Counter Culture. To some degree, the level of consumership wouldn’t be where it is without Counter Culture because of their commitment to training and education. ”

The flip side: “If you’re someone that loves coffee and going to different cafés, do you really want to go to the coffee shop on the corner and have their featured coffee of the month, and go to the next one and have their featured coffee, and have it be the same coffee?” says Reithmaier. “That’s the kind of risk you run, that you see a lot of the same coffee in different shops.”

* * *

As widespread as Counter Culture coffee might seem, there are alternatives. You just have to look for them.

There’s M.E. Swings, the 80-year-old roaster downtown. Qualia Coffee in Petworth also roasts its own. Illy, an Italian coffee purveyor, has a shop in Foggy Bottom and now supplies the recently opened Lot 38 near Nationals Park. Local start-up Vigilante Coffee Co. sells beans at Eastern Market and distributes to Smith Commons and Granville Moore’s.

Perhaps the biggest challenge to Counter Culture’s D.C. dominance could come from Ceremony, the rebranded roasting arm of Annapolis’ Caffé Pronto, which offers an exclusive contract that’s comparable in its perks to Counter Culture’s. Ceremony’s roasting operation is 225 miles closer to D.C. than Counter Culture’s Durham headquarters. There’s no training center here yet, but owner Vincent Iatesta says he’s considering it. In the meantime, Ceremony staffers travel to the D.C. area to train baristas at places like Filter and Restaurant Eve.

Ask the guys at Counter Culture about rivals encroaching on their turf and you’ll hear all about the benefits of competition—a position easily espoused by the dominant player in any industry. “If a coffee roaster comes here, and it’s good quality, it’s just going to push the bar up,” says Brown.

Photos by Darrow Montgomery

Eatery tips? Food pursuits? Send suggestions to hungry@washingtoncitypaper.com.

The trailblazing Bloomingdale coffee shop and restaurant is asking city regulators to let it stay open into the wee hours like other D.C. hotspots. Big Bear currently closes at 11 p.m. on weeknights and midnight on weekends. The restaurant now wants to extend service until 1 a.m. all week long. It's also asking permission to let patrons hang out on its patio later into the evening, as well. Right now, customers carousing al fresco-style have to take it inside at 9 p.m. weekdays, 10 p.m. weekends. The restaurant is asking to extend outside service until midnight on weekdays and 1 a.m. on weekends.

What will the neighbors think? Residents weren't entirely thrilled with Big Bear's plans for evening hours and alcohol service in the first place. The District's Alcoholic Beverage Control Board was scheduled to review Big Bear's application for later hours on Wednesday.

Photo courtesy of Big Bear Cafe

If it's Wednesday, you know there's something unusual to try at Thunder Burger in Georgetown. Today's exotic protein special: ostrich and poblano chili served over dirty rice.

Coming up: on Thursday, Bruegger's is giving away free bagels to anyone with a coupon, Kushi is offering late-night sushi specials and local sommeliers are vying for the title of top super-taster in town. The latter function kicks-off the International Wine & Food Festival at the Ronald Reagan Building, where hundreds of varietals are available for tastings over the weekend.

For more info, click on any link in the Y&H food events calendar above.

Got something tasty going on? Email tips, daily specials and event listings to hungry@washingtoncitypaper.com