Deviled eggs, like the common hot dog and macaroni and cheese, are one of those classic comfort foods that have lately taken on a sort of contemporary chic—and, in some cases, sheen.

To wit: One recent evening at Boundary Stone in Bloomingdale, a plate of the $3 hors d’oeuvres arrived in the standard fashion—hard-boiled, bisected, and served cold. Except for one glaring element: The yolks were frickin’ pink! What horrible deformity had befallen that poor chicken embryo?

Thankfully, the blushing semi-orbs didn’t taste all that abnormal. They were just slightly sour and a tad tangy. It seemed no genetic mutation was at play here, nor was this some ill-conceived promotion to benefit the Think Pink campaign for breast cancer awareness. “I take some pickled beet juice and add that in with the yolk to make the deviled mixture,” chef Vincent Campaniello later explains.

When I made a return visit a few weeks later, the eggs had changed from bright pink to a sort of greenish gold. They smacked of heavy salt and spice, as well as a more subtle flavor that I couldn’t immediately identify but eventually found out to be dill.

This sort of guessing game has become commonplace at the increasingly hip neighborhood’s newest boîte.

A woman sitting next to me at the bar, who described herself as a “deviled egg snob,” claimed to have previously tried three different colors of eggs at Campaniello’s rustic-looking restaurant on Rhode Island Avenue NW: pink, orange, and purple. Her favorite? The orange—though she added that she had no clue what was in that one.

“My deviled eggs will change nightly depending on what I feel like playing around with and putting in them,” says Campaniello, whose Sunday trips to nearby farmers markets often dictate what sort of creamy egg filling his patrons will be eating for the next week. “I try and give the people something new.”

Despite the mystery, or maybe partly because of it, the bar snacks have become quite popular sellers, according to the chef. “I get a lot of questions sometimes,” he says. “But once [customers] try them, they fly out of here. I get in trouble stocking them. I’ll think I make enough orders and they’ll be gone with plenty of time left in service.”

Campaniello’s eggy experiments underscore a larger trend. At D.C.-area eateries, the summertime picnic staple has become as common an appetizer as fried calamari, yet as varied in preparation as pizza.

Perhaps the local standard-bearer of the genre is 2Amys in Cleveland Park, where deviled eggs have been listed on the menu since the restaurant first opened in 2001. Peter Pastan’s place is best known for its traditional Neapolitan-style pizza, but the eggs are outstanding. They win my vote for best in the entire city. The yolk filling tastes of curry, but not overpoweringly so. And, the accompanying oily green sauce—whipped up with chopped parsley, pickles, anchovy, capers, and mustard seed—piles on the salt.

Prior to the pizzeria’s opening, Pastan, also proprietor of Obelisk in Dupont Circle, had served the dish at local fundraisers. “Either people would get it, and they’d be like, ‘Oh, who doesn’t love deviled eggs?’ or, they’d be like, ‘What? Deviled eggs?’ like it was nothing special,” says 2Amys co-owner Amy Morgan.

Between the deviled delights and other egg-laden recipes, 2Amys generally goes through about five cases of eggs each week, she says. That’s 150 dozen.

In recent years, other venues have tried to elevate the old cold egg in weird ways, with varying degrees of success. At Ray’s to the Third in Arlington, the latest establishment in beef-centric restaurateur Michael Landrum’s empire, the traditional yolk mixture is tossed out entirely. Landrum instead fills his white ovals with steak tartare and smothers them in Hollandaise. The powdery yolks are scattered about the plate as a sort of garnish along with some pickles, capers, and diced onion. Call me old-fashioned, but the yolk is where the payoff is. Relegating it to the side is just plain wrong.

Retro-chic comfort food, like overpriced pet food, seems to cause marketers to break out the puns: At Ray’s, the classic deviled descriptor is altered to “devilishly good” on the menu. At Founding Farmers, the Foggy Bottom church of farm-to-table dining, eggs filled with lobster, crab, and salmon-infused mixtures are labeled “devil-ish.”

* * *

Economics may help explain the ascension of the old-school, albumin-rich dish to prominence on local menus. Eggs are cheap. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the average retail price of a dozen grade-A eggs in September was less than $2. Slice each of ’em in half and your profit margin on the main ingredient instantly doubles.

Another financial factor: Prominent local chefs I’ve interviewed give me the distinct sense that they think the cure for our current national economic malaise involves healthy doses of mayonnaise, plus yolk.

“In these times, people are looking for what comforts them,” says Boundary Stone’s Campaniello. “I’ve done the five-star fine dining and everything. People aren’t really looking for the white linen service anymore. They want to come in and just enjoy the simple things that spark a little memory.”

And yet, even some of the city’s finer dining establishments are churning out deviled eggs. Consider Central, where fancy French chef Michel Richard serves what his compatriots calls œufs mimosa, a quartet of creamy egg halves topped with marinated anchovies called boquerones, for $7. They are quite good. The seafood topping is neither too fishy nor too salty.

At Richard’s even fussier Georgetown location Citronelle, a more traditional version of deviled eggs also appear on the menu of a special pre-theatre promotion honoring the Washington Ballet’s upcoming production of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic jazz-age novel The Great Gatsby. (The story’s action, you’ll recall, takes place in fictional West Egg.) It seems that what was good for the dapper gents and flapper-clad gals of the roaring ’20s is also perfectly suited to the 21st-century high rollers still raking it in within the Beltway’s yet-unburst bubble.

On the flipside, you find the same style of finger food getting hands sticky inside some of the District’s dingier dives. At DC9, where former Frank Ruta acolyte Amber Bursik now helms the kitchen, deviled eggs help ease the sting of whiskey shots and ear-ringing indie rock.

Bursik infuses her egg filling with pimento cheese. It’s a natural extension of the chef’s go-to morning-after remedy: grilled cheese filled with the pimento spread. “That’s one of my favorite hangover foods,” she says.

Add some paprika and a sliver of real pimento on top and you’ve got one potent bar snack. “It’s got a little bit of a smoky flavor to it, then it’s kind of sweet, a little salty, a little cheesy, and a little eggy,” she says.

Beyond the homey appeal of the dish—“They remind you of your childhood, they’re tasty and they’re kind of a guilty pleasure,” the chef says—Bursik floats another reason why folks flock to local restaurants for their deviled egg fix: “They’re a pain in the ass to make for yourself.”

Photos by Darrow Montgomery

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

Boundary Stone, 116 Rhode Island Ave. NW

2Amys, 3715 Macomb St. NW, (202) 885-5700

Founding Farmers, 1924 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, (202) 822-8783

Ray’s to the Third, 1650 Wilson Blvd., Arlington

DC9, 1940 9th St. NW, (202) 483-5000

Y&H alum Tim Carman takes a sip for WaPo, describing the wine as "in­cred­ibly drinkable, with an initial fruit blast that gives way to a pleasing acidity." Pastan describes it in less oenological terms: “It’s supposed to be a fun wine. It’s not supposed to be a serious wine.”

Photo by Rick Audet/Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

All indications suggest that Edan MacQuaid is in the house. Washington Post critic Tom Sietsema broke the news Wednesday that the prominent D.C. pizzaiolo is back at the oven. Again. This time at Local 16 on U Street NW.

You'll recall that after flaming out at Peter Pastan's popular pie palace 2Amys, MacQuaid landed at RedRocks Fire Brick Pizzeria before moving on to Pizzeria Orso in Falls Church, which unceremoniously dumped both him and his manager wife this past March.

I was just planning to stop by for a pie at Ardeo + Bardeo in Cleveland Park, which only last month had enlisted MacQuaid as a consultant, before learning that the renowned pizza maker had already rambled on elsewhere.

“The last few years have been interesting,” the pie maestro tells Sietsema.

I decided to waste no further time—who knows when the wily pie guy might jump ship again—and immediately headed over to Local 16 on MacQuaid's first night for a quick bite.

Instead of the traditional margherita, a MacQuaid specialty, I ordered the "Pizza 16" (pictured), topped with prosciutto, sopressata, and roasted red peppers. I was not disappointed: not too crunchy, not too chewy, with just the right balance of sauce and cheese. I devoured the whole thing, save for a few ashy specks.

Whether or not this was truly indicative of MacQuaid's handiwork, though, remains to be seen. He tells Sietsema that Local 16 has been making “pretty good pizza already” under chef Alex Vallcorba, a former 2Amy's colleague of MacQuaid's. The former Pastan cronies reportedly will be partnering to develop various meat roasts using the wood-burning grill. And, possibly, a s’more pizza.

Next time, I'll have to stick around for dessert.

Local 16, 1602 U Street NW, (202) 265-2828

Photo by Chris Shott

The editors promptly tore it apart, word by word. I’m not sure how many editors had a say on my first draft, but it felt like management was treating my Y&H debut as the journalistic equivalent of a tackling dummy. I figured it was a test of my mettle, particularly when an editor told me I wasn’t brilliant enough to use metaphors. I couldn’t tell if he was bullshitting, but I knew for certain that if I were to survive as the City Paper food columnist, I was going to need to develop thicker skin. This was no place for wallflowers who want to craft their prose in monk-like solitude, guided only by their “muse” and some arch, overly precious sense of the food world. The editors stood steadfastly against preciousness on all fronts.

Half a decade later, I look back on the edit of that first column (sample comments: “Fuck this; I hate this equivocation. Forget what I said up top about you keeping a strong POV throughout this piece” and “I don’t give a flying fuck what your entrée was!”) with a mix of nostalgia and bile-churning, spit-hurling anger, which was probably the whole point. Editors had time back then to find your pressure points and see if, by pressing them, they could make you a better writer and reporter.

Don’t worry. I’m not going to turn my farewell column into some sentimental, revisionist claptrap about how journalism needs more editors who treat their reporters like Bo Pelini treats his star quarterback. No, I’m just reflecting back on how much things have changed in five years, starting with the very job I’m leaving. Back in February 2006, when I officially became the paper’s next Young & Hungry, I wrote exactly one column a week. I went through at least three drafts on each column. I answered further questions from the copy desk. I didn’t blog at all. We didn’t even have a blog at City Paper. And today? Well, let’s just say I miss the old work load.

The food and dining scene has experienced its own growing pains. Consider that in late 2005:

• Washingtonians had a president who never visited restaurants. George W. Bush was content to sit in the White House, choking down pretzels while watching football. By contrast, Washington now has a president who has stopped at some of the area’s most recognizable restaurants, both high and low end, from Komi to Five Guys Burgers & Fries. In one instance, the president’s visit propelled a popular eatery, Ray’s Hell Burger, into the stratosphere. Owner Michael Landrum was forced to put his planned seafood restaurant on hold and expand the Hell Burger empire. That’s a good problem for a local restaurateur to have.

• The District boasted restaurants by Todd English and Charlie Palmer, but our biggest celebrity chef was a Frenchman, Michel Richard, who dared to base his operations in D.C. In the intervening years, chefs of varying celeb status have decided to throw up a restaurant and drill down into our wallets. On one end you have a TV-generated, semi-celebrity like Spike Mendelsohn who has also made D.C. his home, while on the other, you have a Michelin-star hoarder like Alain Ducasse who thought he’d send some emissaries down to D.C. and start cashing in on his considerable reputation. There are benefits on both sides of this star spectrum, but there are also sinkholes. Some of these culinary carpetbaggers take dining dollars (and sometimes kitchen talent) away from the home team.

Michel Richard

• Roberto Donna still had his Galileo empire. He not only had the flagship restaurant, but also the Osteria and the Laboratorio. He was also hawking grilled sandwiches on the sidewalk outside of Galileo. Five years and one failed restaurant later, the chef returned to D.C. with a storm cloud over his head. He owes taxes to Arlington County, owes money to former employees, and owes the people a better accounting of his abuse of public money.

• H Street NE was a great spot for fried whiting and a tall boy. No strip has changed as much as this patch of Northeast. The Ohio Restaurant was one of the early pioneers on H Street, hawking chef-driven soul food from a ragged outpost at H and 14th streets. But other dining destinations soon popped up. Granville Moore’s, Taylor Gourmet, Sticky Rice, Liberty Tree, Biergarten Haus, H Street Country Club, The Atlas Room. These (and others yet to come) are turning the street into a dining destination. Imagine what the area will be like once the city completes that goddamn streetcar project.

• Unless you count those motorized hot dog wagons down by the National Mall, the District didn’t have a single food truck. D.C.’s streets have made a remarkable turnaround in the past two years, breaking the death grip of the depot owners who have controlled the city’s curbside eats for decades. If and when the D.C. Council ever passes new vendor regulations, you can expect to see even more variety on our streets. I know for certain that Kushi, my current favorite for Japanese cooking, plans to launch a yakitori truck in D.C. But what the District really needs, as a colleague recently pointed out, is a gourmet coffee truck. Nick Cho, are you listening? Have you paid off your tax bill yet?

• The craft beer craze was just in its embryonic phase in the District. We had brewpubs, of course, but if you wanted to sample the best of the world’s craft beer, you pretty much had to give your money to Dave and Diane Alexander, whether at the Brickskeller in Dupont or Regional Food and Drink in Chinatown. These days? You can’t wander the streets without running face-first into a Dogfish Head tap. Craft beers are everywhere. Rustico (two locations now, with perhaps more to come), CommonWealth Gastropub, Pizzeria Paradiso (three locations), Meridian Pint, Brasserie Beck, Granville Moore’s, Black Squirrel, Restaurant 3, and the mother of all beer emporiums, ChurchKey, have transformed D.C. into suds city.

• Peter Chang and Fabio Trabocchi were still cooking in area kitchens. At the time, Chang was mesmerizing diners at TemptAsian Cafe in Alexandria, while Trabocchi was blowing away patrons with his gourmet takes on Italian cooking at Maestro in Tysons Corner. Within two years, both Chang and Trabocchi were gone. But after a rollercoaster ride in New York City, Trabocchi is returning next year to open Fiola in the former Le Paradou space in Penn Quarter. And Chang? Well, after forcing his fans to follow him around the country like jilted lovers, the chef has apparently settled down in Charlottesville, where he’s scheduled to open Peter Chang China Grill in January. Has anyone started a pool yet to see how long it lasts?

• The Washington area had only three four-star restaurants, according to Tom Sietsema’s 2005 Dining Guide. They were Maestro, Citronelle, and the Inn at Little Washington. Sietsema’s latest Dining Guide listed five four-star performers. Citronelle and the Inn made repeat appearances on the list, joined by Komi, Rasika, and Restaurant Eve. A previous four-star restaurant, CityZen in the Mandarin Oriental, was nowhere to be found on Sietsema’s 2010 survey. No one can accuse the critic of ratings creep at the top end.

• The boutique pizza market had two main players: Pizzeria Paradiso and 2Amys (OK, and maybe Ella’s). The pie options today are stupefying, a reminder that the recession continues to force many restaurateurs into safe, cheap, and consumer-friendly choices. The new pizzerias are too numerous to mention, but here’s one indication of how ridiculous our pie market is today: Not one but two Frenchmen have opened pizza joints (Pizze in Woodley Park, and Seventh Hill in Capitol Hill), no doubt generating a small forest of raised eyebrows among the Gallic community, which tends to view Italian cuisine as something to feed the family pet.

• There was no Urban Daddy, no Thrillist, no Tasting Table, no TBD, no NBC Feast, and damn few bloggers ambitious enough to fight for every scoop that used to land like a butterfly onto the lap of print journalists. The competition for information today is fiercer than ever.

With this week’s column, I’m ending a City Paper tenure that has had its own mood swings. My beat and responsibilities have had to evolve and expand to reflect a changing media environment as well as a changing culinary one. This is the truth of modern journalism. We must find new ways to look at old subjects. We must venture beyond our usual circles to find the next person who wants to revolutionize what we eat. Anyone in my line of work knows that food can never, ever be treated like something too precious to withstand tough scrutiny. But my time at the paper, from that brutal first edit back in the one-column-a-week days to the radical shifts in job responsibilities that accompanied the old news media’s discovery of the Internet proves that we dead-tree types are more adaptable than you think.

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

Photos by Darrow Montgomery

Red Hook Lobster Pound truck: street food makes the Dining Guide

WaPo's Tom Sietsema released his 2010 Dining Guide online yesterday, and in between other tasks, I've been combing through it to understand how the critic views the current restaurant scene. Before I get to the nuggets that I've mined, though, I should note what Sietsema's MO was for this year's guide:

To make the cut this year, a restaurant didn't just have to be performing well; it had to be a place folks are talking about. That means you won't be reading about all of the area's better-known addresses or popular standbys for sushi, steak or pizza. Chances are, you already know about them. Chef changes excluded a handful of contenders from consideration, as did a noticeable dip in quality at some of the region's most popular (but no longer most praiseworthy) restaurants.

Using this as his guiding criteria, Sietsema shook up his guide from a year ago, sometimes radically so. Among the notable picks, omissions, and star movements:

• CityZen, chef Eric Ziebold's taste laboratory in the Mandarin Oriental, went from four stars in the 2009 guide to completely off the list this year. This is the biggest fall from grace I can ever recall.
• Other notables from the 2009 guide that didn't make the cut this year: Marcel's, the restaurant that topped the Zagat food ratings this year, was dropped from Sietsema's guide after earning three stars last year.  Other three-star performers from last year that lost their spots: Present, Corduroy, The Source by Wolfgang Puck, Proof, and Zaytinya. (The Zaytinya snub is understandable.)
• Other sacred cows that got tipped this year: 2Amys, Four Sisters, and even 2941, which earned three-and-a-half stars from Sietsema last year.
• Citronelle regained its fourth star after losing it two years ago. Michel Richard's flagship moved up to three-and-a-half stars last year, but made a full recovery this year.
• Michael Landrum, despite opening the high-profile Ray's the Steaks at East River, has no restaurants on the list. Not even Ray's Hell Burger.
• Birch & Barley, Estadio, Kushi, Pizzeria Orso, and Masala Art all made impressive debuts, scoring either three or two-and-a-half stars.
• The Red Hook Lobster Pound truck made an appearance on Sietsema's list, the first time street food has made the cut. It's a very forward-thinking move if you ask me.
• Similarly, Sietsema gave a huge boost to the craft cocktail movement by awarding three stars to the Columbia Room, mixologist Derek Brown's boozy hideaway, which doesn't even serve formal meals. (Which, frankly, makes me scratch my head why the equally inventive ChurchKey didn't make it.)
• Sietsema ventured into Baltimore Sun territory by including Cindy Wolf's tasting-menu operation, Charleston, from Charm City.
• And, in what must be a very satisfying moment for Little Mexico, Taqueria La Placita also made its debut on the Post list. I'd like to think Y&H helped influence that decision.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

2029 P St. NW (202) 872-1180

If interest on the Y&H blog is any indicator of future success, Isabella is going to have a big stinking hit on his hands. Thousands clicked on the blog item, easily making it the week's top performer.

Here are the Top 5:

1. Mike Isabella Is Leaving Zaytinya to Open His Own Place
2. 2Amys, Consider Yourself Warned: Edan MacQuaid Is Back in Business (*)
3. Food News You Can Use: The Sam Kass Is Hot Edition
4. Dogfish Head's Sam Calagione to Star in Discovery Channel Beer Show
5. (Tie) Meridian Pint Opens Today: What's Inside? and The 'American' Section in a German Grocery Store

* A certain light-drinking Budweiser beer was, once again, a popular item among readers, but we’ve stopped counting it.

As soon as the pie hit the table at Pizzeria Orso, I knew I was in the presence of Edan MacQuaid, the pizzaiolo who has worked the wood-burning ovens at 2Amys, Pizzeria Paradiso, and RedRocks. I'd recognize his margherita pizza anywhere.

It's not just the puffy crust, mottled with char and radiating a wood-smoke aroma as enticing as freshly baked bread. It's the careful arrangement of colors: the rosy splashes of tomato sauce, the white eggshell dollops of fresh mozzarella, the wilted myrtle-colored leaves of basil, and the pale green rivulets of olive oil, which, in turn, tint the exposed crust to the most delectable shade of yellow.

This is pizza-making as art.

The flavors are even more intoxicating than the colors. There's a balance to MacQuaid's margherita that I don't find with many other interpretations. The fresh acid sweetness of the tomatoes, the cool creaminess of the mozz, the salty smokiness of the cornicione, the cleansing licorice of the basil, and the....the incomprehensible sourness of the crust.

I keep thinking that I'm imagining the sourness, so I keep eating more crust to find out, even long after I'm full. The sourness is always present.

It's not until I speak with MacQuaid a few days later that it all makes sense. The pizzaiolo says he puts a little sourdough into his pizza dough, which I think is a great, ballsy move. It not only adds flavor, but it's a small razz to the Neapolitan polizia who want to dictate exactly how their pies should be produced, right down to the hydration level in the pizza dough.

But then I remember that MacQuaid has affixed the letters "DOC" next to his margherita pizza on the menu. The letters stand for "Denominazione di Origine Controllata," and they imply that MacQuaid is following the rules, set down by the Italian Ministry of Agriculture in 2004, for a genuine margherita pizza from Naples.

Now, I'm no authority on these Neapolitan pizza rules. Every time I think I understand them, someone tells me I don't. But from what I've read, I'm pretty damn sure sourdough is not allowed in a DOC margherita pizza. I ask MacQuaid about the addition. He has a ready answer.

Back before the invention of commercial yeasts, MacQuaid tells me, pizza makers used sourdough starters to facilitate fermentation in their dough. There is an strong argument among pizzaioli that such a method doesn't violate the spirit of the Italian government's Neapolitan pizza laws. I floated this theory by the notoriously scrupulous baker and occasional pizza maker, Mark Furstenberg, and he agreed that it makes sense.

So I asked MacQuaid the obvious question: Did he secure official certification from the pizza authorities for his margherita pie?

"All that I'm stating there [with the DOC on his menu] is that the margherita is authentic," MacQuaid tells me. "Is it certified DOC? No....But it meets the standards of the DOC certification."

You know what? I've come to the point where I don't care much about this whole authentic, by-the-book Neapolitan pizza certification puffery. At least not here in the states, where we have a culture of freewheeling experimentation. When I travel to Italy, then I'll care about authentic Neapolitan pizza. Back here, I just want a good, honest, full-flavored pie. If it's merely based on tradition, that's good enough for me.

Here's the bottom line for me: Authentic or not, legal or not by Italian agriculture rules, MacQuaid's margherita pizza is the best pie I've eaten in a long time. 2Amys, you've been officially put on notice.

Until I met Tony Meeks last week, I don't think I had a full appreciation for the many complexities of seasoned hardwoods — their moisture content (and how to determine that content by look and feel), their densities, and even their ability to ignite quickly for a fast lunch service.

The latter is one quality that wood-fired pizzerias look for with seasoned hardwoods. Some local pie joints, including 2Amys, buy their wood from  the Firewood Factory in Bladensburg (4521-A Kenilworth Ave. 202-554-4100). Watch the video and understand why. By the way, that's my bud and barbecue guru, Jim Shahin, asking the questions.