It’s a short work week, and we at Young & Hungry Central have just the thing you need: beer and dining recommendations for the Fourth. We also have something for your reading pleasure:

The top blog posts of the week.

1. Obama Ate Here: The Working Map (with apologies and gratitude to BrightestYoungThings)
2. What Did Your $10 Ticket Get You at the Safeway Barbecue Battle?
3. On July 4th Weekend, Buy American Beer
4. Breadline Busted on 19 Health Code Violations, Ten of Them Critical
5. Dairy Godmother’s Owner Doesn’t Want the Obama Bump That Ray’s Hell Burger Got

Photo by cristinabe via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution License

Just a week after it was closed for 19 violations of the D.C. food code, Breadline was back in business today. To the naked eye, the sandwich shop didn’t look so different from its “excessive live fruit fly” phase. I did notice meticulous, hand-written expiration dates on the lemonade drinks and that the bread rack behind the cash register was gone, an apparent victim of a D.C. Health Department inspector who thought consumers might contaminate the loaves. But almost everything else looked the same.

I don’t mean to imply that Breadline remains as dirty as when the inspector tagged it as a menace to society. What I do mean to say is that I (and probably you) wouldn’t know a health hazard if it bit me (or you) on the ass — at least not from the serving line at this downtown sandwich shop. Could I have known that food was stored at the wrong temperature? Or that there was excessive grease under the hood? Or that dough was rising on the walk-in floor? Or that Breadline was operating without a restaurant license?

Nope, I couldn’t.

What I do know is that Breadline has aggressively tackled the problems in the days since the Health Department pointed them out. The restaurant managers have scrubbed the place clean, to the point that it not only passed re-inspection but it also impressed Breadline founder Mark Furstenberg, a man not known for an easy compliment.

Read More “Breadline Back in Business. If You’re a Fan, You Should Go.” »

Yours truly is thrilled to report that, for the first time in weeks, the vintage TV beer commercials did not crack the Top 5 posts. I’ll drink to that news.

Instead, readers this week were fascinated by a D.C. Department of Health inspector’s report on Breadline, which found 19 separate violations of the food code. Thousands of you wanted to read all the ugly details that caused the department to temporarily shut down Breadline. Fewer of you wanted to read the good news: the re-inspection report, which found not a single violation at Breadline. Ah, human nature.

And with that, we turn to the most-read items this week:

1. Breadline Busted on 19 Health Code Violations, Ten of Them Critical
2. My Top 5 Desert Island Beers. What Are Yours?
3. BGR: The Burger Joint Set to Open Third Store in Dupont Circle
4. Dining Guide Rejects: Corduroy, Comet, Urban, Tallula
5. Dairy Godmother’s Owner Doesn’t Want the Obama Bump That Ray’s Hell Burger Got
   

In the name of fairness, Y&H is posting the D.C. Department of Health’s re-inspection report on Breadline, which had earlier been cited for 19 health code violations. In her return trip, inspector Dawn McFadden found a totally different Breadline. She reported no violations.

The bottom line from McFadden: “Permission granted for the issuance of the restaurant and Bakery Basic Business license.”

You can read the rest of the report after that jump.

Read More “Breadline’s Reinspection Report: Nary a Violation in Sight” »

Less than a week after it was cited for 19 violations of D.C. Department of Health codes — ten of them critical violations — Breadline has passed its re-inspection, says Dena Iverson, director of communications for the department. Before it can officially reopen for business, though, the sandwich shop still has to secure a new restaurant license from the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs.

Morell Marean, representative for the private-investor owners who bought Breadline from founder Mark Furstenberg in 2005, hopes to have the license in hand by tomorrow, which would allow Breadline to reopen for business on the same day.

“The Breadline has passed its health department inspection, and we’re looking forward to opening soon,” Marean says.

Read More “Breadline Has Passed Its Reinspection, Could Reopen By Tomorrow” »

The opening page of the Health inspector’s report on Breadline.

The big news today has been the temporary closure of Breadline, the once esteemed bread and sandwich shop founded by Mark Furstenberg in 1997 but sold to the international company, Groupe Le Duff,  in 2005.

The Washingtonian was first out of the gate with its late-morning Tweet, which reported that Breadline was closed. “For good,” it noted. The Washington Business Journal quickly followed with a report that said Breadline was merely closed for repairs, and then Washington Post published a more substantial report, saying that Breadline was “temporarily closed for health code violations,” but was working with the District to resolve them.

This afternoon, however, Y&H got a hold of a copy of the Food Establishment Inspection Report, filed on June 18, which lists 19 separate violations at Breadline. Ten of them, according to inspector Dawn McFadden, are critical. McFadden determined the risk at Breadline was “high” based on her inspections.

Among the violations that McFadden recorded:

• License requirement: Breadline was operating with a suspended restaurant license, which is issued by the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs after an establishment passes a health inspection. McFadden noted that Breadline’s license expired on Dec. 31, 2008.

Read More “Breadline Busted on 19 Health Code Violations, Ten of Them Critical” »

Silent Treatment: Loic Feillet knows how to take criticism

Loic Feillet is, without question, one of the area’s most skilled bakers. The owner of Panorama Baking Co. in Alexandria has, over the years, sold bread to some of the finest restaurants in the District, including both CityZen and Citronelle. But when Feillet took part in the Washington City Paper’s debut baguette competition, his entry finished far down the list.

Feillet’s loaf scored only 24 out of a possible 80 points, placing it eighth among the 12 competing breads. The baker, whom I asked to join our contest as a non-voting judge, remained mum as his fellow critics sliced and diced their way through the various baguettes. Some of the judges were not kind to Feillet’s bread.

“It looks really good,” said CityZen chef Eric Ziebold. “I was surprised. It did not taste good.” On his scorecard, Ziebold awarded the baguette only 10 out of a possible 20 points. Mark Furstenberg, founder of both Marvelous Market and Breadline, scored the bread slightly higher, giving Feillet 11.5 points, but his comments were coarser than Ziebold’s.

The crust, Furstenberg noted, was “old — should be better.” As for the crumb, or the interior of the bread, the baker wrote on his scorecard that it was “dense” and “badly done.”

It was only after all the breads were sampled and all the scores tallied that Feillet finally spoke in defense of his baguette.

Read More “The Hard Realities of Commercial Bread Making” »

Believe it or not, the origins of Mark Furstenberg’s forthcoming G Street Food can be traced to a turbulent period in the mid-1990s when the master breadmaker was being forced out of the very business he started — the then-groundbreaking bakery, Marvelous Market.

“When I was failing at Marvelous Market and I was losing Marvelous Market because of my own expansion, I was invited to go on a trip to Apulia (Puglia, Italy),” says Furstenberg, who recently took part in the Washington City Paper’s debut baguette competition. “I kept seeing bread eaten on the streets in various forms.”

If that trip abroad was the first spark, then every subsequent trip that Furstenberg took, whether to Philly or to France, was just enough fuel to keep an idea smoldering in the back of the chef’s mind. Finally, after years of traveling and eating all manner of street food, Furstenberg realized he had the concept for his next restaurant. He thought: “It would be so much fun to do street food in Washington… We don’t have real street here.”

Read More “Furstenberg’s Street Food Restaurant Will Stretch Far Beyond Bread-Based Snacks” »

A number of experts spent part of the day at the City Paper offices this afternoon to figure that out. Y&H invited two of the heaviest hitters in the local bread-making business to turn a critical eye — and palate — on our area’s baguettes: Mark Furstenberg, the founder of both Marvelous Market and Breadline, and fellow baker, Loic Feillet, owner of Panorama Baking Co. in Alexandria.

To round out the panel, we also invited Eric Ziebold, chef at this year’s Best Restaurant, and esteemed cookbook author Joan Nathan. We even asked City Paper’s resident baker, Jule Banville (also known as our assistant managing editor), to provide more of the lay-editor’s perspective.

We’ll report our findings next week in Young & Hungry, but in the meantime, let’s jump start the debate: What do you consider the best baguette in town?

More pictures from today’s competition below the fold, courtesy of staff shooter, Darrow Montgomery.

Read More “What’s the Best Baguette in Town?” »