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.

Where am I going with this? I’m saying that if you liked Breadline in the past, when it was apparently a haven for the city’s fruit fly population, then you should like it now, when it’s as clean as an operating room. Health inspections are designed to protect you from harm, not harm a business — though that’s sometimes the unfortunate consequence.

When I stopped by for lunch, I noticed that the patio was packed with patrons, but inside, a good number of tables were empty. As I paid for my salami and cheese sandwich, lemonade, and chips, I asked the cashier how Breadline was faring on its first day back. She said it was “better than expected.”

I was going to leave it at that but just couldn’t. So I asked her if that meant business was down from pre-inspection times. The cashier smiled and nodded.

As I was about to leave, I stopped and looked at the pastry display case and noticed it was virtually empty. A manager-looking guy asked if he could help me and then promptly directed me to a housemade whoopie pie, which I purchased. I asked him how business was, and he, as you might expect, was more optimistic. He said it was “good.”

But as he handed me my whoopie pie, he said something that said everything: “Thanks for coming in.”

He said in a way that made me feel as if I were a brave pilgrim venturing into untamed lands.

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.

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.

Marean wouldn’t comment on the amount of money invested — or the time spent — to get Breadline back up to code. But Furstenberg, who was at his former restaurant when the inspector was there today, told Y&H this afternoon that the shop looks born anew.

“It was beautiful. Seriously,” Furstenberg says about the repair work. “They replaced ceiling tiles, cleaned the oven, cleaned all the machinery…Everything was spotless.”

“They must have spent a fortune,” he adds.

The public will now be the final arbiter on Breadline’s future. Given the large number of violations — including that customer-killer known as vermin in the kitchen — Breadline will likely need to conduct more than a clean-up campaign to get patrons back in the door. The group will likely need to go on a PR offensive.

But for now, Marean prefers a cautious approach. As for a public statement, the representative wants to be brief and on point.

“Food safety and sanitation are of paramount importance to our company,” Marean says, “and we have worked diligently to remediate all of the items cited by the health department.”

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.

• Preventing contamination from premises — food storage: The inspector “observed containers…containing rising dough stored on the walk-in cooler floor.” Health codes mandate that food must be stored at least six inches above the floor, she noted.
• Preventing contamination by consumers — food display: McFadden observed bread stored on racks behind the service line, toasted bread slices stored on a tray at the deli station, salads not stored behind the sneeze guard, among other things. “Above items are exposed to contamination by consumers,” she wrote.
• Cleaning — food/non-food contact surfaces: The inspector found a dirty meat slicer (”old food particles present”) and a dirty potato chopper (ditto) as well as “debris throughout prep tables and prep table shelving.”
• Controlling pests — McFadden observed “excessive live fruit fly activity throughout the establishment.” Aside from recommending an exterminator, McFadden advised that Breadline “eliminate harborage conditions such as dirty mops stored in stagnate [sic] water, cleaning floor drains of slime and build-up present throughout and by routinely inspecting food shipments.”
• Cooling — On at least three separate checks, McFadden found that the following foods were improperly cooled. Chicken, chick pea spread, tuna salad, curry chicken salad, sliced turkey, ground beef, and cole slaw were all above the required 41° Fahrenheit threshold.
• Refrigeration — McFadden observed a “display deli case maintaining a temperature of 82° F.” She recommended removing sandwiches from the unit until it is repaired.
• Physical facilities — The inspector noted that Breadline needs to clean “the wall in the warewash area, above the mop sink and where…mold [is] present.” She also recommended that Breadline provide “a drop ceiling in the food pantry area and repair the ceiling throughout and provide ceiling tiles.” Finally, she said the shop needs to clean the “stove, oven, entire hood system, excessive grease build-up present. Remove the ice build up present on the door of the walk-in freezer in order to properly close the door. Clean the walls throughout of excessive dirt present.”
• Handsink accessibility — McFadden observed that a bread rack or other equipment blocked access to hand sinks. “Handsinks,” she noted, “must be accessible at all times for proper handwashing.”

The full inspection report is listed below.

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.

“I made this baguette not to my personal tastes,” Feillet told the crew gathered around the conference room table. “It’s made according to the will of my customers.”

In fact, Feillet told us, he used to make a baguette based on master baker Eric Kayser’s recipe, but when Feillet moved from Florida to Alexandria about four years ago, he learned that his clientele wasn’t interested in a classic French baguette. “It was a nightmare,” Feillet added. “All the customers wailed, ‘What is this baguette?’”

Feillet calls what he makes now “commercial bread,” meant for many of the restaurants he serves, not for retail sales. (I should note that the high-end restaurants mentioned above don’t or didn’t buy Feillet’s baguettes, but some of the other breads he produces.)

His customers, Feillet added, “want something very soft. I can’t go against my customers.”

Upon hearing this tale of woe, Furstenberg offered some advice to Feillet: “Never lower yourself to your customers’ tastes.”

Perhaps realizing the harshness of his words, Furstenberg immediately changed his tone. “You don’t want to fight with your customers, I understand that,” Furstenberg said. “I want to fight with my customers.”

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

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.”

This summer, Furstenberg’s long-smoldering idea will erupt into G Street Food in the former Ecco Cafe location at 1706 G St. NW. To call it “Furstenberg’s place,” however, is a little misleading. G Street will be owned by the Choi family, who previously operated Ecco Cafe. The Koreans had been serious fans of Furstenberg’s Breadline and had approached the breadmaker about working together at some point.  The Chois are “going to run it,” Furstenberg says of G Street. “I’m going to do the menu and the food.”

“Unquestionably,” he adds, G Street “is going to be identified as mine” by most members of the media, not to mention most of the baker’s old fans from Breadline and Marvelous Market.

Furstenberg plans to sell a number of dough-based street foods, he says, perhaps samosas or Montreal-style bagels or stuffed Turkish flatbreads or even Chinese steam buns. But make no mistake, G Street will venture way beyond bready things.

Furstenberg is thinking about serving pho, Tunisian salads, kabobs, and even Asian-style congee for breakfast, which G Street will also serve. “It won’t be as bread based as the Breadline,” he promises.

The chef has been testing recipes, consulting cookbooks, and even making more trips to prepare for G Street’s opening. Furstenberg fully acknowledges that he’s not familiar with some of the foods he wants to serve, which in part explains why he’s not yet settled on a menu. (Well, that and the fact that the opening date is still months away.) But he plans to keep things concise at first.

“I’m not going to open with foods that I don’t really know and feel comfortable with,” he says.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

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.

It’s a crumb-y job: Judging a baguette’s interior structure.

Furstenberg takes a knife to baguettes.

The judges show off their “bread intuition.”

Photos by Darrow Montgomery