It’s a question, no matter how trite and stupid it sounds, that you have to ask a 90-year-old who still shows up for work every day: What’s the secret to living a long, active life?

When I put the question to François Haeringer, the founding chef/owner of L’Auberge Chez François and the subject of this week’s Young & Hungry, he acts like I just asked him what style of wine he prefers.

“It’s all individual,” he says and stops abruptly. He’s done with the subject, I think.

“OK, then what is your individual secret to a long life?” I ask. I smile and laugh at my rephrase in hopes it doesn’t sound snotty. I’m not sure why I’m worried about offending the chef; he seems, on some level, immune to such a feeling.

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One by one, we’re running through the 50 restaurants that made the cut on this year’s Young & Hungry Dining Guide. If you have visited the day’s featured restaurant, let us know what you think. If you’re planning to visit for the first time, tell us about your meal when you return.

I absolutely refuse to feel ashamed that D.C.’s best taqueria is run by a Harvard-grad gringa with a James Beard Award to her credit. Hell, if that were the case, I’d also have to feel bad that one of the District’s best hamburgers is produced by a Frenchman (Michel Richard at Central). The truth is, Ann Cashion is a student of la cocina mexicana, and her tiny takeout behind Johnny’s Half Shell proves she has deep respect for a cuisine too often bastardized for an easy buck. (You listening, you Salvadoran-Mexican joints?) I’m still trying to figure out how her corn tortillas taste so fresh when they’re not even made in house.

Taqueria Nacional, 400 N. Capitol St. NW, (202) 737-7070

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

One by one, we’re running through the 50 restaurants that made the cut on this year’s Young & Hungry Dining Guide. If you have visited the day’s featured restaurant, let us know what you think. If you’re planning to visit for the first time, tell us about your meal when you return.

As the name suggests, Market Lunch is a place famous for its…breakfasts. Seriously, if you read the published record on this popular Eastern Market spot, that’s exactly the impression you walk away with. The blueberry pancakes. The crab cake benedict. The Brick breakfast sandwich. Each has its charms, of course, but Market Lunch really lives for the noon hour and its twin odes to mid-Atlantic cuisine: the crab cake and the fried whiting sandwich. The former is a fried mound of crabmeat, short on filler and long on fresh, sweet flavors. The whiting is, without a doubt, the best interpretation in the area—two long fillets, each lightly breaded and fried, which are slapped onto a bun so that the fish flaps out over the edges, as if the fry cook tried to stuff a gull into your sandwich. By the way, those house-made buns are half the reason your sandwich tastes so fine; they’re fresh from the oven, soft, and full of flavor.

 Market Lunch, 225 7th St. SE, (202) 547-8444

photo by katmere via Flickr Creative Commons Attribution License

The saying goes like this: Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper.

It’s old wisdom, and I’m not sure how well it has stood up to modern nutritional studies. But to the extent it remains a good way of life, I recommend putting the proverb to work at the Mayflower hotel’s delicious daily breakfast buffet.

First of all, the king thing seems to fit at the Mayflower. Cafe Promenade, where the hotel serves breakfast is a really nice space, high-ceilinged and not noisy at all. On certain days, they even have some guy sitting on a balcony playing guitar. He takes very few breaks.

You’d think he’d be commuting to the breakfast supplies, like the rest of us. I’m not yet an expert on area breakfast buffets despite ambitions of becoming one, but I’d venture a guess that the Mayflower spread is highly competitive. Here’s the inventory from the hotel’s Web site:

Our Breakfast Buffet offers many breakfast favorites including: scrambled eggs, crisp smoked bacon, chicken apple sausage, smoked salmon, deli meats, pancakes, cereals, fresh fruits and an assortment of breakfast pastries including our award-winning banana nut bread. Fresh squeezed juices, hot teas and coffees are also included. Espresso drinks are not included.

Not sure what award that banana nut bread won—it is good, though.

One of the common complaints about a buffet is that there’s lots of volume and no quality. Not my experience at the Mayflower. I easily get my $20 worth from this assortment. I make three trips, arranged by theme. First is the European, which features a bagel, less than two teaspoons of cream cheese, and some smoked salmon. Second is American, heavy on the chicken apple sausage, eggs, and perhaps a slight bit of bacon. Third is for the heart—oatmeal with some raisins and such.

They keep you filled with O.J. and coffee. Nine times out of ten, it’s a better experience than dinner at any restaurant in town.

Renaissance Mayflower Hotel, 1127 Connecticut Avenue NW, Washington, D.C. 20036. Breakfast open daily 6:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.

There wasn’t a drop of coffee to be found at the Shanghai House of Tea when I stopped at the Glover Park establishment at 11 a.m. today. I knew there wouldn’t be, and even if there were, I didn’t think I had the stones to ask for it. It’d be sort of like asking for a T-bone at Java Green.

Instead, I asked the waitress what she usually drinks in the morning. She recommended a pot of Dragon Well. It’s a green tea, which promotes good health, she said. (Apparently the stuff helps keep your arteries open, which sounds like a good idea given all the red meat I eat.)

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Sometimes in the morning, when I’m not feeling loaded down with work, I like to get lost (briefly) on the way to the office. It has its benefits. You discover places you never knew about, like Rhode Island Reds Cafe on (where else?) Rhode Island Avenue in Hyattsville.

Owner Chris Brophy wasted no time making me feel like a regular. Before I could even pick up a menu, he asked if I was interested in a freshly prepared breakfast sandwich, one that would kick the crap out of the Egg McMuffin. It’s served on a multi-grain Kaiser roll, he said, and comes stuffed with steamed herbed eggs, ham, and a slice of American cheese. All that for $3, he added.

How could I turn it down?

Read More “McTrotsky Breakfast Sandwich Is Not Just for Commie Capitalists” »

People are brilliant. People are mindless cows. Today’s roundup has a bit of both. 

• Chow.com tells us how London’s fast-food chicken outlets have escaped the Colonel’s hatchetmen, including the creatively named Kent’s Tuck Inn Fried Chicken.

Read More “Daily Food Blog Roundup: Random Sample” »

I found myself hugely amused by this skit from British comedy troupe, Idiots of Ants, which turns the simple act of making breakfast into a competitive video game.

The disappointments were stacking up yesterday morning by the time I took my huevos rancheros back to the car. For reasons I couldn’t explain, I wanted a plate of warm, airy beignets dusted with powdered sugar. Maybe all the talk of Mardi Gras had made me miss New Orleans. I don’t know. Whatever the reason, I knew I could get them at Johnny’s Half Shell. What I didn’t know is that I could get them only til 9:30. I was a good 30 minutes late.

So I ducked behind the Half Shell and ordered a to-go box of huevos rancheros from Taqueria Nacional.

Read More “Please Drown Me in the Refried Beans at Taqueria Nacional” »