If you ever had any doubts about a dish’s ability to cross cultural boundaries, all you need to do is look at the trajectory of chicken and waffles. Once considered a staple of soul-food joints, chicken and waffles has become a fixture at trendy neighborhood operations like Marvin and Creme, where gentrification has ensured that the dish enjoys a much wider audience.

It has even filtered down to genuine suburban haunts like Restaurant 3, the Southern-minded eatery in Clarendon that, believe it or not, does a version of C&W far superior to the one at Marvin. And for $15 a plate on the brunch menu, Restaurant 3 also does it a buck cheaper than Marvin.*

Read More “Dish of the Week: Chicken and Waffles at Restaurant 3″ »

The charm of this sandwich, part of the brunch menu at Black Market Bistro in Garrett Park, lies almost exclusively with the ciabatta bread, which is among the best I’ve sampled (perhaps because it wasn’t squashed to death in a press). Its extremely crackly crust gives way to an airy crumb, creating the perfect toothsome environment for almost anything placed between the slices. Too many ciabattas, I find, have the chewiness of shoe leather, which is perhaps only too appropriate for a loaf named after a slipper.

But I stray.

Read More “Veg Dish of the Week: Tomato, Mozzarella, Pesto Panino at Black Market Bistro” »

As soon as the Æbleskiver hit our table at Domku, Carrie had a flash of déjà vu.  For my wife, these Danish balls of pancake dough brought back pleasant memories of her State Department childhood in the Netherlands, where the bite-sized breakfast snacks are known as poffertjes.

Your own Y&H, however, had a flash of horror. These babies in Petworth were practically blackened on one side, which no powdered sugar could hide! (See pic above.)

Read More “Some Æbleskiver Advice for Domku: Give Those Puppies a Turn” »

Montmartre’s monsieur: Put some cheese on that mofo.

This has happened to all of us who’ve become fans of a particular restaurant: The place lets us down.

Sometimes the disappointment is (relatively) minor, like when the kitchen runs out of a favorite dish or drops the plate entirely from the menu. But then there’s the kind of disappointment that I encountered this weekend at Montmartre on Capitol Hill: During Sunday’s brunch service, the operation seemed to have shed its thick, fatty bistro skin and adopted the mantle of every other joint catering to America’s fear of calories and offal.

I know what you’re thinking: “Relax, Tim, it’s just brunch, pandering to the easiest of all restaurant-goers, those people who think four-cheese omelets are sophisticated.” I would agree with you if it were any place other than Montmartre, where I have previously enjoyed brunch plates as righteously rich as liver and coarsely ground country pâté shot through with lots of flavor-heavy fat. Yesterday’s brunch, by contrast, was a hollow imitation of a bistro lunch.

Read More “When Good Restaurants Go Bad: My Montmartre Experience” »

Calling Dr. Freud. Calling Dr. Freud. We may have an Oedipal patient for you.

For other Mother’s Day suggestions, Y&H turns you to the Washingtonian’s brunch guide and Open Table’s listings.