Posts Tagged ‘Busboys & Poets’
Vegan Treats: Desserts That a Butter Man Could Love?
No animals were harmed in the making of these desserts.
Last Friday, we here at Y&H Central sampled some new seasonal desserts created by Danielle Konya, founder of the Pennsylvania-based Vegan Treats, a bakery that employs the nuclear option when making sweets. VT uses no butter, eggs, cream, or cream cheese. Konya, after all, is an ethical vegan, with a strong pro-animal/environmental philosophy behind her bakery:
Clearly, there’s nothing appetizing about the needless suffering of ten billion animals a year for their flesh, milk and eggs. And there’s really nothing tasty about aiding in the destruction of our environment for a cupcake. After all, the more one learns about the milk and egg industry, the more sickeningly un-sweet desserts made with them become.
Vegans don’t often inspire a lot of cuddliness, particularly among editors. Erika Niedowski, assistant managing editor here at the paper, wasted no words: “I don’t think vegans deserve dessert at all,” she e-mailed me after our tasting. “I mean, what do they need dessert for, they’ve given up everything else. (Maybe a poached pear, but not anything more.)”
She may be joking.
Niedowski, however, did like the same dessert as all the other City Paper testers who sampled them (including me): Konya’s caramel pecan cake, a moist, not-too-rich confection studded with little pieces of pecan for texture. I’d order the cake even if I had non-vegan options.
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Spot Check: Eatonville
Chef Rusty Holman, the chef at Eatonville
My tablemate and I are sitting at a two-top by the large picture window at Eatonville, which provides a semi-comfortable, climate-controlled view of the parade of mini-skirts and flesh that walks up and down the bustling 14th Street NW corridor. We’re half way through our appetizers when the food runner brings our entrees. She seems oblivious to the fact that we’re still eating our first course; she’s also a little slow on the basic laws of physics. Our tiny table barely contains all the plates she has just unceremoniously dropped off, her job here done.
The Eatonville Chef Contest: Trent Conry’s Perspective
Conry takes a break from his job interview to answer questions.
As I noted in today’s cover story on the Eatonville chef contest, Trent Conry was, without much question, the most accomplished toque among the nine finalists who competed for the $75,000-a-year gig at Andy Shallal’s new Southern restaurant. And yet: The former executive chef at Ardeo and 701 didn’t even make it to the finals in the cooking contest.
During the semi-finals, Shallal told Conry that his modern approach to Southern cooking — and perhaps even his personality — wouldn’t make for a good fit at Eatonville. During a long phone interview several weeks after the competition, Conry says he wasn’t surprised by his dismissal, even if he looked stunned and hurt when Shallal delivered the blow.
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Shallal’s Eatonville Set to Open in Mid-May with Its Second Chef
Eatonville Chef Search episode 1 from Electric Communications on Vimeo.
Eatonville, restaurateur Andy Shallal’s homage to Zora Neale Hurston, is scheduled to open in mid-May, says the founder of the mini-Busboys & Poets chain. But the Southern eatery on 14th Street NW will debut, Shallal adds, without the winner of the Eatonville chef competition, held earlier this year at CulinAerie cooking school.
Shallal and the winning toque, Chris Newsome, had a falling out while traveling together down South following the contest. One of the sticking points between the men was the very subject they were researching: Southern cooking, specifically the cuisine around Eatonville, Fla., Hurston’s childhood home. Newsome, who grew up in Alabama, had a pork-centric concept of Southern cooking. Shallal did not.
“Now we have swine flu, so I was right,” Shallal jokes. “You don’t want to open a menu with all pork.”
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There’s No ‘V’ in Langston Hughes, But There’s Langston Hughes on V
Last month, a law went into effect that officially adds the name “Langston Hughes Way” to the stretch of V Street between 13th and 14th streets NW. It’s the part of V that bisects the original Busboys & Poets and the forthcoming Eatonville restaurant, so of course owner Andy Shallal had a hand in the renaming.
Shallal has been working to get the District to do more to honor the Harlem Renaissance—and D.C.’s contribution to that important era. Shallal’s expanding Busboys & Poet chain already pays tribute to poet Hughes (who, according to lore, was “discovered” while working as a busboy in D.C., never mind that his work already had been published), but the restaurateur wants more. He was talking to Jim Graham about what the city could do, and the Ward 1Councilmember suggested the name change for V Street.
The council passed Graham’s bill in December, and it went into effect on March 21.
The street signs, however, have not been updated.
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Busboys & Poets’ Andy Shallal Has Been Saved!
A pre-saved Shallal chatting with Top Chef-er Carla Hall
For those who thought the protracted chef competition for Andy Shallal’s new Eatonville project was a sinful act of pride, you might be happy to learn that the Busboys & Poets owner was saved yesterday. Fittingly enough, Shallal’s salvation came in Eatonville, Fla., the town for which his forthcoming Southern eatery took its name.
Mocha Hut R.I.P.
DCist is reporting that Mocha Hut has closed. We agree with the bloggers that its brunch was super awesome and relatively cheap. It literally was one of two decent options in the corridor. It was always Mocha Hut or Busboys and Poets for brunch. This will surely mean the lines at Busboys will be that much longer. I wonder why they went out of business considering that the U Street coffee shop always seemed busy (at least on weekends). DCist writes:
Finale from the Eatonville Chef Contest: We Have a Winner
Note: Busboys & Poets owner Andy Shallal is taking an Iron Chef approach to hiring the chef for his forthcoming Eatonville, a Southern-oriented restaurant that pays homage to Zora Neale Hurston. This is the second in a series of blog posts chronicling the competition. This series will not announce the winner; it will be revealed later in the City Paper.
After four previous rounds and God knows how many tastings in CulinAerie’s smaller classroom, the competition for Eatonville’s chef had come down to two men. Both had grown up in the South, which no doubt helped them grasp the cuisine they were expected to prepare, but both chefs also had dramatically different personalities. One had the gift of gab, the other a gift for silence.
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Scene 3 from the Eatonville Chef Contest: Too Fancy for His Own Good
Note: Busboys & Poets owner Andy Shallal is taking an Iron Chef approach to hiring the chef for his forthcoming Eatonville, a Southern-oriented restaurant that pays homage to Zora Neale Hurston. This is the second in a series of blog posts chronicling the competition. This series will not announce the winner; it will be revealed later in the City Paper.
Christina Giallourakis, a former lawyer who now does health counseling, had nothing bad to say about the chef’s dishes. ”I think his whole array of food is like two notches above the others’ food,” the judge said, refering to the other two chefs competing last Friday in the semi-final round of Andy Shallal’s hunt for an Eatonville chef. Giallourakis could, without much doubt, see herself driving across town for this guy’s cooking.
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Scene 2 from Eatonville Chef Contest: Something for Vegetarians
Note: Busboys & Poets owner Andy Shallal is taking an Iron Chef approach to hiring the chef for his forthcoming Eatonville, a Southern-oriented restaurant that pays homage to Zora Neale Hurston. This is the second in a series of blog posts chronicling the competition. This series will not announce the winner; it will be revealed later in the City Paper.
The chef, one of five left standing in Andy Shallal’s unorthodox hiring process, didn’t waste a second letting the judges know that he had absorbed their criticisms from the previous round. He had taken the fuss out of his Southern-minded food. “The tutu came off,” he told the judges.
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