The pie-maker at Seventh Hill Pizza is named “Anthony,” an employee tells me at the pizzeria on Capitol Hill. Try as I might to secure his surname, I can’t get the job done because no one, the following day, will pick up the damn phone at the place. No matter. Anthony is a show all by himself. He has style to burn. Every move he makes with the raw dough — flipping, spinning, stretching, securing the round on his peel — has more flair than your average NFL end-zone celebration.

His crusts, by contrast, don’t feel the need to show off. They’re ultra-thin and crispy, which makes me think Anthony doesn’t use olive oil in his dough. Perhaps Anthony doesn’t let his dough rise long enough, either. His crusts are content to supply a basic cracker-ness, but they’re also nicely chewy and his toppings provide more than enough flavor to fill in the blanks.

 I’m particularly fond of the Navy Yard toppings ($10.95 for a small), mostly because of the Toulouse sausage, which releases enough grease along the surface to add a layer of fatty goodness to the pie. The French sausage is not only a delicious addition but also a sly indication of Seventh Hill’s owners: They’re the same folks behind Montmartre.

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.

Let’s start with the latest version of the country pâté, which would have barely tripped my taste buds if it hadn’t been for the coarse salt sprinkled on top and the plum sauce stuffed in the middle of it. This was like the Lean Cuisine of pâté, if that’s possible.

My guest’s croque-monsieur was a bigger slap at the French Republic and its affinity for that one-two coronary punch of butter and cheese. The bread, barely toasted and with nary any butter, was whole wheat or multi-grain, which gave the sandwich an odd texture and, dare I say, a healthy nutty flavor. The crusts were still attached, too. The final insult was the cheese/béchamel sauce, which I know is optional on the monsieur but which has become standard on just about every other version served in town, including the one at Cafe du Parc, where the sandwich is practically laminated with the stuff. The cheese didn’t even cover the top of the croque-monsieur at Montmartre, which meant that some bites were as dry as…toasted whole wheat bread.

Listen, if I wanted to watch my calories — if I wanted a standard-issue soup, like the mediocre gazpacho on Montmartre’s brunch menu — I wouldn’t go to a bistro. I’d go to Teaism or Chix or some such place.

Now your turn, readers: What old favorite has let you down recently? E-mail your experiences to me at hungry@washingtoncitypaper.com and I’ll post the best (or worst, as it were) ones on the Young & Hungry blog.

If Spike Mendelsohn had ever wondered whether his recent run-in with the law had put him in dutch with Michelle Obama, a documented fan of his burgers, then the First Lady answered it today when she revisited Good Stuff Eatery on Capitol Hill.

Obama Foodorama, Eddie Gehman Kohan’s indefatigable blog, reported that the First Lady made a return appearance to Good Stuff today, along with daughters Sasha and Malia and some White House staffers. It was Michelle Obama’s first public tasting of Good Stuff burgers since news broke in late May that Mendelsohn, along with business partner/roommate Mike Colletti, had been evicted from a Capitol Hill property for failure to pay more than $8,000 in rent and penalties.

The First Lady had previously hit up Good Stuff in early May, shortly before the eviction.

But perhaps Mendelsohn’s moves to make restitution were enough for the First Lady? Or maybe Michelle Obama feels some loyalty to Good Stuff because, as Obama Foodorama reported, Mendelsohn has been keeping the President stuffed with a steady supply of burgers?

Noted Ob Fo:

As Ob Fo noted during Mrs. Obama’s last Good Stuff visit, Spike is no stranger to the White House. He was one of the guest chefs who demonstrated healthy cooking in the Kids Kitchen at the 2009 Easter Egg Roll. He also told Ob Fo that he’s been making “secret burgers” for President Obama since Janauary; the President has been known to send Secret Service dudes over for a cheeseburger when he can’t get out of the (Oval) office. Spike said he always keeps a fresh head of broccoli in his cooler, because it’s not regularly on the menu, and President Obama likes his burger with a side of steamed broccoli.

Literally. We have no problems with Capitol City’s beer. In fact, it’s one of the great pleasures of DC’s beer culture to be able to drink fresh brews next to its beautiful fermentation tanks. To be clear: we love fresh beer. But when it comes along with a foul-smelling odor, the experience is considerably diminished. The Washington Post reports that Cap City, located upstairs from the US Post Office facility on Massachusetts Avenue on Capitol Hill, is indeed a stinky place lately. From the Post:

Kelvin Nwosu, general manager of Capitol City Brewing Company, a restaurant on the floor above the post office, said the smell is the result of a leaking pipe somewhere in the bowels of the building, known for its round-the-block lines come annual tax deadline time in April. Three weeks ago, Capitol City received a report of leakage in the post office lobby, where several ceiling panels bear brown stains. Contractors hired by the restaurant opened walls to try to pinpoint the leak, unleashing the stink. “Everything has kind of really embedded really strongly in the concrete,” said Nwosu, who has worked at Capitol City since October. “We’re working on it.”

Cap City has understandably been a little hesitant to characterize the odor. But one patron told the Post that it had the unmistakable stench of sewage. Still, plenty of people seem to be braving the stink to fill their bellies with fresh beer. Contractors are working the problem, but accessing the faulty pipes is itself quite an undertaking, given that most of them are buried behind floors and walls. They supposedly broke through Cap City’s kitchen floor on Sunday night and everything might be resolved as early as next week. Meantime, the restaurant remains open.

Photo by Cavalier92 used under a Creative Commons license.

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

Momoyama, 231 2nd St NW. (202) 737-0397

As promised, Eastern Market re-opened today after a $22 million renovation, following a fire in the Spring of 2007. Mid May, I (or rather a designated construction official, who said I couldn’t come onto the site due to my footwear) snapped some photos of the inside of the building.

According to a city announcement, “all of the original vendors that served the community at Eastern Market prior to the fire have returned.” Plus, there’s WiFi! And a new pottery studio! And new, 24-hour fire monitoring system that is “programmed to automatically call 911″ if another fire ever occurs again.

Tomorrow, the city and the Eastern Market Community Advisory Committee will host a community celebration  offering music, food, and arts and crafts.

Let me tell you how the Hill Rag, a free monthly, cost me $2 this morning.

I stopped on the Hill today to eat breakfast and buy a cup of Joe from my current favorite, Peregrine Espresso, located in the former Murky Coffee spot, site of the late unpleasantness. I ordered a to-go cup made from beans imported from Burundi, a country better known for its ethnic violence and its brain-numbing level of poverty. Coffee exports, it seems, have given this poorer-than-dirt-poor country some hope. (Just don’t tell that to the women during bean-picking season.)

Economic hope and the morality of supporting abusive coffee pickers were the furthest things from my mind, however, when I ordered my coffee. Instead, I was daydreaming about the flavors packed into this caramel-colored liquid. Peregrine’s sign, perched on the counter next to the ordering station, informed me that Burundi “Bwayi” coffee boasts notes of lemon and figs and other flavors I can’t now remember.  I just remember how happy I was to try a new coffee, even at $2-plus for a rather small cup.

I stood there at the counter as the barista ground the beans and placed them into a fresh filter. She then pulled hot water from a heating unit set to the perfect temperature for drip coffee, around 208 degree Fahrenheit. She proceeded to slowly pour that piping hot water into the filter, and I continued to stand there, mesmerized and expectant, as the liquid fell in a steady stream into my paper cup. When the exacting process was finally finished,  I grabbed a lid, sealed off my cup, and fled the shop with my small taste of Burundi firmly in hand.

I took a few sips of the coffee and detected a light, almost pinot noir-like flavor. But the liquid was still too hot for my tongue to appreciate the coffee’s full pleasures. So I continued to walk to the car, waiting for the liquid to reach its perfect drinking temperature.

That’s when I spotted the Hill Rag box, not far from the temporary home of the Eastern Market. I bent down to pick up a copy of the free publication, and as I did, my exquisite cup of Burundi caught the edge of the box’s door and dropped to the ground with a devastating thud, spilling its vital fluids all over the sidewalk like some homicide victim. I stood there for a second, dumbfounded by my stupidity. I shouted the first word that came to mind, no matter what child may be within earshot: “Fuck!”

I thought about going back to Peregrine and spinning a sad tale about dropping my coffee, hoping they’d take pity on me and offer up a free cup. But I didn’t think that was right; the shop shouldn’t pay for my clumsiness. Besides, I was parked in a 15-minute zone. I had a bad feeling that my $2 copy of the Hill Rag might turn into a $32 one, with the addition of District of Columbia parking ticket.

• Tom Sietsema reports that the guys behind the mini-Matchbox chain are planning a small, personal comfort food restaurant on Capitol Hill.
• Sietsema also has the scoop on the Neighborhood Restaurant Group’s latest offering, a chop house in Old Town.
• Metrocurean breaks the news about Cork Wine Bar opening a new market on 14th Street NW, not far from the popular restaurant.
• A poster on DonRockwell.com notes that the Gaithersburg branch of El Tapatio has closed down.

(Of course, let’s not forget this either.)

However, today was about moving forward.  Construction workers and officials gathered at the building and discussed its upcoming re-introduction into D.C. life. Crews expect to complete the project on June 9.

Eastern Market will officially reopen on Friday, June 26. A community celebration will be held the following day on Saturday, June 27, according to a press release from the city. Here’s a sneak peek of how the recovery’s going: