The Margherita at 2Amys: Does it make the cut?

Earlier this week, I was noshing on the roast chicken at Palena Cafe, reveling once again in Frank Ruta’s ability to add and coax flavors from this generous, succulent portion of breast, wing, and leg meat. That’s when the thought struck me: This is, hands-down, one of the area’s greatest dishes. It deserves a spot in some sort of local culinary hall of fame.

The roast chicken is an obvious one, but what other dishes would make the cut? I’ve been pondering this and have drafted a number of nominees. The list is, by no means, complete. It needs your suggestions.

Once we get a solid roster of nominees, we’ll put them to a public vote here on the Y&H blog. The top 10 vote getters will go into the City Paper’s inaugural D.C. Dish Hall of Fame. Winners will receive everlasting glory.

The working list of nominees:

Read More “Seeking Nominees for City Paper’s Inaugural D.C. Dish Hall of Fame” »

Ruta emerged from Palena’s kitchen, pictured with Maddy Beckwith

So how unique was last night’s opening reception for Sou’Wester? So unique that Frank Ruta showed up. In all the years Y&H has been covering the dining scene in D.C., I’ve never seen the semi-reclusive Palena chef and owner at an industry event. I barely recognized him out of his whites.

“This is only the second time I’ve been to one of these,” Ruta told Y&H.

“Only the second ever?” I asked Ruta, knowing his years on the scene.

“No, this is the second time this year,” he responded.

Ruta’s presence wasn’t the only unusual thing about this dual-themed party, which celebrated both the fifth anniversary of CityZen and the launch of Sou’Wester, the latest project from Eric Ziebold, chef of the City Paper’s reigning Best Restaurant. There was a tattooed DJ spinning rap and funk tunes in the CityZen dining room, one of the most formal spaces in town, where food stations had been set up to pass out samples of Sou’Wester’s menu. That’s right, people were dancing in the CityZen dining room (including Y&H, but it’s best not to think about that). The cognitive dissonance was palpable.

Read More “Two Things Y&H Didn’t Expect to See at Sou’Wester’s Opening Party: Frank Ruta and Dancing” »

When last we checked in with Eric Ziebold — to hear him defend the name of his latest project, South by Southwest, which is actually a restaurant, not an excuse to get drunk in Austin — the esteemed chef said the Southern-minded operation would open in early summer.

Scratch that.

During a phone conversation yesterday, Ziebold said that South by Southwest, which replaces Cafe MoZU at the Mandarin Oriental, wouldn’t open until September. The problem, Ziebold said, is that the original designer envisioned a “bold, bright” space. Unfortunately, that wasn’t Ziebold’s vision.

“We were looking to make a statement by not making a statement. You know what I mean?” Ziebold told Y&H. “I’m a less-is-more kind of person…It wasn’t going in that direction.”

Read More “Mandarin’s South by Southwest Is Running Behind Schedule” »

This morning, I got into a small online argument with a fellow D.C. gastronome (can I just pause here and say that I hate almost all the words used to describe a food lover; they all carry the connotation that you can’t tie your shoes without the help of a sommelier or bus boy) who disagreed with my decision to exclude the local heavy hitters from my Young & Hungry Dining Guide.

Wrote this epicure (again with the gastro-dandy terms) over two separate e-mails:

No Komi? Omitting Citronelle is trendy. Omitting Komi is foolhardy. (And no, I’m not a New Yorker. I think Komi beats Pierre Gagnaire in Paris, which is 3 stars and top ten in the “best in the world” list.)

Having places on your list that are not on Tom’s or Todd’s is what makes it interesting and cool. But entirely omitting from the list a place that’s on everyone’s list, and tops on many of them, seems deliberately provocative. But we’ll just agree to disagree (unless you want to buy me dinner at Komi so we can sit down together and you can make your case against their inclusion!)”

 Here was my response back to this international eater:

Read More “The Decision to Skip Komi, Citronelle, Etc.: Provocative? Legit? Or Stupid?” »

Allow me to tell you about some of the restaurants that didn’t make this year’s Young & Hungry guide to the 50 Best Restaurants in D.C. Michel Richard Citronelle, for one. Komi didn’t, either, no matter how many times some New Yorker wants to tell me what a genius Johnny Monis is. I sent other sacred cows to slaughter, too: Palena, Restaurant Eve, Minibar at Café Atlantico, CityZen, 2Amys, Inn at Little Washington,  and Central didn’t make my final cut. You want more? Buh-bye, CityZen and Ray’s Hell Burger.

Trust me, I’m not trying to be difficult. I’m just trying to be realistic. Do you really need me—or anyone else for that matter—to tell you to eat at these places? I might as well tell you to wear clothes when you go outside.

Photograph of Palena’s Frank Ruta by Darrow Montgomery

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.

Read More “The Hard Realities of Commercial Bread Making” »

Imagine Y&H’s surprise when, just two hours after posting this item, chef Eric Ziebold was on the phone defending the decision to rename Cafe MoZU and identify it by the restaurant’s location within the District.

Ziebold was not at all defensive. He even agreed with my basic premise: that MoZU’s new name, South by Southwest, said more about the hotel where the restaurant is housed than the cuisine itself, which presumably will funnel Eastern Shore flavors. But he wanted me to understand where he was coming from. His concept, as you might expect from the City Paper’s top toque, was pretty well thought out.

Read More “Eric Ziebold Responds to Y&H’s Pot Shot at South by Southwest” »

The Post’s Tom Sietsema broke the news yesterday that the Mandarin Oriental and chef Eric Ziebold will be transforming Cafe MoZU—the pan-Asian restaurant best known as the place everyone wanders into when looking for CityZen—into a more modestly priced outlet featuring Eastern Shore flavors.

CityZen’s second-in-command in the kitchen, Rachel Harriman, will be the chef de cuisine at the revamped MoZU, which will serve, according to Sietsema, “blue crab soup, chicken and dumplings, braised rabbit leg with grits and hush puppies with honey butter,” not to mention desserts like “carrot cake, strawberry shortcake, peach cobbler and grasshopper pie.”

Simply put, Y&H loves the idea of a white-tablecloth restaurant embracing local/regional flavors. We can only assume Maryland fried chicken will have a place on the menu, too.

What Y&H doesn’t love?

Read More “South by Southwest at the Mandarin: Love the Idea, Hate the Name” »

Rachael Harriman, the sous chef at CityZen in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, has been fielding questions of various weight and sophistication over at DonRockwell.com for the past couple of weeks. I was particularly interested in Harriman’s response to this inquiry:

With all of the time you spent in Thomas Keller’s kitchens, it’s obvious that he had confidence in you. What was it like at the beginning, when you first went to work for him? What are some of the most important things that you learned, in order to be able to survive and thrive in that milieu?

Say Harriman:

Read More “CityZen’s Rachael Harriman on Her First Days at the French Laundry” »

This is sort of like reporting that, new flash, no one was killed today in Congress, but I figured my wife, Carrie, can’t be the only person who heard this item on WAMU this morning. She called to tell me there was a fire at the Mandarin Oriental, which houses one of the city’s finest restaurants, CityZen, home to James Beard-award winning chef, Eric Ziebold.

Read More “False Alarm: No Fire at Mandarin Oriental Hotel” »