He prefers the term "builds," of course. "You always build a sandwich," Cooper tells me, "because people who make sandwiches should just make peanut butter and jelly."

At his Blagden Alley restaurant on Monday night, the Rogue Toque fashioned a makeshift panini press out of a small collection of shiny pots, pans, tin foil—and, at one point, even employed the arms of one of his underlings ("I don't have a brick," he explained)—which he used to construct me a pretty substantial sandwich. It consisted of corned beef, sauerkraut, pork belly, and gruyere, dressed with red wine aioli and creole mustard, all crushed between what appeared to be two thinly breaded loaves of butter. "It's all heart healthy," he jokes.

The name of the sandwich? "Shott in the Heart," he tells me. ("Derek came up with that one," he adds, referring to Rogue 24 bartender Derek Brown.)

An appropriate, if somewhat morbid, moniker, what with the Coop preparing to undergo open-heart surgery the following day.

Still, I was feeling pretty honored by the namesake. At least until fellow food scribe Amanda McClements mentioned that the restaurant has a cocktail named after her, too.

The occasion for this bold display of intricate sandwich-making—er, building: a Gilt City soiree toasting the launch of "Rogue Sessions," a series of guest chef dinners taking place at the restaurant over the next several months while Cooper recovers from his operation. The $185-per-person dinners kick off Tuesday night with Volt's Bryan Voltaggio in the guest slot.

For a guy facing life-threatening health issues, Cooper sure acted good-humored about the whole thing—surreal send-off celebration and all. "It's like when you're in Manhattan and a car flips over and everyone's watching," he tells me while his monstrous sandwich is cooking.

This grand corned beef build-out could be the start of something new for Cooper. The chef tells me he'd like to open his own sandwich shop—one with bread that doesn't rip up the roof of your mouth when you eat it.

Here's to hoping for a successful surgery and speedy recovery, chef, so that your sandwich-making dreams might become a reality.

Learn to become a better brewer with Paul Rinehart of Rockville's Baying Hound Aleworks. Perfect your pickling with former Tallula chef Barry Koslow. Get good at gelato with Dolcezza's Robb Duncan. Maximize your moonshine with PS7's Gina Chrevesani. And make better bacon with preeminent pork purveyor Bev Eggleston.

More details below:

City Paper is proud to announce the first ever Crafty Bastards Farm as part of the eighth annual Crafty Bastards Arts and Crafts Fair.

(Washington, DC) For the first time ever, Crafty Bastards Does Food. The arts and crafts fair will extend into the realm of gastronomy, uncovering the area’s little known craft food scene. This inaugural program will feature a D.I.Y. Salon showcasing some of the area’s best culinary talent, a Crafty Food Market that explores the regions diversity of craft foods, and a Crafty Food Awards to crown the city’s best picklers, preservers, and brewers. Join us October 1st, 2011, 10am-5pm at the Marie Reed Learning Center at 18th & Wyoming in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, DC for a taste of Crafty Bastards Does Food.

The D.I.Y. Salon
The D.I.Y. demonstrations will teach the essential food crafting techniques—a mixture of show, tell, and taste. Learn how to pour a cider press with Derek Brown, make bread-and-butter pickles with Barry Koslow, blend the perfect gelato with Robb Duncan and compost with Jeremy Brokowsky. Come learn from some of DC’s best culinarians.

Crafty Food Market
The on-site Crafty Food Market will feature the area’s best culinary crafters. The vendors will sample a rich blend of craft foods from across the region. SCRAP (School Community Re-Use Action Project) will be selling ‘crafty’ re-usable grocery bags and Farm-to-Desk students will be
serving up school-pressed apple cider. Come meet the crafters, taste great food, and go home with a basket full of edible wares. Crafty Food Awards powered by DC State Fair The Crafty Food Awards will crown the area’s best PRESERVERS, PICKLERS, and BREWERS. Come taste the top contenders products during the fair. Sorry, but no beer on site. And make sure to stay around for the on-site judging, it’s going to take TV food competitions to the next level. Winners will be awarded Crafty Bastards Food trophies and entrance into next year’s nationally acclaimed Good Food Awards.

For more information, please contact Nick Wiseman at craftyfoodawards@washingtoncitypaper.com or 301-509-5301.

Photo by Dvortygirl/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license

Mike Isabella

Eater DC chats up Graffiato general manager James Horn, who dishes a bit about the sort of celebrities that chef Mike Isabella's neo-Italian starfucker clubhouse, um, celebrates:  "Our VIPs are people like [The Source's] Scott Drewno and [Proof and Estadio's] Haidar [Karoum] and [The Passenger's] Derek Brown and people that work their asses off just the same as we do. I tell you, if Scott and [movie star] Brad Pitt walked in at the same time for a table of four, Scott would be seated in a much more timely manner than Brad Pitt. I welcome Brad Pitt, but those are our VIPs, those are our celebrities. People that inspire us."

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Derek Brown

Allegedly invented at the behest of a bawdy lobbyist named Col. Joseph Kyle Rickey, the first rickey was mixed by bartender George A. Williamson at a dirty, cobwebbed bar called Shoomaker’s. In an age before air conditioning, D.C.’s muggy summers were made a bit less brutal by glasses of bourbon or gin with seltzer and half a squeezed lime.

A simple drink with a storied history, the rickey has become a crusade of sorts for Brown, the brains behind the Passenger, the Columbia Room and countless cocktail programs across the District.

For the last four years, Brown and his colleagues at the D.C. Craft Bartenders Guild (of which he’s is a founding member) have celebrated July as "Rickey Month." But now, things are official. Only a month ago, Brown brought the issue to the attention of Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans, who, in turn, added the drink to the city’s list of official symbols last week.

Derek Brown

1331 Bar & Lounge stands where the old Shoomaker’s once did, a fact Brown revels in. He spent the last week training its bartenders on the art of making a proper rickey. “It is amazing that right now we are drinking the rickey in the place it was created,” Brown noted during the plaque's unveiling. “The rickey belongs to D.C. It belongs to all of us.”

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton showed up for the official dedication, which she conducted with drink in hand. “This is more than a government town,” she said, adding that in despite of all the things that D.C. does not have— voting rights, anyone?—“today we’re defining ourselves by what we’re pleased to have.”

Like all drinks of legend, the Rickey’s story has some holes. Colonel Rickey may not have actually invented the drink. George Rothwell Brown, author of Washington: A Not Too Serious History, points to an unknown stranger from the West Indies as the true innovator. By some accounts, Colonel Rickey wasn’t a big fan of the drink and resented his association with it, altogether. In a 1901 article in the Wellsboro Gazette, the colonel unloaded his frustration:

“I was Col. Rickey, of Missouri, the friend of senators, judges and statesmen and something of an authority on political matters and political movements... But am I ever spoken of for those reasons? I fear not. No, I am known to fame as the author of the 'Rickey', and I have to be satisfied with that. There is one consolation in the fact that there are fashions in drinks. The present popularity of the Scotch high ball may possibly lose me my reputation and restore me my former fame. 'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished for."

Regardless of Rickey's actual like or dislike of the drink, it still became wildly popular. Its original character, however, has become muddled over the years. The original base spirit, bourbon, the colonel’s favorite, has been surpassed by gin in popularity, and many more variations exist today. In fact, the D.C. Bartenders Guild holds a yearly party featuring more than a few. At this year’s event, which takes place on Aug. 1, more than 2o bars and restaurants will serve up their own versions of the historic libation, with add-on ingredients ranging from hibiscus to rosemary to coconut.

Expect to see some seersuckers there, too. At 1331, Brown wasn’t the only blue-and-white-clad imbiber in attendance. Eric Felten, a former Wall Street Journal writer who won a James Beard Award for his drinks column, was sporting the breezy fabric as well. “Seersucker is the sartorial equivalent of the gin rickey,” he said. The outfit, like the drink, is all about staying cool—a distinctly Washingtonian pastime.

Photos by Rachel Tepper

Two summers ago, Y&H alum Tim Carman spent a "bleary-eyed evening" with passionate Rickey advocate Derek Brown of the Passenger and forthcoming Rogue 24, discussing the drink's history and Brown's campaign to have the native bevvie declared D.C.'s official cocktail. I guess Brown can now quaff in peace, knowing the boozy effort was not in vain.

We had just spent the evening dancing and drinking to the subdudes at the State Theatre. I don’t remember how much Carrie or I had to drink. Maybe we were drunk. Maybe we weren’t. It didn’t matter. Neither one of us was counting drinks; the very act of quantifying our consumption would have diminished our time inside the State.

It was the winter of 2005, still pre-Katrina, and the New Orleans musicians had just released Miracle Mule, their first studio album since 1996, when the guys somehow thought it was a good idea to silence one of the most harmonious sounds ever produced in the Big Easy. The venue was overflowing. At one point, Tommy Malone, John Magnie, and the rest of the band took their acoustic instruments and started performing among the masses gathered in front of the stage. They sang, “Known to Touch Me,” and Carrie and I and everybody else in that hall joined the band on the chorus, feeling each note as if it were a tender mercy in a tortured world.

After the show, Carrie and I wandered into the streets of Falls Church and over to Cherry Hill Park, not far from where she lived as a child, and played in the snow. At one point, I stopped in the tracks we had created in the flakes and told Carrie that I didn’t believe in big, highly orchestrated announcements. I believe in small moments. Then I asked her to marry me.

Intoxication, we all know, can lead to irrational behavior and poor decision-making. Most of us have horror stories of waking up with strangers to prove it. But the opposite is also true: A good alcohol-induced high can make you more attuned to life around you and the feelings you have about it. These highs are routinely brushed aside the following morning. We even have phrases for the conversations we have and the actions we take when inebriated: “It was the beer talking.” “That was just drunk talk.” “He was only a drunk hook-up.”

All these phrases negate the experiences we have when tipsy. Sometimes that’s appropriate—it’s easy to ditch an unwanted lover by labeling a previous encounter an alcoholic hook-up—but our highly developed ability to discount our drunken experiences strips away the reverence of those moments that have nothing to do with ill temperament or bad judgment. Like when you suddenly realize you can’t imagine your life without someone.

I realize I’m treading upon that famous slippery slope. History is full of tragic stories involving drunks and vehicles, let alone drunks with weapons and cheating spouses (and the inevitable country songs that grow out of those sad stories). Entire movements and organizations have sprung up due to the ill effects of alcohol. One of my best friends just told me the other day that he was giving up alcohol cold turkey. He realized he had no control over his drinking, and he promptly joined Alcoholics Anonymous. I told him I fully support his decision, and I do.

Drinking is clearly not for everyone. Americans in particular have a hard time negotiating their relationship with alcohol, largely due to what has to be one of the most immature drinking cultures anywhere. As a society we make alcohol readily available—at package stores, bars, restaurants, even at the 7-Eleven for chrissakes—but we simultaneously stigmatize the men or women who dare to overindulge on these many elixirs within their reach. The words we use to describe such drinkers almost spit with disdain: drunks, winos, sots, boozers, lushes, souses, and that Rat Pack favorite, rummy.

But our contradictions go much deeper and have a darker psychological edge. Our beers and wine grow more alcoholic by the year. Marketers and the media alike extol the merits of the latest premium liquors. Bars and restaurants promote happy hours and half-price wines. Clubs offer bottle service and create throbbing environments designed for little more than drinking.

And yet: Few seem to enjoy their drinking for more than its sheer alcoholic high. Few seem to think of it as a tool to unlock a deeper appreciation of their immediate surroundings. Do we even know how to drink? I look around, and I don’t think so. I see mostly reckless drinking, its aim unfocused but generally headed straight for Blotto-ville. There’s a more conscious intoxication out there, as oxymoronic as that may sound, one that can heighten your pleasure, instead of your pain as you’re bent over the gutter on Adams Morgan’s 18th Street strip.

I was attempting to make this point the other day to Derek Brown, the co-owner and mixology professor behind The Passenger and its cocktail laboratory, the Columbia Room. Brown is way too informed on the history of drinking, and the world’s love-hate relationship with alcohol, to cough up a simple philosophy for me. He told me he’s “in favor of a moderate enhancement of your experience and not drunkenness.” He also brought up the “paradox of hedonism,” which roughly states that a person cannot actively seek out pleasure but may find it in the course of some other pursuit.

Brown then directed me to an article in the Feb. 15 issue of The New Yorker, in which Malcolm Gladwell chronicled the story of Dwight Heath and Anna Cooper Heath. In the mid-1950s, Dwight Heath, then a grad student in anthropology at Yale, and his wife traveled to a small town in Bolivia to study the indigenous Camba people and their land use. By a strange twist of fate, the Heaths instead became authorities on the Camba’s drinking habits.

In an article that he wrote for Yale’s Center of Alcohol Studies, Dwight Heath noted that every Saturday night the Camba would gather for a drinking party that often wouldn’t end until work started on Monday. The party was a ritualistic affair in which the invited guests would sit in a circle, often with music playing in the background. A toaster would pour a glass of local rum and approach someone else in the circle. The two would exchange nods, and then the toaster would drink half the glass and the toastee the other half. The toastee would then become the toaster and start the process anew.

“When people got too tired or too drunk, they curled up on the ground and passed out, rejoining the party when they awoke,” Gladwell wrote. “The Camba did not drink alone. They did not drink on work nights. And they drank only within the structure of this elaborate ritual.”

Two things stood out about the Camba’s weekly drinking ritual: One was their choice of rum. It was 180 proof, which Gladwell describes as laboratory-grade alcohol that scientists use to “fix tissue.” But the other important point is the Camba’s reaction to this high-octane bacchanal. Dwight Heath reported that there were never any arguments, no fights, no sexual aggression, and no verbal aggression among the Camba people.

This example, of course, runs counter to the theory that alcohol unchains our monstrous Id and allows it to run amok among the innocents, raping and pillaging everything in sight. The Camba study—and others that followed—point out alcohol’s more shadowy effect.

Writes Gladwell: “Alcohol makes the thing in the foreground more salient and the thing in the background disappear. That’s why drinking makes you think you are attractive when the world thinks otherwise: the alcohol removes the little constraining voice from the outside world that normally keeps our self-assessments in check. Drinking relaxes that man watching football because the game is front and center, and alcohol makes every secondary consideration fade away. But in a quiet bar his problems are front and center—and every potentially comforting or mitigating thought recedes. Drunkenness is not disinhibition. Drunkenness is myopia.”

I have been thinking a lot about this idea that drunkenness is myopia. It reminds me to be mindful of those moments when I put wine glass to lips. Drinking, in other words, should not be an automatic reaction once the work day is over and the bars start calling my name. I must give consideration to my mood, my drinking buddies, and the very venue where we plan to tipple. Is the place loud and obnoxious and full of Type-A assholes ready to fight the first person who looks at them funny? Are my fellow imbibers friends, or strangers, or even co-workers with whom I have a strained relationship? Or am I choosing to drink alone, with only my thoughts at the bar? Any one or all of these factors could shrink my world view into a sullen little storm cloud dumping acid rain on my head.

But I also think about this myopia in relationship to that night at the State Theatre five years ago. I think about alcohol’s splendid effect that evening, stripping away all the pressures I was feeling at work at the time so I could focus on the music and this magnificent woman dancing beside me. It created a feeling so intense that I wanted to repeat it ’til the day I die. Fortunately, Carrie felt the same way.

Eatery tips? Food pursuits? Send suggestions to hungry@washingtoncitypaper.com. Or call (202) 650-6925.

Illustration from clipart.com

After waiting in a line that extended out the door, I'm now surrounded by an army of parents with their baby strollers, who are waging a noise offensive. My eggs aren’t warm, and my distracted server looks as hungover as me. My cocktail may be bottomless, but what's the point if it's merely a horrible flute of champagne and re-constituted OJ or a glass of bloody Mary that tastes of jarred salsa?

Yeah, I’m ready to repeat what others have said before me – most brunches suck.

It could be that I’m biased. I often prefer paddling around at home, playing jazz records and waiting on my pot of hand-pressed coffee, but sometimes I want to let someone else do the dishes. So after poking around the city a few weekends, I’ve finally found two brunch offerings that warrant attention.

Birch and Barley’s “Boozy Brunch” on Sunday is as much an economic salve as a hangover cure.  For $30, you get a plate of doughnut holes, all the coffee (or iced tea) you can drink, an entrée,  and a choice of two cocktails that pack serious punch.  The "Michelada" matches a savory tomato puree with the cool effervescence of a pilsner beer.  The champagne cocktails boast fresh fruit purees and decent bubbles, and the doughnut holes — well, they’re topped with bacon.

Those who want to focus more attention on the sweets can order three full-sized doughnuts for $6.

Near Mount Vernon Square, the Passenger offers another hangover counter-offensive.  Enough has been written about the cocktail prowess of the Brown brothers, but their brunch menu deserves attention, too. The chilaquiles pair fried tortilla strips tossed in a smoky mole with a fried egg, avocado, and hot sauce. The biscuits and gravy sampled on one visit may be the best I’ve encountered.

Menu aside, the Passenger has set up a brunch joint for those of us without the parental obligation to stay sober on Sunday. Running 'til midnight, the brunch here attracts a decidedly stroller-less crowd, and the customers come to booze.

Am I wrong to think brunch is the bastard child of the restaurant world? Birch & Barley and the Passenger are making me rethink my stance, but what do you think? What other brunch offerings do you think are worth venturing out on a Sunday with a headache? Or should I just stay home?

From across the street, you can almost peer through the glass storefront at The Passenger and imagine a dimly lit Nighthawks. I have to admit, I'm feeling a bit of a stewing loner myself as Tom Brown keeps his hands busy at the bar.  The cocktail I ordered has left a bad taste in my mouth, and I’m pining for a beer.

Some visits to The Passenger make me miss the days when Tom used to man the bar at Cork Wine Bar. Back then, it seemed he had more time to devote to each of his custom cocktails, and when you have Tom's attention, he has a way of making you feel like the only person at the bar.

Still, I've enjoyed many of the drinks here, and the canned beer menu requires little hand holding. Order. Pop the top. Enjoy. It also goes well with the kimchi hot dog, which is the reason I stopped here in the first place.

While U Hall’s pho dog is still my favorite, the Asian hot dog at The Passenger was the first one I had ever sampled in the District. Perched on a bed of spicy fermented cabbage and topped with a toned-down Sriracha, the smoky link set me back $10 and came with pickles and chips.

The price seems steep, but the links are handcrafted by Red Apron’s Nate Anda.  I’ve personally watched Nate and other area chefs bang out small-batch hot dog varieties.  Believe me, the cost is warranted.

The Passenger also offers a half-smoke crowned in chili, but the topping is heavy and redundant with a link that already bears a higher than usual fat content.  The acidic kimchi on this dog, however, cuts the richness that might otherwise blanket my palate. It's a marriage of ingredients worthy of a toast. With beer.

The Passenger, 1021 7th St. NW, (202) 393-0220

Red Hook Lobster Pound truck: street food makes the Dining Guide

WaPo's Tom Sietsema released his 2010 Dining Guide online yesterday, and in between other tasks, I've been combing through it to understand how the critic views the current restaurant scene. Before I get to the nuggets that I've mined, though, I should note what Sietsema's MO was for this year's guide:

To make the cut this year, a restaurant didn't just have to be performing well; it had to be a place folks are talking about. That means you won't be reading about all of the area's better-known addresses or popular standbys for sushi, steak or pizza. Chances are, you already know about them. Chef changes excluded a handful of contenders from consideration, as did a noticeable dip in quality at some of the region's most popular (but no longer most praiseworthy) restaurants.

Using this as his guiding criteria, Sietsema shook up his guide from a year ago, sometimes radically so. Among the notable picks, omissions, and star movements:

• CityZen, chef Eric Ziebold's taste laboratory in the Mandarin Oriental, went from four stars in the 2009 guide to completely off the list this year. This is the biggest fall from grace I can ever recall.
• Other notables from the 2009 guide that didn't make the cut this year: Marcel's, the restaurant that topped the Zagat food ratings this year, was dropped from Sietsema's guide after earning three stars last year.  Other three-star performers from last year that lost their spots: Present, Corduroy, The Source by Wolfgang Puck, Proof, and Zaytinya. (The Zaytinya snub is understandable.)
• Other sacred cows that got tipped this year: 2Amys, Four Sisters, and even 2941, which earned three-and-a-half stars from Sietsema last year.
• Citronelle regained its fourth star after losing it two years ago. Michel Richard's flagship moved up to three-and-a-half stars last year, but made a full recovery this year.
• Michael Landrum, despite opening the high-profile Ray's the Steaks at East River, has no restaurants on the list. Not even Ray's Hell Burger.
• Birch & Barley, Estadio, Kushi, Pizzeria Orso, and Masala Art all made impressive debuts, scoring either three or two-and-a-half stars.
• The Red Hook Lobster Pound truck made an appearance on Sietsema's list, the first time street food has made the cut. It's a very forward-thinking move if you ask me.
• Similarly, Sietsema gave a huge boost to the craft cocktail movement by awarding three stars to the Columbia Room, mixologist Derek Brown's boozy hideaway, which doesn't even serve formal meals. (Which, frankly, makes me scratch my head why the equally inventive ChurchKey didn't make it.)
• Sietsema ventured into Baltimore Sun territory by including Cindy Wolf's tasting-menu operation, Charleston, from Charm City.
• And, in what must be a very satisfying moment for Little Mexico, Taqueria La Placita also made its debut on the Post list. I'd like to think Y&H helped influence that decision.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Bon Appétit's August issue includes a breakdown of the "Top 10 Best New Cocktail Bars" in America, and right there at the bottom of the page is the Brown brothers' punk-like exercise in personalized drinking, The Passenger, as well as its nerdy, science-obsessed sibling, the Columbia Room.

Author Andrew Knowlton wrote this about Tom and Derek Brown's operation next to the Convention Center:

One could happily spend an evening ensconced in the up-front booths, sipping a Moscow Mule at brothers Derek and Tom Brown's Chinatown-area bar. But in terms of speakeasy appeal, you can't beat the reservation-only Columbia Room in the back.

Y&H sends out congratulations to the Brown brothers for the well-deserved honor. You can read the full list of honorees here.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery