The City Paper editorial staff fanned out across the area yesterday to take a look at the way we eat, all the way down to Darrow Montgomery’s dog, named Beans, appropriately enough. Fortunately, most of us, if not those poor souls at Washington Hospital Center, dine much better than Beans.

Here are the highlights from yesterday, as determined by…well, me.

• Dave McKenna investigates the many wrecks at the intersection where professional athletes professional restaurants try to cross, including this dissection on former Redskins who’ve traded cleats for clogs.
• Loose Lips chews the fat with Marion Barry, who’s got a serious beef with beef.
• Ruth Samuelson gets the grand tour of personal chef Monica Thomas‘ kitchen island. Y&H now must have his own water-facet pedals.

Read More “Highlights from Our D.C. Food Day” »

This is personal Chef Neil Wilson. He used to be in the army—but now he makes delicious ravioli (seen here in its pressed dough, pre-stuffed from). Before becoming a personal chef, Wilson attended L’Academie de Cuisine and then worked as a line cook for Palena.

Here are some of his cooking tips:

• Buy this book:The Flavor Bible. Look up any popular ingredient, and it will provide a rundown of complimentary herbs, spices and foods, and other cuisines in which the ingredient is featured.

• Every time you add a major ingredient to a dish, add a pinch of salt.

• Lemon zest is an easy way to enhance a dish—but only use the very top of the lemon. Once you see white, you’re getting the bitter stuff. Read More “Personal Chef Neil Wilson on Bibles, Lemon Zest, and Thanksgiving Leftovers” »

Asking to see a restaurant’s trash is like asking a stranger for a stool sample: You’ll learn a lot if you look carefully, but you’ll also have a hell of a time making your case.

At the Cleveland Park Starbucks, a shift supervisor who requested to remain anonymous was tight-lipped on the subject of waste. “What we’re required to do is to throw out anything that’s expired. I don’t know if you’d call that wastage,” he shrugs. (I would.) “I won’t say anything more than that.” Inspecting their trash-room in the back, he told me, was out of the question.

Read More “In Praise of Transparency: North Sea’s Back Alley” »

LL learned a lot of food trivia today. For instance:

• Vincent Gray loves wonton soup. Loves the stuff. Had it for lunch today. His chief of staff regularly picks up a double order for him from the Meiwah Express stand at the Reagan Building food court.
• There’s a great debate over which Starbucks to patronize among John A. Wilson Building denizens. There’s the regular old Starbucks on 13th Street NW, then there’s the “Secret” Starbucks inside the J.W. Marriott Hotel on 14th Street NW. The former is slightly cheaper, on the way from the Metro, has a better food selection, and is patronized by Dan Tangherlini. The latter is secluded, a good spot to eavesdrop on a secret political rendezvous, offers better service, and takes you past a cardboard cutout of President Obama on your way there.
• Kwame Brown and David Catania are closet McDonald’s fans.
• Harry Thomas Jr. enjoys Smoothie King.
• Jim Graham, Ward 1 councilmember and WMATA board chair, likes to eat Subway on the dais. “Ironic,” says one council wag, “because he never rides the Metro!”

That ends LL’s Food Day. He’s kinda hungry.

At 4:50 p.m., Tom, 88, grabs an empty table along the left side of the Washington Hospital Center’s cafeteria. He takes off his cap and plops it in front of his food tray. The room is nearly empty. Two men in scrubs tap away at their phones. A teenage girl struggles through math homework. A trio of middle-aged women trade hugs. There is not a lot of eating going on. The food options have dwindled down to burgers, pasta or heat-lamped pizza. But Tom does not mind.

Tom’s plate is full: pasta with clam sauce, scoops of warm string beans, peas and corn, and what he calls “special” mashed potatoes. The potatoes are special because they aren’t just plain mashed. “Anything to make it different,” Tom says.

Tom’s just not exactly sure what is in his potatoes to make them different.

“What’s the red stuff? Vegetables?” Tom asks. “I don’t know.”

Tom is a regular here. He dines out on the hospital’s chow just about every night—no matter what it is in the potatoes. He has stayed loyal to the fish or fowl, baked or fried, for the past three years. “All hospitals have cafeterias. And they’re cheap. I don’t know how to cook,” he explains. “I hate it….. I never cooked a potato in my life and I’m not going to start now.”

Read More “Here Comes A Regular” »

Tommy Wells has been Ward 6 councilmember since 2007.

Favorite Ward Haunts: “It really depends on the occasion. If my wife and I are beleaguered and had a rough week and we want comfort food, we go to La Loma. Sam Fuentes and his family take care of us….When you want to go to someplace nice, we like Trattoria Alberto [on Barracks Row, 8th Street SE]….For special occasions, we’ll go to Montmartre. We love the French food and good wine….When we’re [feeling casual], I’ll go to the Argonaut for sweet potato fries and a Dogfish Head 90-minute IPA, and nine times out of 10, the fish tacos.”

Home Cooking: “Marinated salmon on the grill, wild rice from Minnesota, usually with mushrooms and raisins in it, and asparagus.” Actually, make that mushrooms and Craisins.

Fave Wine Region: Côtes du Rhône

Power Lunch Locale: “I have been mourning the loss of Les Halles. It was reasonably priced and I liked the dishes….I generally don’t go to Chef Geoff’s because they vehemently opposed sick leave, so I’m going to Bluepoint [Grill] for a real change. The good news there is the bad news: The food is not great, but I never have to wait for a table”—meaning it’s easier to have a private conversation. Recently, though, he’s spotted more colleagues on the premises seeking seclusion.

Quick Bite: “Same place every time,” he says—a Japanese spot in the Ronald Reagan Building food court. “It’s called ‘Kabuki’ something,” he says, and he always gets the sushi deluxe with an orange juice. “And the weirdest thing is, it often costs different amounts.” Wells recently returned from a European vacation, and apparently the sushi stand missed him. “I went back two days ago, and they added other sushi pieces. they let me know they were doing that as a gift.”

Bag It: His sushi trips provided valuable intel on a pet piece of legislation. Wells, of course, is currently pushing a bill to charge five cents for paper and plastic bags. “The other odd thing is, sometimes they put it in a plastic bag, sometimes they put it in a paper bag. That indicated to me there’s no economic difference between the two.” Wells, of course, usually refuses the bag. But not always. If there’s a long line of tourists behind him and the counterperson sticks his lunch in a bag, he’ll take it. “I don’t want to be too weird,” he says.

Kaffeeklatsch: “I routinely meet with people in the back part of Firehook. I can have a fairly private conversation without constantly being interrupted by constituents. When it doesn’t matter, I go to Port City.” There was recently a coffee scandal of sorts in Ward 6, when the Murky coffeeshop on 7th Street SE was revealed not to have paid its taxes. Wells, however, had already avoided the joint, after owners painted over a intricate mural inside depicting an Eastern Market street scene. “I quit going there,” he says. “I boycotted the affront to community art.”

No Reservations: One place in Ward 6 Wells hasn’t been: Dr. Granville Moore’s on H Street NE. “I can’t get a table!” he protests. “I’m the councilmember! What’s that say about [owner] Joe Englert?”

No town on the planet has produced more basketball stars. Yet when it comes to basketball bars, DC is Nowheresville.

The only Bullets/Wizards spot with a pulse, in fact, is Grevey’s.

The former sharpshooter from Kentucky played for the Bullets from 1975 to 1983. He was traded to the Milwaukee Bucks and played for two years before retiring from hoops to open his upper-middle class sports bar in a Merrifield strip center.

And it’s thrived. Grevey’s run as a restaurateur has brought him more local renown than his basketball deeds.

Grevey and his pure left-handed jumper helped the Bullets win their first and only NBA championship in the 1977-’78 season, at the height of Bullets Fever. That same year, Grevey gained some national acclaim by making it all the way to the semifinals of the H-O-R-S-E contest run by CBS, where he got whupped by Pete Maravich.

Read More “The Limited History of DC Basketball Bars and Restaurants” »

As part of Washington City Paper’s food day, Will Mitchell and Erik Wemple pitted old Pepsi versus OLDER Pepsi, high fructose corn syrup versus cane sugar, Pepsi Throwback versus the same Pepsi Americans have been drinking with reckless abandon for decades. Here are the results: