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.

• Jason Cherkis takes a trip down the street with two veterans who flee the VA Medical Center for better eats.
• Ted Scheinman goes Dumpster diving behind North Sea Restaurant and Sushi Bar.
• Amanda Hess (aka, The Sexist) unravels the mysteries of Tune Inn's eternal happy hour.
• Darrow Montgomery profiles a dying patient, the Florida Avenue Market.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

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.

• Tired of eating left-over thanksgiving day side dishes? Just put them in home-made ravioli, freeze them, and eat when you desire. Good side dishes to consider: Creamed spinach, mashed sweet potatoes (with a little added cheese), roasted squash.

• Here's an easy, sure-fire pasta sauce recipe that will make anyone believe you're a personal chef: Toast fennel seeds until you start to smell the scent wafting around kitchen. Take them out. Put them on a plate and set them aside. Then, in a pan:

Slowly cook onions over a low heat, so they don't brown too much.

Add a "seasonal twist"–whatever's tasty then: Zucchini, squash, carrots, celery.

Throw in a can of san marzano tomatoes.

Add some diced garlic cloves.

Cook for an hour.

Then, add in the toasted fennel seeds and a cinnamon stick.

Cook for another 55 minutes. Then add in black olives and cook for another five minutes. Done.

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.

Across the street at Spices, a manager was similarly Rovian in defending her dumpster from my prying eyes.

"Oh, I couldn't allow that," she said.

For the managers of North Sea Restaurant, though, there's no such thing as TMI. Even after our tepid review of their new sushi offerings, manager Annie Chen was more than happy to give me a tour of their kitchen, their walk-in refrigerator, and especially their dumpsters.

Chen even showed me some of the "not-for-Americans" food that she and her staff cook for each other at 5 p.m. every day: A special tilapia dish served with shaomai, a seafood soup that she says Americans might find too murky for consumption, and various cuts of anonymous fish that, Chen says, have "too many bones" for the occidental palate.

She showed me storage (frozen bean-sprouts, fetal dumplings awaiting their call to life), the two kitchens (both of which smelled, just before dinner, insanely good), and finally the rear entrance, where, between the dumpsters, two bowls sat atop a delivery crate. One held shallots (fresh, robust-looking things), the other small, crackly-dry brown strips.

"Mushrooms," she told me.

We turned to the dumpsters. "We throw out some food every night," Chen acknowledged, "because I won't give my customers old food." (This is a common response.) Chen lifted the lid of the dumpster, sticking her head inside. I did so as well. We sniffed. No Chinese food in here.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Chen said, remembering. It's Thursday, the day WM comes to empty the bins. "You can come back tomorrow," she ventured, letting the lid slam. I told her I'd consider it.

But what were those delicious shallots and 'shrooms doing in a trash-filled alleyway? "They need to be outside to dry," Chen said. Turns out she's saving them for special dumplings; here, dried mushrooms are better than their fresh counterparts, which are "all juice" and no flavor.

The dumplings sound great—too bad Chen's customers won't get to taste them. That's one more dish reserved for staff only. "Some Chinese food, Americans just don't want it."

I asked Chen what her favorite non-Chinese dish was.

"Pizza," she said with a smile, and paused. "But I like Chinese food better."

Photo above by spike55151

• 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.

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."

Tom is thin and his hearing isn't so good. He says he used to work for TWA in the accounting department until he retired in 1974. He has since spent much of his time collecting theater memorabilia which, he adds, will be given to his alma mater, William and Mary, upon his death. It's in his will. His wife passed away, but he refuses to speak on the subject. "Forget that," he snaps.

Tom stabs something pink and pale with his fork and lifts it up for a little inspection.

"There's a clam," he says. "Not much."

Tom has become an expert on the hospital cafeteria. "I've tried them all," he explains. He considers Sibley's cafeteria to be the CityZen of cafeterias–smaller than most, good quality food, but expensive and a little out of the way. George Washington Medical Center's is "fine, very good." Georgetown gets a "fine" rating as well.

"It's all the same–fish or fowl," Tom explains.

"Nobody's interested in this," Tom adds. Just a few forkfuls of special potatoes to go. "You should have picked something else."

Tom thinks my questions and his meal are dull. He says: "I get bored eating but what are you going to do?"

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.

The nice weather brought out enough folks to fill Grevey's patio, which has no hint of his Bullets stardom, for Thursday's happy hour.

There are no other basketball bar stars around here.

A lot of folks, however, miss Mike Riordan's Annapolis drinkery, Riordan's Saloon. The small forward, who won a title with the New York Knicks in 1970, came to the Bullets in 1972, a year before time Abe Pollin's move from Baltimore. He retired a Bullet in 1977 and immediately opened a drinking establishment and eatery downtown in the Maryland capital. He made a grand stand against the killing of baby seals in 2006, vowing to never serve Canadian seafood again until the practice stopped in the Great White North.

The seals are still being clubbed, but Riordan's, after three decades in business, closed its doors in July 2007.

Tough-luck circus center Manute Bol briefly had Manute Bol's Spotlight, a wannabe jazz club on U Street that the ex-Bullet fan fave (1985-1988) opened in 1995.

Along the way to throwing away his every last dollar in retirement, Bol lost a reported minimum of $500,000 on the bar. Which, though a nice chunk of change for anybody to flush, wasn't as painful for Bol as the $3.2 million he gave to the Sudan People's Liberation Army.

That's a rebel group of Dinka tribesmen in his native Sudan that turned on Bol after fleecing him.

Last and least, we have Michael Jordan's Steakhouse.

Jordan opened his eponymous eatery in the Reagan Building shortly after Ted Leonsis convinced him to get in bed with former nemesis Abe Pollin and become president of the Wizards in January 2000. Then Pollin famously and boldly kicked him to the curb in 2003, and Jordan drove away in that convertible with Illinois plates and never ate meat in this town again.

His restaurant shut down in January 2004.