Reading about food on an empty stomach can be frustrating. Especially when it's this nice description of roasted chicken at Fortune Chinese Seafood Restaurant in Seven Corners, which offers push-cart dim sum: ...[I]f you can get the roasted chicken on its first pass through the dining room, then it’s a real steal. This is one [...]

With the inexorable contraction of the fine-dining market—both in the number of restaurants and in the people willing to drain their bank accounts to eat in one—I’m heartened that 2941 continues to fight the good fight in Falls Church, in essence arguing that any metro area that wants to be taken seriously must maintain its [...]

Scott Drewno at The Source You could say I generally admired Scott Drewno’s Asian-inspired cooking at The Source by Wolfgang Puck. But I didn’t fall hard for it until he introduced his izakaya menu at the downstairs lounge. The menu’s inspiration came not from Drewno’s diminutive Austrian boss (or not just from said Teutonic restaurant [...]

Unlike Four Sisters, Fall Church’s other perennial favorite for Vietnamese cooking, Present enjoyed a meteoric rise almost from the day it opened. Yours truly contributed to the hype last year, when I called it, without much hesitation, the “area’s best Vietnamese restaurant.” Like others who’ve visited Present since its initial rush of positive press, I’ve [...]

Until reader Mike Henry alerted me to Ba Le Vietnamese Deli in Langley Park, I had generally assumed a trip to Falls Church was required for any decent banh mi in the area. But last week I made not one but two visits to the strip center deli. Four sandwiches later, I'm a serious fan.

Pizzeria Orso is open for business. The man who normally occupies this space has been waiting a while for this day. "Can you please open already?" Tim wrote in January, declaring that "of all the pizzerias scheduled to open soon, none gets me more excited than" the then-mythic Falls Church joint which had been in [...]

Maneki Neko sounds like a sushi lover's sushi joint. The owner/chef Futoshi "Tao" Takazato says on his history page that it "took me six months of practicing and learning before I was able to make sushi for my first customer. It took nearly five years before I would feel comfortable and confident in my art. [...]

3 Y&H thought he would engage in a little warm-up battle before taking on the ultimate pollo a la brasa challenge later this winter. (Scroll to the comments section of that link to get an eye-ful.) So here are today's challengers: El Pollo Rico in Wheaton vs. Super Chicken in Falls Church. I'll tell you one thing that I [...]

Of all the pizzerias scheduled to open soon, none gets me more excited than Pizzeria Orso, the planned project between former 2Amys pie-maker Edan MacQuaid and the owners of 2941. The problem is, I don't know how much longer I can sustain this excitement. I mean, this pizzeria has been on the boards for nearly two [...]

For those who have pawed through Y&H's 2009 Dining Guide, you know that I'm a serious fan of Present, a Vietnamese restaurant unlike any other in the area. Y&H, of course, is just one of a number of media sources beating the drum for Present. But what do eaters who don't get paid to chew [...]