Posts Tagged ‘General Store’
The General Store’s Soft-Shell Crab Sandwich, Which Wasn’t So Soft
I could have done without my first bite of Gillian Clark’s soft-shell crab sandwich at the General Store. As soon as I bit through the crustacean’s semi-soft outer body, I was splattered with a jet-stream of yellow-green matter, likely a combination of eggs and tomalley. My new shirt now looked like a painter’s smock.
My second bite wasn’t much better. I felt as if I was ripping into an old leather bag. I couldn’t understand what was happening. Everything else about the sandwich was delicious: the surprisingly sweet lemon aioli, the soft buttery Gold Crust bun, the salty, beautifully fried onion straws. But the star of the dish — a genuine Maryland blue crab, Clark told me — had gone rogue, betraying all of the other ingredients in the sammie.
In all the times I have eaten soft-shells, I have never had such a tough time biting into one. This sucker, though, was a damn hard softie. A few Google searches later, I think I learned why.
According to the award-winning book, Fish Forever by Paul Johnson, fishmonger to the star chefs, all softies are not created equal:
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This Week’s Most Popular Posts on Young & Hungry
Two older posts continue to fascinate the readership of Young & Hungry. One is tragic. The other practically comedic. After that, the Top 5 posts of the week shape up this way:
- Gillian Clark’s General Store Now Available for Sit-Down Service
- Saigon Bistro: A Best of D.C. Contender or Just a Pretender?
- Scene 1 from the Eatonville Chef Contest: Fried Chicken
- Alert Las Vegas: Washingtonian Debuts Burger Brackets in Time for March Madness
- Urban to Offer Meats Fresh from the Smoker on Saturday
Photo by Darrow Montgomery
So When Will the Post Office Tavern Open?
Earlier this week, I noted that Gillian Clark and Robin Smith finally got their certificate of occupancy from Montgomery County, which cleared the way for them to (finally) open the General Store as a sit-down restaurant. Which is great. I was really tired of eating fried chicken in the car.
But what about the Store’s downstairs partner, the Post Office Tavern?
Gillian Clark’s General Store Now Available for Sit-Down Service
For nearly a month, the General Store, chef Gillian Clark’s home-spun Silver Spring restaurant with the killer fried chicken, has been operating as a take-out joint only. Montgomery County apparently wanted Clark and her partner, Robin Smith, to have more dedicated parking spaces before issuing them a certificate of occupancy.
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This Week’s Greatest Hits from the Young & Hungry Blog
This is depressing. The No. 1 item for the week was last week’s celebrity-sighting post from the inauguration, which I’ll dismiss faster than Lindsay Lohan from her latest rehab session. So starting with the No. 2 most popular post, here’s this week’s Top 5:
Keep Your Paws Off the Antique Nickelodeon!
Back in late 2007, I wrote about a column about all the fussy signs at Gillian Clark’s former restaurant, Colorado Kitchen, and how they sometimes caused diners to rebel, kid-like, against the rules. Well, yesterday when I stopped by Clark’s new joint, the General Store in Silver Spring, the chef and her partner, Robin Smith, told me a story about their antique Nickelodeon player.
On Saturday, the General Store’s first day of business, customers took to the expensive player piano as if it were their own. Some didn’t even know how to play the instrument, plucking the keys at a level somewhere below “Chopsticks.” The general disregard for the equipment forced the partners to put a sign on the piano that asked, quite politely, “Please Do Not Press the Nickelodeon Keys.”
The General Store Opens With a Growl
The wife and I stopped by the General Store late on Sunday night, around 9, hoping against hope that chef/owner Gillian Clark might still have some fried chicken and collards available for take out. She didn’t. She had sold the last of her birds about three hours earlier, so we had to satisfy our General Store itch with some face time with Clark’s partner, Robin Smith, who told us the story behind the bear diorama and the slogan, “Grab a Root ‘n’ Growl.” (See picture.)
As a child growing up in California, Smith knew it was dinner time whenever her mom used to holler, “Grab a root and growl!” Smith, somewhat sheepishly, admits she never gave the phrase much thought until one day, in her teens, she suddenly realized that it had ursine connections. Up until then she always considered the phrase merely a call to chow.
