Here's the weekly listing of organized beer fun in and around the District. Click on any event in the D.C. Beer Events Calendar above for more details. My pick is the Oxbow Brewing night at Meridian Pint on Tuesday, which will feature two unique American farmhouse ales brewed by D.C.-to-Maine transplant Tim Adams in a renovated barn near Newcastle, Maine. Rustic! Read on for a rundown of the rest of the week. On Monday, Hank's Oyster Bar in Old Town will host Port City Brewing and War Shore Oysters, both of Alexandria, for an evening devoted to the double Virginian delights of mollusk and suds. On Tuesday, in addition to the Oxbow night at Meridian Pint, Bell's Brewery of Michigan will be the focus of a five-course dinner at RFD. Across the river in Falls Church, Public House No. 7 will be pouring a cask of Heavy Seas Black Cannon, a black, or roasted, India pale ale brewed nearby in Baltimore. On Wednesday, plan to head to Old Town Alexandria again for an Allagash beer dinner at RedRocks Pizza. On Thursday, it's back to the District for a pint night at The Pug featuring beers from Brooklyn's Sixpoint Brewing Company and a seasonal beer tasting with "Beer Activitist" Chris O'Brien at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue. On Saturday, the Park Hyatt Masters of Food & Wine tour stops at D.C. to host a variety of interactive workshops, including a beer tasting with Port City Brewing Company founder Bill Butcher. Also, starting this week Smith Commons launches its Restaurant Week menu, which includes special deals on craft beer. Watch out for other suds-centered restaurants and what they will be offering.

Send submissions for the D.C. Beer Events calendar to thelagerheads@gmail.com.

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For all the Cajun-Creole-themed cooking going on inWashington these days, you’d think the city would see a sudden spike in capsaicin overdoses. Not so.

The stuff that generally passes for New Orleans-style fare around here would barely register on the Scoville scale. To put it mildly, so to speak: My first bowls of gumbo and crawfish étouffée at Pearl Dive Oyster Palace would have been entirely forgettable, except for their unforgettable lack of heat.

Thankfully, I’m not the only one who noticed.

“When we opened, there were a lot of dishes that I thought weren’t spicy enough,” says chef and owner Jeff Black.

A subdued stew runs counter to the restaurant’s whole raison d’etre. “I want people to think it’s going to be spicy,” Black says. “I don’t want ’em coming in thinking it’s going to be timid.” For weeks, Black has been hounding his kitchen staff to amp up the piquant. “I started sounding like a broken record,” he says. “I’d say, ‘It’s not hot enough.’ Everything I tried. ‘It’s not hot enough.’”

The gumbos, for example, were initially touched up with a blend of Crystal and Tabasco hot sauces. It led to a little lingering background heat, Black explains, but no immediate punch. Lately, though, his cooks have been scaling back on the Tabasco and adding more jalapeño to the mix in the hopes of a stronger first taste. “Finally, I looked at Danny [Wells], my chef de cuisine, and said, ‘We did it—it’s too hot!’” he laughs. “So we racheted it back down.”

My most recent bowl of the chunky soup, swimming with oysters, shrimp, and diced ham, suggests that Black and company have finally struck the right balance: hot enough to spark faster sips of beer but not so scorching to justify the $3 fee for a refill on bread.

“A lot of times you get beat up,” says Black. “‘They hate this, chef.’ ‘Way too spicy, chef.’ And you start to alter the way you cook. When I hire guys, I tell them, your cooking needs to be assertive, it needs to reach up and grab somebody. Subtle is fine, but subtle is what everybody else is doing. Let’s have a dish that just grabs a hold of somebody and then when they leave, they think, I want to come back and have that. Instead of, ‘Oh, that was pretty good,’ and then they can’t remember they ate.”

At Pearl Dive, the dish I found most grabbing would be the braised pork cheeks appetizer, priced at $9. Dusted with flour and seared, the meat is then braised in ancho chipotle, mirepoix, and veal stock for four to five hours, Black says. Served with grits and topped with fried onions, it’s a solid combination of creamy, rich, and crunchy. It packs some nice heat, too. The zesty flavor snatched my attention on first bite and had me coming back for seconds a few nights later.

The Vietnamese pickled shrimp, on the other hand, was the most non-grabbing of dishes. The $10 appetizer reflects Black’s admirably broadminded view of the culture of his native Gulf Coast—where Vietnamese cuisine has become enough of a staple to shape the culinary tastes of non-Vietnamese chefs like him. But this particular item has a problem: It’s not very pickled.

Served fried, the cured crustacean is supposed to taste sweet and spicy beneath its crunchy coating. I gave it three tries on three separate nights and found it virtually indistinguishable from the common battered butterfly variety. The only noticeable difference: a bed of super-spicy slaw underneath, which Black also uses in bánh mì during Sunday brunch.

If the menu reflects the old and the new of the Gulf Coast, the act of getting seated is strictly D.C. Snagging a table works a bit like having your license renewed at the Georgetown Park DMV branch: Give your name to the receptionist and take a number, then wait for your digits to appear on multiple screens mounted around the establishment. Fortunately, the waiting area includes a bar—two, actually. The more intriguing one, a somewhat separate (but uniformly owned) concept called Black Jack, is upstairs. It has its own distinct food and drinks menus, including a vastly more diverse, and more pleasing, selection of beers than the actual restaurant downstairs.

The signature cocktail is called “The Cigar,” featuring a heavy a dose of mezcal, chilled with a block of ice curiously prepared in an andouille smoker, then refrozen and infused with peach nectar. The cocktail tastes sweeter the longer the ice is allowed to melt. While I was fascinated by the icy element, my friend couldn’t get past the garnish: a slice of prosciutto on a stick that kept sliding around the rim with each sip. “The meat keeps smacking me in the face!” she cried.

Once your number comes up, you descend from the dimly lit lounge back into the bright white walls of the main restaurant. Chilled oysters are a must—they’d better be, given the joint’s name. Pearl Dive offers between 12 and 15 varieties, a vastly bigger selection than rival Northwest D.C. mollusk mecca Hank’s Oyster Bar (six per night) or even renowned oyster hotspot Old Ebbitt Grill (eight per night). “We’re going through probably 7,000 to 8,000 oysters a week,” Black says.

The choices are so abundant that Black now has staffers categorizing the things by flavor profile—“from mildest all the way up to Belon, which is the biggest, fullest, mineral-y, in-your-face, suck-on-a-copper-penny flavor profile you’re ever going to get,” he says.

The bulk of the selection comes from the nearby Chesapeake Bay, but the meatiest ones, I find, are from the West Coast: If the server mentions Naked Roys or Skookums, get ’em. Black’s house-made “dive juice” dipping sauce, made daily with scallions, cilantro, and jalapeño, nicely compensates for any stragglers.

Among the four styles of the cooked oysters, the Angels on Horseback, at $9, is my favorite. Wrapped in thinly sliced applewood-smoked bacon, the pillowy oysters arrive in a vin blanc and vinegar reduction that is both rich and a tad tart; the bacon is so thin as to not overwhelm the oyster. I found the tasso ham of the Tchoupitoulas variety to create the opposite effect.

If the place were open for breakfast, Black’s C.E.B.L.T. po’boy would become my morning ritual. The sandwich features fried catfish topped with a fried egg and salty bacon procured from every pork gourmand’s favorite farmer, Allan Benton. “The key is, you gotta push it down,” Black says. “You push it down and the yoke runs through it.”

But for dinner, despite the restaurant’s theme, you’d be ill-advised not to order the fried chicken. It’s a sort of makeshift recipe that the cooks at Black’s Rockville restaurant Addie’s used to throw together to feed the dishwashers, incorporating braised chicken normally reserved for coq au vin. “We’d take that braised chicken, dust it, flour it, and fry it,” says Black. “Well, one day, I was like, ‘You know what? That looks pretty good. I’m going to try it.’ And I was like, ‘Holy crap, this is freakin’ delicious!’”

At Pearl Dive, Black doesn’t use red wine as he might with a traditional coq au vin; instead, he braises the meat in white wine, blond mirepoix and chicken stock. “It’s fully cooked, so when you order it, all I’m doing when I fry it is, I’m setting a crust on it. So it’s not in the fryer for very long.” The crispy crust is quite spicy—there’s a lot of cayenne in there. And a bit of Parmesan, believe it or not. The collard greens it comes with are pretty damn tasty, too. And not so bitter. “I don’t add vinegar, which a lot of people do,” Black says. “I just let it be. You can cook that bitterness out if you cook ‘’em long enough.”

When dessert comes, a woman at an adjacent table suggests Black needed to spend more time cooking off the booze. She’s eating the bourbon-infused pecan pie made with wild Texas nuts—a standard, sticky, sweet version of the southern classic. My neighbor claims to be “getting high” off the liquor. Later, when I ask Black about it, he suggests she must have been a lightweight. “There’s not that much [alcohol],” he says.

Photos by Darrow Montgomery

Pearl Dive Oyster Palace, 1612 14th Street NW, (202) 986-8778

Eatery tips? Food pursuits? Send suggestions to hungry@washingtoncitypaper.com.

I've been known to have a lead foot when it comes to the brews I choose, and in this regard many of the drinkers in the distant, cold reaches of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden and I are one in the same. But it's the nod to their Nordic roots, experimentation with modern American styles (like Double IPAs) as well as a tendency toward high-alcohol content that draws me to Scandinavian beers. On Monday at 6 p.m., ChurchKey is offering a rare chance to sample from a variety of Nordic brews on draft from outfits like Kissmeyer, To Øl, Haandbryggeriet, Nøgne Ø and Mikkeller, as well as the new-to-the U.S., Bøgedal, a Danish brewery that produces beer so unique that each batch is numbered, not named.

Also on Monday, Hank's Oyster Bar in Dupont Circle will host the D.C. launch of Flying Dog's newest brew, Pearl Necklace Oyster Stout. A dry stout brewed with local oysters to raise awareness of issues facing the oyster population in the Chesapeake Bay, Pearl Necklace was the brainchild of Flying Dog, Rappahannock River Oysters, and Baltimore’s Woodberry Kitchen. Proceeds from Pearl Necklace will benefit the Oyster Recovery Partnership, an organization that coordinates and conducts large-scale oyster restoration efforts. From 5 to 7 p.m. get a free oyster with each purchase of a Pearl Stout...and feel good about doing your part to help save the environment.

On Tuesday, fans of the Saint Louis Brewery's solid line of Schlafly beers will want to schlep over to Meridian Pint for a chance to sample a dozen offerings, most not often available in D.C. The brews will be available in four flights, or sets, of three small pours each. Choose from malty, hoppy, wheaty, or bourbony. Stand outs include Hop Harvest, a dry-hopped American Pale Ale brewed with fresh Sorachi Ace hops and 2006, 2008, and 2010 batches of Bourbon Barrel Imperial Stout.

It wouldn't be a D.C. Thanksgiving without a growler of local beer and some pre-ordered, specially prepared pies. DC Brau and Dangerously Delicious Pies have you covered. The local businesses arranged it so you can pick up your pre-ordered pie at the brewery on Wednesday between 2 and 8 p.m., effectively getting your "punch" and pie in the same spot. As of Saturday, Dangerously Delicious was no longer taking Thanksgiving orders...but you can still get that growler of beer to go.

No turkey plans? No problem. Thursday evening The Black Squirrel is offering the generous gift of an all-you-can-eat Thanksgiving buffet for just five bucks. Even better, the evening will feature several pumpkin beers, including Schlafly’s Pumpkin Ale, DC Brau Fermentation without Representation Imperial Pumpkin Porter, and Flying Dog The Fear Imperial Pumpkin Ale. Show up any time 7 p.m. or later, preferably hungry.

Also this week, Bourbon in Glover Park is holding extended happy hours, from 5 to 8 p.m., and launching their fall cocktail menu. Capitol Hill's Belga Café will hold its monthly beer dinner on Tuesday, this time focusing on holiday ales. Across the river in Falls Church, Mad Fox Brewing Company will tap a cask of Defender American Pale Ale. On Wednesday, The Big Hunt will tap its stash of Great Lakes Christmas Ale. On the same night, Smith Commons in the Atlas District will feature Long Trail brews. Finally, ChurchKey is pulling out all the stops for a Thanksgiving Eve party with an impressive list of American craft beers from both near and far.

Send submissions for the D.C. Beer Events calendar to thelagerheads@gmail.com.

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LAGERHEADS PICK: On Friday, Smith Commons is hosting a launch party for a special collaborative brew created by DC Brau and Baltimore-based Stillwater Artisanal Ales. The beer was initially referred to as "DJ Love" because Smith Commons beer director Miles Gray, DC Brau's Brandon Skall and Jeff Hancock, and Stillwater's "gypsy" brewer Brian Strumke have all spent time behind the turntables. Now they're calling it "Natas" (that's satan backwards) in keeping with the tradition of devilish names for dark Belgian ales. The event starts at 6 p.m.

As for the rest of the week Birch & Barley is hosting Ninkasi and 21st Amendment, two outstanding West coast breweries, for a massive seven-beer, five-course dinner on Monday.

On Tuesday, Neighborhood Restaurant Group strikes again, as ChurchKey participates in the Vanberg & DeWulf 30th anniversary coast-to-coast toast, featuring rare Belgian imports. Hank's Oyster Bar in Dupont Circle is throwing a beer dinner featuring Great Lakes Brewing Company. Across the river in Clarendon, Fire Works Pizza will be pouring pints of California's Stone brew and Restaurant 3 is hosting Port City Brewing Company founder Bill Butcher for a five-course dinner.

On Wednesday, all Victory Brewing Company beers from Pennsylvania will be on tap at Scion in Dupont. On Thursday, Smith Commons is partnering with Demigods LLC and Thirteen22 for a beer and music focused clothing drive featuring beers by Ommegang and complimentary small bites.

Friday and Saturday, you can sign up for a "Novemberfest" beer and brat cruise on the Potomac with Capital Yacht Charters. Oompah! Also on Saturday, join Heavy Seas Beer of Baltimore for the Capitol Bacon and Beer Bash at National Harbor.

Send submissions for the D.C. Beer Events calendar to thelagerheads@gmail.com.

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"Homegrown" is a term often tossed around in various genres of food. You just rarely hear it at the raw bar. That could soon change.

The newly expanded Hank's Oyster Bar in Dupont Circle, City Paper readers' pick for "D.C.'s Best Seafood 2011," is now growing its own oyster.  The "Hayden's Reef," served for the first time at the restaurant last week, is a collaboration between Hank's chef-owner Jamie Leeds and Virginia oyster farmer Bruce Woods. The mollusk is raised in the Nomini Creek area of Westmoreland County in an estuary boasting one of the lowest salinity levels within the Chesapeake Bay, which is said to give the oyster its "unique sweet flavor," according to publicity materials.

On Monday, Young & Hungry stopped by the new and improved Hank's to sample the brand-spankin' new mollusk, which stood out for its large shell and beige tint. I found it to be much meatier and a bit less briny than the other available Virginia variety, Old Plantation, but less creamy than the buttery Naked Roy from Washington State.

My dining companion, admittedly not much of an oyster connoisseur, put it more bluntly: "It's like licking the bottom of a barge—but in a good way."

His positive spin makes some sense, at least to the chef: "I think that it's a good starter oyster, as far as the flavoring, because it's a mild oyster," says Leeds. "It's got a meatiness to it. Some oysters are very creamy and those are more for the oyster veteran. All in all, it's a good well-rounded oyster."

Since its debut last week, the new oyster has been the restaurant's best-seller. "We blew through 1,000 of them in three days," Leeds says. Not only served on the half-shell, the Hayden's Reef is also used in the chef's Hog Island-style barbecued oyster.

The mollusk is named after Leeds' 8-year-old son, who isn't quite the shellfish aficionado that his mother is. At least not yet.  "He sipped the juice a little bit," says Leeds. "But he's not ready to take in the whole thing."

Hank's may be the only place in D.C. currently growing its own oyster. "I haven't heard about it anywhere else," Leeds says.

The process began about a year ago. "We collected bushels and bushels of old shells," Leeds explains, "and we took the staff out there to [Woods'] farm and we poured them in the water and built the reef with those shells. He used the reef to grow those oysters...We have about 750,000 oysters now." That sort of supply could last the restaurant anywhere from six months to a full year, she says. (For some perspective, Hank's generally goes through about 10,000 per week. That's including all six varieties on the blackboard.)

Fresh shipments are scheduled for twice a week, though the recent hurricane knocked out power to Woods' farm, meaning that Hank's will have to do without for the next several days, Leeds notes.

The chef recommends that patrons pair the new oyster with either the Old Rasputin imperial stout on tap, or the house specialty "Hanky Panky" cocktail, made with lemon-infused vodka, a little limoncello, a little cava and a little dab of simple syrup. "It's nice and bright and citrus-y and goes nice with oysters," she says.

Photo by Chris Shott

Leeds is also taking the opportunity to debut an all-new oyster, called the Hayden's Reef, developed in collaboration with Montross, Va., oyster farmer Bruce Wood and raised in the Nomini Creek area of Westmoreland County, which is said to have one of the lowest salinity estuaries in the Chesapeake Bay.  According to a press release, this low salinity allows for "a unique sweet flavor that produces one of the finest half shell, baked or fried oysters." A rep for the restaurant tells Y&H the new oysters would be pulled from the water on Monday and delivered fresh for Tuesday's 5 p.m. opening.

Image courtesy of Hank's Oyster Bar

We're giving away two tickets to the Smithsonian's World Oceans Day festivities. Join activist-actor Ted Danson in hearing from experts about the long-term impact of last year's ecological disaster in the Gulf of Mexico while also enjoying sustainable seafood dishes created by local chefs, including Kyle Bailey of Birch & Barley and Jamie Leeds of Hank’s Oyster Bar. The event takes place Thursday, June 9, at Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

As far as valuable learning experiences go, this one should be pretty tasty. Check out the menu and wine list here and here.

Photo by Alpha/Creative Commons Attribution License

Coming Soon:

• People's Bao, a bao food truck will be hitting the streets sometime around February, serving up Asian specialty steamed buns with a variety of fillings. (Metrocurean)
• Three-level neighborhood bistro Smith Commons, which will feature a globally inspired menu, is scheduled to open on Tuesday at 1245 H St. NE. (Y&H)
• Tim Carman got the scoop on Gillian Clark's grand plans for a new Colorado Kitchen near Union Station. (WaPo)
• Big things are happening in Crystal City. Only a few days short of the grand opening of its first Buffalo Wild Wings, Fairfax-based Paisano's Pizza has also announced it will be adding a location at Market Square at Potomac Yard. (ARLnow)
• Crystal City isn't the only place getting a new pizza joint: Angelico's Pizza is on its way to 1421 H St. NE. (Prince of Petworth)
• And the next NYC restaurant heading to D.C. is...Hill Country BBQ! A Penn Quarter location at 406 7th St. NW is slated to open in March and will feature all sorts of barbecued goodness. (PQ Living)
• After nearly three years of speculation, multiple sources are claiming that U.K.-based noodle shop Wagamama may finally be on the path to opening in Chinatown sometime next year. (DCist)
• The D.C. Alcoholic Beverage Control Board has granted the Dupont location of Hank's Oyster Bar permission to expand into its neighboring retail space at 1622 Q St. NW. (Borderstan)

Openings:

• The Big Cheese truck
• Tegeste in Columbia Heights
• Pho DC in Chinatown
• Yola in Dupont Circle

Photo of some nice looking Xiaolong bao from Shanghai by Flickr user Gary Soup using an Attribution 2.0 Generic Creative Commons license

Photo of a grilled cheese sandwich by Flickr user pirateyjoe via a Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic Creative Commons license

Y&H is no Reliable Source, but even this food scribe is occasionally thrown a scrap of gossip about all the Top Chef shenanigans going on in the District. Like yesterday, a source told me that some white-jacket types were seen cooking in the building across the street from NPR's headquarters at 635 Massachusetts Ave. NW.

Apparently the aromas were torturing some NPR staffers who work in the building. There was even some speculation that the cheftestants were being ask to do a TV demonstration dish — you know, one of those dishes that a chef throws together quickly on camera while the TV host blathers away.

So says my source quoting another source.  This is what passes for reporting in the world of Top Chef stalking.

Meanwhile, Hank's Oyster Bar chef/owner Jamie Leeds tweeted that Gail Simmons, Mike Isabella (Zaytinya's chef and a contestant last year on Top Chef), and another TC alumnus, Spike Mendelsohn, all dined at her Dupont Circle restaurant last night.

I spoke with Leeds this afternoon, who said the trio was part of a larger entourage that dined at Hank's.  Leeds wasn't there for the celeb sighting but said they ordered lots of oysters on the half shell as well as fried oysters and clams and some sides like mac 'n' cheese and onion rings.

"They were smiling and laughing and having fun, " says Leeds, who hadn't heard whether Isabella and Mendelsohn had just shot an episode for the coming season. "I was kind of fantasizing that they were scouting out Hank's with the idea of doing a quick fire [challenge]."

Leeds was imagining a shucking challenge at her restaurant. Alas, there has been no call from Top Chef producers. But she does have another celebrity chef coming to her Dupont restaurant. She says that Bizarre Foods' Andrew Zimmern has a reservation for later this week.

Finally, Chris Shott, the Show & Tell alumnus who's now our Interim News Editor, spotted Padma Lakshmi last night at the Westend Bistro by Eric Ripert, where she was dining with an unknown older gentleman in a booth.

I asked Shott to tell me what Lakshmi was eating, what she was wearing, what her dining companion was eating. His response?

"I was too distracted by her plunging neckline to pay any attention to what she was eating."

Photo courtesy of Top Chef