As we head toward Thanksgiving, Y&H wants to help you eat like a pilgrim (a Native American, too, because we’re all about equal opportunity eating here). In other words, we want to help you eat locally for the holiday. Almost 400 years ago, the pilgrims had no choice but to eat local. These days, we do. It’s not easy. First up: the appetizer course.

For a great opening spread, try a slection of local cheeses, charcuterie, breads, and jam.

Several local dairies hawk their cheeses at area farmers markets, including Everona Dairy, Keswick Creamery, Blue Ridge, and Cherry Glen. For charcuterie, check out Red Apron, which sells Nathan Anda’s wide-ranging selection of house-cured meats at Planet Wine in Del Ray and at the FRESHFARM Penn Quarter market (until Dec. 17). Or order Jamie Stachowski’s holiday charcuterie board, which includes enough sausage and salami and pâté to serve 10 people, by calling the chef at (202) 413-7355.

Some of the best breads anywhere are being baked by Atwater’s in Baltimore; you’ll find their terrific baguettes and San Francisco-style sourdough bread at the FRESHFARM Dupont Circle and Takoma Park farmers markets. For jams, check out Copper Pot’s excellent line of spreads made by former Mio chef Stefano Frigerio. You can order them at www.copperpotfoodco.com.

Your guests may never make it to the dinner table after this opening feast.

I randomly dropped an e-mail to Jamie Stachowskiyesterday, wondering if the chef might have made enough charcuterie to peddle to the public during the holidays. I wasn’t ready for his response:

The Jamie Stachowski Holiday Charcuterie Board, which for $95 provides enough pâté, sausage, salame, and bresaola to feed 10 hungry carnivores. Here’s what you get for your money:

• 1.5 pounds of Burgundy-style pheasant  pâté with lardons and pinot noir pearl onions
• Two loops (1.5 pounds) of Portuguese linguica
• Two links (12 ounces) of smoked duck petito
• Eight ounces of bresaola
• One pound of cardamom-scented and lightly smoked salame cotto.
• Quince and pear chutney

If you like charcuterie, this is a no-brainer purchase. Stachowski, who works under his own brand, is an obsessive for quality cured meats. You can taste it in every bite of his charcuterie, which is, hands down, the best in the city.

To place your order, call Stachowski at (202) 413-7355 or e-mail him at jamiestachowski@gmail.com.

Despite a name that makes you think of eyeballs, meat, and contact lenses — always an appetizing trio, yes? — MeatCrafters was a promising partnership between one of the best charcuterie makers and one of the most successful distributors in the D.C. area.

The partnership is no more.

Y&H contacted Jamie Stachowski yesterday evening who confirmed that he and Mitch Berliner have parted company — at least as partners in the charcuterie business. Stachowski’s name has already been scrubbed from the MeatCrafters‘ Web site, but he will still have a role in the company. Berliner is still selling and distributing some of Stachowski’s sausages.

“I’m trying to pursue a full line of charcuterie, and he is focusing on the [farmers] markets,” Stachowski tells Y&H. “Who knows? We might come together again at some point.”

Stachowski paints the falling out as a disagreement over markets — the chef wanting to target the chef-driven restaurant scene and the distributor wanting to target the area’s farmers markets. But Stachowski also hints that there may have been other issues, which he wouldn’t discuss for the record.

“I’m not sour,” he adds.

Instead, Stachowski continues to focus on his own charcuterie, which he now won’t have to market under a name that sounds like a mall storefront.  At present, Stachowski says, his charcuterie can be found at Enology Wine Bar on Wisconsin Avenue NW, Willow in Arlington, Thirsty Bernie Sports Bar & Grill (where the chef once worked until his surprising departure last year), Ristorante Posto near Logan Circle, Veritas Wine Bar near Dupont Circle, the Willard Room downtown, Bar Pilar on 14th Street NW, Red, White & Bleu in Falls Church, and Napolean in Adams Morgan.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Let’s assume for a moment that you don’t want to grill and that you don’t have any friends kind enough to invite you to their barbecue drunk-a-thon on the Fourth. Where do you turn? Well, Y&H has some options, including a couple with smoked meats for those who just can’t celebrated America’s birthday without an animal sacrifice.

Mmmm, animal sacrifice.

• Jamie Stachowski will be grilling his artisan sausages at Red, White & Bleu in Falls Church from 1 to 5 p.m. on Saturday. The charcuterie master will be tending the charcoal grill at the wine and gourmet food shop, cooking up veal bratwurst, kielbasa, merguez, and linguiça for customers to sample. Stachowski will also have some rabbit terrine, country pate, and other “meat surprises” to try. All samples will be free, but the shop is hoping, of course, that you’ll be enticed into buying some of Stachowski’s meats to take home — and maybe a bottle or two of wine to go with it.
• Mr. P, one of the top 50 performers on Y&H’s 2009 Dining Guide, will be working the Fourth at his usual spot: the Safeway parking lot at Rhode Island Ave. NE. Aside from his amazing spare ribs, which are smoked to a charred, crispy, and succulent state, Mr. P will also trot out a new item: barbecued short ribs. He tells me they will be a permanent part of his menu.

• Asia Nine not only has some patriotic rolls available — the red-white-and-blue tinted Firecracker Roll and Independence Roll — but also a special BBQ Grab-n-Go Menu. The latter features such entrees as Thai barbecue chicken and Laos grilled steak, which you can have boxed with sides and ready for transport to the Mall. The specials run through July 9.
• Cashion’s Eat Place is not taking any holiday on the Fourth. From 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., chef John Manolatos will be serving up a picnic spread of hamburgers, brisket sandwiches, and Maryland blue crabs. You can also call ahead and order a picnic basket for two for $40. Call (202) 797-1819.

Speaking of picnics, the Post has compiled a list of restaurants that will be packaging their food for carryout on the Fourth. And if you’re looking for more Fourth-oriented restaurant specials, the Washingtonian has an authoritative list.

Happy Fourth, everyone.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Note: An occasional feature in which Y&H revisits a previously reviewed restaurant.

It’s Friday night, and the regulars at Thirsty Bernie Sports Bar & Grill have settled onto their usual barstools to toast the end of the week with a few drafts and another ninth-inning meltdown by the Nats. The atmosphere is unlike most sports bars: No one here has that thousand-yard stare, lost in the competition on the telly.

There are reasons, of course, for their lack of interest. The Nationals have become the Branson, Mo., of baseball franchises: Only old-timers in love with the “game” and their youth follow the team. The Caps are between contests, and the other hockey playoff has all the appeal of a tax audit. No, Thirsty Bernie is a neighborhood sports bar that emphasizes the first descriptor. Locals mostly gather around the bar to bitch, flirt, and gossip. One woman greets everyone with the same sentence: “Oh, I’ve missed you!”

The food may have something to do with the friendly vibe. The menu is stuffed with the kind of rich, gloriously meaty Bavarian dishes that have fueled Buffaloans for generations, helping them shovel a million drive-ways and survive the harshest winters with stoic good-humor. The dishes are, more or less, the same ones developed by Jamie Stachowski, the chef who unceremoniously parted ways with Thirsty Bernie last year. Whatever the reason for the fall-out between chef and owner, there appears to be no hard feelings now between them. Stachowski’s name is plastered all over the menu, wherever the chef has provided his sausages and charcuterie to a dish.

I order a stein of Franziskaner and the kielbasa sandwich in hopes of reliving the glory days of Thirsty Bernie, which occurred all the way back in the fall of aught-eight. The sausage has a thick casing, which has been grilled and blackened to a satisfying snap. The mildly spiced link is draped with sautéed peppers and caramelized onions and stuffed deeply into a big, crusty roll that requires some serious steamrolling before you can squeeze it into your maw.

The sandwich, in other words, is still more than anyone could ask for at a sport bars — hell, more than you could ask for at most delis and sandwich shops, too.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Suddenly, it seems that our region is awash with artisanal charcuterie makers. We’ve already told you about the stuff at Restaurant Eve, the cured meat plate at PS 7’s, and the hand-crafted meats that Jamie Stachowski is peddling practically everywhere, even from the back of his 1988 Trooper. (Oh, by the way, Stachowski finally settled on a name for his product line, MeatCrafters, which sounds like a shop at the mall where they stuff your sausage in an hour. So to speak.)

Two more players have recently entered the cured meat market.

In February, Melissa McCart wrote about the Red Apron line of charcuterie being produced by Nathan Anda, former executive chef at Tallula and EatBar; his bacon, chorizo, hot dogs, and even beef jerky are currently available at Planet Wine in Alexandria, a property owned by Neighborhood Restaurant Group, the same parent company of Tallula, EatBar, Rustico, and the forthcoming Birch & Barley. Also look for Anda’s products this spring at local farmers markets.

And just today, I got a press release announcing the opening of Robert Wiedmaier’s new place, The Butcher’s Block, a Market by RW, at 1600 King St. in Old Town, next door to the Marcel’s and Brasserie Beck chef’s BRABO property. Here’s the pertinent part of the release:

In addition to the charcuterie, pates, sausages and terrines, The Butcher’s Block, a Market by RW sells prime cuts of rib-eye, fillet, lamb tenderloin, veal chops, pork loin, rabbit and chicken. Chef Wiedmaier sources much of his meat from the region, and he offers braised lamb shank, pork and beef carbonnade that can be purchased with his signature sauces to be heated and served at home.

These places are not helping with my mission to cut down on red meat!

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Thanks to the power of the internets, the first two spots on this week’s list belong to posts from last week: one on the departure of Bill Catron from Brasserie Beck and the other on the Cameron Perks tragedy. After that, the Top 5 looks like this:

1. The Sounds of Slurping: Get Ready for D.C. Noodle Shops
2. Ray’s the Net Is No More. It’s Now Ray’s: The Catch
3. Beard Semi-Finalists Just Announced: D.C. Is Well Represented
4. So Where the Hell Can You Find Jamie Stachowski Charcuterie in This Town?
5. Pizze in Woodley Park: Taking Aim at the Jumbo Slice Culture

That was the question I put to the celebrated meat man when he called up out of the blue this afternoon, asking me what he should call his forthcoming charcuterie line. (For the record, I told him he should just name the stuff after himself, no matter how difficult “Stachowski” is to pronounce for people who spend all their damn time silently working a computer; the Eastern European surname would lend the meats instant credibility, at least for those who haven’t already sampled Jamie Stachowski’s sausage, pates, and cured products.)

But back to the question: The short answer is many places. You can find Stachowski’s meats at the Kielbasa Factory in Rockville, the Lebanese Butcher and Restaurant in Falls Church, Enology Wine Bar on Wisconsin Avenue NW, Willow in Arlington, and even Thirsty Bernie Sports Bar & Grill in Arlington, where the chef once worked until his surprising departure last year. In the near future, look for Stachowski’s charcuterie at Ristorante Posto, Veritas Wine Bar near Dupont Circle, and at the Willard Room downtown.

After his unceremonious departure last month at Thirsty Bernie Sports Bar & Grill, Jamie Stachowski has been working to launch his own name-brand charcuterie company. Well, maybe not a name-brand company. It seems the chef’s partner in this venture, Mitch Berliner, is afraid nobody can pronounce Stachowski.

Stachowski’s not buying that argument. To him, a number of commercial makers of cured meats and pates, companies like D’Artagnan’s to Les Trois Petits Cochons (which incidentally just means “three little pigs,” folks), have “difficult names that are hard to pronounce.”

Whatever the final name, Stachowski and Berliner, owner of Berliner Specialty Distributors, are currently searching for a USDA-approved processing-and-packaging facility. Berliner, the man who essentially introduced D.C. to gourmet ice cream, is the bringing the marketing muscle to this partnership, Stachowski says.

Stachowski could sells his meats to local chefs and specialty shops, he says, but Berliner can sell them to major grocery chains, like Whole Foods. “He knows the people,” Stachowski says. “He knows the contacts.”

The chef hopes to launch the company early next year.

The Washingtonian is reporting that Jamie Stachowski, the mad genius of meat, is out at Thirsty Bernie Sports Bar & Grill.

The Washington Post is reporting that Andrew Kitko “parted ways” with Redwood in Bethesda.

I personally think Thirsty Bernie will suffer greatly without Stachowski. With him, it was the most unique sports bar in the area; without him, it’ll just be another place to eat grease and watch the game.

As far as Redwood, well, I have to say the move would seem smart. I had my first meal there this weekend and was singularly underwhelmed. My companion’s pulled chicken salad with buttermilk dressing was mush on mush—soft, lifeless bird pieces with cubes of squishy avocado on top of romaine leaves that had lost much of their crunch. It was like paying $13 for leftovers.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery