Photo by Jess Lander

All sorts of foods go well with beer, and all sorts of brews pair well with food. Spicy hot wings and lukewarm lager? A classic combo. But, chocolate stout-flavored chicken wings? The District’s craft beer craze has officially hopped the suds shark.

The dark chocolaty poultry stands out like a greasy black thumb from even the heavily beer-focused menu at the recently reopened Argonaut, the pioneering dive bar turned brunch spot at the rapidly gentrifying intersection where H Street NE meets Maryland Avenue and Benning and Bladensburg roads.

You’ve probably heard of beer-can chicken. This is something else entirely. A little sweet, a little bitter and more than a little dry, the bits of bony bird are bathed in hot sauce, butter, and Bell’s Special Double Cream Stout, then served with the standard sides of celery and blue cheese dressing. On visual inspection, the blackish wings look like they were marinated in used motor oil, or perhaps just left on the curb to collect grime overnight. Maybe this is what the locals mean when they say that H Street hasn’t completely lost its grit.

Luckily, they taste a lot better than they look.

“We’re still trying to perfect the recipe,” says Demetrios Recachinas, the Argo’s interim chef, kitchen manager, and part-time bartender. “Stout is a great flavor, but when you’re working with it, if you try to reduce it or anything like that, it gets super, super bitter.... We thought if we could control the flavor of the chocolate, then it would be a good combination.”

It’s an ongoing experiment that Recachinas, the former food manager at the D.C. Central Kitchen and one-time sous chef for American cooking dominatrix Carole Greenwood at Buck’s Fishing and Camping, isn’t quick to claim as his own. He inherited the recipe from a previous chef, who quit one day after the restaurant’s January grand reopening. The hasty exit was just the latest in a series of calamities—including fire, theft, and tax troubles—to befall the beloved boîte.

Even my server seemed skittish about the wings, a surprise at this time of mass obsession with all things malt- and hops-related.

Other local eateries have employed similar stout-based recipes. At Chinatown’s brew-centric Regional Food and Drink, for instance, there are no fewer than three menu items infused with chocolate stout, all of them desserts: a decadent brownie, a cleverly titled “bieramisu,” even an ice cream float.

The Argonaut’s unique approach (what is this, chicken mole in a pint glass?) flips this convention on its clucking head. Is this supposed to be an appetizer? Or a dessert? Either way, it makes sense mainly as a gimmick to impress the beer geeks.

In fact, the Argo, now fully recovered from last summer’s devastating kitchen fire, is poised to woo brew enthusiasts like never before. Re-launched with 24 shiny new taps (up from just four), the joint has a beer list that’s harder to navigate than the Symplegades. Call it the Quest for the Golden Yeast: The overhauled menu includes micro-brews from California, Colorado, Maryland, Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire, Ohio, and even Florida.

Adventurers beware: As the multiple asterisks on the menu suggest, the venue’s actual stockpile of beers changes a lot faster than its printing capabilities. Also note the disclaimer that certain varieties are “limited in their yearly availability or production, so we’ll rotate our selection often.” In fact, weeks after reopening, the Argo was already out of several stellar drafts, notably Gonzo Imperial Porter, Flying Dog Brewery’s potent (9.2 percent) tribute to the late Hunter S. Thompson.

There are still plenty of high-octane options, of course. And the folks in the kitchen tend to incorporate ingredients from the bar into other food items, too. In addition to the dubious stout wings, both the Argo’s honey-drizzled onion rings and its crispy fried cod, served with fries and a tasty lemon curry sauce, are brewski-infused. The batter is made from the light-colored medium-bodied house IPA, which, in keeping with the eatery’s nautical theme, the staff calls “booty beer.”

“We’re very beer-heavy here,” says Recachinas. “Adding it to the batter basically infuses another layer of flavor.”

Back in 2005, the Argonaut was one of eight properties snatched up as part of prolific D.C. restaurateur Joe Englert’s effort to “clean up” H Street, as Englert described it: “to recruit just not restaurants, but bakers, chocolate shops, museums, flower shops and more to the strip.” The local trade journal Foodservice Monthly dubbed it the “Joe Englert Entertainment District.”

In a part of town previously known for carry-out dispensed from behind bulletproof glass, the ensuing culinary gentrification involved places that served Moroccan tapas, German wursts, and Japanese sushi served with an ironic side of tater tots. Today’s H Street corridor offers duck confit at Smith Commons, Philadelphia-style hoagies at Taylor Gourmet and the uncomfortably named “white trash crème brulee” from Dangerously Delicious Pies.

If you buy the notion that today’s young professionals regard food and drink the way their parents approached sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll, then consider H Street a burgeoning Haight-Ashbury—albeit one promising a better kind of crabs.

By those standards, the old Argonaut might today seem pedestrian. The reinvented one, though, keeps pace with the neighborhood’s increasingly baroque tastes.

Proprietors Scott Magnuson and Shaaren Pine bought into Englert’s vision early on. The affable couple serves as the public face of the Argonaut. (Englert remains the principal owner; Magnuson the managing partner.)

“We opened in ’05 as a dive bar with very little food and that worked really well...until it didn’t,” Pines notes. Much like the couple (now doting parents) and the surrounding residential areas (now settling into comfortable yuppiedom), the Argo has since opted for a more family-friendly vibe. “We needed to become more of a restaurant and less of a bar, so we hired a chef and managed to change our entire direction—and double our business!—in two months.”

For Act III, it seems, the restored Argonaut has managed to step it up on both fronts.

Its renewed focus on domestic crafts, in particular, seems a direct challenge to H Street neighbor Granville Moore’s status as the neighborhood beer mecca. The culinary recalibration, meanwhile, includes a concerted effort to hop aboard the locavore bandwagon. That’s where Recachinas, with his nonprofit background and his penchant for sourcing fresh local ingredients, comes in.

Argonaut’s pasta du jour, for instance, is handmade at Floriana in Dupont Circle. Over the past several weeks, the restaurant has advertised artisanal raviolis stuffed with short rib, lobster, and curry chicken, among the featured proteins. But for all three of my recent visits, it was the same entrée every night: green pillows of spinach pasta, stuffed with ricotta, swimming in a creamy soup alongside floating chunks of garlic, mushroom, and cherry tomato, sprinkled with parmesan shavings.

Recachinas wasn’t immediately sure how well the localized ethics would sit with fans of the Argonaut’s original fish tacos, still the venue’s signature dish. Lightly breaded in cornmeal and flour, the flaky fish comes served on warm flour tortillas, topped with cheddar, diced tomatoes, and a crunchy slaw of cabbage, red onion, and carrot. The new morality threatened to upend this tradition, calling for the elimination of the house’s standard tilapia, with its origins in far-flung East Asia, in favor of Atlantic mahi-mahi. “We were expecting a little push-back from our customers,” the chef says, “but no one said a word.”

Perhaps the pièce de résistance, menu-wise, comes courtesy of an upgrade in kitchen equipment, namely a newly installed triple-decker steamer machine, producing piping hot pots of seafood and vegetables.

There is nothing little about the Virginia littleneck clams, hauled in from the Chesapeake and steamed in white wine, butter and herbs, which came out quite large, in fact, meaty and delicious, alongside Pacific Dungeness crab legs and whole Gulf shrimp with heads and antennae intact. Maybe the tastiest part of the entire steamer pot combo, though, was the corn on the cob, which seemed to capture the flavor vapors of the various shellfish while everything was stuck in the sauna together.

Between the porters and the steamer, there’s a lot to like about the resuscitated Argonaut. Maybe more if Recachinas can figure out a winning formula for stout wings.

“It’s a fun project to perfect,” he says.

If any one thing defines Y&H Nation, it's our insatiable need for more (and more accessible) outlets for craft and imported beers. When the urge strikes — and when doesn't it? — we want to walk to the neighborhood Safeway for our Dogfish Head fix, not climb into the car and drive to a gourmet wine-and-beer shop and pretend we're interested in yet another geeked-out discussion on American vs. European hops. We just want our beer dammit!

The Lagerheads delivered the good news last week on this front, and you all lapped it up. It topped our list of the most popular posts:

1. Shelf Watch Proves D.C. Craft Beer Selection Is On the Up and Up
2. Obama Introduces Russian President to Hell...Burgers
3. Photos: Ray's the Steaks and Ray's the People at East River (*)
4. The Restaurants That Just Missed the Cut in This Year's Dining Guide
5. Argonaut Down by Fire; Tavern Hopes to Re-Open by August

* A certain light-drinking Budweiser beer was, once again, a popular item among readers, but we’ve stopped counting it.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

UPDATED: 5:47 p.m., 6/21/2010

The irrepressible Chris Shott has more information on the Sunday morning fire that closed down the Argonaut, one of Y&H's top five eateries for onion rings. (And if you've had the Arognaut's honey-drizzled rings, you know that's not damning with faint praise.) Shott also draws upon his past as a D.C. nightlife reporter to lay out owner Joe Englert's unfortunate history with fire.

Y&H is trying to track down the elusive Englert even as I type, but a lot of info can already be found on the Argonaut's own Web site, including photos of the devastated kitchen (sound familiar?) and a prediction about when the place hopes to re-open. Short answer: before its August birthday, when the joint turns 5.

I just got off the phone with Englert who's relaxing (well, sort of) in the Adirondacks. He may want to stop visiting upstate New York. "Every time I go to the Adirondacks, something burns down," Englert says. The Capitol Lounge fires that Shott detailed both occurred while Englert was in the Adirondacks.

The owner says that the kitchen and half the bar were destroyed by the fire. "Aside from that, it's fine," he says about the structure. He doesn't have a damage estimate yet.

"It's disappointing because we were doing well there," Englert says. The Argonaut, with about 99 seats, was pulling down about $1.3 million in annual revenues, he adds.

Once he gets a structural OK from the city, Englert hopes to reopen at least the upstairs portion of the Argonaut and sell alcohol, with some light finger foods brought in from elsewhere. It will likely require a new tavern license from the city.

For now, Englert and his partners are helping their Argonaut employees find work, whether in one of Englert's other properties or elsewhere. "I'm sure we can beat the bushes and get them work."

Photo courtesy of the Argonaut

EastEnders, say hello to Northeast.

The Queen Vic, a gastropub named after a bar in the British soap opera, EastEnders, is expected to open in June in the Atlas District. It will occupy a storefront at 1206 H St. NE, the space originally proposed for Joe Englert’s sports bar, the Olympic, before the deal fell through.

The pub, with outdoor seating upstairs, will dish out a traditional British menu with local and seasonal produce, says owner Ryan Gordon, who also owns a stake in the Pug, a boxing/soccer themed hole in the wall on H Street. The neighborhood is "a funny little area,” Gordon says. “Everyone’s doing something a little different, the diversity of different bars and restaurants.”

Gordon’s wife Roneeka, a native of Wales, wanted to open a place reminiscent of the pubs she knew back home — and as an ode to her father, who recently passed away. He ran Bokhara Brasserie, an Indian restaurant in South Wales, which was nominated for a British Curry Award.

Fancy a beer or cider? Harp, Guinness, Magners and the beloved Strongbow, will be on tap, alongside six British ales and such. English breakfast — eggs, mushrooms, tomato, beans, bacon, sausage, and toast — will be served all day, every day. You'll also find thrice­-cooked, hand-cut chips on the Queen's menu, and, of course, where there are chips, there must be fish.

The pub plans to serve up a variety of Cornish pasties and meat pies, including eel and kidney! “A bunch of different stuff, we’re trying to use every part of the animal that we bring in,” Gordon says.

While blood sausage won’t be on the menu, Queen Vic will serve a variety of links, all made in-house and griddled on a flat iron. Gordon plans to dish out a lot of game meats, too — venison, pheasant, and boar. There will be something for vegetarians as well, not to mention a weekend brunch and a Sunday roast.

With a nod to the vibrant Indian culture in the UK, Gordon says the pub will also feature an Indian-style curry of the day, using a lot of his father-in-law's curry blends. "Curry has taken over the place of fish and chips,” he says.

It will be interesting to see how the Atlas District takes to the Queen. If history is any indication, British fare could be a tough sell. Last year, CommonWealth in Columbia Heights was forced to expand and lighten its menu, an acknowledgment that some customers weren't always looking for heavy British pub food.

The Queen Vic plans to open Monday through Thursday from 5 p.m. to 2 a.m., Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 a.m., and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. The pub is slated to open mid-June, shortly after Biergarten Haus, which means summer time is looking very Continental on H Street.

Photo by Ryan Gordon

Joe Englert admits it's all his fault. Englert was hoping to negotiate a deal with the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue on his delinquent sales tax for the Argonaut. The owner says he was in talks with the OTR, but apparently that wasn't enough to stop the office today from revoking the Argonaut's sales and use tax certificate, which prevents the tavern from collecting taxes on food and drink, essentially shutting the place down.

The Argonaut was one of eight restaurants that had their certificates revoked today. The others are INTI on 18th St. NW, Prince of Georgetown on Prospect St. NW, Besta Pizza on Connecticut Avenue NW, Porter's on 19th St. NW, Prince Cafe on Wisconsin Avenue NW, Mendocino Grille on M St. NW, and Cafe Nema on U St. NW.  Collectively the establishments owe the city more than $860,000 in back taxes, according to OTR records, topped by Porter's, which owes more than $389,000 in taxes, penalties, and interest.

Once the word came down, Englert says he went and paid off the full amount of his outstanding bill, plus penalties and interest, which the OTR pegged at $62,051.23. Englert says the tax-bill problems date back to a period in 2007 when the Argonaut was struggling. What's more, the owner adds, he had already paid his tax bill for a couple of months for which the city apparently did not have record of it.

The Office and Tax and Revenue, which cannot comment on individual cases, would not confirm Englert's story or payment.

Regardless, Englert says he'll be open for business tonight at the Argonaut. He admits he has no one to blame but himself. "It's all my fault," he says. "They're perfectly right. It's just weird timing...I thought I was in compliance" for trying to work out a deal on the outstanding bill.

Though embarrassed by the public airing of his delinquent taxes, Englert says this is a common issue for restaurateurs. "It happens all the time," he says. "I'd say that 80 percent of the restaurants owe money."

Y&H is thrilled to report that Select 55 has been dethroned — by another beer, Guinness, which celebrated a birthday yesterday.

Let's raise a glass to Select 55's long run and to the new king of the Y&H blog.

This week's most-read posts:

1. Raise a Toast to Guinness' 250th Anniversary
2. Budweiser Launches Select 55, Light Beer Arms Race Gets Absurd
3. Joe Englert Offers a REAL Tribute to the Dean of D.C. Liquor Lawyers
4. Two Things Y&H Didn't Expect to See at Sou'Wester's Opening Party: Frank Ruta and Dancing
5. Stand in Judgment of Georgetown Chefs!
   

Englert wanted to write his own tribute, which Y&H encouraged. You'll find it, in all its obscene and hilarious glory, after the jump.

[Note: Englert's tribute has been edited for typos, punctuation, and clarity...but not for length or taste.]

Lawyers are bullshit.

No guaranteed results. Just guaranteed fees.

D.C. liquor license titan Dimitri Mallios died September 15. He was no bullshit. He predicted success for his client and was never wrong. When you were his client, and your plan was to open up a gin joint or watering hole or speakeasy he came through for you. He got you what you asked for. That is, if you weren't a jackass. Then the bill came and the cost was never close to what his efforts were worth. He gave the restaurant world a volume discount.

Dmitri was 77. And you might say that's not tragic. That is a fine long life. But he was among the last of a dying breed, a Runyonesque character who ran with people named "Blackie" and "Jimmie" and Petie." (Of course, when you are the Greek Godfather every other person calling your office is named George.) It is very sad that he won't be around any longer.

He called his favorite clients profane names. But he always did it to their face. You knew he loved you when he called you "asshole." He called me often and never bothered to announce himself. "You dumbshit, what do you think you're doing?"

"My wife is begging me to be nicer," he would smile. "And I'm trying."

His legal documents were two pages long. Handshakes. Your Honor. Your word. Those were more important.

"If you don't trust a person, don't fucking get into business with them," he'd tell me. "Englert, you are a smart boy. Don't you know how to smell a rat?"

When the Capitol Lounge, a tavern I owned burned down in August 2005, he was one of the first to call.

"Englert, they used to call it Jewish Lightning. But now it's called Korean Lightning. All the Jews are doctors and lawyers now."

Part Shecky Greene, part Don Rickles, part Don Vito. I am glad he never charged by the joke. He was also part Yenta, giving you great dirt on public officials and unofficial competitors.

"He's a scumbag," he said once of a downtown developer. "I just told him that this morning when we met. I tell everyone he is a dirt bag that you shouldn't do business with."

Dimitri could drive around town in one of his big cars and point out who owned every building in downtown D.C. He knew who owned every skyscraper in downtown Bethesda, Tysons Corner, and Alexandria, too. Thousands of buildings but remarkably only a few dozen owners, almost always a Greek or Jewish guy he grew up with. But he also knew the guy who owned Giorgio's Pizza on 19th Street back in '80's and '90's, strip club owners, and the Ethiopian guy with an injera delivery business as well. He knew every lady by name at ABC and would giggle with, and even warm the heart of, someone like Marilyn Groves, the wicked witch of the Dupont Circle Civic Association in the '90's.

"The world is full of crazy people," he would cackle.

He loved Vietnamese and Indian and Nigerian immigrants who owned the corner stores, delis, and liquor stores throughout the city. He was a D.C. immigrant himself, an owner (with his brother named "George," of course) of Trio, Trio Pizza, and the legendary Trio's Fox and Hounds. I think he would have rather bullshitted with a guy in an apron than a fellow attorney in an Armani.

"My brother, George, is the ballsiest guy I know," he would shake his head. "And the Fox and Hounds is a great bar. You can't get a stiffer drink anywhere in town."

Until Dimitri's mother died in her late 90s, George and he had lunch with her at Trio every Wednesday. "Give her a coffee saucer that's not clean enough, and she's going to send it back. Nothing gets by her."

He made rain for the biggest of rainmakers.

In the late '80's, I had a joint called the 15 Minutes Club. It had a short lease. I was looking for another bar. Fast.

"Be at 20th and K in 15 minutes. Bring your checkbook," he told me.

My partner at the time, Steve Zarpas (his old man was another cool Greek character who would eat off your plate at lunch) and I quickly ran to the location. Minutes later, we were shaking hands with Ted Pedas, the mogul and original sugar daddy of the Coen Brothers.

One of Pedas' tenants was eight months behind on the rent. He made the guy hand over the keys to me right there and then.

"It's your place until I want to develop it. When I say, 'Get out,' get out!" Ted said with a shake of my hand. Dimitri nodded at both of us. Later that week, a lease arrived at my office. The monthly rent was half the going rate. Ted never raised the rent that much, either. It was the Crowbar and went on to have a long life after that. It sadly became the Eagle Bank building.

We talked often about people who weren't as big of assholes as they seemed. And he gave me advice on keeping your kids close when you were in the business.

"Never miss a chance to take them to work every weekend morning before things get busy. They'll stop coming before you know it. They'll get teenaged, and all of a sudden, you aren't as interesting as dating and hanging out with friends."

Dimitri always held his nose and gave to local hacks. He wrote a check for a couple of hundred bucks to hundreds of politicians, past and present. "You see these guys' caricatures at the Palm five years after they leave office, and you can't even remember their names."

D.C. government had been so bad, so bloated, and so unpredictable for so long that it was like you had been to war with Dimitri. Only he could share the pain, the frustration, and the terror of the nonsensical raids, stings, or law changes that DCRA and the ABC board were so famous for in the late '90's and early 2000's. "They're all fucking crazy!" he would rail. Then later he would get his clients off with no suspension or fine. No matter how intractable the bureaucrat was, Dimitri appealed to their better nature. He always got them to laugh and go easy on the bad boy Jack Ruby types of D.C. When he walked through DCRA, the Paper Shufflers and the just-say-no Red Tapers gave curt bows and respectful head bows. "Hello, Mr. Mallios."

Just a few years ago, a landlord repeatedly turned down my offers to buy his building. Nothing came of my dozens of letters and faxes. Once my lease was up, the landlord told me that his daughter was going to take over the joint and run a Greek restaurant.

I was in his office when Dimitri picked up the phone and yelled to my landlord, "Your daughter, Nina, the one with the six-inch nails and the foot of hair poofed up, the one that goes to the spa everyday? She's going to run a fucking restaurant? Stop the bullshit or I am going to tell Father George at church!"

A day later, a contract for the building was faxed to my office.

The dining space, located on the ground floor near the kitchen, will accommodate small parties for a multi-course tasting menu not available anywhere else at H Street Country Club, says owner Joe Englert. Cardoso, who has worked previously at Cashion's Eat Place and Jackie's, will offer an ever-changing menu of Mexican and Latin American small plates, which the diners can pair with either wine or tequila.

And in keeping with H Street's concept, these private diners will also have access to their own Wii games of golf and tennis.

So when will the Maxi Bar open?

"June 2013," jokes Englert, a reference to H Street's endless delays.

Englert actually hopes to have the Maxi Bar open by September.

Honest Abe was attacked again.

If you'll recall, back in May when H Street Country Club first opened, I tried to warn owner Joe Englert that several holes were vulnerable to attack from drunk duffers. He brushed it off like so much pet hair, saying the statuary on his putt-putt course, particularly the gruesome dead presidents on Hole No. 5, could withstand the punishment of Satan's army.

Well, apparently not.

Just weeks after opening, some asshole broke the hands off the rotting skeleton of President Lincoln — and that's not even the worst of it. "Someone tried to skull fuck Abraham Lincoln," Englert notes. I'd prefer not to explain how this could be done to artist Lee T. Wheeler's statue, but let's just say there's a wide-diameter bullet hole in Honest Abe's skull.

Englert's shocked, too, which is saying something for him.

Whether due to unwanted advances toward dead presidents or just poor design, H Street Country Club's owners have been forced to alter several holes since opening day, Englert says. All but one of the dead presidents, for instance, have now been moved outside the coffin that outlines Hole No. 5.

Hole No. 4, in which you putt across a glassy Reflecting Pool and up the stairs of the Lincoln Memorial, has been altered to include AstroTurf on the previously wooden entrance to the monument. And with a simple rerouting of a drain pipe, Hole No. 3 no longer sends your ball bouncing across the golf course when you putt up the ramp of the National Cathedral.

Other changes are coming, too, Englert says, including adding gray AstroTurf to Hole. No. 7 in which you now have to put across concrete and between the legs of a D.C. meter reader.

It's just Englert's style to adapt, he says. "I will change at the drop of a hat," Englert crows.

So Englert? Can I say it now? I told you so.

"You didn't say that. You said Michael Jackson was going to live to be 100," Englert responds.