Just a week after it was closed for 19 violations of the D.C. food code, Breadline was back in business today. To the naked eye, the sandwich shop didn’t look so different from its “excessive live fruit fly” phase. I did notice meticulous, hand-written expiration dates on the lemonade drinks and that the bread rack behind the cash register was gone, an apparent victim of a D.C. Health Department inspector who thought consumers might contaminate the loaves. But almost everything else looked the same.

I don’t mean to imply that Breadline remains as dirty as when the inspector tagged it as a menace to society. What I do mean to say is that I (and probably you) wouldn’t know a health hazard if it bit me (or you) on the ass — at least not from the serving line at this downtown sandwich shop. Could I have known that food was stored at the wrong temperature? Or that there was excessive grease under the hood? Or that dough was rising on the walk-in floor? Or that Breadline was operating without a restaurant license?

Nope, I couldn’t.

What I do know is that Breadline has aggressively tackled the problems in the days since the Health Department pointed them out. The restaurant managers have scrubbed the place clean, to the point that it not only passed re-inspection but it also impressed Breadline founder Mark Furstenberg, a man not known for an easy compliment.

Read More “Breadline Back in Business. If You’re a Fan, You Should Go.” »

The 225 University of Florida athletes who lunched today at Old Ebbitt Grill arrived 15 minutes late, which meant that the cooks and servers had 15 fewer minutes to get this massive crew in and out the door. It was a damn impressive performance in the kitchen and on the dining room floor.

Along the main, two-tier stainless-steel counter in the kitchen, cooks worked in an assembly-line fashion. Dishes started at one end: Cooks would add one thing or another (roasted potato slices, coleslaw) to a plate already loaded down with two entrees — an eight-ounce burger and a chicken sandwich — until the plate reached the end of the counter, where servers would pick it up for a trip to the dining room.

The servers were practically circus performers. With red cloth napkins draped across their left arms, waiters stacked four hot plates — that’s right four — on their appendage, carrying a fifth in their right hand.  Carrying five plates at a time, the wait staff had all 225 students, coaches, friends, and hangers-on served within 20 minutes of sitting down. “It’s managed chaos,” one waitress told me in the kitchen, “but it all works.”

Read More “The University of Florida Arrives, Dines, and Dashes” »

The line cooks at Old Ebbitt Grill know how to handle pressure. They’re used to cranking out 2,000 meals a day, says General Manager Kyle Gaffney, but today will be different. Several teams from the University of Florida, including the national championship football squad, will be eating lunch at the Grill, starting at 11:15 a.m., which means the kitchen will have to feed 225 hungry mouths at the same time.

It’s no easy task.

The first thing the managers had to do was pare down the menu dramatically — to exactly two items. Those hulking footballers will have to choose between chicken or burgers, which, when you think about the general eating habits of college students, is no choice at all. Looks like the grill cooks will be flipping a crap load of burgers today.

The entree choices are based on the kitchen’s ability to cook the proteins slightly ahead of time, says Gaffney, and hold them until all the plates are ready to hit the dining room at once. This explains why those athletes aren’t getting any fries for lunch, either.

There’s just no way to deep fry enough cut potatoes for 225 people and have all those starchy sticks be crisp and fresh.

Looks like coleslaw all around for those big boys and girls.

Many of you, I suspect, will be too busy with Thanksgiving preparations today to jump into the car and fetch lunch. But for those who still need a mid-day break while pushing around papers and hiding your facebook page from the boss, I have something you might like: a make-our-own Reuben at Jackson’s Roasting and Carving Co. in Arlington, where they cure their own brisket.

The woman behind the counter at Jackson’s tells me that people call her the Green Giant, and once you spend just a few minutes with her, you can understand why. She’s a towering young woman with a passion for local, sustainable ingredients. She can tell you the source of just about everything at Jackson’s, from ‘kraut to cheese, and she’s just an employee, not the owner Stefanie Reiser, who named the place after her Jack Russell terrier. You could say I’m a sucker for these kind of women.

Read More “Lunch Call: Eat at Jackson’s Roasting and Carving Co.” »