Gina Chersevani

A petition urging D.C. Council to pass new food truck regulations has garnered more than 500 signatures in just 24 hours. [HuffPo]

Marvelous Market founder Mark Furstenberg backs out of a new bakery deal in Dupont Circle. [WaPo]

Againn's executive chef Michael Sindoni splits for Dallas. [Dallas Morning News via Eater DC]

Siblings Winnette and Timothy McIntosh, proprietors of Capitol Hill's boutique bakery The Sweet Lobby, are competing on the Food Network show Cupcake Wars. The episode airs Sunday after the Super Bowl. [The Root]

What's up with the latkes served aside French toast at Irish Whiskey? [Bitches Who Brunch]

Here's a peek at the cocktail and beer list for the forthcoming Boundary Road. [H Street Great Street]

Photo by Kagor/GNU Free Documentation License

As part of his ongoing series to review D.C.'s culinary history, Kojo Nnamdi will look back at the 1960s and 1970s when the District started to shed its image as a culinary jerkwater town. That, in large part, was due to the man in the video above: the brilliant, the belligerent Jean-Louis Palladin, whose restaurant at the Watergate put Washington on the map.

For today's program, Nnamdi will speak with former Washington Post food critic Phyllis Richman and Marvelous Market/Breadline founder Mark Furstenberg (the man who likes his portable espresso machine) about D.C.'s transition into a restaurant town.

This conversation will no doubt focus on the  man above. Just watch this crudely produced video for some insight into Palladin's kitchen psyche. He wasn't just a classically trained French chef trying to refashion Washington into some New World Paris.  No, he worked with local ingredients, like the shad roe in the video above, making him (arguably) the true pioneer of the local/seasonal movement in the area.

Tune into Kojo today at noon to hear more about Palladin and the other people who shaped D.C.'s culinary landscape. The Kojo Nnamdi Show can be heard on WAMU, 88.5 FM.

Mark Furstenberg, the master baker who apparently can't rise in the morning without a strong shot of espresso, wrote me shortly after I posted this video about the future of kitchen gadgets. He wanted to take me to task for mocking the portable espresso machine.

Wrote Furstenberg:

I have one and took it with me when I went to Germany to work in a bakery near Munich.  Indeed, I take it with me to California. Easy to use and very nice to have in a hotel.

So there!

I wasn't sure if we were talking about the same machines. So then he sent me the glamor shot above, which is when I asked him to publicly defend the device. Here's what he wrote back:

No, it doesn't make my best shot. I put in a standard pod and heat water to the boil, pump the little machine that resembled a bicycle pump, and pour water into the little reservoir. A little switch pushes the water through the pod and a decent shot of espresso dribbles out. It has a crema, not great, and because the reservoir is plastic, the espresso isn't as hot as I would like.

But I can make it in the bathroom of my hotel room — and it's a lot better than nothing at all.

In Napa Valley, when I am there for Greystone, I can buy some unpasteurized milk, heat it in a microwave and have a faux cappuccino. No foam.

Mark, maybe this is impudent of me. But don't they have a Starbucks in Napa?

As soon as the pie hit the table at Pizzeria Orso, I knew I was in the presence of Edan MacQuaid, the pizzaiolo who has worked the wood-burning ovens at 2Amys, Pizzeria Paradiso, and RedRocks. I'd recognize his margherita pizza anywhere.

It's not just the puffy crust, mottled with char and radiating a wood-smoke aroma as enticing as freshly baked bread. It's the careful arrangement of colors: the rosy splashes of tomato sauce, the white eggshell dollops of fresh mozzarella, the wilted myrtle-colored leaves of basil, and the pale green rivulets of olive oil, which, in turn, tint the exposed crust to the most delectable shade of yellow.

This is pizza-making as art.

The flavors are even more intoxicating than the colors. There's a balance to MacQuaid's margherita that I don't find with many other interpretations. The fresh acid sweetness of the tomatoes, the cool creaminess of the mozz, the salty smokiness of the cornicione, the cleansing licorice of the basil, and the....the incomprehensible sourness of the crust.

I keep thinking that I'm imagining the sourness, so I keep eating more crust to find out, even long after I'm full. The sourness is always present.

It's not until I speak with MacQuaid a few days later that it all makes sense. The pizzaiolo says he puts a little sourdough into his pizza dough, which I think is a great, ballsy move. It not only adds flavor, but it's a small razz to the Neapolitan polizia who want to dictate exactly how their pies should be produced, right down to the hydration level in the pizza dough.

But then I remember that MacQuaid has affixed the letters "DOC" next to his margherita pizza on the menu. The letters stand for "Denominazione di Origine Controllata," and they imply that MacQuaid is following the rules, set down by the Italian Ministry of Agriculture in 2004, for a genuine margherita pizza from Naples.

Now, I'm no authority on these Neapolitan pizza rules. Every time I think I understand them, someone tells me I don't. But from what I've read, I'm pretty damn sure sourdough is not allowed in a DOC margherita pizza. I ask MacQuaid about the addition. He has a ready answer.

Back before the invention of commercial yeasts, MacQuaid tells me, pizza makers used sourdough starters to facilitate fermentation in their dough. There is an strong argument among pizzaioli that such a method doesn't violate the spirit of the Italian government's Neapolitan pizza laws. I floated this theory by the notoriously scrupulous baker and occasional pizza maker, Mark Furstenberg, and he agreed that it makes sense.

So I asked MacQuaid the obvious question: Did he secure official certification from the pizza authorities for his margherita pie?

"All that I'm stating there [with the DOC on his menu] is that the margherita is authentic," MacQuaid tells me. "Is it certified DOC? No....But it meets the standards of the DOC certification."

You know what? I've come to the point where I don't care much about this whole authentic, by-the-book Neapolitan pizza certification puffery. At least not here in the states, where we have a culture of freewheeling experimentation. When I travel to Italy, then I'll care about authentic Neapolitan pizza. Back here, I just want a good, honest, full-flavored pie. If it's merely based on tradition, that's good enough for me.

Here's the bottom line for me: Authentic or not, legal or not by Italian agriculture rules, MacQuaid's margherita pizza is the best pie I've eaten in a long time. 2Amys, you've been officially put on notice.

OK,I know I said on Friday that Y&H was finished with our short hymn to a mother's influence on chefs, but late yesterday, Mark Furstenberg, a man of some renown, wrote a moving tribute to his mum and her kitchen skills. You need to read it, and not just because it's a 71-year-old chef praising his mother, who's nearing her 100th birthday. This is a missive from another era:

My mother will reach her 100th birthday on May 20th and she is in very good shape. That fact alone would seem to vindicate her cooking (as well as her genes and her will and her energy).

I was one of six children. We were an eating family. We ate dinner together; we even ate breakfast together. And although our food was influenced by my father's having been born in Sweden (herring and knaeckebrot for breakfast), my mother made the food decisions.

She came from a somewhat aristocratic German-Jewish family and her mother didn't cook. Her family's meals were prepared by Miss Hen (one generation out of Slavery) followed by Bobbelee who started working for my grandparents when she was 15 years old. (She lied about her age.) My mother may never have turned on a stove until the War.

But in 1942 my father was assigned to Florida and my mother had to learn to cook. Happily she had an aptitude.

Our family dinners were simple — it was a time of simple food. I have memories from the War when rationing demanded from even experienced cooks a level of ingenuity that our affluence today has made entirely unnecessary. We didn't have meat very much; we certainly didn't have butter. But even without ingredients easily obtainable now we ate very well.

It was in the Fifties that my mother's cooking flourished. She used to describe meals as "the flower of my art." Scallops, pot roast, Swedish meatballs, Beef Stroganoff, always vegetables simply cooked, nearly always potatoes that my father loved, salads, and desserts. We ate well. The dinner table was chaotic. Six children, all eaters, my father trying to tell stories from his workday, my mother trying to gather our attention for my father. She was the cook; she was the mistress of ceremonies.

"Mom," someone (usually me) would say, "We just had lamb." And my mother would bolt from her chair and bring back from the kitchen her notebook, look through it to say, "We haven't had lamb since March 10th."

It's sad that what we have exists so little now. Dinner wasn't always joyful. My sister (Carla Cohen, owner of Politics and Prose) regularly knocked over her water glass and, in anticipation of my father's disapproval, would begin to cry.

But whether joyful or not, stormy or not, our dinner was a family time, the most important family time. And always my mother was in charge.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

The picture to the left, believe it or not, is my recipe for two pounds' worth of pizza dough. It's based on a recipe forwarded by Mark Furstenberg, the master baker late of G Street Food. He suggested I reduce the hydration by five percent so the dough would be easier to work with. I felt like I was back in algebra class, trying to figure out the baker's math on this baby.

My headaches didn't stop there, either. Once I did the math, I had to convert it into ounces, since my home scale doesn't weigh in grams. Then I had to find a place in our old Takoma Park bungalow that was warm enough to let the dough rise — but near enough to a TV set so I could watch college football and occasionally fold the goddamn dough. My chosen spot, the basement, was not ideal.

Oh, the compromises of a home baker who grew up in Nebraska.

The Y&H pie in all its salty and crispy glory.

The next day, I pulled the dough from the fridge, let it warm and rise some more, and then shaped the ball into the closest thing to a pizza round. (This is when I learned about "resistant" dough and how to deal with the reluctant bastard.) I ladled on the home-cooked sauce (long cooked to sweeten the sauce and cut down on tartness) and applied the basil leaves, fresh mozzarella, Italian sea salt, and olive oil.

I took the prepared round to some friends' house for New Year's Eve and baked the thing on a stone. Ten minutes later, I practically had to pry the pizza off the stone because it had sat too long before we popped the pie into the oven. My fellow partiers said they enjoyed the pie; they marveled that it was my first pizza ever made from scratch.

My own review?

I loved the thin, crispy crust, which remained horizontal even when held aloft. I didn't love its lack of flavor, which I blame on the cold basement and my addiction to college football. I also wanted more chew to the dough; it was crispy, all right, but not chewy the way all good crusts are.

Finally, the whole thing was too salty (though not absurdly so). I made the classic rookie mistake: I salted everything to taste, not taking into account the pizza as a whole, how the salt would become too overpowering when I brought the dough and the sauce together and shaved a little umami-loving Parm over the top.

This is why superb pies take weeks and weeks (months and months? years and years?) to perfect. My hat is off today in humble recognition of D.C.'s best piemakers.

Cupcakes. People love to eat 'em and love to read about 'em, too. The little frosted cakes devoured two of the top five spots this week. Well, I should say that subjects tangentially related to cupcakes took two of the top five spots.

Take a look:

1. Furstenberg's Departure from G Street: What Does It Say About D.C.? (*)
2. The Georgetown Cupcake Range Rover
3. Savour/Sutra to Open This Week in Adams Morgan
4. Hello Cupcakes. Goodbye Profits?
5. Brasserie Beck to Open Second Location in Atlantic City

At least that was Furstenberg's current idea as to why G Street started so slowly.

Y&H asked for your thoughts on this theory, and you responded with all manner of opinions, some even related to the original theory.

Karly, obvious a good listener, wrote in:

I don't necessarily disagree with the statement that people don't want to think about their food during a stressful workday, but my one and only experience at G Street Food was stressful, regardless of the food I ate. It was busy, confusing, and the staff weren't helpful. Furstenberg admitted that the food he served was not your typical DC lunchtime fare, but the menu offered little to no explanation of what you were ordering or getting. It is sad that he left, I think the place has (had?) a lot of potential, but it just needed some time and some tweaks.

Mike, on the other hand, wasn't buying any theory other than the one that postulates this: G Street sucks. Writes Mike:

I think that if you check Yelp's reviews of the place, you will note the consistent comments on the average food and exorbitant prices. Any other theory is just bullshit.

[Y&H Note: Mike is correct about the constant complaints on Yelp about price, but a number of folks also mention how much they like the food at G Street. This is classic blogger-commentary subterfuge from Mike: Ignore the material that doesn't suit your argument.]

Both Ron and Jim wrote in to express their admiration for G Street and to support the idea of stretching one's palate at lunch. Writes Ron:

I really liked G St and was amazed how slow the place was. Perhaps it was lack of publicity, a somewhat sleepy location? I like trying new stuff for lunch, I've become a fan of bulgogi after trying it off the cart at 14th and L and I had my first bahn mi at G St (I can't believe I'm 46 and can say that)

Jim was even more effusive for G Street:

I have been eating at G Street Food every week since it opened –usually two or three times per week precisely BECAUSE it allows me to stretch the limits of my palate. After working in downtown offices for 30 years, why would I want to go somewhere where my choices are the usual tuna or deli-meat sandwiches? Even the chinese buffets introduced in the 90's are now "old hat." The success of Breadline (for almost 15 years) and G Street Food must be due at least in part to being unpredictable.  While you can get a real carved turkey or egg salad sandwich, if thats what you really want, when you enter you never know if you might end up with something completely
different that you love–like a Vietnamese pancake with shrimp, a spicy lamb pizza, an oyster po-boy, or peanut soup.  Even his new takes on the sloppy joe and meatball sandwich are worthwhile because of the step up in quality ingredients.  D.C. is one of the few cities where this can succeed–you wouldnt try it in Pittsburgh.  The truth is, its expensive, and office workers are notoriously cheap–they pay $6.50 for Sysco chicken-cube sandwich at Cosi, or $5.99 for a Mcdonald's meal deal, but
then balk at paying an extra $1.50 for food that is truly top quality.

You can also read the comments from the original blog post here.

We all know how hard it is to get a good, gourmet sandwich in this town. Well, it got a lot harder yesterday with the news, via WaPo's Tom Sietsema, that master baker Mark Furstenberg has decided to leave G Street Food, the once-and-former street food operation that turns out an excellent banh mi.

Y&H caught up with Furstenberg yesterday morning to ask him if selling street food from a brick-and-mortar building was a concept doomed to fail from the start — or if Washingtonians just aren't into street food. My question is based on an unavoidable fact: not enough people are eating at G Street, which has forced the owners to start looking for ways to cut costs, a situation that did not always sit well with a perfectionist like Furstenberg.

"I just think that at G Street,  we needed more time to get this established," the Bread Line founder told Y&H. "I don't know if there's any reason that this can't be moved inside."

Furstenberg has an alternative theory as to why G Street Food hasn't attracted the numbers it had originally envisioned: People don't want to think about food during lunch.

"I think I underestimated the degree to which people want comfort food for lunch," Furstenberg says. "They don't want to be distracted by food."

People, in other words, don't necessarily want to ponder (or luxuriate in) their meal during lunch time. They want something familiar and something quick.

Furstenberg may be onto something here. What do you think, Y&H Nation? Do you want to stretch the limits of your palate during lunch, during a potentially stressful work day, or do you just want comfort foods? E-mail me and let me know your thoughts.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Not Furstenberg's rolls. Make 'em yourself to see what they look like.

As we head into 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. But it’s not easy.

When I called G Street Food baker and chef Mark Furstenberg for recommendations on where to buy good dinner rolls, he immediately suggested that home cooks make their own instead.

I balked. I said that it's impossible to find local flour, and local was the theme of my assignment: build a holiday dinner from metro area ingredients. At least with store-bought rolls,  I thought, I could kid myself they were local.

That's when Furstenberg told me about Patrick Henry All-Purpose flour from Byrd Mill, which you can buy it online (minimum $10 order). Hmmm, Ashland, Va., that sounds close enough to home to qualify as local to me (even if the wheat is, no doubt, from somewhere far, far away). I accepted Furstenberg's re-direct. I even accepted, with open arms and gullet, his recipe for buttery homemade dinner rolls.

Furstenberg's recipe is after the jump.

Mark Furstenberg's Thanksgiving Dinner Rolls

17.5 ounces Patrick Henry All-Purpose from Byrd Mill

12.3 ounces water at approximately 60 degrees F.

.4 ounces salt

a sprinkle of instant dry yeast

1 stick butter

1. Put flour and water in the bowl of an electric mixer and combine them.  Then let them rest for 10-20 minutes.   Add yeast and mix for two minutes on low speed, adding salt.  Mix for two minutes on low speed after salt addition.
2. Put the dough into a bowl and cover.  Refrigerate overnight or for several hours.
3. Dump the dough onto a lightly floured counter and fold it, bringing one side into the middle, then the other side.  Then bring the two unfolded ends into the middle.  Put the dough folded side down into a bowl sprayed lightly with pan spray.
4. Allow the dough to rest in the bowl for two hours or until risen and puffy.
5. Fold the dough as before and put it folded side down on a counter.
6. After 30 minutes cut the dough into little pieces of approximately one ounce..
7. Dip each piece in melted butter and put them into a round or square cake pan.
8. Allow them to rise for one hour or until light and puffy.
9. Sprinkle them with coarse sea salt and bake them in an oven pre-heated to 450 degrees until they are deeply browned.

Photo by Elin B via Flickr Creative Commons, Attribution License