Last night, I popped into Whole Foods to swing by the pay-per-pound salad bar to create a veggie-centric dinner. Since I haven't been spending too much time cooking at home, keeping fresh vegetables around my apartment is generally a bad move for me. So Whole Foods is counting on its convenience factor to lure me in. I know it's more expensive, but the quality is better. What about value?

Last week, The New York Times' Nate Silver dissected the value of the Whole Foods salad bar, noting that for many ingredients, the salad bar price is on average 70 percent more expensive than the same product on the shelves. That's not a huge surprise, necessarily.

But if you're trying to get more bang for your buck, Silver notes some things to stay away from and other items to seek out: Skip the romaine lettuce and get baby spinach or mesclun instead. Beets, one of my favorite vegetables, are among the worst values, unfortunately. Silver instead suggests indulging with sun-dried tomatoes.

What strategies have you used to keep your trip to the Whole Foods salad bar relatively affordable?

Photo of a Whole Foods salad bar by Flickr user taberandrew using an Attribution 2.0 Generic Creative Commons license

Most recently, however, veteran Los Angeles Times critic S. Irene Virbila was thrown out of a restaurant, but not before a manager could snap her picture and let it fly across the Internet. The restaurant's defense: "Irene is not the person any of us wanted reviewing our restaurant."

Like the weather, the anonymity questions seems to be heading East. Last week during the The Washington Post food critic's weekly online chat, Ask Tom, a chatter brought up spotting Tom Sietsema while dining.

Q. MCLEAN, VA: I saw you at a restaurant recently and the owner (an important culinary figure in DC with tons of restaurants to his name) obviously knew who you were and chatted you up. Is that a worrisome situation in terms of your anonymity? Os [Or] is it just impossible to expect perfect anonymity?

A.: TOM SIETSEMA: Is this the same restaurant where the manager said LOUDLY to everyone at the bar that I was in the house? Grrr. (A friend of mine was drinking at said bar. Thanks, Will. )

I've been covering the local scene for more than a decade now. It's very hard to dine out at Big Deal Places without someone on staff recognizing me. I don't like it, but what can I do?

Being recognized simply requires me to focus even more on how others in the restaurant are being treated. Keep in mind, I visit places multiple times and I sometimes manage not to be noticed at least once, or mid-meal, or whatever.

But one chatter wouldn't let Sietsema get away with that answer.

Q. NOLO, DC: ...Uh, quit and let someone else do the job? That's a glib and fairly (but not entirely) tongue in cheek answer. You've been getting this question more and more often, and you consistently respond that there's nothing you can do about it. And that's simply not true.

A.: TOM SIETSEMA: Happy Wednesday to you, too, friend!

Well, yeah, I could quit, but I'm not ready to do so. Also, I think the question I'm getting from (a few) folks here is more about how anonymity (or the lack of it) influences how I do my job.

Sietsema keeps his reply short here, not delving into a bigger question: Must a critic remain anonymous to accurately review restaurants?

Food magazine Saveur (how to pronounce) recently announced it would start reviewing restaurants both in the United States and abroad. The magazine refuses to hire one person and instead will enlist a roster of well-known food writers to review, not critique, favorite restaurants. Eater asked editor-in-chief James Oseland how such "recognizable" people could perform the job:

You know, it's not 1975 anymore, and sure, a restaurant critic or reviewer can use a false name under which to make a reservation. But service is so finely-tuned in so much of fine dining — not only in America but the rest of the world — there are some pretty crack front-of-house people who can kind of do instantaneous Googling and researching and figuring out. I think those days of absolutely anonymous reviewing have maybe come to pass.

I'd have to agree with Oseland. Just because a critic (or blogger) walks in doesn't automatically elevate the food. Sure, better service can be given to VIPs, but it's not as if a whole new kitchen staff with superior ingredients will be magically in place when someone important walks in. A kitchen can only do so much. What's more important, as Young & Hungry contributor Scott Reitz pointed out, is how a critic can "shape a diner's perception, expectations, and, ultimately, their dining decisions."

So for now, I'm still on Team Sietsema.

While I'd like to think my little column every Friday contributes to more eaters choosing meatless meals, it'll probably be Sodexo that will really change America's diet.

This week, one of the world's largest food service providers announced it will join in the Meatless Monday campaign. In numbers, this means that vegetables will be featured in 900 hospital accounts, 2,000 corporate clients, 175 government sites, 650 college campuses, nearly 500 school districts and 150 private schools, Meatless Monday program director Chris Elam wrote at Huffington Post this week.

As a meat eater, I understand how easy it is to add chicken to salad and bacon to grilled cheese. And too often, restaurants do not offer one single vegetarian item. (A quick finger wag at Ba Bay: such a modern establishment should know better. Somethings can be changed to vegetarian-friendly, but that's not the same.) What I like about Sodexo's approach is the option. It will simply make a plant-based entree available. There's no forcing. Because shaming and torturing customers into a meatless meal will not work. But putting it out there is a promising first step.

And if Sodexo's campaign won't reach everyone, The New York Times might. Mark Bittman, the "vegan-till-6" Times food writer retired "The Minimalist," his straightforward recipe (and rant) column after 13 years. His work will now appear in the paper's opinion pages. This move certifies what many have been writing about, that food has moved from simple sustenance, to snobbery, and now to a political movement. Food not only keeps us alive, but has become a personal mission statement.

Bittman increasingly encourages more meatless meals as well as food choices that promote the health of our planet. With the the Times elevating those principles to the opinion pages, it can only further advance the need for more discussion and action on a new food approach.

I like the way 2011 is honoring the vegetable. I'm hopeful for more to come in this new year.

Photo of China Rose Radishes at the Dupont Circle FreshFarm Market by Stefanie Gans.

Tim Carman in today's Washington Post defends the District's honor from The New York Times, which has historically belittled the nation's capital in the food department, including Jennifer Steinhauser's recent declaration that there's a "steady rise" of "Everyman Eating" on Capitol Hill, with plenty of chefs trying to capitalize on "food that is affordable, nostalgic and deeply accessible."

This all seems to have ruffled Carman's feathers:

Allow me to apply some ointment to our many probe marks and ask a small favor from the Gray Lady's staff: Could you please stop rubbing our noses in our inferiority? We understand by now. You're better than we are. Your fashion is better than ours, your art is better and, of course, your restaurants are better. Washingtonians will forever cower in the long shadow cast by Gotham, nervously picking our nails and hoping you will like us one day. I mean, really like us – and not just like us so that you can tear us to shreds another day.

Fuck yeah!

Photo by Flickr user ReservasdeCoches using an Attribution 2.0 Generic Creative Commons license

On Sunday, Nov. 7, The New York Times published a story that spelled out the U.S. Department of Agriculture's hypocritical role in America's dietary life: The agency that pushes for healthier diets, the paper pointed out, has simultaneously created and partially funded a marketing group designed to add tons more cheese into our lives via products like Domino's pizza.

As you might expect, Michael Moss' story has generated lots of outrage, even a little bit right here on Y&H.

There is just one small problem with this cheesy controversy. Well, two large problems: The USDA didn't create Dairy Management, and the government doesn't fund the marketing group's domestic efforts to inject more cheese into our meals. Several writers have revealed the flawed premise of the Times story.  First among them is author Bill Bishop, who writes:

The story led the Sunday Times and then spread like a house afire. Readers assumed Dairy Management, a “marketing creation” of the government, was using taxpayer money to promote foods so thick with cheese that they would clog a sewer line.

This is all misleading at best, and in large part it's wrong. Down in the story, Moss reports (correctly) that Dairy Management is “largely financed by a government-mandated fee on the dairy industry. But it also receives several million dollars a year from the Agriculture Department….”

But he never explains that Dairy Management is an example of agricultural marketing that is used to promote more than a dozen kinds of food. And he doesn’t tell you that the millions in government money that goes to Dairy Management is only used to open markets in other countries.

Congress has passed legislation that allows food producers to pool their resources in order to promote their products. Producers vote to tax themselves based on their sales, and the money is put into a fund that a board of producers then uses to promote their goods. Farmers call this a checkoff.

The decision on how to spend checkoff funds is made by boards of producers. (The USDA appoints some members of these boards.) The USDA oversees these funds, to make sure there is no impropriety and to see that the programs are honest, but all of USDA’s costs are reimbursed by checkoff money.

Why is the government involved at all in this business? Once producers vote, federal law requires that everybody pays the fee. This cuts out the problem of having free riders, producers who benefit from the advertising but don’t pay for it. The government is needed to create these programs as a way of taking care of the free-rider issue.

There are checkoff programs for corn, soybeans, pork, beef, eggs, honey and avocados. Money is collected when farmers sell their goods, and that money is used to promote these foods. In 1983, Congress passed a bill that would allow for a dairy checkoff.

A few days later, James McWilliams, an associate professor of history at Texas State University, San Marcos, piled on with a short piece for The Atlantic food channel. McWilliams concluded:

So in the end Moss's story was not about the USDA using taxpayer dollars to fund a cheesy agreement between Dairy Management and Domino's Pizza. Instead it was about the dairy industry paying for marketing services—services that happen to be regulated by the USDA—designed to sell more cheese.

And of course that's not much of a story.

So far, the Times has not corrected or clarified its blockbuster story, even though Bishop's piece was published on Nov. 10, more than a week ago. Does the Times know something that Bishop doesn't? (The great Marion Nestle, for example, didn't attempt to correct Moss' story in her own Atlantic piece.) Or are the paper's editors just going back through the story to determine what needs to be corrected or clarified? Or are they just hoping the controversy goes away?

Mike Shanahan's decision-making on Sunday may have been a bitter pill to swallow, but we're here today to rinse the nasty taste out of your mouth. Straight to the food news:

• A new Tryst-type spot called Bistro 18 will be opening up where Oya's Mini Bazaar and African Art used to be at 2420 18th St. NW. (Prince of Petworth)
• Businessman David Von Storch, who owns Capital City Brewing Company, signed a lease last week for his newest location, 901 Restaurant at 901 9th St. NW. (TBD)
• The folks over at Thrillist have a sneak peek at CapMac, the gourmet macaroni and cheese truck planning to roll out sometime next week. (Thrillist)

• Do you and your significant other have the noses of bloodhounds? Can you sniff out a truffle like a pig? Well, there's a casting call 'til 5 p.m. today for a new TV cooking game show for couples in Silver Spring. (Girl Meets Food)
• Tweet news: Bobby Flay is scouting locations for a burger joint in the area. (Nycci Nellis via Metrocurean)
• Hong Kong-style dim sum. A Slow Food feast. Bordeaux blends from New Zealand. You can learn about these foods and drinks at one of the many events scheduled this week. (Washingtonian)
• It's kind of like National Treasure without Nicolas Cage and with a whole lot of food instead. Here's the scoop on the DC Supper Club, a secret underground feast. (Borderstan)
• Jon Stewart who? The big news this weekend came from the Iota Club & Cafe in Arlington which announced it has expanded its draft system to 12 lines! (DC Beer)
• The Halloween Candy Buy Back program is a guilt trip to get kids (and adults) to turn their treats over to support the troops. (DCist)
• Just because your jack-o-lantern is rotting away doesn't mean pumpkin season is over. Here's your guide to everything pumpkin. (Northern Virginia magazine)
• Why people who deep-fry their Thanksgiving turkeys suck. (Serious Eats)
• Former New York Times dining critic Frank Bruni discovered the crude realities of drinking the infamous Four Loko. After knocking back three different flavors, Bruni concluded that the alcoholic energy beverage was "malt liquor in confectionary drag." (Eater)
• Zpizza plans to open a location in Rosslyn. Try to contain your excitement. (Washington Business Journal)
• News from the Twitter world is that Red Hook Lobster Pound is looking to add a second truck to its fleet. (Metrocurean)

Photo by Matthew Wade Davis (m.  treatzone) via Flickr/Creative Commons Attribution 2.0

That was the question I pondered after a City Paper editorial meeting last week in which editor Michael Schaffer, showing off again his ridiculous ability for recall, pointed out that Frank Bruni came out of the closet with his review of the Penthouse Executive Club for the Times.

For the record, Bruni didn't exactly claim to have worn a rainbow-colored mohawk to the club. No, his language was more coy, more teasing, like the strippers who surrounded him at the Manhattan establishment:

We were strangers to such pulchritudinous territory, less susceptible to the scenery than other men might be, more aroused by the side dishes than the sideshow: underdressed, overexposed young women in the vestibule, by the coat check, at the top of the red-carpeted stairs up to the restaurant, on the stage that many of the restaurant’s tables overlook.

Then Schaffer dropped a bomb: He expected a similar, jaw-dropping revelation from my review of the Stadium Club. I knew he was joking — or at least partly joking — but there's actually an important question buried within Schaffer's semi-serious dictate: How much should a food writer reveal in a review of a strip club that serves steaks?

I mean, the subtext of such a place is to bare it all, right? For the dancers, it's their body. For the patrons, it's their desires, repressed or otherwise. For writers, it's our ability to speak honestly about our experiences.

For example: Did I get a lap dance? (No.) Did I flirt with any dancer? (No.) Did I repeatedly try to get a good look at the dancers through the windows of the Stadium Club's restaurant? (Yes.)  Have I been to strip clubs before? (Yes.) Do I enjoy strip clubs? (Can you answer "no" and really be honest? The honest answer is they make me uncomfortable for lots of reasons, which makes me dislike them, but you'd have to be a block of wood not to have some neurons firing away when you enter a strip club.)

The biggest revelation I had at the Stadium Club was this: During the drive back from the club, I turned to my wife and said, in all honesty, that I find clothed women more sexy than naked ones. Don't get me wrong, the human body is gorgeous, but for me, there's something about the drape and cut of clothing that emphasizes the sexiness of the female form.

Now, I have to say, as far as strip club experiences go, you're at something of a disadvantage at the Stadium Club. When eating at the restaurant, you don't have the kind of interaction with dancers that Bruni had at the Penthouse. You won't have an experience like Bruni's:

“Are you hungry?” one of these women said, making hungry sound like an X-rated word. “Ravenous?”

Speechless was more like it. We sat down in a cocktail lounge at the front of the restaurant. A beautiful woman claimed the plush armchair opposite mine. She introduced herself. I wasn’t sure I’d heard her name correctly.

“Mahogany?” I said.

“Yes,” she purred.

I was getting my bearings. “Mahogany,” I asked, “do you know where you’re going to?”

She didn’t miss a beat, noting the reference, summoning the singer, and moving on to another of the dreamgirl’s hits. “I’m ... coming ... out!” she sang, waving her arms, wiggling her hips. Mahogany and I would get along just fine.

She said she was running low on cabernet. I took the cue and asked if I could buy her a fresh glass. “Yes,” she said. “And you can pour it on my toes.”

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

The trailer for Bitter Feast strikes me as way too serious for a film that feels like it should be a send-up of Swimming with Sharks or Hostel. I mean, the very premise sounds like a bad joke (or a chef's wish fulfillment): a canned cook takes revenge on a food blogger whose harsh critique causes his termination.

To be honest, the back story sounds more interesting than the film itself. Writer-director Joe Maggio claims that former New York Times critic Frank Bruni was his inspiration. Or, more precisely, one of Bruni's harsher reviews:

The origins of BITTER FEAST go back to June, 2007. I was reading a Frank Bruni review of Gordon Ramsay’s first New York City restaurant, “London Hotel.” There was a lassitude in Bruni’s writing that gave you the sense he liked the food, but wanted to dislike it, and so he delivered this odd, middling, lazy review, ultimately condemning it for lack of what Bruni considered “the most important thing of all – excitement.” It struck me that this was totally ridiculous and unfair. Then I started thinking what I would do to Frank Bruni if I were Gordon Ramsay. After many strange imaginings, I concluded that more than anything else, what Ramsay would probably want is to somehow force Bruni to live in Ramsay’s shoes for a bit, to teach him empathy, to force him to care about cooking with the intensity that Ramsay cared about it, and then to randomly and arbitrarily shit all over Bruni’s dreams. Thus, BITTER FEAST

Bitter Feast seems to unfold like many horror films: It's an Old Testament morality play soaked in blood. People who commit sins are punished. Of course, such characters are usually punished for casual sex. This time it's for the arrogance of having an opinion — and perhaps having no soul.

The early reviews on Bitter Feast sound promising enough, even though none of them make me think Maggio is striving for dark comedy. Here's what LA Weekly had to say about the flick:

The premise seems like an extra act to Ratatouille: a disgraced celebrity chef (James LeGros) kidnaps a food blogger (Joshua Leonard) who slammed him, forcing a regime of torture and cooking lessons upon his quarry. In writer-director Joe Maggio's delightfully nasty Bitter Feast there are no heroes, only levels of villainy, with two outsize egos bruised in different ways. Once the premise is launched, the film settles down to a simple series of mind-game one-on-ones between the chef and the blogger, each struggling to hold on to the safety of his carefully cultivated persona. Zesty fun for its actors, Feast is at once a sly parody of the celebrity-chef culture spawned by all the cable cooking shows and competitions, and a creepy little chamber-piece. Even Maggio's point of view on blogging captures something unique: Leonard's character likens himself to the Iron Sheik, applying an unlikely but apt wrestling analogy to online provocation.

I duly noted his irony and insult, but told him all the same that I had to go and write up my blog item. Well, this morning, look who made the front page of the New York Times? (Not that you can see it well in the screen capture at left, but here's a link to the front page.)

I suspect Mr. Landrum would say that this only proves the collective drop in standards across all media. Or would you, Mr. Landrum?

This may be a first: A Brooklyn lobster vendor is planning to launch a street truck in D.C. because our bureaucracy is easier to deal with.

So says Susan Povich, co-owner of the Red Hook Lobster Pound in Brooklyn, who told the New York Times earlier this week that she's given up on the burdensome Big Apple bureaucracy in favor of ours. Her quote must be music to the ears of the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, which has been working for years to make it easier for street vendors to set up shop:

“I wanted a truck in New York,” Ms. Povich said. “But it is just an impossible prospect given the licensing and turf wars.” In Washington, she continued, “it’s a great time to get in at the beginning, and we figure that we have at least two more years with a bunch of transplanted Ivy League New Englanders in the government aching for a lobster roll.”

I briefly chatted with Ralph Gorham, Povich's husband, who's so sidewalk-spitting mad about New York bureaucracy he couldn't even talk on the record. He left the PR chores to his wife, who was traveling today and unavailable. I also have a call into DCRA to see where in the permitting and licensing process Red Hook is. More on that as I know it.

I do know this: The mere promise of fresh Maine lobsters on our streets has caused many of us in the food-writing community to start drooling, Pavlovian style, over the buttery rolls to come. The Going Out Gurus has more about Red Hook's frustration with NYC bureaucracy as well as Povich's D.C. connection: her grandfather was the late Post sportswriter Shirley Povich.

Now, if you want to understand why New Yorkers bow before Red Hook with an almost religious servility, just read this outtake from Florence Fabricant's short item in the Times last year:

Mr. Gorham (above), who also makes tables from recycled wood, drives round-trip to Kittery, Me., on Thursdays to buy up to 1,000 pounds of fresh lobsters off the boats. He does not buy lobsters from pounds, where they may have been lolling in the water for days or weeks, shedding flavor and texture.

His lobsters go on sale Friday at noon; by Sunday evening, when he and his wife close, they are usually all gone...

There is, however, one stick in the mud about this Red Hook invasion. District Plates would like to know why everyone is getting all red, hot and bothered about this Northern carpetbagger when we have a great Maryland seafood delicacy right in front of our faces. Good question.

By the way, you can get a sneak preview of Red Hook Lobster Pound next weekend at the Azalea Garden Festival in Bethesda. Douglas Povich, the cousin of Susan and the man behind the local truck, will be showcasing the rolls to come on D.C.'s streets.