Komi

Take a peek inside the new and improved Great Wall Szechuan House [Prince of Petworth]

Black-eyed peas may have little to do with good luck—but at least something to do with slavery. [WaPo]

Prediction: Asian dumplings will be huge in 2012; $26 pasta dishes not so much. [Esquire]

Lots of exciting restaurant openings to look forward to in 2012. None in D.C., apparently. [The Daily Meal]

Here's something different: a restaurant with a "cash tips only" policy [The Bad Deal]

Some tantalizing food porn from the past year [Serious Eats]

Photo by Chris Shott

Pasta Mia has built its considerable reputation on preparing dishes to order and preparing customers to accept the red-sauce house's many limitations. Among them: cash only, no reservations, no substitutions, no bar, no seating until the full party arrives, and no wines by the glass other than the cheap house vino. Restaurants with significantly better pedigrees wish to God they could be so rigid.

And yet: Every day it's open, Pasta Mia has a line of eager diners just waiting to suffer for their mountainous bowl of fusilli with tomato sauce. It's a pasta house for people who like to be dominated.

For me, Pasta Mia has always been like the museums on the Mall: easily available, often attractive, but always ignored. My first visit, in fact, was this past weekend when I waited 45 agonizing, alcohol-free minutes for a spot in Pasta Mia's cramped, dated dining room, where the framed prints of pasta and other Italian ingredients have been hanging on the walls so long that sunlight has bleached them out.

When my dining companion and I were finally granted access to one of the elevated tables, it was in classic Pasta Mia-style. A woman in chef whites handed us our menus, pointed to something up the short set of steps, and let us seat ourselves at a red-checkered two-top. It had the warmth of an all-out safety blitz.

The menu is divided neatly between one page of specials ($13-$19) and one page of "Pasta...Pasta...Pasta..." (all $15). None of the pastas are made in-house, and the vast majority of them are topped with one (sometimes two) of a handful of sauces: cream, tomato, spicy tomato, pesto, or a ragù alla bolognese. Aside from the cream version, I believe all of these sauces can be (in fact, should be) prepared well before opening time.

The bolognese that swamped my companion's spinach ravioli looked like finely ground Hamburger Helper — and didn't taste much more complex than that. The sauce was made more palatable when paired with the overcooked ravioli, which at least tempered the bolognese's grainy, off-putting texture. My bowl of fusilli with tomato sauce and fresh mozzarella was a swimming pool of pasta, cooked perfectly al dente but choking on its overly tart red sauce.

We took more pasta home than we ate, which is routine for anyone who dines here. It's a point of pride and, no doubt, a significant profit center for Pasta Mia, which can justify its inflated prices with each bloated bowl of penne. It works the same for the joint's starters, including this burial mound of chopped watery romaine that serves as the Caesar salad. It's slathered with a garlicy dressing and topped with a shaker full of sawdust-like Parmesan, which left a harsh bitter taste in my mouth.

Maybe I missed Pasta Mia's hey day, all those years ago when my predecessors in this chair used to rave about the place, but after this meal, I'm left with a sneaking suspicion: that Pasta Mia creates its own allure by purposely making you wait, even when empty tables are available.

The restaurant has routinely told its customers that its kitchen is too small to seat more people, but in my examination of the menu, I don't see a whole of lot here that would require a la minute preparation, aside from boiling the pasta, which, if you'll remember, they don't even make in-house.

Don't know about you, but after a long work week, I love to hole up in the kitchen and cook. Carrie and I don't get to do that much, given my obsessive devotion to dining out, but this weekend we're hosting a craft-beer party for the Shitheads that promises to keep us in the kitchen most of Saturday. I can't wait.

So let's see what the blogs have been cooking lately:

• The Cocktail Chronicles borrows a page from the unapologetically parsimonious Kingsley Amis, who knows how to fool party guests about the quality of their cocktails.
• Alinea at Home has your amuse bouche: pear balls nestled in eucalyptus gelatin, which sort of look like "milk-soaked, bloated Apple Jacks" to the author.
• Coconut & Lime has cooked up a simple shrimp, artichoke, and mushroom pasta.
• One Frugal Foodie has a recipe for cheap, hearty German-style wheat bread. Mmm, slater that with salty butter and I'm good to go. 
• And Angela's Food Love has found the perfect cheesecake recipe to help empty that Costco-size jar of orange marmalade in her fridge.

Photo courtesy of Angela Potter.

Jim had been planning this thing—or "ting" as he had come to call it—for nearly a month. It started out as a simple birthday dinner for our friend Lou, he of the award-winning holiday cookie recipe. It practically turned into a quest to replicate the entire menu from the late, lamented A.V. Ristoranto.

The immovable object in this equation was Lou's birthday and his love for red-sauce Italian cuisine. The irresistible force was Jim, a man who's never satisfied with hosting something "grand" when "epic" is within reach. Each of the party guests had volunteered to prepare at least two dishes (and sometimes three) for the evening. Jim's e-mails leading up to the party were encouraging and helpful. Some were even hilarious parodies of goombah language and culture. Sample:

I t'ought we might do a update on dis boitday ting for our good friend, Lou. It is de ting he requested: old-fashioned red-sauce dinner. Like we used to do back in Hoboken. Remember? Sinatra on the box? Garlic in the air? (Or was that Gina's perfume?)

Below, you will see de t'ing you said you would do. If there are question marks, it means, I don't know. Hey, who do I look like, de freakin' Answer Man? Fuhgettabowtit.

In the days leading up to the party, however, some of Jim's e-mails took on an edgier tone. In one, he wrote: "I know this is a terrible thing to be thinking, but it has been bugging me all day that we don't have anything for the table. I may make an additional pasta dish or two. I'll see about the time." In another he said he would try to make escarole, since the people assigned to that dish (ahem, me and the wife) could only find spinach.

By the time the birthday soiree rolled around, we had enough food to feed not only the 12 invited guests but also each guest's 20 closest friends. The primi piatti alone included four pasta dishes and a pasticciata, which is essentially a polenta lasagna. We danced between courses to encourage further gluttony.

No one puked, and Lou loved it all. He loved it so much he ended up with a "I love bacon" tattoo on his ass. Long story, for another time.

The entire menu (well as much as I can remember) and more photos are below the jump.

PRE-DINNER COCKTAIL:

Martinis

PRE-ANTIPASTO ANTIPASTO:

Anchovy-bread spiedini
Tuna spread on crostini

ANTIPASTO:

Two types of stuffed olives
Prosciutto
Stuffed peppers
Provolone
Salami
Mozzarella
Artichokes
Boiled eggs
Sun-dried tomatoes
Crostini

PALATE DIRTIER:

Utica greens

PRIMI COURSE:

Spaghetti and meatballs
Manicotti
Pasticciatta
Shrimp fra diavolo
Vodka penne

SECONDI:

Braciole
Sausage and peppers
Chicken parmesan

CONTORNI:

Broccoli rabe
Escarole
Spinach

DESSERT:

Tiramisu

DESSERT DRINKS:

Sambuca
Amaretto
Limoncello

BEVERAGES:

10 bottles of red wine

BREAD:

Lotsa bread, some of it garlic bread.

Photos by Angela Potter.