The editors promptly tore it apart, word by word. I’m not sure how many editors had a say on my first draft, but it felt like management was treating my Y&H debut as the journalistic equivalent of a tackling dummy. I figured it was a test of my mettle, particularly when an editor told me I wasn’t brilliant enough to use metaphors. I couldn’t tell if he was bullshitting, but I knew for certain that if I were to survive as the City Paper food columnist, I was going to need to develop thicker skin. This was no place for wallflowers who want to craft their prose in monk-like solitude, guided only by their “muse” and some arch, overly precious sense of the food world. The editors stood steadfastly against preciousness on all fronts.

Half a decade later, I look back on the edit of that first column (sample comments: “Fuck this; I hate this equivocation. Forget what I said up top about you keeping a strong POV throughout this piece” and “I don’t give a flying fuck what your entrée was!”) with a mix of nostalgia and bile-churning, spit-hurling anger, which was probably the whole point. Editors had time back then to find your pressure points and see if, by pressing them, they could make you a better writer and reporter.

Don’t worry. I’m not going to turn my farewell column into some sentimental, revisionist claptrap about how journalism needs more editors who treat their reporters like Bo Pelini treats his star quarterback. No, I’m just reflecting back on how much things have changed in five years, starting with the very job I’m leaving. Back in February 2006, when I officially became the paper’s next Young & Hungry, I wrote exactly one column a week. I went through at least three drafts on each column. I answered further questions from the copy desk. I didn’t blog at all. We didn’t even have a blog at City Paper. And today? Well, let’s just say I miss the old work load.

The food and dining scene has experienced its own growing pains. Consider that in late 2005:

• Washingtonians had a president who never visited restaurants. George W. Bush was content to sit in the White House, choking down pretzels while watching football. By contrast, Washington now has a president who has stopped at some of the area’s most recognizable restaurants, both high and low end, from Komi to Five Guys Burgers & Fries. In one instance, the president’s visit propelled a popular eatery, Ray’s Hell Burger, into the stratosphere. Owner Michael Landrum was forced to put his planned seafood restaurant on hold and expand the Hell Burger empire. That’s a good problem for a local restaurateur to have.

• The District boasted restaurants by Todd English and Charlie Palmer, but our biggest celebrity chef was a Frenchman, Michel Richard, who dared to base his operations in D.C. In the intervening years, chefs of varying celeb status have decided to throw up a restaurant and drill down into our wallets. On one end you have a TV-generated, semi-celebrity like Spike Mendelsohn who has also made D.C. his home, while on the other, you have a Michelin-star hoarder like Alain Ducasse who thought he’d send some emissaries down to D.C. and start cashing in on his considerable reputation. There are benefits on both sides of this star spectrum, but there are also sinkholes. Some of these culinary carpetbaggers take dining dollars (and sometimes kitchen talent) away from the home team.

Michel Richard

• Roberto Donna still had his Galileo empire. He not only had the flagship restaurant, but also the Osteria and the Laboratorio. He was also hawking grilled sandwiches on the sidewalk outside of Galileo. Five years and one failed restaurant later, the chef returned to D.C. with a storm cloud over his head. He owes taxes to Arlington County, owes money to former employees, and owes the people a better accounting of his abuse of public money.

• H Street NE was a great spot for fried whiting and a tall boy. No strip has changed as much as this patch of Northeast. The Ohio Restaurant was one of the early pioneers on H Street, hawking chef-driven soul food from a ragged outpost at H and 14th streets. But other dining destinations soon popped up. Granville Moore’s, Taylor Gourmet, Sticky Rice, Liberty Tree, Biergarten Haus, H Street Country Club, The Atlas Room. These (and others yet to come) are turning the street into a dining destination. Imagine what the area will be like once the city completes that goddamn streetcar project.

• Unless you count those motorized hot dog wagons down by the National Mall, the District didn’t have a single food truck. D.C.’s streets have made a remarkable turnaround in the past two years, breaking the death grip of the depot owners who have controlled the city’s curbside eats for decades. If and when the D.C. Council ever passes new vendor regulations, you can expect to see even more variety on our streets. I know for certain that Kushi, my current favorite for Japanese cooking, plans to launch a yakitori truck in D.C. But what the District really needs, as a colleague recently pointed out, is a gourmet coffee truck. Nick Cho, are you listening? Have you paid off your tax bill yet?

• The craft beer craze was just in its embryonic phase in the District. We had brewpubs, of course, but if you wanted to sample the best of the world’s craft beer, you pretty much had to give your money to Dave and Diane Alexander, whether at the Brickskeller in Dupont or Regional Food and Drink in Chinatown. These days? You can’t wander the streets without running face-first into a Dogfish Head tap. Craft beers are everywhere. Rustico (two locations now, with perhaps more to come), CommonWealth Gastropub, Pizzeria Paradiso (three locations), Meridian Pint, Brasserie Beck, Granville Moore’s, Black Squirrel, Restaurant 3, and the mother of all beer emporiums, ChurchKey, have transformed D.C. into suds city.

• Peter Chang and Fabio Trabocchi were still cooking in area kitchens. At the time, Chang was mesmerizing diners at TemptAsian Cafe in Alexandria, while Trabocchi was blowing away patrons with his gourmet takes on Italian cooking at Maestro in Tysons Corner. Within two years, both Chang and Trabocchi were gone. But after a rollercoaster ride in New York City, Trabocchi is returning next year to open Fiola in the former Le Paradou space in Penn Quarter. And Chang? Well, after forcing his fans to follow him around the country like jilted lovers, the chef has apparently settled down in Charlottesville, where he’s scheduled to open Peter Chang China Grill in January. Has anyone started a pool yet to see how long it lasts?

• The Washington area had only three four-star restaurants, according to Tom Sietsema’s 2005 Dining Guide. They were Maestro, Citronelle, and the Inn at Little Washington. Sietsema’s latest Dining Guide listed five four-star performers. Citronelle and the Inn made repeat appearances on the list, joined by Komi, Rasika, and Restaurant Eve. A previous four-star restaurant, CityZen in the Mandarin Oriental, was nowhere to be found on Sietsema’s 2010 survey. No one can accuse the critic of ratings creep at the top end.

• The boutique pizza market had two main players: Pizzeria Paradiso and 2Amys (OK, and maybe Ella’s). The pie options today are stupefying, a reminder that the recession continues to force many restaurateurs into safe, cheap, and consumer-friendly choices. The new pizzerias are too numerous to mention, but here’s one indication of how ridiculous our pie market is today: Not one but two Frenchmen have opened pizza joints (Pizze in Woodley Park, and Seventh Hill in Capitol Hill), no doubt generating a small forest of raised eyebrows among the Gallic community, which tends to view Italian cuisine as something to feed the family pet.

• There was no Urban Daddy, no Thrillist, no Tasting Table, no TBD, no NBC Feast, and damn few bloggers ambitious enough to fight for every scoop that used to land like a butterfly onto the lap of print journalists. The competition for information today is fiercer than ever.

With this week’s column, I’m ending a City Paper tenure that has had its own mood swings. My beat and responsibilities have had to evolve and expand to reflect a changing media environment as well as a changing culinary one. This is the truth of modern journalism. We must find new ways to look at old subjects. We must venture beyond our usual circles to find the next person who wants to revolutionize what we eat. Anyone in my line of work knows that food can never, ever be treated like something too precious to withstand tough scrutiny. But my time at the paper, from that brutal first edit back in the one-column-a-week days to the radical shifts in job responsibilities that accompanied the old news media’s discovery of the Internet proves that we dead-tree types are more adaptable than you think.

Eatery tips? Food pursuits? Send suggestions to hungry@washingtoncitypaper.com.

Photos by Darrow Montgomery

The seriously creamy buffalo mozz at Pizze

Restaurants constantly evolve, which is why I try to revisit as many as possible in between checking out the new ones that come along. I particularly try to revisit the places that I have previously panned, like the trio of pizzerias below.

To be fair here, I didn't really pan any of them —  save, perhaps, RedRocks in Columbia Heights. I think it would be more accurate to say that I expressed reservations about Pizze in Woodley Park and Pizzeria Paradiso near Dupont Circle.

So let me start with the best of the re-evals:

• My most recent pie at RedRocks was just last night, and the joint's Margherita was nearly perfect. The cornicione, or crust's edge, was puffy and charred, which are good signs of excellent dough-making and baking. Better yet, these crispy-chewy crusts were full-flavored, balancing salt and yeast with the unique bitter-sweet qualities of char. It was the best-tasting crust I've had since my visit to Lombardi's in NYC a month or so ago. The sauce itself mellowed out the tomato's more acidic qualities while maintaining its essential fruitiness. Only the buffalo mozzarella could be improved, I thought. I would have preferred a creamier version.
• The buffalo mozz at Pizze, however, was spectacular. It was rich and creamy and generously applied to my recent order of Margherita at the pizzeria below Petits Plats. In fact, I thought every single ingredient on this pie, from the sweet sauce to the flavorful crust, was far superior to the first time I tried this round. My lone complaint had to do with the baking time. The pizza-maker, clearly under pressure during a lunch-time rush, did not allow the pie to fully cook, which shortchanged his creation in terms of both texture and flavor.
• The crust on my Margherita at the new suds-drenched Paradiso off Dupont was more cracker-y than I remembered with previous pies at Ruth Gresser's place. It was also lighter in density and chew than I recall. But I discovered an interesting thing about Gresser's crusts: If you sprinkle them with just the smallest amount of olive oil, they are transformed into a full-bodied bite, as if they're thirsty for a little more moisture and fat. It's as if her crusts were made for dipping, like a good crusty Italian bread served with a plate of fruity, extra-virgin olive oil. Try it and see if you don't agree.

French Non-Resistance: Petits Plats goes Italian with Pizze.

It's a sign of the times that local restaurateurs continue to place their trust in the good ol' Italian pie. Cheaper to produce than many other dishes — and one with an expansive, built-in fan base — pizza has become the low-risk option for a number of new and/or established restaurateurs as they ride out the recession.

Two of the District's newer Italian operations, Ristorante Posto and Potenza, made sure to include pizza ovens in their build-outs.  Restaurateur Ashok Bajaj has installed one, too, in his forthcoming Bibiana Osteria-Enoteca on New York Avenue NW. Vapiano continues its colonization of the D.C. market with its fast-casual pies, and the Fairfax-based Paisano's plans to roll out 10 more 'za outlets by the end of next year. Hell, even a Frenchman decided to bite the bullet and open a pizza take-out.

Now, two more pizzerias look to join the ever-expanding ranks.

Spiro Gioldasis, perhaps better known as the general manager at Mrs. K's Toll House in Silver Spring, plans to venture out on his own with Pacci's, a 65-seat restaurant specializing in antipasti, fresh salads, and brick-oven pizzas.

Before coming to America and working at the historic Mrs. K's, Gioldasis specialized in pizza in his native Greece. Pacci's, named after Gioldasis' two sons, will be located on Georgia Avenue in Silver Spring and is set to open next month.

Far more nebulous are the plans for the former Fratelli la Bufala space in Georgetown. The D.C. outlet of the massive Italian chain went up in smoke faster than a pie left in a wood-burning oven. The rumor is, according to one industry source, is that it will reopen as yet another pizzeria. More as I know it on both projects.

Thanks to the power of the internets, the first two spots on this week's list belong to posts from last week: one on the departure of Bill Catron from Brasserie Beck and the other on the Cameron Perks tragedy. After that, the Top 5 looks like this:

1. The Sounds of Slurping: Get Ready for D.C. Noodle Shops
2. Ray's the Net Is No More. It's Now Ray's: The Catch
3. Beard Semi-Finalists Just Announced: D.C. Is Well Represented
4. So Where the Hell Can You Find Jamie Stachowski Charcuterie in This Town?
5. Pizze in Woodley Park: Taking Aim at the Jumbo Slice Culture

The guy manning the Wood Stone oven at Pizze, the new Neapolitan-style pizzeria in the basement of Petits Plats, is a work in progress, much like the place where he's employed. A manager is giving him instructions on how to put together my Margherita pizza. After rolling out a beautifully thin skin of house-made dough, the neophyte ladles out a too-generous portion of tomato sauce, strategically drops clumps of fresh buffalo mozzarella all over the round, places a handful of basil leaves on top, and then sprinkles salt and drizzles some olive oil over everything.

I have to admit that, before the dude even places my pie in the oven, I want to change at least four different things about his preparation: I want less sauce, more salt, and more basil. And I really wish I could convince him to add the basil after the round has been in the oven for a few minutes, so that the leaves won't shrivel up until they look like dehydrated ancho peppers. Oh, and I'd prefer to see that olive oil drizzle after the pie has been cooked, not before.

Regardless, the newbie pizza man watches over my pie like a cat stalking a mouse. I like his singular attention to the task. He uses a peel to rotate the round as the crust nearest to the gas flames begins to blister; he wants to make sure no part of my pizza is scorched to death. By the time he finally takes the pie out of the oven, I'm practically foaming at the mouth in hunger.

Overall, the pizza is not a bad. It's also not great, but the shop is so new, you don't expect greatness yet, even if the esteemed Edan MacQuaid was a consultant on the project. The sauce is too tart for my tastes—and too much of it. I'd like to see the sauce cooked down longer to promote more sweetness. The crust is chewy, just as I like it, but it's also slightly gummy. I think the whole round could have stayed in the oven, which registered only about 340 degrees F on the external thermometer, for another minute or so.

The ingredients are clearly first-rate. The pie-makers just need more experience under their belts. They're already producing the best rounds in the Adams Morgan/Woodley Park area, but given the neighborhoods' preference for the jumbo slice, that's not saying much.

God, I'm praying hard the Pizze will be the first step toward killing off the jumbo slice culture once and for all.