Any guesses which ones? The guy has already been to Ben's Chili Bowl, Five Guys, Ray's Hell Burger, Ted's Bulletin, Restaurant Eve, Good Stuff Eatery, 1789 and Equinox, among other places.

Photo by Фото пресс-службы Президента России/Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License

Multiple tipsters have reported spotting the D.C. mayor at Danny Meyer's heralded new burger joint in Dupont Circle on Tuesday night. One witness emailed the above photo of Hizzoner standing inside the glassy storefront on 18th Street NW. Another offered some juicy details about the mayor's order:

"Vince Gray and his posse waited in line and ate at the new Shake Shack yesterday...he had the "Shake Stack" a monster burger and cheese stuffed portobello  mushroom...860 calories..."

I'm presuming the writer is referring to the "Shack Stack," described on the menu as a cheeseburger and a 'shroom burger topped with lettuce, tomato and the house secret "Shack sauce." According to the restaurant's web site, the stacked sandwich weighs in at 850 calories and costs $8.75.

Maybe not "the Cadillac of burgers," per se. More like an SUV.

I have contacted the mayor's office to find out what the mayor thought of the food, the line and the overall Shack experience. I'll post an update when I hear back.

Contributed photo

As stated in a previous post ("Should a Veggie Burger Imitate a Hamburger or Be Its Own Sandwich?"), I feel that a veggie burger only works when it tries to succeed on its own merits, rather than merely attempt to mimic beef.

As I've searched far and wide for this meatless ideal, I've come across a dearly disappointing version at Black Squirrel, which tried in vain to secure the very wild grains of quinoa with flimsy strips of eggplant. And, while I normally advocate for eating real food over processed, weird, made-in-a-lab crap, I actually found joy in the TVP Garvey burger from Everlasting Life and didn't particularly care for the lentils, mushrooms, cornmeal and flour that create a bland veggie burger at Luna Grill.

Recently, I've found two meatless burgers that have made my boyfriend, a noted beef fiend, wishing he had ordered like me.

Albeit better known for its beer, Mad Fox Brewing Company presents a surprisingly spicy black bean burger, thanks to ground cayenne and chili powder, rounded out by cumin, and held together with flour and bulgur wheat. The house-pickled onions and the house-made bun only increase the pleasure of the burger, although I wished for a heavier coating of the cilantro pesto lining the bottom bun.

I thought sitting outside watching a game, while trying to avoid the onion loaf, would occupy my time at Lou's City Bar. Instead, my attention turned to its veggie burger, another solid black bean-based patty, served with a kicky red pepper aioli. I upped the wow factor, asking for guacamole to top my burger, and of course it worked. But even without the creamy green topping, the burger was a hit.

So far, it seems, those veggie patties springing from the humble black bean tend to fare best. Veggie burger makers, take note.

Photo of the Mad Fox black bean burger by Bennett Lipscomb

Ray's Hell Burger from Best of D.C.: Burgers

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

Y&H doesn’t have the bona fides to judge where on the spectrum between actual political rally and Yuksapalooza Saturday’s “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” will fall. But he does know there will be plenty of hungry out-of-towners combing through guide books and looking for advice on where to eat. The last thing you’d want, as a Jon Stewart fan, is to end up at an establishment better suited to the Colbert Nation. Thankfully, Y&H is here to help.

Below are a number of the District’s tourist-approved dining spots. Y&H has taken the liberty of labeling which ones are more suitable for Daily Show devotees and which ones cater to the church of The Colbert Report.

• Celebrity chef restaurants

Washington, D.C., is the new Vegas, at least in terms of celebrity chefs, who have decided our money is as green as Sin City’s even if they can’t legally spend it on hookers here. In the past few years, Eric Ripert (Westend Bistro), Wolfgang Puck (The Source), Alain Ducasse (Adour), Michael Mina (Bourbon Steak), and Jean-Georges Vongerichten (J&G Steakhouse) have all opened up shop in the District. They have one thing in common: A Stephen Colbert-like belief in their sheer brilliance, a combination of talent and hubris that makes them think they can go into anyone’s neighborhood and take over the place.

Westend Bistro, 1190 22nd St. NW, (202) 974-4900

The Source, 575 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, (202) 637-6100

Adour, 923 16th St. NW, (202) 509-8000

Bourbon Steak, 2800 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, (202) 944-2026

J&G Steakhouse, 1515 15th St. NW, (202) 661-2440

• Ray’s Hell Burger

President Obama has made two stops (and counting) at Michael Landrum’s Arlington patty parlor, but those trips alone do not place Hell Burger in the Daily Show camp, given Stewart’s repeated criticisms of the president. No, what does the trick is the fact that Landrum, like Stewart, refuses to align himself with any particular cause or constituency, except for one. With Stewart, the cause is comedy. With Landrum, it’s undermining the bloated economics of the restaurant industry.

Ray’s Hell Burger, 1725 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, (703) 841-0001

• Busboys and Poets

Andy Shallal’s chainlet is a bastion of progressive thought and cost-conscious cooking, which alone qualifies it as a dirty little lefty hangout. But take a few steps back from the liberal vortex and peer into Shallal’s macro business plan—there are already three B&P outlets with a fourth coming to Harlem—and you see good ole capitalist empire building. Rupert Murdoch would be proud.

Busboys and Poets, 2021 14th St. NW, (202) 387-7638; 1025 5th St. NW, (202) 789-2227; 4251 S. Campbell Ave., Arlington, (703) 379-9757.

• Five Guys Burgers and Fries

When announcing his rally last month, Stewart told viewers that our political discourse is dominated by loud, divisive, fringe voices on both sides. His Rally to Restore Sanity, he said, would be a chance to “Take It Down a Notch for America.” Similarly, Five Guys, the once-proud burger joint from Northern Virginia, has been taking it down a notch for America even since it started franchising across the country in 2003. Just ask the noted burgerologist Josh Ozersky, who wrote last month: “Five Guys is as bad a burger as there is.”

Check fiveguys.com for locations.

• Galileo III

Roberto Donna may have been the original Tea Bagger. Long before those anti-tax and anti-big government zealots started mailing tea bags to the White House, Donna was staging his own revolt. The entire time he ran Bebo Trattoria in Crystal City, the chef never paid a single dime to Arlington County in meals taxes. When the authorities finally put the screws to Donna, he owed more than $156,000, including penalties and interest. Now Donna has to pay his back taxes or face jail time. Stephen Colbert himself might want to dine at Donna’s new restaurant and shake the chef’s hand for standing up to the man.

Galileo III, 600 14th St. NW, (202) 783-0083

• Food trucks

Maybe Donna should start a food truck in D.C.? As a mobile vendor in the District, he’d have to pay only $1,500 annually in sales tax, compared to the 10 percent shelled out by the brick and mortars for their sales. That’s the kind of tax burden even Colbert could live with. But then again, these food truck operators aren’t exactly fat cats looking for tax loopholes so they can buy a second home in Tahoe for coke-and-stripper parties. Whether selling poutine (Eat Wonky truck) or Maine-style lobster rolls (Red Hook Lobster Pound truck), these vendors are the little guys, fighting the cops, the inline restaurants, and powerful political interests for their right to work the streets. Sounds almost like an immigration problem.

• Birch & Barley/ChurchKey

Beer may have been invented in Mesopotamia and perfected in Belgium many centuries later, but it took good ole American ingenuity to turn the ancient craft into a (draft) arms race. Everyone knows who’s armed to the teeth in the District: ChurchKey, the upstairs bar at the beer-centric Birch & Barley. The joint has more than 50 tap arms and five ales on cask. Colbert would no doubt approve of the gratuitous stockpiling of (non-powder) kegs, laughing in the face of the mutually assured destruction they clearly represent.

Birch & Barley/ChurchKey, 1337 14th St. NW, (202) 567-2576

• Old Ebbitt Grill

Old Ebbitt is indeed old. (It can trace its roots back to 1856.) It makes a ton of money annually. (It was No. 5 on Restaurants & Institutions’ Top 100 Independent Restaurants list, raking in more than $20 million.) It has played host to numerous U.S. presidents, including Ulysses S. Grant, Andrew Johnson, and Theodore Roosevelt. Likewise, Jon Stewart is old. (OK, he’s 47, old by TV standards.) He makes tons of money. (Forbes pegged his salary in 2009 at $14 million.) And he’s played host to presidents. (Well, he played host to his first sitting president on Wednesday when Barack Obama appeared on The Daily Show.)

Old Ebbitt Grill, 675 15th St. NW, (202) 347-4800

• José Andrés Empire

The District’s most celebrated/prolific/motor-mouthed chef already has four restaurants in Penn Quarter, not including his chemistry experiment within a restaurant (minibar inside Café Atlantico). Andrés also has a strolling gastronomic playground in Los Angeles and plans to open two new places in Las Vegas and another in South Beach. He was profiled on 60 Minutes. GQ named him Chef of the Year in 2009. He has his own PBS series. We get it: José Andrés is everywhere. In fact, he’s almost as ubiquitous as Colbert, who still has one accomplishment that Andrés can’t touch yet: a painting of the faux pundit at the National Portrait Gallery. Curators valued the Colbert portrait to such a degree they hung it where the museum traffic is greatest—near the toilets.

Check thinkfoodgroup.com for locations

• Founding Farmers

Last month, Colbert testified before a House Judiciary subcommittee that, “American farms are presently far too dependent on immigrant labor to pick our fruits and vegetables.” The solution? “Now the obvious answer,” Colbert noted, “is for all of us to stop eating fruits and vegetables.” But how about this, Stephen: Pay a visit to Founding Farmers, the Foggy Bottom restaurant owned by real American farmers. The place strives to source ingredients from “fine, high-quality, family farms,” although a Post investigation later revealed that this category broadly included salmon farmers, those scourges of the environment. No matter. Colbert’s testimony wasn’t always sincere either.

Founding Farmers, 1924 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, (202) 822-8783

• Ben’s Chili Bowl

Regardless of what you think of Ben’s Chili Bowl—I’m always surprised at the vitriol this U Street NW institution can inspire—you have to respect the Ali family for its commitment to keeping their greasy spoon pure. They’ve refused offers to chain the Bowl far and wide, understanding part of what makes Ben’s great is its historic location and vibe. Regardless of what you think of Stewart’s rally on the Mall, the man himself has similar integrity, refusing to compromise his brand for the sake of any one administration. He’s on a crusade to make politics civil. I’ll raise a Ben’s chocolate shake to that.

Ben’s Chili Bowl, 1213 U St. NW, (202) 667-0909

Eatery tips? Food pursuits? Send suggestions to hungry@washingtoncitypaper.com. Or call (202) 650-6925.

The question of the day is whether or not Ray's Hell Burger, the prez's preferred patty, will be opening a D.C. location at CityVista. Prince of Petworth, as is our liege's habit, teases us with such a rumor.

But DCist, you know, actually did some reporting and asked owner Michael Landrum if he's planning an expansion. He waffles on the subject. "While Landrum did not outright deny the possibility of a City Vista Ray's location, he told DCist that he regularly fields offers from a number of developers," wrote Jamie R. Liu.

Personally, I'd call Landrum for further clarification, but I don't have the time right now for a 45-minute conversation. More to come on this subject, no doubt.

When it comes to the "perfect" hamburger, Josh Ozersky doesn't mince words. He prefers the simple, American-cheese charms of a lean ground-chuck burger at Veselka in the East Village. It's a nice counter-intuitive choice, more down-market than the gourmet burgers that get all the media attention.

But I wonder if Ozersky's just adopting a common-man shtick at the expense of flavor? An 85-percent lean burger just isn't going to have the flavor of, say, a BGR: The Burger Joint patty, which seems to have as much fat as a sausage.

Discuss.

Video courtesy of Chow.com.

If any one thing defines Y&H Nation, it's our insatiable need for more (and more accessible) outlets for craft and imported beers. When the urge strikes — and when doesn't it? — we want to walk to the neighborhood Safeway for our Dogfish Head fix, not climb into the car and drive to a gourmet wine-and-beer shop and pretend we're interested in yet another geeked-out discussion on American vs. European hops. We just want our beer dammit!

The Lagerheads delivered the good news last week on this front, and you all lapped it up. It topped our list of the most popular posts:

1. Shelf Watch Proves D.C. Craft Beer Selection Is On the Up and Up
2. Obama Introduces Russian President to Hell...Burgers
3. Photos: Ray's the Steaks and Ray's the People at East River (*)
4. The Restaurants That Just Missed the Cut in This Year's Dining Guide
5. Argonaut Down by Fire; Tavern Hopes to Re-Open by August

* A certain light-drinking Budweiser beer was, once again, a popular item among readers, but we’ve stopped counting it.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

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?