Looking West: As Andy Shallal, who describes himself as an "activist with food," works on a possible Busboys & Poets location in Harlem, he also has Busboys projects cooking out west, including a location that's in the works in Denver, and "expects to open a San Francisco Busboys within the next two years." [Publishers Weekly]

Currently Out West: "Washington's bad-boy barista" Nick Cho, formerly of the now-shuttered Murky Coffee, admits to Tim Carman that he can't escape his tax troubles with the District and Arlington as gets his new coffee roasting business in the Bay Area off the ground. "I’m trying to get back on my feet. I’m trying to hopefully start a healthy business..." [WaPo]

Grocery Identity Politics: Apparently, no non-Safeway grocery stores have nicknames. (For fear of being accused of ageism by proud residents of North Cleveland Park, Y&H supposes that it would be insensitive to call the Giant supermarket near the Van Ness-UDC Metrorail station the "Geriatric Giant." [TBD, DCist]

Innovative! How about some bacon-scented cologne mixed with "11 essential oils...to trigger pleasant memories." [Eater Nat'l]

Construction Continues: At Cuba Libre, "architects are beginning to draw up plans for a new double-sided bar and potentially a private dining area." Nifty. [The Feast]

Photo by Flickr user Daquella manera using an Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic Creative Commons license

Top Chef: Played out?

Hey, I thought we were supposed to be suffering through the summer doldrums in the District? Not with this amount of news, we aren't. So let's waste no time.

• Proof owner Mark Kuller has just entered José Andrés territory with the grand opening of Estadio. [via Metrocurean]
• Pssst, the Secret Safeway is closing. [via Washington Business Journal]

• WaPo's Dave McIntyre sees some progress in the local wine movement but still sides with Todd Kliman's rebuke from the pulpit, "The Locavore Wine Hypocrisy." [via All We Can Eat]
• Don't listen to the corn-syrup lobby; that stuff really is making us fat. [via The Slow Cook]
• D.C.'s Top Chef alumni pick their favorite summer hot dogs. [via Best Bites Blog]
• There's only one A student among the federal cafeterias, despite new government guidelines to promote healthier eating at its facilities. [via WaPo]
• DCist has a great photo spread on L'Enfant Cafe's Bastille Day block party in Adams Morgan. We have just two words for you: French maids! Well, sort of. [via DCist]
• And finally, Josh  Ozersky wonders if Top Chef is played out. [via Time magazine]

Sure, D.C. has seen a steady increase in the number of beer-centric bars and restaurants opening, as well as wine and cocktail-focused places adding more craft and imported beer to their lists. But the beering up of the shelves in our neighborhood corner and liquor stores,  and especially our grocery store, is a tell-tale sign of how well our fair city is trending in the craft beer arena.

For years, The Lagerheads have scanned the beer aisle of the Adams Morgan Safeway with the hope that a six-pack of something we would actually buy would show up. We have always seen the mainstream stuff from the big guys, Sierra Nevada and Samuel Adams, which we are happy to drink but do not seek out. Over the last few years we have noticed the same types of accessible beers and mix-packs from Flying Dog and Magic Hat. But in the past month we have seen a notable change.

First a couple six-packs of Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA appeared, and then last week Leffe Blonde (which is in the AB-InBev owned family of brands, but hey, it's a good beer) became available. Corporate grocery chains like Safeway seem to no longer regard it a risk to stock more "niche-market" craft and imported beers. And the numbers show they shouldn't. We heard recently that the market share of craft beer, which means beer made by breweries that distribute less than 2 million barrels a year, in the District is around 9%, compared with a national average of 6%, and both volumes have been steadily increasing each year.

So now instead of the disappointment (bordering on snobbery, we'll admit) that we usually feel as we come to the mass-marketed cases of Miller-Coors and Anheuser-Busch/InBev products in the beer aisle we now scan the shelves eagerly, wondering what new craft gem will be available next. Newbies often ask us where to go to buy "good" beer, and we tell them to try their neighborhood corner store because you can find great beer almost anywhere in the city. It seems that fact is even truer now.

Have you noticed any similar changes in your regular old neighborhood shops and markets? What evidence have you seen that craft beer is thriving in D.C.?

Once you step inside the Wegmans in Fairfax, you don't know what you might find. The megastore — part blue-collar Safeway, part fussy Whole Foods, part wish-fulfillment Disneyland — offers a bewildering amount of products, from fresh-baked breads and freshly prepared meals to yoga clothes and housewares.

To food-obsessed adults, I suspect Wegmans generates a feeling they haven't felt in years: like a kid in a candy store. One goddamn big candy store. One goddamn big candy store that knows you can't sell only imported Belgian dark chocolate with 62 percent cocoa mass. You gotta have Ho Hos and Ding Dongs, too, baby.

Last weekend I made only my second visit to a Wegmans, this time to document many of the things one could buy there. (Such visits won't require a trip to Fairfax in the near future, since the privately held chain has plans to open stores in Alexandria, Columbia, Germantown, Landover, and other nearby towns.)

Take a look at my Alice in Wonderland trip through Wegmans:

In-house bakery

Pastries from in-house bakery

Indian buffet

Sub shop

Salmon, many different ways

Fresh mahi mahi

Meat counter, heavy on choice cuts

Crab cake sandwich from the in-house cafe

Seared scallops with citrus-soy sauce at in-house cafe

Wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano and other cheeses

Huge selection of craft and import beers

Olive bar

Wide selection of teas

More cheese

Pre-packaged fruits and veggies

Bagged lettuces

Cosmetics

Expensive wine glasses

Housewares

Baby supplies

Kitchen supplies

DVDs

Greeting cards

Pet supplies

Commercial breads and a company timeline overhead

Light bulbs and paper goods

Wegmans butter

Wegmans finishing butters

Kosher foods

Wegmans coffee

Lots and lots of magazines

Books, emphasis on best-sellers

Compared to the beer, the wine selection is paltry.

Processed cheese

Yoga clothes

"Combination" remedies

"New Age" beverages

Flowers

Organic seedless cucumbers

Conventional seedless cucumbers

Beefsteak tomatoes from Mexico

Pizza bar

Chicken wing bar

Wegmans cream and yogurt

Utz cheese balls!

It's a juicy story about replacing kosher meats with Safeway sirloin steaks and a lame attempt by the cafe staff to cover up the violation. Here's the pertinent section from reporter Richard Greenberg's story:

[T]he incident occurred when the cafe was running low on steak. A tray of about five nonkosher sirloin steaks that had been purchased from a nearby Safeway supermarket were then brought into the cafe, apparently to make up for the shortage.

When the Vaad's on-site mashgiach, or kashrut supervisor, briefly glimpsed an employee carrying a Safeway bag, he suspected that something was wrong.

At one point, according to Sanders, some cafe employees attempted to shield the mashgiach's view or otherwise create a "diversion" that was intended to draw attention away from the unkosher meat.

The mashgiach, who could not be reached for comment, quickly doubled back to the room the meat had been brought to. "Apparently, they didn't suspect that he'd come back so quickly," Sanders said.

The steaks were found buried deep in the refrigerator, recently encased in plastic wrap. Their original wrapping had been removed and stashed under a nearby counter. Sanders was notified and he then alerted his supervisors at the Vaad, who ordered the restaurant closed. A few diners had just taken their seats when they were informed of the immediate shutdown.

Y&H called the Jewish Community Center yesterday afternoon and the person who answered the phone said the cafe is still closed. But it's expected to open back up soon.

One by one, we’re running through the 50 restaurants that made the cut on this year’s Young & Hungry Dining Guide. If you have visited the day’s featured restaurant, let us know what you think. If you’re planning to visit for the first time, tell us about your meal when you return.

Three different vehicles have taken up residence at the back end of a massive parking lot that serves the Safeway grocery store at 514 Rhode Island Ave. NE. One is a converted 1995 school bus now outfitted with deep-fryers, prep tables, and coolers. The second is a square white panel truck that hauls around a giant generator, and the final is a beat-up red Chevy 1500 pickup with an equally well-used Southern Pride smoker propped up on cinder blocks in the bed.

This sprawling mobile barbecue empire belongs to Fate Pittman, a 73-year-old pitmaster who has been smoking pork, beef, and chicken for more than 30 years. Except no one calls Pittman by his family name. Everyone knows him by the handle painted onto his vehicles: Mr. P.

Mr. P is a large graying man, his fingers as plump as sausages. He doesn’t move around that well anymore. He blames it on a bad back, which he injured decades ago while working in the auto-body repair business before he turned to barbecue. It’s with some reluctance that I ask Mr. P to extract himself from his comfortable perch inside his school bus to show me around. I tell him that I’m sorry, but I only half mean it. The fact is, I’m on a mission. A guy who makes pork ribs this good needs some love from the local food press.

The barbecue man sells a number of items from the main window on the side of his bus. He sells fried whiting, barbecue chicken, oversized sections of smoked beef ribs, and a whole mess of side dishes, from coleslaw to collards. The chicken is pretty fine, both smoky and moist, but his beef ribs are chewy and dehydrated—and yet shockingly still edible, like a good meaty jerky. (I’ve heard tell that on his better days, Mr. P’s beef ribs are a work of art, which gives you an idea of how fickle barbecue is.)

But the main reason to hop aboard Mr. P’s bus is to order his pork ribs. They are, without any doubt in my mind, the best pork ribs in the area. They’re charred. They’re crispy around the edges. They’re moist and pink inside. They’re smoky and salty and meaty and, goddamn it, I want a whole rack right now! Because Mr. P is from western North Carolina, he serves his meats with a ketchup-based barbecue sauce. I wouldn’t bother with it; like good Texas ’cue, his meats don’t need the extra flavor.

Mr. P didn’t always used to work out of a school bus. At one point in his barbecue career, he says, he had real brick-and-mortar stores, mostly takeout oriented. But then he got into the mobile smoke business up in Chillum, which was a thriving concern, as Mr. P describes it, until Prince George’s County started cracking down on street food vendors. That’s how he ended up in this godforsaken Safeway parking lot.

Because of his age, Mr. P has plenty of help with his business. Victor “Preacher Man” Wilson is his day-to-day pitmaster, tending to the hickory and oak logs that fuel the Southern Pride. Wilson is also the one who makes sure the meats, especially those simple spice-rubbed ribs, don’t smoke too long. But Mr. P also has Belinda Roberson, who works the window and prepares all the sides, including the baked beans and potato salad, which she says are the bestsellers. Roberson has been working with Mr. P, she says, for 30 years.

“We’re two of his secret weapons to keep it going,” says Preacher Man, who’s been working with Mr. P, off and on, for 10 years. “We’re him when he’s not here.”

Except that may not be the case in the near future. Mr. P is thinking about retiring. “Don’t you think it’s time?” he asks me rhetorically. The problem is, he may not have anyone left to carry on the business, including his four children. “They don’t want to mess with it,” Mr. P says. “They got their own things.” Even worse, neither Roberson nor Preacher Man think they can afford to buy out the business.

All three of them—Mr. P, Preacher Man, and Roberson—seem to sense that the business is on its last legs. Which may explain why they’re pushing so hard for one last request. They really want me to try to get a message to President Obama: Go visit Mr. P’s Ribs and shake the owner’s hand.

“He tried Five Guys,” Preacher Man says, “Tell him to try this here.”

Mr. P’s Ribs and Fish is located in the Safeway parking lot at 514 Rhode Island Ave. NE. It operates from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.