Mark Furstenberg’s vision for his new G Street Food was simple: He wanted to bring some of the world’s greatest street foods to a city that has some of the worst. It’s too bad that Washingtonians don’t seem to appreciate them. Or at least don’t seem to appreciate them as much as Furstenberg and his partners had hoped.

The master baker says that revenues at G Street Food, in the first few weeks of operation, are down at least 40 percent from projections.  It’s enough to cause concern for the owners of the place, the Choi family, who “expected it to do well from the beginning,” Furstenberg tells Y&H.

Read More “Furstenberg Is Forced to Expand Beyond Street Foods” »

For reasons that will become clear later, Y&H has become obsessed with banh mi — and the many subtle ways one sandwich differs from another.

Most in the D.C. area offer variations on these basic ingredients: a pork preparation (shredded, roasted, barbecued), pâté, cold cuts (including those divine slices of head cheese for crunch), pickled veggies, slices of jalapeño, a mayo-based dressing, and some cilantro garnish, all on a crusty mini-baguette. But I have never seen anything as elaborate as this banh mi, which Anthony Bourdain wolfed down during a No Reservations trip to Vietnam.

I’m not even sure what some of those ingredients are. What’s that reddish looking sauce clinging to the sides of the baguette? A fish sauce-loaded hot sauce perhaps? And a fried-egg finish? Good God, I’ve never had such a thing around here — but I’m dying to find one soon.

Compare the banh mi that Bourdain pounds down to a combination banh mi  that I bought this weekend at Song Que:

It was tasty, yes, but I gotta think we’re missing out on some decadent banh mi in our parts.

Bayless and Furstenberg: Men of the street

Imagine Y&H’s surprise when he stopped by G Street Food, baker Mark Furstenberg’s new operation inspired by international street foods, and saw Rick Bayless casually walk in the door.  As if the celebrity chef lives just across the street, not half way across the country.

Bayless, fresh off his victory on Top Chef Masters, no doubt wanted to chat with Furstenberg about his new project, since the Chicago chef recently launched a similar street-food restaurant in the Windy City. The two toques spoke for awhile; I tried to leave them alone, save for the picture above, but when Bayless finally said he had to go, I button-holed him near the exit.

Read More “Rick Bayless Drops by G Street Food This Morning” »

Taylor is close to opening its second garage door.

Casey Patten, one of the personable owners of Taylor Gourmet, checked in with Y&H today to give us a construction update on the Philly-inspired deli’s second location, located at 485 K St. NW in the CityVista building.

“We have incorporated the same look and feel as the location in H Street NE but with a few new twists,” e-mails Patten this afternoon. “The garage door will be 16 feet wide and will open up to sidewalk patio seating. We have taken 55 gallon oil drums and turned them into accent lighting fixtures, these oil drums are suspended from the ceiling with industrial chains. The down lighting when you enter the restaurant is nine 5 gallon drywall buckets with lighting fixtures inside to create a clean glowing feel.”

Read More “An Inside Look at the Forthcoming Taylor Gourmet II” »

Unlike at Pat’s or Geno’s, the line moves sloooowly at Jim’s

As part of my never-ending quest to find the perfect cheesesteak, I recently stopped by Jim’s Steaks on South Street in Philly, at the request of the friend who swears by the stuff there.

My snap verdict? Love the Art Deco space, can pass on the cheesesteaks. I’ll explain both in pictures after the jump.

Read More “My Visit to Jim’s Steaks in Philly” »

For reasons that I can’t fully explain, I ordered the muffaletta at Nicaro, which recently reopened under chef Luis Martinez, who has tons of experience opening and running restaurants of all sizes, from Cubano’s in Silver Spring to Cheesecake Factories here and in California.

I think I was feeling nostalgic for New Orleans after reading Martinez’s menu, which dabbles in some Crescent City favorites, including this iconic sandwich, which I’ve enjoyed at one of the finest places to ever stake its name on this righteous sammie with the Italian origins: Napoleon House in the French Quarter.

Rule No. 1 about eating muffalettas: never compare the one in front of you to the heated muffaletta served at Napoleon House unless you enjoy wallowing in disappointment. (I know, I know, some of you will argue that a muffaletta should never be served hot, but this is an argument for another day, all right?)

Read More “Beware the Sandwich That Dares to Call Itself a Muffaletta” »

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.

As the name suggests, Market Lunch is a place famous for its…breakfasts. Seriously, if you read the published record on this popular Eastern Market spot, that’s exactly the impression you walk away with. The blueberry pancakes. The crab cake benedict. The Brick breakfast sandwich. Each has its charms, of course, but Market Lunch really lives for the noon hour and its twin odes to mid-Atlantic cuisine: the crab cake and the fried whiting sandwich. The former is a fried mound of crabmeat, short on filler and long on fresh, sweet flavors. The whiting is, without a doubt, the best interpretation in the area—two long fillets, each lightly breaded and fried, which are slapped onto a bun so that the fish flaps out over the edges, as if the fry cook tried to stuff a gull into your sandwich. By the way, those house-made buns are half the reason your sandwich tastes so fine; they’re fresh from the oven, soft, and full of flavor.

 Market Lunch, 225 7th St. SE, (202) 547-8444

photo by katmere via Flickr Creative Commons Attribution License

You got to hand it to City Vista. 

This Mount Vernon Square development has landed the most impressive group of retail, restaurants, and amenities in recent memory: Results Gym, a beautiful Safeway, 5th Street Hardware store, Chevy Chase Bank, Busboys and Poets and now a second location for Taylor Gourmet, as first reported on Prince of Petworth.

The deli, whose first location opened on H Street last year, has received a lot of love on these webpages.  Co-owner Casey Patten says he and his partner started considering new spots as soon as the first location “got on its feet.” There were four or five places considered. So why City Vista?

Read More “Taylor Gourmet Owner Explains Why He Chose Mount Vernon Square for Second Location” »

Just a week after it was closed for 19 violations of the D.C. food code, Breadline was back in business today. To the naked eye, the sandwich shop didn’t look so different from its “excessive live fruit fly” phase. I did notice meticulous, hand-written expiration dates on the lemonade drinks and that the bread rack behind the cash register was gone, an apparent victim of a D.C. Health Department inspector who thought consumers might contaminate the loaves. But almost everything else looked the same.

I don’t mean to imply that Breadline remains as dirty as when the inspector tagged it as a menace to society. What I do mean to say is that I (and probably you) wouldn’t know a health hazard if it bit me (or you) on the ass — at least not from the serving line at this downtown sandwich shop. Could I have known that food was stored at the wrong temperature? Or that there was excessive grease under the hood? Or that dough was rising on the walk-in floor? Or that Breadline was operating without a restaurant license?

Nope, I couldn’t.

What I do know is that Breadline has aggressively tackled the problems in the days since the Health Department pointed them out. The restaurant managers have scrubbed the place clean, to the point that it not only passed re-inspection but it also impressed Breadline founder Mark Furstenberg, a man not known for an easy compliment.

Read More “Breadline Back in Business. If You’re a Fan, You Should Go.” »

One by one, over the next several weeks, we’ll run 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 how your meal was when you return.

How many banh mi shops bake their own bread? Until I visited this Vietnamese deli in Falls Church, I would have said zero, which is strange, if not downright wrong, given the banh mi’s roots in French bread-making culture. Other shops may serve better pâtés or prepare more interesting spreads, but none bake their own mini-baguettes, as do the folks at Banh Mi D.C. Sandwich. Every morning, dozens upon dozens of fresh rolls are pulled from the oven racks, ready to serve as the base for the shop’s 24 different sandwiches. The wheat-flour breads are really more like crusty rolls than baguettes, which is fine. They still serve their purpose, which is to provide that all-important crunch when you bite into them. The key here is to demand that your sandwich-maker add extra garnishes—crisp pickled slivers of radish and carrot, flame-throwing rounds of jalapeños, a small garden of cilantro—to ensure that there is harmonic convergence among protein, vegetable, and bread.

 Banh Mi D.C. Sandwich, 3103 Graham Road, Falls Church, (703) 205-9300

Photo by Darrow Montgomery