I was bested last night. The subject of the beer tasting was the vaunted strongest beer in the world, Samuel Adams Utopias. It’s brewed every other year in limited quantities — they made 10,000 bottles of the ’09s — and comes with a proportionately high price tag of $150. This year’s batch weighs in at 27% abv, about two-thirds the strength of whiskey or vodka.

Read More “Beerspotter vs. The Strongest Beer in the World” »

A couple of weeks ago, Y&H asked you to nominate the entrees and appetizers and desserts that you felt were worthy of inclusion into a D.C. Dish Hall of Fame. Y’all tore into the assignment like a pack of wolves on a dead carcass.  I received Tweets, personal e-mails, and lots of suggestions via the comments section.

Then for this week’s Young & Hungry column, I contacted a few chefs for their input on HOF dishes. All told, between the public and chefs, you nominated more than 100 dishes, with very little overlap. I’ve narrowed down the list down to the 30 dishes that could represent D.C. well, if elected to the hall.

Now it’s your turn. You can vote for three dishes and three dishes only. The top five vote-getters will be part of the inaugural class of the D.C. Dish Hall of Fame. You have until Dec. 11 to vote.

Pass the word around!

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

The Margherita at 2Amys: Does it make the cut?

Earlier this week, I was noshing on the roast chicken at Palena Cafe, reveling once again in Frank Ruta’s ability to add and coax flavors from this generous, succulent portion of breast, wing, and leg meat. That’s when the thought struck me: This is, hands-down, one of the area’s greatest dishes. It deserves a spot in some sort of local culinary hall of fame.

The roast chicken is an obvious one, but what other dishes would make the cut? I’ve been pondering this and have drafted a number of nominees. The list is, by no means, complete. It needs your suggestions.

Once we get a solid roster of nominees, we’ll put them to a public vote here on the Y&H blog. The top 10 vote getters will go into the City Paper’s inaugural D.C. Dish Hall of Fame. Winners will receive everlasting glory.

The working list of nominees:

Read More “Seeking Nominees for City Paper’s Inaugural D.C. Dish Hall of Fame” »

Y&H had a hard time extracting himself from the office by the start of the FreshFarms Market by the White House yesterday, so I missed all the politico-celebrity speech-making. Fortunately, there were only, say, a thousand other journalist covering that angle. So I focused on, you know, the food. It’s a farmers market after all, even if it’s one as much about symbolism as produce.

Check out Y&H’s photos after the jump.

Read More “Yep, That’s Right, More Photos from the White House Farmers Market” »

It’s official. People have gone batshit for Select 55. Or at least batshit for our post on the beer. It tops the list once again this week.

I think I’ll go drown my sorrows in a real beer.

1. Budweiser Launches Select 55, Light Beer Arms Race Gets Absurd
2. Looking for a Little Practice, Bibiana Jumps the Gun and Opens for Service Today
3. Oh, the Noise, Noise, Noise, Noise in Restaurants
4. ‘Two Left Feet’ for One Big Steak
5. Did Vidalia Use “Inferior” Ingredients During Restaurant Week?

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

This blog has gone to Hell, and readers are taking Select 55 with it. For Christ’s sake, people, can we get over this Budweiser post, which tops the list for the third straight week?

The most-read items for the week:

1. Budweiser Launches Select 55, Light Beer Arms Race Gets Absurd
2. Not So Fast: There’s No Deal for a Ray’s Hell Burger in Adams Morgan
3. No Hell Burger for Adams Morgan, but a Ray’s the Steaks for NE
4. Did Vidalia Use “Inferior” Ingredients During Restaurant Week?
5. Drool List: Pizzeria Paradiso at Dupont Circle
   

At the end of our discussion on Vidalia’s Restaurant Week menu, owner Jeffrey Buben told Y&H about an experiment he conducted during last summer’s promotion, which offers some evidence that the bi-annual RW event isn’t as beneficial to restaurants as Open Table would like us to believe.

Open Table conducted a survey in 2007, which revealed that 92 percent of diners said they would return to the restaurant they just tried for the first time during RW. Now that stat, all by itself, doesn’t tell you much because it’s based only on an oral commitment. But Lynne Breaux, president of the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington, tells Y&H that 61 percent of diners actually return to the restaurant they try for the first time during RW. That’s according to the same 2007 survey, Breaux says, which presumably is based only on Open Table users.

Read More “Does Restaurant Week Actually Benefit Restaurants?” »

It’s not often that a Restaurant Rater forces Y&H to pick up the phone and talk to the restaurateur under evaluation, but capitolfoodies, in their  meticulously detailed critique of Vidalia during Restaurant Week, dropped this small, tactical bomb:

After we paid the bill and were preparing to leave the server asked how we enjoyed the meal. Parry and I exchanged looks. This is that embarrassing part of a bad meal where guests feel compelled to lie. We opted for the truth. Parry asked to speak with the manager and seconds later Michael Nevarez, the General Manager of Vidalia appeared. We carefully and somewhat gently explained that we had been eager to dine at Vidalia because of Chef Buben’s reputation and the rave reviews many have afforded the establishment but that we were gravely disappointed in the five-course tasting menu because so much of the food was either bland or overcooked. I suspect many of you will doubt what you are about to read but Parry and I swear it is the absolute truth. Mr. Nevarez responded by telling us that the dishes we were served fell short of our expectations because it is Restaurant Week and that in order to provide the five-course tasting menu at the price of $45 the chefs had to cut costs and use inferior ingredients. I swear Parry’s mouth slipped open during this horrendous explanation. I wish I’d had a camera with me to capture it. My response differed from Parry’s. I looked right at Mr. Nevarez and asked why Vidalia would risk their fine reputation by participating in Restaurant Week if doing so meant serving shoddy food. His response? In this economy, Vidalia wouldn’t survive if they didn’t especially since Congress is out on a break and business has been so slow.

It’s a serious charge that required a serious phone call to Jeffrey Buben, the owner of both Vidalia and Bistro Bis. He was hesitant to talk about the issue on the record. He didn’t think any good could come from refuting a customer’s experience; his main goal is to make his diners happy, he says, not treat them disrespectfully in the media.

Read More “Did Vidalia Use “Inferior” Ingredients During Restaurant Week?” »

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.

The influx of celebrity chefs to D.C. can excite local diners, but it can deflate local chefs, who see these carpetbaggers stealing their customers, their line cooks, maybe even their thunder. Back in 2007, before Eric Ripert or Michael Mina or even Alain Ducasse opened doors here, chef R.J. Cooper at Vidalia was one of the reigning badasses in the kitchen, fresh off his Mid-Atlantic Beard Award, which he split with Frank Ruta at Palena. But if Cooper and/or Vidalia have suffered since these culinary hawks have swooped into town, you wouldn’t know it from eating at this downtown institution. Cooper, in fact, seems to be cooking with a renewed passion since the competition increased. My most recent meal at Vidalia included a number of dishes that blew me away, notably a pigtail croquette with strawberry-rhubarb mostarda and an artistic plate of mix-and-match bites, from raw cubes of hamachi to squares of lime gelee to tiny diced pieces of watermelon to little slivers of jalapeño. Cooper even plated something I had never seen before—a deep-fried blowfish from the lower Chesapeake, commonly known as the “sugar toad.” It tasted a thousand times better than the name would suggest.

 Vidalia, 1990 M St. NW, (202) 659-1990

The History Channel’s Modern Marvels gives you an insider’s view of something you may not want to see: how pork rinds are made at a Rudolph Foods processing plant. Frankly, it’s not as gross as the weiner-making video, but it’s still just a massive, industrial process untouched by human hands. If you want a more chef-driven pork rind, try the ones on chef R.J. Cooper’s bar menu at Vidalia, where he sprinkles the deep-fried wonders with lime-chili powder and smoked salt.