Busboy

So tell me: how do you manage to eat the crab in the soup with those plastic spoons? On the basis of your review, I believe Mr. Rosebud and I would be available to continue the exploration of the menu with you and Mrs. Waitman. ← We cracked the crab with our fingers and sucked the meat out, though I have no idea if this is the traditional strategy.

Ercilia's 3070 Mt. Pleasant St. (Mt. Pleasant and Irving) (202) 387-0909 I've been living on Irving Street for almost eight years now and that means I've probably literally walked past Ercilia's a thousand times. Something there is that does not love a pupasa, apparently and besides, in Mt. Pleasant, when you get a jones for Latin food you just go to the grocery store and cook it yourself. So for years we never made the quick stroll to the corner of Irving and Mt. Pleasant. Bit of a mistake, that. Ercilia's is the kind of neighborhood joint where you feel a little bad interrupting the counter ladies who seem to be preparing for some kid's birthday party, they're all showing off the little dwarf-sized soccer uniforms the lucky dude's going to get, still in their cellophane wrapper from the dollar store down the street. And someone's friend is folding her laundry on a table -- there's a laundromat next door -- and catching up on the gossip while keeping one eye on the telenovella on the TV. It feels like a girls' place -- when was the last time you were in an ethnic restaurant and it was the soaps, rather than soccer on the TV? For whatever reason I've always thought of Ercilia'a as a pupuseria, but it offers a lot more than that. Pupusas, for the uninitiated, are white corn tortillas stuffed with a a variety of savories -- cheese being perhaps most prominent -- fried and served warm and gooey. These were pretty good, about a buck-an-a-half a pop, stuffed with queso and chicharrones and, my favorite, shrimp and cheese. I may have to abandon chicken wings as my fall Sunday junk food fix. But what blew us was was not the pupusas (which came with a tasty slaw and some excellent salsa on the side, btw) but the sopa de mariscos, a shellfish soup that -- had we been wearing socks -- would have knocked them off. Hey, it probably wasn't Marseillaise bouillabaisse but is was chock full of tasty sea creatures -- shrimp, scallops, crab, mussels and so on -- in a broth with a bit of tomatoes and a lot of garlic. And don't be ordering the sopa de mariscos saying that you don't want your fish to taste "fishy," 'cause this soup tastes of the sea. And, at $8.95, it's dirt cheap. Lot more to explore at Ercilia's, but the soup is a keeper.

Skipped in for a couple of baguettes Saturday morning and while I maintain that the entry room has all the sincerity of a Potbelly Sandwich Works the patio was open and the upstairs was a warmth of oak flooring and exposed brick an chiaroscuro lighting. Baguettes rocked, too.

I made it to the reconstituted Eastern Market over Labor Day weekend, to pick up some onglets at my favorite butcher, Union Meats. The ambiance has certainly changed dramatically -- I kind of miss the grungy din -- and the crowds seemed diminished. Good to see everyone open, though. I hear the Market Lunch is back open these days, as well.

A correction: the gilded pork chops are not from Polyface but from Emerald Family Farms, " a consortium of small family and young farmers," who are acolytes Joe Salatin and Polyface and sold through the same distributor, Eco-Friendly, but are not formally intertwined. Just for the heck of it I wandered into the Safeway on the walk to work and found a family pack of pork chops running $1.99 a pound, about a fifth of the nine-and-change (the label was smudged) EFF gets for its chops. Factor in the the copious fat and bone and the actual pork ends up costing about what you'd pay for a dry-aged strip steak and, for left-thinking skeptics like myself that draws all the questions about whether saving the world and the family farm through "ethical family farming and raising pasture-fed animals" is really just a hobby for the rich and the true believers and an excuse to feel a little smug regarding the unenlightened who -- merely because they are feeding families on limited means -- are eating those inferior and possibly immoral pork chops the Safeway sells. But jeez, what a pork chop. It could have been the martini or I might have just got lucky and hit the seasoning and cooking just right, but chances are it was the pork itself and that finger of fat that circles the loin like a cholesterol Beltway and it was -- to my mind -- the best piece of pork I ever put in my mouth, bar none, and the best leftovers the next day, as well. The stuff melted, melted away leaving a roast-fat and pure pork taste that I can still summon today and which may well drive me back to fling more money in their direction on Sunday. For them as cares, the preparation was hardly gourmet: we dusted the chops with salt, pepper, ground coriander, chili powder and garlic powder and then grilled them until they were a pale pink. On the side: fresh corn a la phaelon56 (Toigo corn, can't find p5's technique, maybe my wife will remind me) canned black beans my wife had pimped with fresh garlic and "torpedo" onions (Tree and Leaf) and fresh heirlooms (T&L again) tossed with olive oil and diced avocado (Bestway Mercado Latino ). The pork was so rich a sauce would have been superfluous, but heaping the beans and the tomatoes onto the meat worked quite well (as everyone who's ever eaten Latin American food can tell you). I can sense more angst coming on.

So you think that a small farmer is going to be putting their kids through college and paying their mortgage selling organic milk for less than $4.50 a gallon? I hate to break it to you, but everywhere I've shopped the cost of responsibly produced ingredients is higher than the factory farmed alternatives. ← But if the price of factory farmed good rises relative to organic and artisan goods, you might see a shift. Restaurant X may not be able to afford local milk that's twice as expensive as the wholesale stuff, but if its only 40% more expensive, they may be able and willing to make a shift. That being said, DC still doesn't do much organic, but the "local" thing continues to expand.

The "small plates" trend and its sinister upscale cousin, the "tasting menu" aren't new, but they seem to be picking up steam here in DC. Likewise, we're seeing the rise of the "boutique chain," if you will, with local chefs spinning off new places like mad even as Ripert and Puck and are set to arrive in town (and Jose Andres opens something in LA). And a few years after Nuevo Latino failed to conquer the world, we're getting a new influx of mid- and upscale Latin American restaurants that are pleasantly removed from those places where they smoosh your guacamole tableside in order to make you think that their margaritas really are worth $14.

In a lot of ways the area around sixth is much the same -- both in good ways (though ethnicities have changed, both Pyramid and Zenebech are very much working-class establishments) and bad (the Howard Theater is still a menacing hulk). As for the new, gentrified name, my bet is that they'll allow "LeDroit Park" to jump across Florida Avenue and annex a little bit of Shaw. There's now a farmer's market every Sunday about two blocks from your old house. It's still a little mentally jarring to stumble across it.

I didn't realize that it was a custom creation and not a traditional dish. Chef Seth more or less stood DC on its ear when he opened Heritage India (that's the carry out menu I referred to in my earlier post) here a few years back -- at was head-and shoulders above any other Indian restaurant in the area -- and I have been remiss (or too stereotypically urban) in not venturing out to the suburbs to try his new place.

Back in Olden Tymes the District of Columbia had several separate incorporated jurisdictions within it and the city limits of Washington proper (as envisioned by L'Enfant and executed by Ellicott and Banneker) were, in part, marked by the passage of Boundary Street, today known to crowds of club-goers as Florida Avenue and U Street. Despite creeping gentrification (I plead guilty), this path at the foot of the hill still serves as a rough divider between the increasingly affluent inhabitants of Logan Circle, Dupont and even parts of Shaw on the one side and -- up the hill -- we proles who just can't shell out a million bucks for a modest row house. Up in Columbia Heights, Mt. Pleasant (my 'hood), Petworth, the Howard U. neighborhood, 14th Street Heights and so on we're a little less well-scrubbed and a little more likely to be immigrants, students or members of a minority group. Not that one bunch is better than the other, just that our neighborhoods play "yin" to the ritzier areas' more-publicized "yang." So, in this topic I hope to shine a little more light on the "yin" side of things (and hope that others will pitch in, as well). If any place gets "hot," we'll give it its own thread, in the mean time, we'll have a little romp through the kind of neighborhoods the tourists never see and the guidebooks never note. This isn't fine dining, it's fun dining, and honest, competent cooking (and cheap) is the ultimate goal. First up, two establishments almost right next door to one another, just on the edge of our turf: Pyramid Moroccan Restaurant and Zebenech Injiera, Deli and Grocery. There are certain connoisseurs who claim that the best Moroccan, Ethiopian and Thai (I'll get there, eventually) restaurants in the city are three pocket-sized family-run (what else) places within a block of one another on a not-unskeevy block of T Street, NW. I'll agree just because it makes me (and now, you) feel like one of the cool kids to be in on that kind of secret. And, without a doubt, Pyramid and Zenebech are worthy spots. Modern truck stop wisdom: Always eat where the cabbies eat. Zenebech only has two tables and bay window ledge looking out over the intersection of Florida and T. But you've tasted its cooking: they make something like 90% of the injera served in Washington's Ethiopian restaurants and, as you wait for your dinner, you'll likely see Ethiopian singles and families pop into to pick up a load to take home. This guy works the front and mom cooks in the back. In fact, if you've a hankering to try cooking Ethiopian on your own, they also offer an array of spices, beers and even CDs so that you can set the mood. The kitfo (raw beef with drawn butter, home-made cheese and spices) is excellent and the doro wat (stewed chicken) a powerful version of what is considered Ethiopia's national dish. And, my friend met Haile Selassi's grandson there the other day. Service is friendly and quick and, if you want carryout, you can do what the regulars do: just pull up on the sidewalk and dash in -- no need to hunt down a parking spot. Zenebech Injera, Deli & Grocery 608 T Street NW Washington, DC 20001 202-667-4700 Three doors down from Zenebech sits Pyramid, boasting an equally unassuming front and equally homey food inside. Easy to miss. I'm not sure what Pyramid considers its house specialty, but they describe Bastilla as a "must try" on their menu and you must try it. It's almost a little chicken pie, with shredded chicken encased in a phyllo-type crust (they say they make it in house) and -- here's the cool part -- spicing dominated by cinnamon, cardamom and a dusting of powdered sugar. It's freakin' addictive. Bastilla: Be still my beating heart. We've been twice, both times relatively early, and both times gotten a friendly kind of "we're wrapping up for the day but what can I get you?" vibe from the proprietress, Khadija Banouas. 'deed, if you're not careful, she'll sit and talk with you all night while the tangine is finishing up (a little dry the one time we tried it) and, if it goes on too long, you might get some tea and a selection of hors d'oeuvres to munch on while you wait. Think about the carrot salad and the non-pita bread (similar to naan) as something to grab in addition to the bastilla, and my wife was quite partial to the fried okra. And the hummus is divine. The menu is relatively long for a small place, so there's still a lot to explored. But nothing on it's over $8.00 (for the "lamb chunk," among other dishes) and it offers burgers and a tuna sub for your unadventurous friends. Khadija (aided on our second visit by Sihab, who is Syrian but is the go-to gal for Egyptian food, as well) promised that there will be quite a spread for Ramadan, which begins September 13th this year. She's invited us to come by and we surely will. Sihab and Khadija wielding their tangines. Pyramid 1840 6th St. (at Florida Avenue) NW Washington DC 20001 202-232-6776

I believe it it still alive and well and operating to near capacity just under the rader screen. Please post if you go!

Walk into Le Pain Quotidien Georgetown -- now in its second day of service -- and it's easy to get annoyed fast. The front room looks like it was designed by a relatively talented college drama club for a play set in a French bakery, in conjunction with Whole Foods marketing department: all exposed wood and marble and overpriced condiments on a faux-quaint breakfront and little notes on the shopping bag (hate that logo) about how they "Support Sustainable Farming for Future Generations." Gag me. The only saving grace is the racks of boules rising up against the back wall, boules that suggest the possibility of rising above the ordinary, the familiar...the quotidian. More in a moment. There's an upstairs, which I declined to tour, and a back room, which looks a lot like what I remember of the back room of the previous tenant -- Pied Bistro -- on the one unmemorable time I dropped in. The room has the now-obligatory common table -- still bearing stacks of job applications and largely populated by what seemed to be veteran employees mashing together the restaurant's finishing touches. There's also a patio, which will surely be charming once the humidity drops, but which is now not populated at all, not even with furniture. LPQ will offer table service and -- someday -- Belgian beer and wine by the glass. Employees are enthusiastic, if not yet universally competent. But even a crank like myself can't fault the sweet young things behind the counter for not having the routine down by the second day. I started with dessert: a $4.25 lemon tart that was fine, if not as good as my wife's. Then onto the boules, which are available whole (2 lb.), halved or by the quarter. And I came away a bit disappointed. First, let's dispense with the spelt. I admit I'm prejudiced, but when I dream of France I dream of a place where the authorities would lock you away for calling something made with spelt "bread." It was a little bland and spongy but, I suppose, serviceable. Likewise the walnut bread had a very fine mie, and seemed to lack a certain "je ne sais quoi" in both taste and texture while, admittedly, retaining a commendable credibility about itself. And I think sourdough is wasted on whole wheat ($5.75/half loaf) -- I would have preferred a nice peasant white or a blend that allowed a little more ferment and crannying, but it has a certain charm. And I suspect that on a day with lower humidity that its crust would be a force to be reckoned with. And the $2.95 baguette -- baguette a la ancienne (French for "old school"). The baguette is a fuckin' keeper, as they say on Boul Mich. Matter of fact, it may be the best baguette I've ever bough within the circulation area of the Washington Post. Or the Denver Post. Or the New York Times. The crust (again, correcting for the humiditiy) could fend off an RPG while the mie withing is yeasty feast of creamy goodness. It reminds me of the Palladin back when Bread Line was firing on all cylinders. It's a little denser than many baguettes -- seems to be a theme here -- but lighter than the other breads and addictive from the first bite. I am told that bakers need time to get used to new ovens and new climates. It will be interesting to see how the breads evolve -- or don't -- over the coming weeks. In the mean time, it looks like another errand has been added to the Saturday morning bagel-and-market run.

Hell's Kitchen indeed.

It is The Garden State! Apparently tomatoes are something of a specialty -- there are huge canning operations not far up the coast from where you are now. Have fun! Not talking about Ris et al or the chefs who show up to demo (I suspect all those I mentioned by name of actually shopping). Rather, it seems that it's become hip just to be seen walking through the market (perhaps with photog in tow?).

Random Notes: Anybody else see the irony in the masses trawling the local farmers markets with their free Whole Foods bags slung over their shoulder? Speaking of trawling, it's not uncommon to see the local chefs shopping at the markets, especially DuPont. I've bumped into Ris LaCost (between gigs, but late of 1789 and early of, we hope, a new place soon), Nora Pouillon (Restaurant Nora, Asia Nora), Carol Greenwood (Bucks, Comet; and -- despite her media rep -- very friendly) Tony Conte (Oval Room) and I'm sure others I didn't recognize. But lately there's been a new trend of chefs strolling through, camera-ready in their whites and hounds tooth with lithe arm candy, not chatting up the vendors or loading tomatoes but just...I don't know, doing a little PR? It's even more blatant at Penn Quarter, where the last couple chefs I saw wandering through paid not a whit of attention to the food itself. Are the chefs looking for a photo op? Are the markets requesting drop-bys just to further their cred? I still don't know why Buster doesn't sell out his steamed crabs by 9:30 every week. Bought a pair of Polyface pork chops and a brace of poussins (boring sidenote: I first learned what a poussin was during this memorable exchange) (it's a young, unsexed (!) chicken) for $3.2 million or something like that. I'd rejected a pair of pork chops a couple of weeks ago as being too dear even for me, but they's since haunted my dreams. Pictures and a full report when I finally decide whether to cook them or to frame them.

Just double-checked the carryout menu from my (sometimes) favorite Indian restaurant (Heritage India in Washington, DC) and can confirm that at least in that restaurant the dish is known as Aloo Tak.

I don't think there's much demand, outside a relative handful of restaurants, for the stuff (though it is rising, especially in combination with the now-inescapable charcuterie plates). Also, a cheese course drags out the meal and reduces turnover, most waiters don't know Epoisse from pasteurized processed cheese food and it's difficult to get hold of high quality cheese (Sysco ain't got it), to properly store the stuff and to keep "restaurant-sized" wholesale portions from going bad.

While those are valid examples, the metaphor specifically refers to "Happy Days," when Fonzie literally jumped over a shark while on water skis. ← True. But Happy Days always annoyed me, so I went for the shows that had more intellectual and emotional resonance for me and my fellow intellectuals on the board. More on topic: in terms of driving the culinary scene -- the actuall cooking, that is -- has there been a marked change in whether trends coming down from the top (Asian Fusion-wise) or or bubbling up from the street (truffle pizza-wise)?

No that the thread is devolving into a series of tangents on fashion, demographics and the definition of "formal," I'd like to pick my own nit and suggest that the topic title relies on an erroneous definition of the phrase "jump the shark." Jumping the shark does not (necessarily) have anything to do with a decline in popularity or a shift in trend or public perception. An institution that has jumped the shark is one that has peaked and entered an irreversible decline in quality, usually marked by cheap gimmickry and lowbrow stunts, the result of creative exhaustion or greed for greater public approval. The moment at which an institution jumps the shark is the moment at which the first awful gimmick (one not followed by an adept recovery -- everything has peaks and valleys) is revealed to the world. For example, all right-thinking people know that "The Simpsons" jumped the shark when the creators killed off Maude Flanders; M*A*S*H jumped when Hawkeye became insufferably self-righteous. Both shows, however, remained popular for long after: the Simpsons is limping into its 112th season, M*A*S*H only died when Alan Alda, in one of TVs first mercy killings, pulled the plug on his own show. Whether or not one can wear flip-flops to Babbo or what the implied dress code differences between Mix and Momofuku are have nothing to do with the shark-jumping aspects of formal dining. Now, if Alain DuCasse's after-dinner offering a choice of 12 different fountain pens with which to sign your four-figure (five figure?) check had presaged the collapse of "formal dining" into a morass of expensive pretense, that would signal a good old shark-jumping. But, until the you start discussing the quality of the restaurants rather than the garb of the patrons, that's not the discussion your having (even though the discussion is an interesting one). Just feeling editorial today, I guess.

Although I thought lobster might be a little cheaper in Maine (I guess if I'd been able to buy it from a shack on the docks...) for $8.99/lb it was possibly the best lobster I've ever eaten. We steamed for a couple of minutes and then tossed it with that spiced rice vinegar you see around and a little olive oil, and served it atop fresh tomatoes and someone's garden cukes. The oysters and the clams deserved kudos, as well. Savvy oyster buyers know that you can always request the tag from the bag the oysters reach the store in. In this case, it was amongst the bivalves in the cooler and it was the first time this inlander had ever bought oysters that were less than 24 hours from harvest. And they tasted it. "R" they any better in the fall than in August?

Hey: is this guy on the map?

We have a Dean & DeLuca here in Washington and there are good and bad points. As far as I know they have the best charcuterie selection in the metro area and -- on a good day -- arguably the best cheese selection, at prices that are not particularly outrageous. No one has better produce than the farmers markets but they're not cheap -- I think I've paid $4.00 for a tomato more than once. And, for exotic stuff like Meyer Lemons or starfruit , D&D is a good source. They have a pretty unmatched selection of Cali wines, though so many are obscure and expensive enough that I can't judge the price-quality ratio, though when I've sprung for wines in the $20-30 range they worked well more often than not (high praise from a wine curmudgeon like me!). They have good baked goods and their small selection of fish can be very expensive but is ridiculously fresh. And you can buy a slew of rarities like truffles and whole foie gras at competitive prices, not that that makes them affordable. I think you get in trouble at D&D -- as with a lot of other places -- with the bulk items like the lentils that are packaged opulently and sold at obscene, and the prepared foods you buy because you're in a hurry. I can't judge the catalog; I'm fortunate enough not to have to buy my goodies on line. But if we lost our local D&D retailer, it would be a serious blow. But you do have to know what you're doing, and it helps to have a highly developed sense of incredulity before you shell out the big money for small items.

I've always thought of the Mobil Guide as more geared to hotels -- you hear a lot more hotels describing themselves or referred to as as "Mobil 4-star" than you find restaurants making the same claim. But, just for fun I spent a few minutes on the Mobil travel site to see what would come up if I looked for restaurants in or near the Shenandoahs -- Blacksburg, Lexington, Staunton, the Blue Ridge Highway and so on. The few restaurants that did come up tended to look unappetizingly generic or were mom n' pop country cookin' places (not that there's anything wrong with that). Given some of what's been written about the restaurants on that run of land, it might be easy to assume that generic and homey are the only options. But when I looked closer it appeared that a couple of the better known places up in my end of the Valley (if being 60 miles east of Front Royal allows you to claim your own end) -- the kind distinctive, well-regarded spots that you might want to hunt down after a hard day of hiking or antiquing -- didn't make the website at all. Very curious. I think Fat Guy pointed out on another thread the difficulty of creating a standardized national guide for a country as big and populous as the U.S. But something pocket-sized, regional and critical might be well-received, if not by the chefs and hoteliers who've been coasting for too long (If Michelin rated the Homestead, how many stars would its restaurant earn?).

Actually, in Defense of Dean & DeLuca's water sources and copy writers, I'll suggest that the catalog is trying to make the point that their water source is natural, from aquifers and wells called "artisan", rather than city water or a less pristine natural lake. As for the apples, if they can get it, why not charge it?

In reading Carrot Top's lament I am wondering if the problem is not just one of fawning and uneducated local reviewers, but a lack of respected (or feared), consistent and well-known national criticism, a la Michelin or Gault-Millau. Bad reviewing not only fails to distinguish the good from the bad and the ugly, it cheapens the value of the good reviews to the proprietor and to the diner. For those unfamiliar with CT's neighborhood, she lives up in the Blue Ridge, to my mind one of the most beautiful places on Earth and therefore a perfect spot for kind of less-formal but nonetheless wonderful restaurants scattered with rerasonable regularity across France and (I am told) Italy. But, as I discovered during a truly awful dining experience in another college town in roughly the same neck of the woods, it's difficult to find any local restaurant guide that doesn't reek of incestuous boosterism or at least ad sales quotas which, in turn, makes falling back on a chain restaurant or just settling for whatever the restaurant with the most compelling add on the three-fold brochure available at the tourist office (along with the guide to local B&Bs and Civil War battlefields) considers fine dining. Even were a talented chef and well-trained staff to attempt to make a go of it, it would be hard for me to find them. Now, last time I was in France I decided to to drive up into the Cevennes for a little rusticating, pulled the cork on a bottle of local pink and, within an hour had found a small town with two "Bib Gourmand" hotels and a like number of Bib Gourmand (for those unfamiliar, a rating slightly lower than one-star, but signifying an excellent price-quality rapport). Thus, one of the hoteliers and two restaurants received a reasonable reward for showing the talent and discipline to run better-than-average establishments: a desireable listing in a respected guidebook, and a trio of free-spending Yanks as customers. In addition to the tourist trade, I'm sure that in the off-season, the local eqivalents of the Chamber of Commerce, the Ladies Historical Renovation Society and every jeune homme attempting to influence a first date or make a memorable engagement has an instinct to patronize the local establishment with the "ojectively" "best" rating. In only Western Virginia had a similar guide that was willing to slap down (or ignore) mediocrity and bring business to those who rise above it, we might see more talented chefs take advantage of the beauty and raw materials available to open unique, excellent establishments. (Might put a little pressure on the local critics, as well, to think about something besides winning friends and influencing people through glowing reviews).