The Restaurant Oracles Disappoint with New Big Wong

Neon lights. Check. Candy apple red-brick pattern painted over real bricks as if to openly suggest a theme of artifice. Check. Massive sign advertising the lunch special for $6.99. Check.

The facade of New Big Wong has all the markings of a restaurant that serves typical, Westernized Chinese food. It telegraphs cheap, cheesy thrills like the stripes on a circus tent.

This is the place that Chef Mike Isabella recently uttered in the same breath as Volt and the Source? This is where local chefs hang out for their late-night chow?

Well then this - not Vidalia, Rustico or any of the other "reputable" places on the top 50 list - was our bulls-eye for Saturday-night dining.

We sat at a table next to a saltwater tank filled with dark brown, spined and fangy sea creatures just begging patrons to guess their identity. I flipped through the menu and was pleased to find no less than five pages of authentic Hong Kong specialties. Our waitress sidled up to the table, and ...

Dream Sequence:

... she spoke perfect English. She volunteered the names of any and all dishes that didn't appear on the menu but were nevertheless available on an informal basis. I asked her to tell us about the steamed "live" oysters, and she cheerfully explained they're served on the halfshell with the house sweet and sour sauce - and, no, she joked, they don't jump around on your plate!
So charming.

And from our questions, she could tell we were curious about Hong Kong, so she gave a quick primer on the main difference between the cuisines of this coastal hub and, a stone's skip away, the island of Taiwan: the latter bears the influences of Japan, which ruled Taiwan until the end of WWII, and also draws on Sichuan and Beijing traditions.

Oh, and those ugly mothers in the tank making goo-goo eyes at us? They're anglers, she chirped.
So properly educated by our impeccable host, we were able to order precisely what
we wanted. The waitress didn't try talking me into deep fried versions of everything I ordered even though everyone knows that scorched and oily crap is the only kind of food American esophaguses are biologically capable of passing.
Then the food came, and noticeably absent were those MSG goo-vats that swamp most Chinatown grub like an edible oil slick. Despite Hong Kong's past as a British colony, the seasoning on dishes like the phoenix (chicken) & dragon (shrimp) was restrained and just right, more indicative of Cantonese influences than the shapings of the West.


The food, like the service, was crisp and pleasing by nature.
No wonder the chefs of DC, those oracles of the local dining scene, prophesied New Big Wong as the Next Big Thing.

An icy stare from our waitress jarred me out of fantasy world ....

... and she said, without the trace of a smile, "What you want?"

Reality is a little less hospitable at New Big Wong. Throughout dinner, the service fluctuated from mildly friendly to inattentive, but if one there was one constant, it was lingual dysfunction. I asked two waiters about the live scallops, both of whom awkwardly ducked the requests like flaming arrows and fled our table like their hair was on fire.

Monali's phoenix and dragon

And, in reality, when I tried to order the duck tongue sauteed in black bean sauce, the waitress said something I didn't understand, and which I later realized must have translated into, "We're going to deep fry this because we know that, as an American, that's what you really want." The dish that emerged from the kitchen was so goupy and salty that the taste of duck was about as remote as Hong Kong.

"Sauteed" duck. And no bean sauce.

I tried asking a waiter if Mike Isabella was planning to drop by. He laughed hysterically and walked away.

After leaving the restaurant, I heard that there's some kind of secret menu that contains the real house favorites - which, of course, no one at the restaurant mentioned to us. The best dish is supposed to be something called the whole shrimp - to get it you've got to say you want the shrimp cooked exactly one minute.

Maybe it's trite to observe language barriers at a Chinese restaurant, but they're particularly frustrating at New Big Wong. Clearly, a place like this would take a lot of trial and error to get down all the special requests, winks, nods, translations, and secret handshakes. ESP might also be a requirement.

But there's the rub: I'm not sure the "declassified" grub we had at New Big Wong was good or unique enough to justify any more experimenting. The food p*rn versions below might look attractive, and they're good like popcorn shrimp at Popeyes Chicken after 10 beers. But, ultimately, all our dishes were greasy, retarded cousins of the more authentic Chinese food you can get out in Rockville.


Lolly's curry noodles with shrimp and pork

Lolly's steamed vegetables

My jelly fish with pork

WD-50 Octopus

Don sent in a pic of the octopus appetizer (the plate at the top is smoked duck) he had at WD-50, Wylie Dufresne's restaurant in Lower East Side NYC. He said it was "remarkably tender and flavorful. They must have a good rock in the kitchen!"

Grilling the Beast: Round One Goes to the Octopus

Mike Isabella's grilled octopus at Zaytinya had me up in arms this past weekend - I was so impressed that I recently tried cooking the suckers off these suckers myself.

I was excited for a few reasons. First, I had high - and, I would soon learn, unrealistic - hopes that I'd be able to recreate Isabella's masterpiece.

Second, this would be my first experience cooking an organism that could quite possibly beat me in a fight. I hit the gym when I can, but I'm not 100% positive I could do this to a shark.

The impressive strength of my foe made me feel like a big game hunter set to take down some mutant beast. Yes, my octopus was only two pounds and I bought it over the counter from a short Asian gentleman about a thousand miles from any octopus-containing body of water. Still, it was a step up in the manliness department from broccoli and chickens.

Third, I'm fascinated by the octopus. From an evolutionary standpoint, it's far superior to us as a species. Whereas octopus have been adapting to different water temperatures and prey for over 200 million years, we homo sapiens have only been around for about two million, and if Glen Beck is any indication, we've only got a few more decades to go.

Plus, the octopus is extremely smart, easily finding ways to escape its owner's fish tanks when kept as a pet. Octopus is the only non-vertebrate animal protected by the 1986 Animals Act in the UK - it was included because of its high intelligence.

Given all this excitement, I was a little disappointed that the Fishery Seafood Market in Chevy Chase didn't have any octopus in their display case. The fishmonger said he had some frozen octopus in the back, but when I asked him how long it had been frozen, he just looked at me for a while and never answered. This could have been because he was Chinese and didn't really speak English. Or maybe he couldn't work up the courage to tell me the octopus was 200 million years old.

In any case, what he plopped down on the counter was an octopus coiled in a round block of ice that resembled a large hockey puck. Then he asked me if I wanted a bag! I toyed with the idea of hauling that thing bagless onto a crowded elevator in my apartment building. It was a close call but I decided I don't dislike my neighbors quite that much.

When I got home I ran the octopuck under cold water, and I was reminded of the defrosting scene in Iceman as pale silver and lavender tentacles emerged from antiquity. When all the ice had melted, I poked my fingers into the back of the creepy bastard's hollowed head and held him up for inspection. Not the best way to honor this ancient denizen of the deep, but it was pretty cool-looking - the tentacles were like slimy dreadlocks.

I turned from admiring my ghoulish creature to cooking the hell out of him. For every tentacle, there are probably about ten different recommendations for how to prepare octopus. Most of these tricks are supposed to tenderize the meat. The Japanese rub their octopi with grated daikon, the Greeks boil them, and the Spanish think it's helpful to drop a wine cork into the cooking liquid. In other news, Spanish people are crazy.

But my favorite piece of advice - and probably the single greatest recipe step I've ever seen - was to "beat the octopus with a rock."

The octopus lucked out - no rocks in my apartment. I settled for a quick boil and then simmered for an hour, as suggested by Mark Bittman of the Times. Then, I strayed from Bittman's recipe and grilled the tentacles in an effort to get the same crispiness that made Zaytinya's version so good.

After the octopus was finished cooking, I prepared it as the Galicians traditionally do - over slices of potato with olive oil, sea salt, and smoked paprika.

The flavor profile - specifically the salty octopus and bitter paprika - was on point. The texture of the suction cups is unlike any other food I know of, and the dreads were crispy enough to vaguely remind me of Chef Isabella's grillwork.

That said, Isabella's job at Zaytinya is extremely safe. Although I simmered for what seemed like eternity, the meat was still too chewy.

And so, by the end of the night, I'd lost my battle with the fearsome octopus. But that was just the first round. This weekend I'll be at A&H Seafood Market to get some higher quality eight-legger. I'm also in the market for a big rock.

.

Anyone have advice for cooking octopus or where to buy it?

Best Food Spots in the Country

Jane and Michael Stern, authors of Roadfood, put together this list of the best and most interesting food spots in the U.S. and the rest of the world. Thanks to Lolly for the link.

In case you were wondering what they think of our food scene here in the District, they were able to find a whopping 3 restaurants in DC to include on their list. Vermont, Rhode Island, and Maine all have more. By itself, Connecticut has 17. We did beat out New Hampshire. We'll always have that.

They say it’s a list of everything from the “hottest restaurants to the quirkiest out-of-the-way gems,” but, from what I can tell, it’s mostly diners, cafeterias, and soul food. Their picks for DC are Ben’s Chili Bowl, Florida Avenue Grill, and Sholl’s Colonial Cafeteria. Sholl’s closed a while ago, but Ben’s Chili and Florida Ave Grill are both good places.

Here’s the list for our region:

East

Bantam,CT: Bantam Bread Company
Bethel, CT: Pizzeria Lauretano
Bridgeport, CT: Ralph 'N' Rich's
Bridgewater, CT: Bridgewater Chococlate
Fairfield, CT: Super Duper Weenie Truck
Manchester, CT: Cheeseburger Heaven
Mystic, CT: Kitchen Little
Mystic, CT: Whole-Bellied Fried Clams
New Milford, CT: Clamp's Hamburger Stand
Newton, CT: Carminuccio's
Norwalk, CT: Silvermine Tavern
Old Saybrook, CT: Pat's Kountry Kitchen
Prospect, CT: Big Dipper Ice Cream & Yogurt Parlor
Ridgefield, CT: Old-Style Soft-Serve
Southbury, CT: Perfect Corned Beef Hash
Stratford, CT: Chili at Danny's Drive-In
Wilton, CT: Wave Hill Bakers
Hockessin, DE: Woodside Farm
Smyrna, DE: Helen's Sausage House
Washington, DC: Ben's
Washington, DC: Florida Avenue Grill
Washington, DC: Sholl's Colonial Cafeteria
Eastern Seaboard: The Best Lobster Rolls
Cape Neddick (York), ME: Flo's
Falmouth, ME: Harmon's Lunch
Gardiner, ME: The A-1 Diner
Kennebunkport, ME: Mabel's Lobster Claw
Portland, ME: Molasses and Coffee
ortland, ME: Standard Baking Company
Wells, ME: Maine Diner
Wiscasset, ME: Red's Eats
Cumberland, MD: Bender's
Beverly, MA: Nick's Famous Roast Beef
Cambridge, MA: All-Star Sandwich Bar
Cape Cod, MA: Picks of the Clam Belt
Gloucester, MA: Turtle Alley Chocolates
Holyoke, MA: Nick's Nest
Somerset, MA: Butler's Donuts
Wenham, MA: Wenham Tea House and Shops
Westport, MA: Marguerite's
Bath, NH: America's Oldest General Store
Sugar Hill, NH: Pankcake Picks
Atlantic City, NJ: Formica Brothers Bakery
Atlantic City, NJ: Fralinger's Saltwater Taffy
Atlantic City, NJ: White House Sub Shop
Bloomfield, NJ: Short Stop Diner
Edison, NJ: Harold's New York Deli
Hackensack, NJ: B & W Bakery
Binghamton, NY: Spiedies at Sharkey's
Brewster, NY: Red Rooster Drive-In
Brooklyn, NY: Gargiulo's
Brooklyn, NY: Seafood Feasting at Lundy's
Brooklyn, NY: Sparky's American Food
Buffalo, NY: Beef on Weck
Bandor, NY: Jim's B-B-Q Chicken
Hancock, NY: The Eel Man of the Delaware Valley
Ithaca, NY: Hot Truck
New York, NY: Chicken in a Pot
New York, NY: Jewish Home Cooking
New York, NY: Hallo Berlin
New York, NY: Manganaro's
New York, NY: Margon
New York, NY: Pastrami Picks
New York, NY: Teany
Plattsburg, NY: McSweeney's
Tonawanda, NY: McSweeney's
Northeast: Clam Chowder Variations
Northeast: New England Donuts
Northeast: New England Ice Cream
Akron, PA: Stuffed Pig Stomach
Frackville, PA: Dutch Kitchen Restaurant
Philadelphia, PA: Cheese Steak
Philadelphia, PA: Famous Fourth Street Delicatessen
Philadelphia, PA: Tony Luke's
Pittsburgh, PA: Enrico Biscotti Company
Pittsburgh, PA: Mixed-Up Food at Primanti Brothers
Pittsburgh, PA: Enrico Biscotti Company
Pottsville, PA: Mootz Home Made Candies
Rhode Island: Jonnycakes
Cranston, RI: Italian Food at Mike's Kitchen
Narragansett, RI: Champlin's Seafood Deck
Providence, RI: John's New York Systems
Tiverton, RI: Gray's Ice Cream
Tiverton, RI: Evelyn's Drive-In
Bridgewater Corners, VT: Sourdough Pancakes
Dorset, VT: Dorset Inn
Quechee, VT: The Best Roasted Sweet Corn
Quechee, VT: Simon Pearce Restaurant and Glass Blowing Center
Manchester, VT: Up for Breakfast
South Royalton, VT: An Honest Square Meal
Wells River, VT: P & H Truck Stop
Wilmington, VT: Dot's Diner

Great Service and Love Apples at Zaytinya

Ansel Adams said, "There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer."

Dinner last night at Zaytinya showed that Ansel missed a third person: the one watching the photographer take the picture.

Typically, when my camera flash starts popping in dimly lit restaurants, the other diners flinch and bat their eyes in pre-epilectic swoons. They aren't so much watching me as silently praying I'll choke on my subject before blinding them again.

The waiters are the ones who really watch. They seem to give more attention to my table in the off chance that I might be an industry-insider like Tom Sietsema preparing to write a review.

And last night our waitress took it up a notch - Marcy and I got our first bribe! Of course, our waitress prefaced the bribe by saying, "Now, this isn't a bribe!" But, perhaps in the interest of feeling like a real food critic, I'm saying it was a bribe.

Maybe bribes always taste sweet, but ours was especially so because it was dessert. It was also bountiful - we were the beneficiary of no less than four dishes, compliments of the house. My favorite of the four wasn't on the menu: a counterintuitive mix of cherries, chocolate and a multi-colored caramel of kalamata olives. Other highlights were an olive oil ice cream and an ultra-smooth chocolate visne.

My only criticism is with the timing of the bribe. It came at the end of the meal, at which point I'd already made up my mind about Zaytinya - it's one of the top two or three restaurants I've been to in DC. Here's why:

1. Octopus. I ordered the baby octopus because I heard it's Chef Mike Isabella's favorite food to prepare. He got some cooking tips in Santorini, Greece, where octopi swim the Aegean in such abundance that native Santorinis paint them on their pottery and call them their "apples of love." Santorinis are, apparently, a somewhat creepy people. Like the Santorinis, Isabella braises his octopus in red wine vinegar. But whereas the locals tend to boil their love apples, Isabella grills them until the arms turn brown and crisp.

Have this dish - it will rejigger your understanding of octopus. If, as I used to, you think of it as seafood's second-class citizen - certainly palatable but bland and chewy - Zaytinya will disabuse you of your octoprejudice. Isabella's version is sweet as lobster, and I haven't enjoyed crispiness this much since cracklings. Thanks to last night, I overcame my fear of slimy undulating tentacles coming to life in my kitchen and attacking me, and bought my first octopus to braise and grill later on today.

2. Snails. Chef Isabella's Cretan snails earned him a top three finish in the snail challenge on Top Chef. Flecked with tomato, green onion, and parsley, they were just as pretty on my plate as my television screen.

Like the octopus, Zaytinya's version of snails was a jolt. I'd previously had only escargot - French snails that are lost at sea without a life raft, asphyxiated by butter.

If you've been eating escargot all your life, stop what you're doing (hopefully working out) and go to Zaytinya for Crete's spin. They don't use a drop of butter. That's right - you can actually taste the snails. And I'm not sure where Isabella gets his gastropods, but they're flavorful like the ones that gorge on the aromatic herbs and date palms of Crete's underbrush. To that earthiness, Zaytinya adds a touch of ouzo, an anise-flavored spirit, and skordalia, a potato puree so good the Greeks have it by itself as a main dish.

3. Avgotaraho. If there are two things in this world that I love, they are weird food and Jose Andres. So it was a foregone conclusion that I would order the mullet roe (avgotaraho), which is weird because it comes wrapped in wax, and, according to the menu, is "one of Jose Andres' favorites."

Weird food isn't always wonderful, but Zaytinya's roe was. Most caviar you get in restaurants has been processed, but this Mediterranean tradition involves wrapping the ovaries in beeswax, which preserves their moisture and nutritional value. And, I learned, Greeks have OCD - obsessive caviar-wrapping disorder - they use eight wax layers. It had a great smokiness that reminded us of lox, but did they have to sell out and give it such a catchy, commercialized name like avgotaraho?

4. Tulumu. We'd heard from Cheesehead that Zaytinya's Tulumu cheese was not to be missed. As promised, this sheep's milk cheese from Turkey was strong. To balance it with some sweetness, Isabella doesn't just sprinkle on a little sugar - you get a honeycomb. News to me: honeycombs are edible.

5. Harissa. The restaurant staff was excellent. I don't think I've ever mentioned service on this blog, but, even before I busted out the camera, our waitress was attentive and unusually resilient and knowledgeable in the face of our unending stream of questions. When I requested a side dish of harissa, she brought it out quickly as if she'd been expecting the question, mentioning that Zaytinya shuns the canned stuff and concocts fresh batches in the kitchen.

I gloated to a number of you that I would be crowning my Zaytinya blog with a pic of me and Marcy hanging out with Mike Isabella. This would have been our second brush with Top Chef greatness in under three weeks. Would you believe that Isabella had the nerve to be in Spain when we visited his restaurant? Doesn't he know I'm an industry-insider?

More great dishes from Zaytinya:


Spiced Quail Couscous - braised quail, butternut squash, quail egg

Sea Scallops - seared scallops, yogurt-dill sauce

Baby Beet Salad - golden & candy cane beets, fennel, cress, feta, walnuts

Hommus puree of chickpeas, garlic and tahini

Updated DC Area Restaurant Rankings

...........Taste...Creativity.. Ambiance.....Service....Price...TOTAL

Nava..........8...........8.............6.............7..........8.......37
Thai
..................................................................................
Rasika........9...........9.............7............8............7......40
..................................................................................
Meaza........6...........6.............7............6............7......32
..................................................................................
Abol...........7...........7.............5............6...........7.......32
..................................................................................
Grape.........6...........7.............7............8...........6.......34
seed
..................................................................................
Jang...........8............8............7............5...........7.......35
Hyun Ban Jun
..................................................................................
Evo............8............8.............6............7..........7.......36
Bistro
..................................................................................
Liberty.......8.............7............8.............8.........8........39
Tavern
..................................................................................
Four ..........8............8............6............7...........8.......37
Sisters
..................................................................................
Joe's..........10..........8.............5............6...........9.......38
Noodle
House
................................................................................. .......,.....Taste...Creativity...Ambiance...Service....Price...TOTAL

La...............9...........8.............7..........7.........6.........37
Canela
.................................................................................
India.............6.........7.............7...........6..........7........33
Heritage
.................................................................................
Common-......6...........9............8............5.........6........34
wealth
Gastropub
.................................................................................
Honey Pig......9..........8.............7...........7..........8........39
Gooldaegee
Korean Grill
................................................................................. Eventide.......8..........6..............9...........8..........7.......38
................................................................................. Teatro.........7...........7..............6...........5..........5.......30
Goldoni

Top Five Bites 2009

I was inspired by Metrocurean’s feature called "Chef Five Bites" to try to think of my own top five bites of 2009. In my case, this exercise is an impossible hypothetical - the worst kind of sci fi - because, unless tied down with strong rope after my first taste, I can't imagine only taking a single bite of each of the following dishes. Nevertheless, without further ado, my Five Bites:

1. Spaghetti with tomato and basil at Scarpetta (Meatpacking District, NYC). The build-up to Scarpetta’s spaghetti was sort of like waiting forever to see a really good movie: I’d looked forward to it for months while reading all the glowing reviews, and I worried that it might pale in comparison to my high hopes. But the only thing pale about Chef Conant's signature dish was the orange hue of the sauce - due to the parmigiano-reggiano cheese. In fact, Conant exceeded all expectations by using the freshest basil and peppers to pique the sauce and a super-lengthy cooking process that permits his housemade noodles to fully absorb the tomato flavor. Stoking my awe: multiple catastrophically bad attempts to replicate this seemingly simple dish in my own kitchen.



2. Osso Buco at Famoso (Chevy Chase). The strange thing about Famoso making my Five Bites list is that their osso buco is the only dish I’ve ever actually had at Famoso. And, despite the richness of the Milanese risotto and bone marrow, I've yet to go back to Famoso to enjoy this dish again. And the restaurant is literally across the street from my apartment!

3. Thousand year eggs at Michael’s Noodles (Rockville). A couple of other bites on this list might have tasted slightly better, but this one was the most pleasantly surprising. When the waitress brought out this jiggling, obsidian mystery of the Orient, Lolly and I expected the taste to be something like crude oil. Instead, smoky, sweet and salty.

4. Fried rabbit liver at Cochon (New Orleans). This dish represents the core of what’s so cool about Cochon – modern cooking techniques applied to sentimental backwoods favorites of the Bayou. I have a hard time envisioning anything as sophisticated as pepper jelly sitting in Farmer Fran’s cupboard, yet that’s exactly how Chef Donald Link sauces his rabbit liver.

5. Goat cheese raviolis at Volt (Frederick). I was a little reluctant to order these things because they seemed too tame compared to the competition on Bryan Voltaggio's second-course menu - namely, the wattle pork belly. Luckily, right before I ordered, Marcy chimed in, “You always get pork belly!” By going with the raviolis instead, I not only showed her how crazy and unpredictable I am, but I also got to enjoy what turned out to be the best dish at Volt (and, safe to say, Frederick).

Honorable Munches: Chicken leg tagine at Evo Bistro; Spare ribs at Joe’s Noodle House; Adobo soup at La Canela; Avocado banana chaat at Rasika; Duck rillettes & faux gras terrine at Central; Sweetbreads and pork belly at Paley's Place (Portland).

Anyone else have a Five Bites list?

Our Journey Through the Washington City Paper Top 50 Continues at Eventide Restaurant

1. Roasted Elysian Fields Lamb Loin

For this dish, Chef Miles Vaden keeps the salt in the cupboard and rolls the dice on whether people will like the taste of the Elysian Fields lamb. The lamb jus and chestnut puree (peanut butter?) are both good dipping sauces, but the lamb itself is naked on the plate, brazenly showing its stuff without any detectable fresh herbs or garlic. Whether you like the full frontal depends on your level of attraction to the highly-praised lamb of Greene County, Pa.

That's where you'll find Elysian Fields Farms, whose ruminants have been a trendy pick since the late 1990s, when Thomas Keller liked them so much he decided to charter planes cross-country all the way from Pa. to his restaurants in Napa Valley, French Laundry and Bouchon. Elysian is also acclaimed at top restaurants in Manhattan like Gramercy Tavern and La Grenouille.

Eventide was my first encounter with Elysian. The Farm's owner, Keith Martin, is well regarded in the restaurant industry for aging his lambs just right, and that shows up on the plate: the meat has a firm tooth, not at all mushy like lamb that's grown past its prime.

And because Martin feeds his lamb both grain and grass, the taste is especially sweet. In the kitchen, Eventide abbreviates the roasting process; they know the best way to bring out Elysian's natural flavors is to serve on the rare side.

If I have one complaint about the Elysian, though, it's that you don't get the gamey flavor that you either love or hate about lamb. Whereas you can identify lower-quality lamb from New Zealand or Australia by its gaminess, the taste of Elysian is fresher and more comparable to beef.

It's very possible that I just don't know good sheep, but without that tangy, earthy flavor, I felt like I was missing the full lamb experience. If, like me, you aren't so impressed by Elysian's fresh taste, you'll be clamoring for salt. But if you're an Elysian-lover like Miles Vaden, Thomas Keller or Tom Colicchio, the meat-first, spice-second approach is a no-brainer.

2. Virginia Bison Tartare

According to the Washington Post, the Georgetown Farm in Virginia is the "largest bison operation east of the Mississippi River." Next time I get the urge to drive out to the middle of nowhere on Route 29, I'll be sure to look out for about 250 bison grazing on the creatively-named Buffalo Hill near Madison.

Til then, Eventide is a more convenient and tasty approach to quality bison bonding. Because it's local, the ground bison is fresh, and Vaden mixes it with capers and cornichons, which are numbers one and two on my list of things that are green and salty (don't worry, kosher dill, you come in a respectable number three).

What made the dish the highlight of the night, though, were the dipping sauces. One was a sweet cranberry mustard. The other, which actually looked and tasted more like mustard, was an aji amarillo aioli that was spicy, sweet, and went perfectly with the bison. Aji amarillio (yellow) chiles are mostly found in Peru. They jab a spicy punch right up there with Tobasco, notching 50K on the Scoville rating, and also have a slightly fruity flavor. Typically these peppers are used in salsa, but Eventide makes a paste of them and mixes with red wine vinegar. All this creativity brings out a wild streak in the residents of Buffalo Hill.

3. Oat Crusted Veal Sweetbreads

I've been on a roll over the past few weeks with my sweetbreads. At both Commonwealth Gastropub and especially Volt, the sweetbreads were so creamy I was able to completely forget that unpleasant business about cow glands.

The version of this dish at Eventide had all the accouterments of a winner. Slices of apple and radish sat appetizingly over a syrupy mix of spiced apple butter and cider.

Unfortunately, the sweetbreads themselves reminded me of a woeful attempt to cook these things on my own recently. Perhaps I was thrown off my game by the horrific sight of bloody cow organ sitting on my kitchen countertop, because I'm not sure what I was thinking, but I decided to forgo any kind of crust in preparing them. I just grilled those babies and had them straight up. The taste was so minerally that it was utterly apparent to me that I was eating innards, whereas the best cooking techniques for offal are aimed at distracting you from that regrettable fact.

The only reward to this experience? Having plumbed the depths of bad sweetbreads, I now really appreciate good restaurant versions.

But the texture of the sweetbreads at Eventide wasn't creamy at all but actually a little chewy, prolonging the amount of time I had to deal with a mineral flavor that was unchecked. The bittersweet good news: I now have a more forgiving opinion of my own sweetbread travesty because something similar was served in a nice restaurant.

More Eventide:

Octopus Escabeche with green olives, cauliflower, peppers, chickpea mash

Grilled Pear Salad with frisee, arugula, candied walnuts, sherry vinaigrette, Great Hill bleu cheese flan

Pan Seared Arctic Char with spaghetti squash, spicy remoulade, tomato-fennel confit

Pan Seared Alaskan Sablefish with celery root cream, littleneck clams, pancetta, carrots, celery, potatoes

Cheese Plate served with grilled bread, spiced nuts, fruit preserves

 

I Apply the Rules of the Street to Pork Belly at Honey Pig Restaurant

"It's not that you do sh*t, it's how you do it." -- Namond Brice, season 4 of the Wire.

That I thought of the above quote while having pork belly at Honey Pig, a Korean restaurant in Annandale, tells you two things. First, my obsession with the Wire is on the verge of becoming unhealthy (I've also started whistling the Farmer and the Dell before going into meetings with people I don't like at work).

Second, the genius behind Honey Pig's pork belly - the best in Delmarva - isn't the pork itself. It's how they serve it.

It being New Years Day, the odds were against us liking Honey Pig. Both Marcy and I were hung over from the previous night's festivities, our tastebuds sleep-deprived, numb and cranky.
Instead of nurturing our headaches with Advil and silence, we stepped into what appeared to be the Korean version of MTV's My Super Sweet Sixteen. The young Koreans at Honey Pig like to multi-task by simultaneously dining and clubbing. They chew and bop heads in rhythm to loud Korean hip-hop and high-quality American music like Britney Spears.

My choice of food was predetermined by all the reviews of Honey Pig celebrating the grilled pork belly. Both Candy Sagon of the Washington Post and Todd Kliman at the Washingtonian wrote reviews that highlighted the very one thing that doesn't deserve highlighting: the pork itself. Kliman wrote that Honey Pig's highest virtue was the "quality of the meats," adding, "the pork belly and short ribs have no peer."

They should brush up on their Baltimore street principles - it's not always what you do. You just need to look at the menu prices to know that Honey Pig isn't scouring the Virginia countryside for the most exquisite, farm-fresh cut of Berkshire or Kurobuta. I got my pork belly for $8.95, so I'm guessing they use cheap factory-farm pork.

I'm okay with that, because the real innovation at Honey Pig is how they do it.

Traditionally, Koreans eat their pork belly "ssam" style, meaning they wrap unseasoned slices of pork in lettuce leaves stuffed with hot peppers, raw pieces of garlic, and a spicy condiment called ssam jang.

I think this approach puts too much pressure on the raw garlic and condiment to nail the flavor profile, yet all Korean restaurants in Baltimore serve it that way. Pork belly, with its grease and fat ribboning, should be the ultimate post-party drunk food, but I've had the surreal experience of sharing a big grill of pork belly with three intoxicated college buddies who normally love Korean food and were totally unimpressed by their late-night ssam.

And I've yet to find any pork belly in the District.

Honey Pig's version is the best in the Delmarva region because, although they give you the option of the traditional ssam, they leave the ancestors' techniques in the past with these tricks:

1. They marinate the pork in ... something Top Secret. When I asked our waitress about the identity of the marinade, she responded like I was asking her to disclose South Korean military secrets. Maybe it's one of those obvious secrets, like Kim Jong Il's wig, but I'm pretty sure the sauce isn't honey, as the name of the restaurant would make clear. I'm going with gochujang, the Korean chili paste, and probably a splash of soy sauce. Not only does the sauce improve the taste of the pork, it also caramelizes as it crackles on the grill, giving it a crispy crust.

2. A whole bunch of kimchee and beansprouts are thrown on the grill alongside the pork, so during the cooking process, the meat picks up those salty-sour kimchee flavors. The crunchy panchan vegetables net the dish some texture points.

Without Honey Pig's innovations, pork belly can taste bland. With them, I can vouch for pork belly as a good hangover cure, with great flavor the only rejuvenative property required. As the pork belly and kimchee combo worked its magic on me, I began shaking it to the music. Just like a young un', as Omar would say.

More dishes at Honey Pig:

Marcy's bim bim bap

I enjoy a kimchee stew as some Korean models flirt with me from across the room.

Restaurant Week at Teatro Goldoni

Thanks to the social networking juggernaut that is Joyce, last night I had the pleasure of attending Teatro Goldoni with three people I'd never met before.

It wasn't just the dinner companions that were new - I'd also never been to Teatro, one of the 34 restaurants on the City Paper's Top 50 list that I had yet to grace.

Expectations were high. First of all, it was Restaurant Week. This is the time when modest food spenders emerge, gaunt and faint with hunger, from various hole in the wall delis and drive-throughs to take advantage of slashed prices at D.C.'s finest. We expect the second week of January to revolutionize our tastebuds, solve major life problems, and hold us over for months until the next Restaurant Week.

Ehsan, a recent transplant from L.A., said he was tired of being tricked by Papa Johns commercials featuring glamor shots of Tuscan six cheese masterpieces only to receive deliveries that were inedible. Restaurant Week was here to save the day.

If that wasn't enough pressure for Teatro, I'd also told people around our table about the restaurant's ranking on the Top 50 list.

Ehsan and I both started with the diver scallops carpaccio, which came with crispy leeks and black gelatins of balsamic, basil and pepper. I thought Ehsan was right when he said the scallops were too salty; Chef Fargione was trying a little too hard to cover up the fishiness of the raw scallops. Still, my take was that the scallops went well with the crunchy leeks, but Ensan was seen pushing away a full plate.

For the second course, most of the table ordered the braised veal cheek. When they placed the veal in front of me, it appeared to be sitting on top of a bun, which I thought was a cool play on a hamburger. My first clue that Chef Fargione was messing with my head was when I saw Christine easily spoon a piece of the bun off her plate. I couldn't wait to try this strangely soft bread so I went for it with my spoon, too - it was mashed potatoes. My pride hurt that the kitchen had fooled me so bad, I decided not to like the dish, but delicate veal plus layers of fontina cheese and mushrooms ragu won me over.

The serving sizes were on the small side, an unfortunate trend during Restaurant Week because supplies end up overwhelmed by all the customers.

Ehsan stared down his roasted gulf shrimp with chick peas puree, piled on his plate and half-eaten. "I don't eat fish heads," he said, and told me he was planning to swing by Burger King on the way home.

Joyce, battle-tested veteran of multiple DC Restaurant Weeks, told us about all the places she'd enjoyed in previous versions of Restaurant Stampede. She wasn't too impressed by Teatro Goldoni. Michelle voiced group consensus: Teatro is a solid restaurant as long as you're paying discount, but the food doesn't justify the prices on the regular menu.

My New Years resolution is to spend a healthy chunk of my income on fine dining, so I look forward to a few return visits to Teatro before making any final judgments.

Here's a good map of Restaurant Week provided by Capital Spice: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=117013112445532069246.000452bafcd563fe0ca27&ie=UTF8&ll=38.924161,-77.162476&spn=0.244661,0.598755&z=11.

Kuanta Firfir at Abol in Silver Spring

When I lace up my shoes for work, I'm not going for any kind of statement. So when I needed a replacement pair recently, I headed to the Silver Spring DSW - where the plain, cheap loafer is perfectly constructed for the government employee just looking to fit in.

Shoe-shopping works up an appetite. With a box of new and shiny yet unmistakably conventional shoes in hand, I left DSW in search of a meal more interesting than my footwear selection. It was my first time in downtown Silver Spring, but its reputation for ethnic foods preceded it.

Taste of Morocco on Colesville Rd was alluring, but I settled on Abol, an Ethiopian place a few blocks away. Ethiopian cuisine has had the attractive force of a magnetic field over me ever since the Horn of Africa - a food cart in Portland where a red lentil stew left me like an alphabet letter longing for a refrigerator door.

Inside Abol, I noticed a City Paper review that rated the restaurant one of the top 50 places in the DC area. Abol, it said, means "authentic" or "original." I checked my shoes at the door and grabbed a table.

But the waitress/co-owner, Birtukan, and I got off to a rocky start. I wanted to order the very last item on the menu, the kuanta firfir - dried beef sauteed in berbere sauce and mixed with pieces of injera. Birtukan was against it.

"You will not like it," she said. "Trust me!"

"Okay, okay," I said. "But why won't I like it?"

"You just won't!" The more she resisted, the more curious I became. Her broken english was emphatic. I told her that if she didn't let me order the kuanta firfir, I would go to another restaurant. Defeated, she stomped sullenly back to the kitchen to relay my order to the cooks.

The kitchen produced the dish quickly, and Birtukan placed it on my table with one last look of disapproval. I peeled back a covering layer of injera expecting the worst. At the same time, I was intent on proving my exotic palate to Birtukan no matter what. I would finish whatever atrocity of Ethiopian cuisine she had tried to protect me from.

But underneath the injera there was nothing festering or discolored or slithering. Just dried beef with pieces of injera soaked in spicy berbere. Still, Birtukan watched me anxiously as I took my first bite, probably waiting for me to grimace or spit it out. But the dried beef was crispy like bacon. Actually, it was slightly chewier, which was good because it gave me more time to enjoy the smoky, blended flavors of chili pepper, coriander, and ginger. There will be no justice as long as we as a society allow naive Westerners like the one who ordered this dish before me - and protested it enough to psychologically scar Birtukan - the privilege of continuing to dine at Ethiopian restaurants.

"Excellent," I said to Birtukan from across the dining room. She smiled for the first time.

Her husband, Belete, visited my table and explained that Ethiopians consider kuanta firfir to be a light meal and typically have it for breakfast. I admitted that as a Westerner I wasn't crazy about the idea of eating dried meat for breakfast, but lunch and dinner were another story.

Belete was quick to reward my enthusiasm for his food. At no charge, he gave me an extra side of yefasolia - string beans and carrots cooked with vegetable oil, tomato, garlic, ginger, and green peppers.

A Night in the Culinary Middleground at Volt

In my experience, cheflebrities tend to make an impression. Jose Andres ignored me so he could flirt with a 20-year old girl. Wylie Dufresne was so friendly he did everything but call me to hang out. Spike Mendelsohn just called me a word that rhymes with ashpole.

Contrast that with Top Chef finalist Bryan Voltaggio, who Marcy and I met this past Wednesday when we road tripped it to Voltaggio's restaurant, Volt, in bucolic Frederick. He looks you in the eye and gives you a firm handshake. He politely answers your questions. When you have your picture taken with him, he positions himself so it looks like his arm is slung around your back, but without actually touching you. Before you part ways, he hands you his business card. He's utterly appropriate, and he doesn't register a blip on the personality radar.

That's my take on Voltaggio's food, too. Every dish at Volt is perfectly executed, but I don't see a driving philosophy or definitive style.

Voltaggio seems to be occupying an ambiguous middleground between two warring factions of the restaurant world: those who prefer simple, sustainable food that showcases local ingredients, and the innovators who don't care where their foie gras comes from as long as it's wrapped up in something weird like cotton candy.

These factions were represented by two of the three finalists on the most recent season of Top Chef. Michael Voltaggio thrived at presenting familiar food in ground-breaking ways. Kevin Gillespie preferred simple comfort food with flavorful ingredients. Michael wasn't impressed: "The food Kevin cooks is the food I cook on my day off." Bryan was the third finalist, and he never really picked a side.

Volt's website suggests that Bryan's a locavore like Kevin. The home page shuffles you through a series of pictures that hit you so hard over the head with the theme of local/sustainable ingredients that it almost seems satirical: Bryan strapping on an apron in a horse stable (if you're a good enough chef, all you need to cook is hay and horse poop), Bryan cuddling with a chicken (who was probably soon thereafter decapitated), Bryan peering over a field of corn (looking for somewhere to build a baseball field?).

Even before Volt opened, Voltaggio networked for months with Frederick County farmers to secure as much local produce as possible.

And his menu does place an emphasis on local ingredients. Marcy liked, for example, his composition of market vegetables, including maroon carrots, watermelon radish, and fennel.

But a lot of the dishes seem less about highlighting local ingredients. The simply prepared, flavor-packed beef strip comes from local Pineland Farms, but the strip is surrounded by the tinkerings of a mad scientist: a translucent ball of liquefied carrot, held together by a thin sugary membrane that bursts when you bite into it.

The menu also gives a shout out to Cherry Glen Farms for the goat cheese raviolis, which are creamy and golden and appear like egg yolks beneath a mix of roasted butternut squash and shitake. The menu doesn't mention, though, that the dish comes topped with sage flavored air - the combinination of soy lethicin and a liquid seasoned with sage, which is whipped with a special mixer until it bubbles. The aesthetic of this suggests that a terrorist has stormed the kitchen and applied a poisonous foam to your food. Nevertheless, my first culinary air was enjoyably mind-bending - next I'm going to try smelling a flower by eating it.

Although the molecular tricks are entertaining, I couldn't help but think back on an interview in which Michael Voltaggio advised his brother to "learn to let himself go a little bit. Don't hold back so much, don't be afraid to express yourself on the plate." Bryan agreed, "Michael is right. There's a lot of times when I feel I cook for my guests more so than I cook for myself. Sometimes that's good and sometimes that's bad."

I've also read that the younger brother Michael picked on Bryan a lot growing up. Their mother tells a story about how she once warned Michael that if he kept messing with Bryan, she's send him up to his room so he couldn't watch his favorite show, ALF. Michael immediately trudged up to his room, explaining that he couldn't stop picking on Bryan.

Seems like it's time for Bryan to stand up to the molecular gastronomy influences of his fraternal bully. Once he does, the older Voltaggio, who skipped out on D.C. to locate Volt among the cows and crops, can develop into the full-fledged locavore chef he's meant to be.

A couple more Volt dishes below:

Hudson valley duck liver with seckel pears, pistachio, anise, vanilla brioche

Sturgeon with variations of sunchoke, crosnes, clementine vinaigrette