Image: Peter Gullers, Baker (Italy, 1957).
Dearest Gentle Reader, welcome back to our weekly recap of dining and food news from D.C. and elsewhere. Returning from the holiday break, this week is packed to the gills – including two fish stories. We did write-ups for our D.C. dining guide of two fancy hotel restaurants that get totally different coverage, plus lots more. So shall we proceed?
Updates to D.C. Recommended Restaurant List
Added:
The Bazaar – The José Andrés glitzy emporium in the Waldorf on Penn.
Revisited:
Estuary – On the short list of under-appreciated spots in D.C. right now is the relaunched spot in the Conrad.
D.C. Dining News
Comings & Goings (and other restaurant news):
Moon Rabbit appears to have nine lives. Thankfully. Coming back to a space in Penn Quarter.
Esquire put Chang Chang on its list of 50 best new restaurants.
We were impressed with Irregardless out of the gate, but it has gone through a bunch in a short time. A menu shift, a change at chef, and now a new owner.
Florida Ave Grill expands hours.
Medium Rare is a local treasure.
The Emerging (Local) Economy:
A look at the crime issues on H Street and what it means for economics. “The growing sense of danger in the neighborhood is reflected in crime data. Since January, for example, the number of violent crimes increased from 76 to 96, or nearly 25 percent, compared to the same period last year. The number of stolen cars rose from 115 to 163, or 41 percent, while robberies increased from 62 to 79, or 25 percent and burglaries jumped from 14 to 36. Overall crime is up nearly 6 percent. The increase in violent crime has been greater elsewhere, including the U Street neighborhood, where the number of incidents jumped nearly 84 percent in that same period.” The sense of despair seems not just in the numbers, but that there is no plan to turn it around.
Georgetown is doing well. Vacancy rates on the restaurant and retail side are at pre-pandemic levels. More than 55 retail shops and restaurants opened this year with 30 to 40 more expected next year.
Jessica Sidman on the cost/benefit of credit card fees being passed to consumers. Buried in it is the vulture-like behavior of credit card companies: “Perhaps counterintuitively, some credit card processors have recently started pitching the idea of passing credit card fees to customers, but framed as “cash discounts,” says Jordan Cotton, co-owner of Union Market rum distillery and bar Cotton & Reed. In this scenario, the processing fees for customers are slightly higher than what businesses would typically pay. Given that most customers will continue to use cards anyway, this potentially leads to higher profits for processors.”
DCists flags that D.C.’s Office of the Attorney General is warning retailers not discriminate against residents who pay with Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. “Nearly 146,000 D.C. residents — or one-fifth of the city — received assistance from SNAP last year, according the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a national think tank. Most residents on SNAP have incomes below the federal poverty line and have families with children.”
A common refrain around these parts is support what you want to see survive. Borders and Barnes & Noble nearly killed them. Amazon took a few of them out. But local bookstores survive. It seems like an analogy for restaurants. We don’t want just new places, we want good places.
Along similar lines, D.C. deserves to have a vibrant jazz scene. Carlyle Room is giving it a go to replace some of the void left by recent closures.
Food Sources:
The only commercial orchard for persimmons on the East Coast is in Maryland with a very D.C. story.
Local Media:
“I really, really want to know what company this is.” So would we. Can’t be more than about 20 places that fit this description if you were an enterprising reporter looking for a scoop.
Pati Jinich. “We’ve been spending Thanksgiving with our same group of friends since we moved to Washington, D.C. It made me feel like because I was partaking in a U.S.-based holiday, it’s not that I was being less Mexican, but I was being more Mexican, because my turkey was very Mexican. At the same time, I was feeling American too, and that made me feel like, “OK, I’m now Mexican-American.” I have very deep roots in Mexico, and I’m growing strong roots here in the United States, and that doesn’t make me less of either. It makes me doubly blessed, but it makes me feel doubly responsible too, to do right by my culture and by my home country. If I’m trying to enrich this table, I better do a heck of an amazing turkey.” We just like pointing out she is a local.
The Post has published reviews from a range of writers recently. Sonia Rao on the vegetarian hot dog option at Lyman’s Tavern; Gabe Hiatt on Qui Qui. Just noting.
Drink
Wine:
Alder Yarrow give the new SOMM movie a thumbs up for going in a new direction. “Centered on the efforts of Armenian father-daughter winemaking pair Vahe and Aimee Keushguerian, the film paints a wonderfully intimate portrait of their winemaking efforts in Armenia, and their perseverance to do so in the midst of the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War.” More on Georgia Wines from 60 Minutes.
Speaking of the culture in the prior SOMM movies, Jancis Robinson writes in the Financial Times about the study that found deep and broad sexism in the British wine trade. “The #MeToo era yielded some horror stories about how female sommeliers in the US were treated, but little happened in the UK. Now that this survey has quantified the situation for my fellow British women wine professionals, I hope there will be real improvement in both attitudes and behaviour.”
The herbicide Glyphosate is on track for continued use approval in EU despite concerns. The storyline is looking like Michael Clayton in French.
As the wine industry fights to find new customers among younger generations, someone argues focus on the old people.
Closing in on the cause of “red-wine headaches” other than those caused by overdrinking.
Lo/No:
Derek Brown flags a study in Japan that offering non-alcoholic options has a carry-on effect. “According to the study, alcohol consumption was reduced by an average of 11.5 grams per day. That’s close to one standard drink a day, which in the U.S. is measured at 14 grams of alcohol. The effect lasted until week 20, although that could indicate that the beverages were rationed by participants instead of consumed within the 12 week period. The control group also reduced the amount of their alcohol consumption by 2.7 grams, which researchers suggest may be the result of keeping a drink diary. This might indicate that the effect comes from both the apportion of non-alcoholic beverages and keeping a drinking diary.”
Drink Media:
Eric Asimov does an interview, and talks about his approach: “My job is to inform, question and inspire, not to sell bottles. I imagine I’m writing for an intelligent, curious audience comprising a range of people, from those who know very little about wine to those who may know more than I do about certain areas, along with plenty in between. My hope is to span that spectrum without alienating people on either end.” He also makes a pitch for what makes wine (and food) journalism interesting. “Ask yourself what is most interesting about wine. Is it the people, history and culture of wine? The economics? The agricultural, environmental and human factors? Society’s relationship to alcohol? Methodology of making wine? The experience of drinking wine and how it makes you feel? All these together are what makes wine so fascinating. Go beyond a narrow, drab focus on tasting notes and scores.” We would add it might be good to make yourself AI proof.
Health & Nutrition:
The Post notes a coming revision to eating guidelines issued by the government has food producers worried about stating the obvious. “Critics have long argued that current health guidelines wrongly focus on individual nutrients and ignore the effects of processing and additives. This essentially allows food companies to meet basic nutrition requirements while engineering ultra-processed junk foods that carry marketing claims that sound healthy.”
Related, the Times on Ozempic and the holidays – what happens when gluttony is short-circuited? We also note that Ozembic may have a greater impact on the food industry than guidelines.
Industry:
Hannah Goldfield on New Haven pizza in the New Yorker.
Some perspective from a restaurant closing in Brooklyn. “Don’t ask why we’re closing — ask how in the hell we managed to stay open for as long as we did.”
Meanwhile, in Toronto a study of streateries found that they made “49 times more money” for restaurants compared to the parking fees they would have collected. “[R]esidents spent a total of $181 million at curbside patios within 13 weeks of summer in 2021. If those spaces had remained dedicated to parking, only $3.7 million would have been reaped during the same time period.”
Jay Rayner on the British chef who was a tastemaker and died too young.
Ryan Sutton on the end of Contra and making cutting edge cuisine accessible.
Vittles on how regulatory shifts created better roadside eating in the U.K. “In 2013, keen to endear themselves to the industry, the new Cameron government published a document titled ‘DfT Circular 02/2013’; it contained one paragraph to which the contemporary presence of fast-food brands at service stations can be traced. The regulation stated that MSAs could be ‘a destination in their own right’, ending a policy stipulation dating back to 1980 which had limited the ability of MSA operators to place fast food in service stations.” [trying hard to not make a Brexit joke…]
The workers at Death & Co. are looking to unionize.
Food & Culture:
From a couple weeks ago in Vittles on how the idea of hospitality among immigrant communities is seen as a way to compensate for the bias of diners. “I yearn for a more elastic, reciprocal version of all this, one in which hospitality is circular and unconditional, a system of care not just built on the backs of those who cook and feed us, but one which requires care from those receiving the food as well. More than anything, hospitality should not have to bear the burden of ‘changing minds’, of neutralising hate and hierarchies through service with a smile.”
A Madhur Jaffrey profile piece in the Post. “Fifty years on, Jaffrey isn’t convinced that America’s view of Indian cooking has changed in a meaningful way. Sure, American food magazines may pay lip service by printing Hindi cooking words, she said. But there’s a dimension — a soul — missing, she feels, in the superficial adoption of global flavors under the umbrella of American food. ‘Because how can you get the emotions of each country into the food?’ she said. ‘You have to live it in a way.’”
A play about food and eating, that requires a lot of eating.
Food Sources:
The egg price-fixing case comes in against producers. Though it covers years well before recent spikes.
Rockfish stocks are low; the fishing season is shrunk. “In the 1980s, the population declined so severely that state regulators instated a five-year moratorium. But Luisi said the situation today is not as dire as it was in the ’80s. The spawning stock biomass then was far lower than it is today, he said. But the population of striped bass that peaked in the early 2000s has been slowly declining ever since, due most likely to overfishing, Luisi added. But regulators didn’t realize too many fish were being harvested until more data became available.”
In Mexico, cartels moved in on the avocado trade. This writer argues the U.S. should restrict imports to break the cartels. “The United States should reimpose its ban on Mexican avocados. My people should not die to satiate the world’s appetite for guacamole. Until the Mexican government quells the violence in Michoacán, and Uruapan returns to peace, everyone should be able to get by with fewer avocados.” For more reading on the topic, the Times did a story too, focusing more on the environmental impact. “In parts of Mexico already on edge over turf wars among drug cartels, forest loss is fueling new conflicts and raising concerns that Mexican authorities are largely allowing illegal timber harvesters and avocado growers to act with impunity.”
The Times does a big piece on groundwater usage in the West. “In Kansas, the power of the men who run Groundwater Management District 3 is enormous. Even though the district is in the driest part of Kansas, with an aquifer in dramatic decline, it accounts for half of all groundwater extracted statewide. Pressure is rising for change. State officials and experts want farmers and other users to pump less, noting that other districts have reduced water use through more efficient irrigation techniques and new technology. So far, the leaders of District 3 have refused.”
Can an animal be too smart to eat? “But a growing scientific understanding of the cognition of octopuses and other cephalopods is now calling into question the idea of eating these problem-solving sea creatures — as well as our notion of what exactly makes an animal “intelligent” in the first place.”
Environment:
Another story on climate change impacting agriculture. This time in Africa. “Rising temperatures mean large chunks of Africa are whipsawing between increasingly severe droughts and more frequent and intense cyclones, threatening staple foods for hundreds of millions of people. The International Monetary Fund says each increase of 1 degree Celsius correlates to a 3 percent reduction in agricultural output in developing countries. It forecasts crop yields in sub-Saharan Africa will decline by 5 to 17 percent by 2050, despite a rapidly growing population.”
Irish concrete on Illinois farms to help on climate. “Last week, Silicate began covering over 100 acres of farmland with 500 to 1,000 tons of fine dust from ready-mix concrete that has been returned. Researchers at the climate tech company hope the concrete dust can permanently remove up to 220 tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and transfer it to the soil over the course of a year, the equivalent of CO2 emissions from almost 50 cars in one year.”
Art:
We revive our Saturday art post to highlight a rare piece on display on the West coast for a limited time.
Media:
This week Sports Illustrated was busted for doing AI generated content and even creating false AI-generated writers. We should note that SI, like many other publications, is barely connected to the established outlet it once was. Sidman in the Washingtonian recently flagged AI-generated travel guides that are full of errors.
Influencers in China have been caught fabricating content. “In September, Chen Yiru, a Taiwanese influencer with nearly nine million fans on Weibo, livestreamed footage of himself eating chicken feet for a jaw-grinding 15 hours. His followers were suitably wowed – until some started to question if such a feat was humanly possible. The small print on the video stream confirmed their suspicions: ‘For display purposes only, not a real person.’”
We note that these stories make the idea that Michelin is using AI-generated content more plausible, and they don’t have to pretend to create writers like SI because they are anonymous. But then again, so are we – so do our typos become the true Turing test?
Guy Fieri signs a $100 million deal with Food Network, which is surprising because who knew Food Network had that kind of money.
Odds & Ends:
The end of the pinball machines in the back of a Maryland grocery store.
Animated Grilled Cheese Tattoo.
A very subtle protest by French farmers over agriculture policies?
Truly odds and ends: “A Connecticut woman is suing the fast-casual chain Chop’t Creative Salad Company after being served a salad she says contained part of the severed finger of a manager.”
Red Lobster made all-you-can-eat shrimp permanent in July. Turns out people can eat a lot. “[W]hile demand for endless shrimp surged, Red Lobster struggled to turn a profit while serving mounds of shellfish at a comparatively bargain-basement price. Boosting the offer price to $22 and even $25 failed to stem the losses, which contributed to a downbeat quarter for Red Lobster’s owner, Thailand-based Thai Union.”
What does it mean when you say, “he eats with the fishes?”
The subtle changes to make the Big Mac more appealing.
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That’s it, and we know it was a lot. So, thanks for reading this far. Only a couple more before we break for the end of year holidays, but we are already plotting dining excursions for the new year. If you are looking for spots to dine in the District, keep our humble guide in mind. We have 300+ recommended restaurants, sortable by cuisine or neighborhood in either LIST or MAP format.
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Stay dry and remember that it is a stressful time for many, especially in the food industry. So be patient and don’t whine.