Image: This one felt like it didn’t need a caption. Peter O’Toole, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, drinking at the George V (Paris, 1965).
Welcome back Dearest Gentle Readers to our humble site. This week we put up a page for a historic D.C. spot on our site. In dining news, it was a pretty quiet week, so hopefully a quick read for your Sunday night/Monday morning. So let us proceed…
Updates to the D.C. Recommended Restaurant List
Revisited:
Ben’s Chili Bowl – We finally did a page for Ben’s, which has been in our dining guide since we went live five years ago (Five Years!).
Comings & Goings:
Morgana, the solid Italian spot in Adams Morgan looks to have downshifted to a pasta focused spot, dropping the more formal entree dishes from the menu.
Taco Bamba has shelved its immediate plans to move back into the old Chinatown location. Owner Victor Albisu says it is not about the Monumental disaster, but the overall decline of the area. (Speaking of which, there seems to be consensus that the move is a done deal, but shoddy PR is also matched by shoddy planning on things like traffic. “While the planned Monumental complex will include an underground garage with room for 2,500 cars, the transportation report also suggests that some spectators might park in private garages in Arlington’s Crystal City and Pentagon City neighborhoods or at Reagan National Airport and then take the Metro.”)
Dabney Cellar is coming back! It has been a bad run for wine bars recently. This is good news.
D.C. Dining News
Labor:
The workers at The Bazaar have organized, sought and gotten recognition for a union. Benjy Cannon of Local 25 told the Washingtonian a driving factor was that “restaurant workers in hotels are working side-by-side with the hotel’s union workers, who often have better pay and benefits and more job security. That’s the case at the Bazaar.” He said, “These workers share the same locker room with union workers .who pay zero dollars for their healthcare, while they’re paying up to $400 a month for their healthcare.” It was a busy week for Andrés, who was also nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by several prominent Members of Congress.
Carlos Estrada, the head cheesemonger at Calvert Woodley retired after 60 years. “Everything is opportunity … and I guess I came at the right time. And of course, I gave all the best that I could give … I am very lucky and very fortunate that I … took it very seriously … I was very fanatic for cheese.”
Media:
Did a double take on this. Washingtonian’s IG account posted “sponsored” content plugging Maïz64 as “Washington DC’s finest Mexican restaurant.” This seems like a serious question of journalistic ethics that goes beyond even Michelin’s pay to play rules. Note that Maïz64 did not make the Washingtonian Top 25 – though Chicatana did, nor the Top 100, though a couple other Mexican places did. For what is worth, we do think Maïz64 is among the finest Mexican spots in D.C.
Also we forgot to flag related to the Washingtonian releasing its Top 100 list that it has to be one of the best-selling issues and a primary driver of traffic to the site. It is also currently led by an all-female team. Which is important to note because according to a study last year the highest paid woman in the Washingtonian Guild makes as much as the lowest paid man.
A shoutout to the Post for the Tim Carman story cited below on labor unions and smaller chains/shops. We have noted when “food” stories were not in the Food Section, or how some food stories seemed to be missing from big outlet coverage. Less interesting was a review of the Taco Bell value menu, but we grant they have to keep the lights on.
Drink
Wine:
Nicole Ramee, the sommelier at Pineapple & Pearls writes a piece that highlights many of the other talented women in wine in the D.C. region. (Scroll to p. 56)
Spirits:
A non-exhaustive guide to the new vocabulary of cocktails.
Other News
The Emerging Economy:
Big jobs number this week. This included wages: “Wage growth also showed strength, as average hourly earnings increased 0.6%, double the monthly estimate. On a year-over-year basis, wages jumped 4.5%, well above the 4.1% forecast.” Hospitality was not a driving sector.
Food bills are not coming down. Apropos of the BA story below, how long before consumers re-calibrate how much their weekly grocery bill should be instead of using a pre-Covid reference point?
Last week we flagged the move by the Carbone food group to acquire what they called a “brand.” In the world of criticism, there was a similar move by Conde Nast to fold the music site Pitchfork into GQ, and then proceed to gut the staff, making clear it was buying the brand not the product. But when generic corporate thinking tries to operate in a creative space – writing, restaurants, craft beer – it can lead to a mismatch that leave companies disappointed that their generic model does not match the actual business sector they are operating in. Along similar lines, in our Twitter feed this week this article caught our eye. It is a similar complaint about the movie industry from Issa Rae. “Now these conglomerate leaders are also making the decisions about Hollywood. Y’all aren’t creative people. Stick to the money,” [Issa] says. “The people that are taking chances are on platforms like TikTok: that’s what’s getting the eyeballs of the youth. So you’re killing your own industry.” In her case, the refusal to take chances directly relates to a refusal to invest in project representing more diverse perspectives. “There is a bitterness of just like, who suffers from you guys pulling back? People of color always do.”
Industry:
As noted above, Tim Carman in the Post did a longer story on union drives at local coffee shops that seemed to be inspired by the Starbucks effort. A good chunk of the story is actually an update on the Starbucks effort where there is some movement towards resolution, but not much. The focus of the story is a small chain in Pittsburgh that closed in the face of a union drive.
DC Food Pundit flagged this in BA. Increased costs have re-calibrated dining preferences. Fancier places are less frequented by less-than-very-wealthy people while the neighborhood favorites have become more treasured. It is the mid-range places that are struggling where the staffing issues, supply chain, and other pieces reveal themselves when you have a splurge/date night every few weeks and it doesn’t measure up: “The hesitation seems directed primarily at mid-level restaurants, the ones sitting between fast-casual and fine dining—especially ones with lots of traction on social media. Many diners described feelings of frustration and disappointment when nights out ended in big checks and uneven experiences. The cocktail was just ok, the food was something they could pull off at home, or the patio looked prettier on TikTok.”
Food & Culture:
One chief’s quest for Guatemalans to take their own food seriously: “Just as important is getting diners and home cooks to appreciate what their country can produce. The average Guatemalan has forgotten or never knew about many native ingredients such as Gonzalez’s heirloom beans. This is why Fadul teaches cooking classes at El Patojismo, an alternative educational center for low-income urban youth. She also created a searchable digital database of Guatemalan producers called Crece en Guate (Grown in Guatemala). The website gives producers visibility and provides a way for consumers to make contact and buy directly from the farmers. At her own restaurant, she and her team work with farmers, archaeologists and biologists to explore the biodiversity of Guatemala. She sources from more than 45 food producers and showcases the ingredients in a fixed menu at Diacá. Fadul says she never tells a farmer or rancher what she needs. Instead, she asks: ‘What do you have? And with that, she builds a menu.”
A unique restaurant/inn in Ivory Coast with a burgeoning business in chocolate. “Porquet plans to build a fermentation unit in fall 2024 in Ivory Coast to produce more than 100 tonnes of fine cocoa, which he plans to sell largely as a bulk supply for chocolatiers in Africa and elsewhere. Belgian chocolatiers recently came to the Bushman Café to establish a franchise to sell their fine chocolate in Brussels.”
The photographer who covers gas station dining. “Documenting these independent Southern temples of commerce and community has become a singular focus for the photojournalist Kate Medley, who, like most kids raised in Mississippi, grew up eating at rural gas stations.”
Environment:
USDA provides advice to gardeners on the best climates for certain crops. “Last November, the USDA released the 2023 version of the map. Compared with earlier iterations, the most recent version incorporates data from significantly more weather stations and provides a more granular look at conditions across the United States and Puerto Rico. Relative to its predecessor, which was published in 2012, the new map is overall about one quarter-zone warmer, on average.”
Odds & Ends:
Twitter poster Lauren, flagged this oddity. “DMV thing i’ve long wondered about: why are a bunch of above average takeaway chinese/chicken spots here called Eddie Leonard’s?”
###
That’s it for 2/4/24! We will be off for a couple weeks. So eat up and squeeze as many sweater days as you can out of February. In the meantime, check out our D.C. dining guide, if you are into that kind of thing. We have 300+ recommended restaurants, sortable by cuisine or neighborhood in either LIST or MAP format.
Please give us a follow, if you don’t already. We are on FB, Insta, and Twitter. Click on the icons at the top or bottom of this page to stay up to date.
Stay warm. Tip big. Be patient.