Back in 2007, The Washingtonian food critic Todd Kliman examined the pizza boom that had started to take over Washington. Since then, the boom has transformed into a full-fledged golden age—one which we recently celebrated with our Pizza Pool contest.
One of the frontrunners of the area’s pizza renaissance is Café Pizzaiolo, owned by former Smithsonian culinary director Larry Ponzi. The Crystal City pizzeria has built a reputation on its crisp crusts and unfussy pies, which are more street than boutique. Ponzi’s spicy spin on the New York-style pizza, the Diavala, is one of the most popular items on the menu. The dough is prepared with a sourdough starter and later topped with whole-milk mozzarella, Italian sausage, and roasted peppers. If reading this is making you hungry, just wait until you see Ponzi demonstrate how to make the pizza in our video below.
Steaming bowls of monkfish with garlic aïoli. Plates of soft cheese and rabbit pâté. Cassoulet thick with white beans and pork sausage.
France is renowned for its cuisine, but so much of it is meat-based. What will a French chef do when challenged to make a vegetarian dinner for two for less than $15?
Chef Patrice Olivon—who grew up in Provence, cooked at the Embassy of France and the White House, and now teaches at L’Academie de Cuisine—agreed to give it a whirl. Not including standard pantry items—sugar, flour, olive oil—this vegetarian feast can’t exceed $15.
In our video tour, the Redwood chef gets inspired by heirloom tomatoes and stone fruit, then gives his recipe for bean salad with tomato vinaigrette.
Redwood chef Blake Schumpert loves local ingredients. Lucky for him, the Bethesda Central Farm Market is just outside the restaurant’s door. We tagged along as Schumpert and sous chef Ben Wishnoff picked up a few items for a recent evening’s menu: baby lima beans for a bean salad, Stonyman Gourmet Farmer cheese for the cheese plate, and stone fruit for a fruit soup. Take a tour of the market in the video below, then try Schumpert’s bean-salad recipe for yourself.
Pick and prod all you want. If you’re trying to find the best produce, you have to sink your teeth into it. That’s CityZen chef Eric Ziebold’s approach to the farmers market. On a recent Friday, he showed us around the US Department of Agriculture Farmers Market (12th St. and Independence Ave., SW, in the USDA parking lot; open 10 to noon), just a few blocks from his restaurant. Ziebold shops there nearly every Tuesday and Friday. Check out his tips on picking out corn, cantaloupes, and peaches in the video below, then try his easy recipe for corn soup.
Leah Daniels is right at home in her kitchenware store. Photograph by Chris Leaman.
Hill’s Kitchen (713 D St. SE; 202-543-1997) is a kitchenware store in a 19th-century rowhouse near the Eastern Market Metro. Step inside and you might see owner Leah Daniels taking five minutes to compare a ricer and a traditional potato masher for a customer who’s stumped about which will yield fluffier spuds. (The ricer wins.)
Daniels, 29, who enjoys one-on-one interaction with customers, celebrated her shop’s one-year anniversary in May. She has help from her parents, longtime Hill residents: mom Maygene, chief archivist at the National Gallery of Art, and dad Stephen, a federal judge. They work the register and restock goods upstairs, which also features space for cooking classes.
Daniels’s only prior experience in the food industry was slinging mochas at Primo Cappuccino in Union Station the summer after her senior year at Georgetown Day School; before opening her store, she worked at Riverby Books on East Capitol Street.
Her goal in opening Hill’s Kitchen was to meld “everything I loved—food, business, and working with customers,” and to do so on Capitol Hill, where she grew up and where she returned after college in Minnesota.
Gone are the robust bureaus for the Los Angeles Times, Newhouse News, and other once-healthy news organizations. Digital media bureaus now are taking their places with as many reporters and plenty of swagger.
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Though Ann Limpert graduated from Connecticut College with a degree in art history and creative writing, she spent most of her time in New England debating the merits of warm, buttery lobster rolls vs. cold, mayo-y ones. She spent two years covering the internet for Entertainment Weekly magazine (highlights include interviewing the Beastie Boys and dancing to "Livin' la Vida Loca" with Penn Jillette), then left to hone her kitchen skills at the Institute of Culinary Education. She has worked as a cook at several New York restaurants, researched and edited cookbooks, and now writes about food and restaurants for the Washingtonian.
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Kate Nerenberg
Kate Nerenberg started as an editorial intern at The Washingtonian in January 2008 and became an assistant editor in September 2008. A native of West Hartford, Connecticut, she spent the first half of her writing life as a sports reporter, and was the editor of the athletics section for the newspaper and student-run magazine while at Middlebury College. A joint Spanish and Art History major, Kate graduated in 2005 and took off on a year-long journey around the world. After tasting everything from fried crickets to lavish Turkish breakfasts, she realized she wanted to devote herself to writing about food, a lifelong passion. She lives with three roommates just east of Logan Circle in a house that's often filled with the smell of sauteed garlic, warm banana bread, or fried bacon and eggs.
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Rina Rapuano
Rina Rapuano's English degree from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond put her on the path to becoming a managing editor of a weekly business magazine; a freelance copy editor; and assistant managing news editor—and later the lifestyles editor—at a weekly paper in Maryland. But she realized her true calling when her descriptions of meals to friends and colleagues always seemed to end with the same statement: “You're making me hungry.” Frankly, it was making Rina hungry, too. She chucked her day job in 2006 to become a full-time freelance writer focusing mainly on food, and now works as assistant food and wine editor at The Washingtonian.
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- Cooking at Home
