Want to host a great cookout this summer? You can’t do it without one necessary ingredient: the perfect hot dog. We snacked on ten varieties to bring you the best.
And the winning hot dog is. . . Photograph by Chris Leaman
Washington isn’t lacking in hot dog options. From the housemade franks served by Peter Smith at PS7’s to the cheap dogs smothered with onions and mustard at the divey Vienna Inn, there are plenty of spots to indulge.
But what if you’re hosting a cookout? When grilling a mountain’s worth of hot dogs for a hungry crowd, you want to make sure you’re serving the tastiest. With that in mind, we here at Washingtonian.com gathered for the ultimate summer eating challenge: a hot dog taste test.
To find out the best brand available in local grocery stores, we assembled a crack panel of tasters. The scene: a steamy summer evening on a rooftop in DC’s Shaw neighborhood. The panel: nearly a dozen Washingtonian staffers and assorted friends. And, most important: the hot dogs. Here’s a list of the brands we sampled.
One woman's quest to eat through Washingtonian's 100 Very Best Restaurant List.
Ashley Messick dines her way through the Washingtonian's 100 Best Restaurants—and blogs it all along the way.
Ashley Messick has a thing for lists—even her book club focuses on reading the 100 best novels of all time. So when the 27-year-old Capitol Hill staffer saw The Washingtonian’s 100 Very Best Restaurants in February, a familiar bell went off, and suddenly she was eating—and blogging—her way through the places on the list. From Komi to Marvinis a blog where she shares her experiences through charmingly snarky write-ups and the occasional Food Porn Pic of the Day. (Shrimp toast at Four Sisters, your honor has been compromised.) Over dinner at Eatonville (a new restaurant that’s not on the list) we got to know the woman who’s showing us the love.
Baking bread may seem daunting (and we’d never call it easy), but 2941 bread master Patrick Deiss helps demystify the process as he demonstrates how to make a French baguette—with a yeast starter called poolish—in the video below. The chef de cuisine-turned-baker recently overhauled the French/American restaurant’s bread program and now bakes fresh loaves twice a day.
With Henry’s Soul Café selling 50,000 sweet-potato pies annually, chances are you may have eaten one of them—whether your hostess fessed up to buying the pie or not.
The owners of the Oxon Hill cafe—an offshoot of Henry’s Deli Carryout, which opened on DC’s U Street in 1968—realized it had a good thing going and now offers pie kits online. For $27 plus shipping, two tins lined with pie crust and two vacuum-sealed pouches of filling are delivered to your door ready for assembly.
The pies are sweet—some might say too sweet—but there’s an unmistakable depth of flavor that can’t be masked. Plus, they’re aggressively spiced, made from all-natural ingredients, and when you’re baking them, sugar gathers around the edge of the crust to form a delicious ring of caramel.
While it's still worth visiting the cafe—at least until it figures out how to vacuum-seal and ship its delicious ribs or turkey legs with gravy—sweet-potato pie fans need go no farther than henryssweetpotatopie.com. And then you can tell the truth (sorta) when someone asks whether you made the pie yourself.
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.
more
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.
more
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.
more
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.
more
- Food Experiments
