Chili dogs are $1.50 at the Vienna Inn.

Vienna Inn (120 Maple Ave. E., Vienna; 703-938-9548). It may not get as much press as other hot-dog joints like Ben’s Chili Bowl, but regulars flock here for cheap dogs loaded with mustard, onion, and chili ($1.50 each). Where else can you get three chili dogs and a beer for less than $10?

Ben’s Chili Bowl (1213 U St., NW; 202-667-0909). Legendary for its celebrity clientele, Ben’s doesn’t disappoint when it comes to chili dogs and half-smokes ($3.60 to $4.95), the hot dog’s larger, spicier cousin. Each grilled dog comes with chips, but the best accompaniments are the perfectly crisp fries and a milkshake.

Johnny’s Half Shell (400 N. Capitol St., NW; 202-737-0400). Johnny’s can be both upscale and down-home. During lunch, diners can satisfy cravings for caviar and blinis but also for a hot dog, split and grilled, with fries ($8.75). Johnny’s does give it a twist with some highfalutin toppings, though: The more traditional sauerkraut can be replaced with garden vegetables or bleu cheese.

Every few years an obscure fish is plucked from the deep, rechristened, and anointed a star. Consider Chilean sea bass (a.k.a. Patagonian toothfish), black cod (sablefish), and skate (stingray). Now it’s branzino—formerly known as Mediterranean sea bass.

Restaurant Eve's papri chaat isn’t your typical Indian street snack.

Scan the menu at the Dupont Circle restaurant Mark and Orlando’s and you’ll find crab cakes, a bleu-cheese-stuffed pork chop, and . . . pupusas?

They might be made with buffalo mozzarella and drizzled with tomato vinaigrette, but the griddled patties here ($8) recall ones from Salvadoran joints. Chef/owner Orlando Hiltzig fell in love with the snacks when he was working at Vidalia, where a cook brought them in for staff.

They’re not the only street-cart specialty on upscale menus. Cathal Armstrong of Alexandria’s Restaurant Eve says, “The ethnic stuff usually comes from something personal.” He put papri chaat, the tamarind-splashed Indian potato salad, on Eve’s bistro menu to please his chef de cuisine’s vegan girlfriend. His is made with micro-cilantro, house-made yogurt, and fingerlings.

On a menu full of nostalgic finger foods, many under $10, it’s tempting to sample one of everything at Arlington’s EatBar. And nearly everything is worth a try.

But it’s a plate of hush puppies, six to an order, that triumphs as the ultimate comfort food: With a dab of the accompanying maple butter, the warm, Ping-Pong-ball-size treats recall a plateful of fluffy, syrupy pancakes.

Venerable downtown lunch counter C.F. Folks has a new chef—Georget Vetsch, the opening chef at Circle Bistro and a veteran of Etrusco and the Oval Room. Aside from turning out crabcake sandwiches and daily international-themed specials, he’s considering adding something entirely new to the menu: dinner.

Local cousins Khoa Nguyen, events coordinator at Vidalia, and Denise Nguyen were the first pair to leave chef/terror Marco Pierre White’s new NBC kitchen reality show, The Chopping Block. But they weren’t booted off. The duo left on their own accord, on account of the backstabbing, the drama, and perhaps White telling Khoa to “put his balls on the table.” But will they be back? Vidalia chef R.J. Cooper hints that that might be the case.

The Oval Room’s kalamansi-lime tart, garnished with powdered candied cilantro and fresh micro-cilantro, proves that savory and sweet aren’t strange bedfellows. Photograph by Scott Suchman.

Combine the arrival of President Obama with some new celebrity chefs in Washington and you get a restaurant scene that’s as much a draw as the museums. Dining trends, such as molecular gastronomy—innovative cuisine that includes foams, “molecules,” and flavored “air”—have migrated south from New York and east from Los Angeles. Now Washington pastry chefs have picked up on the latest fad: using herbs as garnishes, infusions, and ingredients in desserts.

“It’s a changing of the guard here—the younger chefs are exploring and pushing a little bit harder,” says Tony Conte, chef at the Oval Room. A disciple of Jean-Georges Vongerichten, who opened eyes at his Manhattan restaurant Jean-Georges by mixing herbs with sweets, Conte seems to push harder than most. On his current menu, a kalamansi-lime tart comes with candied cilantro.

Washington restaurantgoers are responding well to the trend. “Five years ago,” says Heather Chittum, who has a sage pound cake on the menu at Hook, “I don’t think diners would have been willing to try something with herbs.”

Counting any leftover Thin Mints still in the freezer, more Girl Scout cookies were eaten last year in the Washington area than anywhere else in the country. Washingtonians bought almost 4.2 million boxes of cookies in 2008—or roughly 114 boxes for each of the 36,000 regional scouts who sold cookies. Like the rest of the nation, Washingtonians bought mostly Thin Mints and coconut Samoas.