- From the Magazine

Daily dispatches on the Washington, DC area's food, restaurant and dining scene.

Leave What You Will for This Meal

By Megan Kuhn

At a time when everybody’s looking for good dining deals, Karma Kitchen’s one-page menu is a big attraction. It changes almost every week, but the prices don’t: There aren’t any.

Instead of a bill, diners receive a note explaining that their meal is a gift from a previous patron. The only request: Leave what you will to cover the next person’s meal.

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Cheap Eats Critics' Picks

By Todd Kliman , Cynthia Hacinli , Ann Limpert , Kate Nerenberg , Rina Rapuano

These dishes stood out among the many we sampled for the 100 Best Bargain Restaurants issue. Check back Monday for the full Cheap Eats guide.

The codwich at Eamonn's in Old Town Alexandria gets our vote.

The codwich at Eamonn's in Old Town Alexandria gets our vote.

Best . . .

Use of a breakfast staple: Home-style bacon with peppers, onions, and salty black beans at Hong Kong Palace.

Reason to order a salad at a pizza place: Chickpeas with lemon and kaffir lime at Comet Ping Pong.

Bar snack: Tandoori chicken wings at Spice Xing.

Chili high: Karahi, a stir-fry of ginger, garlic, chilies, and tomatoes with chicken or beef at Ravi Kabob House and Ravi Kabob House II.

For fiery-food-phobes: Creamy, gently spiced green curry with shrimp at Amina Thai.

Nod to the West Coast: Shrimp tacos with pineapple salsa, lime sour cream, and yellow rice at Surfside.

Lamb dish: Lamb fateh, tender meat smothered in yogurt and sprinkled with pita chips at Lebanese Butcher & Restaurant.

Southern-inspired sweet: Lemon chess pie at the General Store.

Near-the-Beltway barbecue: Smoky, char-crusted pork ribs smothered in sweet sauce at KBQ Real Barbecue.

 

 

 

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PS 7’s Peter Smith Tours the Penn Quarter FreshFarm Market

By Jessica Sidman

Get out that recycled tote bag—this summer we’re taking our video camera to farmers markets all around Washington. We’ll have local chefs show you around their neighborhood markets, then we’ll give you their shopping and cooking tips about whatever’s in season. For our first installment, we asked PS 7’s chef/owner Peter Smith to take us on a tour of the Penn Quarter FreshFarm market, where he shops every week. Armed with ingredients from local vendors, Smith prepared a grilled cheese with bacon, arugula, and in-season strawberries for a market demo. See how he did it in the video, then try it yourself with the recipe below.

Related: How to Make Peter Smith's Primanti Brothers Sandwich

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First Half-Smokes, Now Burgers: Where the Obamas Are Eating

By Ann Limpert

Following the crumbs on the President and First Lady's dining trail.

What date night at Citronelle looks like for the President and First Lady. Photograph by Brendan Smialowski/Sipa Press/Newscom.

The Palm and the Capital Grille aren’t going anywhere, but there’s been a shift in the dining landscape ever since the Obamas came to Washington. The President and First Lady have been eating like locals, hitting all sorts of foodie hot spots, from Michel Richard’s extravagant Georgetown dining room to a hidden-away Arlington burger joint. Where will they show up next? To help you guess, we’ve followed their trail of crumbs. If you flip burgers or operate a fry basket, stay on your toes.

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The Needle: What's Hot? What's Not?

By Todd Kliman , Cynthia Hacinli , Kate Nerenberg

Each month, we drop in on three restaurants to see how they're doing.

The "Guggenheim" rolls at Cynthia's are as good as ever.

The "Guggenheim" rolls at Cynthia's are as good as ever.

Cynthia’s

The swirly “Guggenheim” rolls that kick off dinner at this strip-mall surprise are irresistible, and the often-whimsical desserts from pastry chef Cindy Bennington—after whom the place is named—are among the area’s best. And what’s not to like about being sent off with a fresh-baked cinnamon muffin? In between, things are iffier. Brian Bennington’s cooking can both dazzle (a seared lobe of foie gras with caramelized peach) and disappoint (a tough pork chop). More often, it does neither—content to ride the middle ground of convention. The generous, crowd-pleasing preparations don’t always warrant the high tabs, but they seldom overreach with forced juxtapositions and obscure ingredients. They call to mind a simpler, less showy era of dining out.

552-I Governor Ritchie Hwy., Severna Park; 410-315-8088

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Cheap Eats 2009 Photo Slideshow

It's time for The Washingtonian's Cheap Eats guide! Read our picks in the June issue of the magazine, on stands now, and check out an online-only photo slideshow of local cheap eats restaurants below. But one warning: don't look at this during your lunch hour. You may find yourself in your car, heading out to Annandale or Falls Church to dine at one of these delicious and affordable spots. Photography by Matthew Worden, Scott Suchman, and Stacy Zarin-Goldberg.

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New and Noteworthy

By Todd Kliman , Cynthia Hacinli , Ann Limpert , Kate Nerenberg , Rina Rapuano

From a tiki-lounge-like spot for pho to a downtown gelato stop, we've got the goods on the restaurants people are talking about.

Photograph by Chris Leaman

Downtown DC gets a branch of the chocolate chain Schakolad, which serves gelato, filled chocolates, and fudge.

Downtown DC gets a branch of the chocolate chain Schakolad, which serves gelato, filled chocolates, and fudge.

District

DC Noodles (1412 U St., NW; 202-232-8424). The owners of Logan Circle’s Rice have transformed what was the Simply Home restaurant/shop into a 52-seater whose menu has as many permutations of noodles as Bubba Gump’s company does of shrimp.

Kitchen (2404 Wisconsin Ave., NW; 202-333-3877). Once an Austin Grill, then a Peruvian lounge, it’s now part Southern comfort—chicken-fried steak—and part pub grub: There are 25-cent wings during Monday’s happy hour.

Pho 14 Vietnamese Restaurant (1436 Park Rd., NW; 202-986-2326). With a tiki-lounge-like bar, this mom-and-pop joint bids to give DC its first authentic taste of the famed Vietnamese noodle soup, pho.

Qualia (3917 Georgia Ave., NW; 202-248-6423). Joel Finkelstein has been roasting coffee beans out of his house for two years. Now he has converted his hobby into a coffeehouse serving, among other things, pitchers of coffee—enough for four.

Schakolad (1107 19th St., NW; 202-457-8888). Six flavors of gelato accompany a sweeping selection of chocolates, all made in-store using recipes that cofounder Baruch Schaked learned in the 1960s.

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Where & When: What to Do This Weekend

Tons of Fourth of July parties, fireworks, pool parties galore, a pig roast, the closing of the Folklife Festival and Artomatic, and lots more in this jam-packed weekend guide. more

  1. Burger Brackets (34 Entries)
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Ann Limpert

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