In this month's issue of Washingtonian, we found 82 burger joints, street carts, taquerias, and dinner-worthy happy hours where a delicious meal won’t cost you more than $15. To see the full list of Dirt Cheap Eats—including guilty pleasures, happy-hour feasts, lunch deals at top restaurants, and more, pick up the issue, on stands now.

But while you're here, make sure to check out...

• Our Dirt Cheap Eats 2009 photo slideshow. Don't look at this before lunch. We warned you.
• Delicious Dining Deals During the Downturn
• Bargain Happy Hours
• Happy Food Hours

Enjoy! And while you're at it, if you have any favorite Dirt Cheap Eats of your own, let us know in the comments—or tweet at @bestbitesblog or @washingtonian with your faves, using the hashtag #DCE.

More>> Best Bites Blog | Food & Dining | Restaurant Finder 

Trummer’s on Main aspires to bring big-time dining to Clifton. Photograph by Chris Leaman.

The people behind Trummer’s on Main, a new restaurant in Clifton, have serious foodie credentials: Stefan Trummer—a co-owner with his wife, Victoria—worked at Masa and Bouley, two of Manhattan’s best restaurants; executive chef Clayton Miller cooked at California’s revered French Laundry and at Daniel in Manhattan; and sommelier Tyler Packwood is a ten-year veteran of the Inn at Little Washington.

So it should come as no surprise that they’ve put together an ambitious offering: a restaurant with three levels, 210 seats, and a 4,000-bottle wine cellar. If there’s anything left of the building’s 140-year history—it was once the Clifton Hotel, then the Hermitage Inn—it’s the whisper of a farmhouse in the exposed beams of the dining room’s vaulted ceilings. The dark first-floor lounge, anchored by a marbled onyx bar, is more modern, just like Miller’s food.

His dishes are painterly compositions with striking colors—neon-red rhubarb shares a plate with a vivid spinach purée—but they sometimes result in a cacophony of textures and flavors. An appetizer of pine-nut-and-ricotta tortellini was complicated by the addition of lamb sausage, rock crab, Bing cherries, and a carrot/white-wine sauce. Offerings with the fewest ingredients—a bowl of spiced potato chips at the bar, a jar of warm brandade, coconut sorbet with a hibiscus foam—are the most rewarding.

Mike Carroll's Leesburg Vintner offers hard-to-find Virginia wines.

Here’s a sobering statistic for the Virginia wine industry, which has had a lot to celebrate, with awards coming its way from national and even international sources: Only 5 percent of wines sold in Virginia are produced in the state.

Why is that?

The old complaint that Virginia wines are overpriced is no longer broadly applicable, and local and East Coast wines have been rising in reputation for years. Part of the problem is that Virginia wines are hard to find unless you take a trip to the wineries.

Leesburg Vintner in downtown Leesburg (29 S. King St.; 703-777-3322) is a wonderful exception. It also happens to be one of the best wine shops around.

Mike Carroll opened Leesburg Vintner in 1988, a decade before Virginia wines began to emerge. Today he devotes 16 shelves to Virginia labels, including varietals from such stellar wineries as Barboursville, Chrysalis, and Linden.

Lots of restaurants use the word “sustainable” on their menus, but what does it mean?

Wreckfish, which has shown up in many local eateries, is a textbook example. It’s under the jurisdiction of the federally appointed South Atlantic Council, says Jim Chambers, owner of Prime Seafood, one of the few Washington fish purveyors that sell wreckfish.

The guys behind the boisterously Greek restaurant Cava in Rockville are on a roll. Not only do they have a second location on Capitol Hill, but they’ve also started a line of packaged dips and spreads sold at 14 area Whole Foods, Roots Market in Olney and Clarksville, and Snider’s Super Foods in Silver Spring. The smooth hummus and bright tzatziki are easy to like, but the standout is the “crazy” feta dip, a popular mezze at the restaurant. It brims with green olive oil and gets its name from a surprise ingredient—jalapeños.

Leesburg’s Cajun Experience turns out authentic shrimp po’ boys—served on New Orleans bread—and terrific pecan pie. Photograph by Chris Leaman.

Bryan Crosswhite, an economic consultant with the US Agency for International Development, and wife Melissa were fledgling restaurateurs when they opened the Cajun Experience in Leesburg in April. But if they lacked experience, they didn’t lack know-how. The Crosswhites drew extensively on their southern-Louisiana heritage and five generations of Bryan’s family recipes.

The restaurant occupies the second-oldest house in historic Leesburg, a clapboard-sided building converted into a charming 50-seat restaurant that would be at home in New Orleans. The Mardi Gras beads and feathered carnival masks are fun, but it’s the honest food that speaks to the Crosswhites’ intentions.

The star of the menu is the po’ boy—there are eight varieties at lunchtime—anchored by its delectably floury bread, imported from New Orleans’s Leidenheimer Baking Company. The fried-shrimp version features Gulf Coast shrimp with minimal breading and a sweet-spicy sauce. Crawfish étouffée is also excellent, its cayenne-spiked cream sauce complemented by the sweetness of long-cooked onions. Boudin balls, an appetizer, are tasty rounds of ground pork, rice, and scallions, fried just short of greasy.

Here’s how to get restaurant-quality coffee at home: Drink the same kind the best restaurants use. We surveyed the top 30 of our 100 Very Best Restaurants to see where they got their coffee, then found out which roasters were local. Here are beans roasted in the Washington area and the places that serve them. There’s one ringer: Qualia doesn’t sell to restaurants, but we include it here for the sheer excellence of its coffee.