Tuesday, September 15 at 11 AM

A well-known issue? Not as far as I know.

Interested to hear what went wrong, exactly. Care to elaborate?

The idea that the servers would be arguing you down because the food is organic is just … well, it's funny, and frankly, it's not surprising.

Organic, local, seasonal, sustainable, etc. — these are magic words in the industry right now. In fact, I have received several emails over the last few weeks arguing that I/we ought to give Restaurant X or Restaurant Y another look because, although the cooking/service/etc. might be lacking, the food is organic, local, seasonal, etc.

As if good intentions are the same as great results.

Answering this makes me feel like a shill, but all right, I'll bite, what the hell …

There's Chop't, whose spelling I had to look up (not to be confused with Chop'd) — with locations, in Penn Quarter, Dupont and downtown.

Think that's a bad name?

How about the new Sou'Wester, which opened yesterday in the Mandarin Oriental. I'm still trying to decide: bad name? or bad and pretentious name?

(There. I feel better. In the restaurant world, they call it balancing the flavors. Same deal. Chase the sweet with a shot of tang.)

Let's see if we can compile a bad/pretentious restaurant name list today … Send in your nominees. Only spots in DC, Md., and Va., please.

Thanks for writing back …

This is one of the reasons I've always liked Tommy Marcos's Ledo Restaurant (not to be confused with Ledo's) pizzas. Because the ingredients bake and blend into the pizza.

Has anyone out there ever tried the bacon pizza? They have two. One is crumbled fried bacon. The other is where they lay strips of uncooked bacon on top, so that the fat runs off onto the sauce and the bacon cooks as the pizza bakes.

The restaurant, curiously, will be vacating its space next year after 50+ years in the same Adelphi location and moving closer to the College Park campus. It's shame, though I wish the owners well and hope they can replicate the atmosphere and texture of the old place in the new. A real challenge.

Meantime, it gives all of you who've never eaten the area's most distinct, most original and, really, most definitive pizza 9 months to go and have a taste.

I have a fairly long list of what DOESN'T interest me in Annapolis these days …

I'm not enamored of Osteria 177 (overpriced and just a notch above mediocre), the new Southern steak chain Stoney River Legendary Steaks (mediocre, but a good chocolate cake), and the new Carpaccio (just a notch below mediocre).

What else? The new Hell Point Seafood isn't trying hard enough, which is too bad, because this could be — and ought to be — a good to very good restaurant.

So, no, I guess not much new really and truly interests me in Annapolis these days.

No, I take that back. I like, for what it is, the new Punk's Backyard Grill. Remember that scene from "The World According to Garp," where Robin Williams watches a small plane crash into a house that he's looking to buy and turns to the realtor and says: I'll take it. It's been pre-disastered."?

Well, Punk's is pre-chained. Still, for what it is, I think they do a good job for a light dinner out. Good margaritas (made with Tempranillo), the beef on the burger comes from a local farm, the rolls are brioche, Gifford's supplies the ice cream, etc.

And, while we're at it, I'm still fond of Joss, Lewnes's, Potato Valley, The Rockfish and O'Leary's …

EVO, yes, I agree with you — totally contrived.

But Duangrat's? That's the woman's name. Pookie Duangrat. I agree, it's not the most appealing sounding name for an American audience, but pretentious??

For pretension, you really have to turn to the kind of restaurants where the owners and chefs take trips and do "research," and return home all keyed up about presenting to a well-fed Western audience their "creative takes" on indigenous South American/Mexican/Pacific Rim cooking.

Come on, folks. Think contrived. Think trying really, really hard. Think of all those places that you scratch your head and say: Huh? What's that supposed to be?

Invariably, they're one or two syllables long and turn out to be the name of some obscure, never-before-heard-of bug or tree or cooking implement.

Done!

And thanks. 

Good one.

More bad than pretentious, I think. But yeah.

Here's an obvious one: Posh.

It's like telling someone you're funny. (You had better be really, really funny.) 

Too cute/clever: sure.

But on the Pretentio-meter, with 1 being cutesy and 10 being so eye-rollingly pretentious that you cringe at uttering the name out loud and begin to feel your sense of self-worth being compromised, I'd say it's a 3. 

I'm looking for the 8s, 9s and 10s.

Note: We're thinking of introducing the Pretentio-meter in an upcoming issue of the magazine. Any suggestions for topics/phenomena, etc. you'd be interested in seeing covered/rated?

I'm glad you wrote in. Equal time.

Er, sort of … 

I'd suggest Barboursville Vineyards, which is putting out fantastic wines (look for their Octagon, their Merlot, their Nebbiolo, their Viognier, and their Pinot Grigio) and has a good restaurant on the premises, too, called Palladium.

It's 2 hours and 5 minutes from the city (according to Google maps). A beautiful drive, and the extensive grounds are well-kept and spectacular — making for a relaxing getaway. 

What, is Arlingtongue the only one out there who wants to play??

(Good one, by the way.)

If more of you don't come forward, I'm going to think that you're not interested in a little good clean mischief, or that you all work in the industry and are loath to talk smack about one of your own. ; )

How about …

— Inox

— Oyamel

— Westend Bistro by Eric Ripert (I mean, when the chef/owner gets his own BYLINE … ?) 

I have.

Guajillo, in Arlington, isn't bad at all. I like their chicken mole, their ceviche, their chips and salsa, their mixed drinks …

Why? What have you been finding? 

I've been to Poogan's Porch. It's a great atmosphere, and as you say, very reasonable. But for brunch, the place I love is Hominy Grill. They put Poogan's to shame.

The biscuits, in particular. Unspeakably good. The shrimp n grits, the corn cakes, and the cakes and pies — my God. If you like cake, real cake — the kind where, when you slide your fork down the front of the wedge, it doesn't flop over onto the plate but stays upright and steady from all the careful cake construction and/or gooey rich frosting layered inside, so that you have to keep moving your fork down, down, down … all the way to the plate — if you like that kind of cake, then you have to get to Hominy Grill.

As for food festivals … I like them, they're fun, I just don't go with the idea that I'm going to eat all that well. There's a lot of warmed-over food — food that in its original context might be good but suffers for sitting out or lounging under a heat lamp, etc., or for being prepared in enormous quantities … 

Hollywood East Cafe on the Blvd. had really good char siu bao.

For the uninitiated, these are the steamed pork buns you find on the dim sum carts. Actually, sometimes steamed, sometimes baked. HEC on the B did both. And both well.

The restaurant is expected to reopen outside of the Westfield mall in Wheaton sometime this Fall. A lot of us dim sum fans are eagerly awaiting Janet Yu's return. This was, far and away, the best dim sum experience in the area.

If you can't wait that long, then you might want to make a trip out to Mark's Duck House in Falls Church. Or Fortune, also in Falls Church. Or new Fortune, in Gaithersburg.

There's a new spot in downtown DC, on Vermont Ave., called Bao that I know has them, but I haven't been yet. Anybody? 

Ping Pong, the London-based Asian tea house that will open in Penn Quarter in November, might have them, too; I've been hearing about a dim sum menu.

Thanks, Dave! 😉

Thanks for the quick correction: Palladio. It's an Italian restaurant, after all. O, not UM.

And thanks for the alternative suggestion … 

I can't think of any restaurant these days that has pasta primavera on the menu, much less a good, authentic one.

Can anyone? 

It's a good question, and for what it's worth, I like the pizzas there, too. In fact, when I did an exhaustive round-up of pizza in the area a couple of years ago, I included the pies being produced by Liberty Tavern.

Why LT wasn't in the mix for the pool has to do with the fact that it's not, technically speaking, a pizza place, and the contest was meant to showcase the places that are primarily — and even exclusively — pizza places.

I'm sure you'd get a fierce argument from folks who've eaten their way through Italy who would argue that these places are just being true and authentic, etc.

But yeah, it's a little like reading a New Yorker article from Jane Mayer or Judith Thurman, the kind that's been sprinkled with lots of not-commonly-known French phrases (which the author does not bother to translate, natch) that make the author come across as worldier-than-thou.

You know, I haven't had the Riesling. Thanks for the rec.

Virginia wine snob! I love it. And I can see a movement just beginning to take shape … 

No, thank you. I appreciate hearing that.

As I've said before, this is the same list that my wife and I used to keep on the fridge at home and now cart around in our phones. It's a personal list, and I don't make any claims for it being empirical or what have you. I think they're all terrific spots in their way, and I recommend them highly, but I also put it up every week to give readers a sense of my enthusiasms, to better gauge what I write, etc.

It's a short list. Casual, good, Georgetown — that's not a promising group of words, generally. The list of places I wouldn't bother with is much, much longer.

Let's see … Leopold's (a Viennese coffeehouse with surprisingly good cooking), George's Townhouse (steak sandwiches, falafel), Chi Cha Lounge (tea and a few small Asian-style plates), Sweetgreen (killer frozen yogurt, customized salads), Aditi (cheap Indian). In nearby Palisades, you've also got Kotobuki (good, cheap sushi) and BlackSalt (seafood and fish).

Kosher desserts … No, I'm stumped.

In Baltimore, on the other hand, you'd have a pick of places … 

Anyone? Am I forgetting something? 

Great deal!

And I like that Viognier, too. 

I'd say my favorite Viogniers right now, out of Virginia, are (in no particular order): Horton, Chrysalis, Barboursville, White Hall.

I guess.

But still, that's more a 3 on the Pretentio-meter. More cutesy than pretentious.

I can't believe the paltry turnout for this …

It can't be that I listed all the good ones …

Zaytinya.

Ceiba.

Brabo.

Is it pretentious to name your restaurant after your kid?

On the one hand, it seems the very opposite of pretension. On the other, it's odd, because it used to be — at least at a certain level — that you named your place after yourself. The name was a signal of something genuine and true. You ate at Mike's, and it was likely that Mike was there, and that Mike cared about what happened at his place, that Mike intended not just for his place to be a cog in the community — but that he, Mike, would be a cog, too.

Which you can't say of the places named after chef's kids. 

Still, I'm on the fence on this one …

!!!

Very, very funny. (Though not for you … )

I'll bet, though, that that large crawling bug was very active and healthy, a result of not having been cooped up all day and exposed to awful chemicals like you find in the non free-range bugs that some restaurants have … I kid, I kid. 🙂

Central Michel Richard you have to include in the mix, it's true, but I do think that if there's one chef in this city who is entitled to put his name on a restaurant it's Michel Richard.

But yeah: Sen-TRAHL.

Thank you! 

Ardeo.

Leopold's Kafe + Konditorei. (I think for the plus-sign more than anything.)

Equinox. 

Of course!

Thank you … 

And that's going to be it for today, everyone, I'm running late for lunch. I enjoyed it, and hope you did, too. Happy Jewish New Year to all of you who are celebrating, and for all of those who are not — eat well and be well, regardless, and let's do it again next week at 11 … 

Submit your questions in advance to Todd's chat next week, Tuesday, September 22 at 11 AM. 

(We miss you, T.E.K.)