Tuesday, April 20 at 11 AM

Thanks for the report from the field.

There's a lot of ramp activity these days. Kyle Jameson, an intern and researcher at the magazine, put together a neat little compendium after reading the chatter about ramps — wild onions, for the uninitiated — last week. Thank you, Kyle!

Vidalia is offering ramps, fava beans, and fiddlehead ferns on its daily menu.

Tosca has two dishes on their dinner menu — a salad and a risotto — that are served with ramps.

On Nora's dinner menu, there's a "Pasta a la Chitarra" starter that's served with ramps and fava beans.

Cedar has a steak served with braised cannellini beans, fiddlehead ferns, and ramps on its dinner menu.

Eventide serves a pan-seared Alaskan halibut with pickled ramps.

Dino is serving a spring risotto with Verpa mushrooms and ramps.

Equinox isn't opening back up until after May 12. But then … On the lunch and dinner menus, a green-garlic soup with confit of rabbit, pickled ramps, and brioche croutons. On the lunch menu, a chicken breast served with sauteed fava beans and mustard-bacon vinaigrette. On the dinner menu, a saffron tagliatelle served with fava beans, fiddlehead ferns, and sweet-garlic cream.

Proof has grilled ramps available as a side item. The sauteed potato gnocchi is served with wild mushrooms, asparagus, and ramps. The pan-roasted Mediterranean branzino is served with asparagus, fingerling potatoes, wild ramps, and pea shoots.

I'm going to guess that Palena is doing something with ramps right now, but no specific intel for the time being. 

The best deli in this area?

I hate to say, it's being done by fancy restaurants. RJ Cooper at Vidalia and Michel Richard at Central have the two best deli sandwiches in the city.

Of course, what you don't get is what makes a deli a deli — the deli experience. The zesty atmosphere. The crustily, lovably indifferent waiters and waitresses. The sense of plenitude all around. A buzz in the air.

David Sax in his recently released book, SAVE THE DELI, calls DC the "WASPiest city in North America" (I'm working off of memory, don't anybody hold me to an exact quote), and it's kind of hard to argue with that when you look around. At the food landscape, and at the landscape, period.

I wish we had a good deli. Deli City in NE has fallen in the last couple of years, but I used to love their corned beef (on crappy bread, alas).

Parkway Deli in Silver Spring has its adherents, but I think it's mostly because it's as close as you get to a deli experience in this area. It can't be the food. Or, let me rephrase that — it's not because the food is good and authentic. It's that the food offers a passable approximation of the real thing. But the matzo ball soup — ugh; oy. A huge, leaden ball, a remorselessly salty broth … 

I figured this was coming. And it's not as though I didn't hesitate before putting it on — I mean, Baltimore's a different city, it has its own restaurants, its own critics and publications, etc.

But the thing is, I really like what I've seen so far from Bluegrass Tavern, and — this was the key thing — it's in Federal Hill, right on the southernmost edge of the city, and easily accessible to a lot of people who live in the Maryland suburbs of DC. This was the reason, remember, that Edward Bennett Williams wanted to build the Orioles' then-new park (this was in the late '80s, early '90s) there.

It's 25 minutes from Greenbelt, 35 minutes from Silver Spring. 

Not close, but I routinely drive to dinner in Virginia and it never takes less than 45 minutes and often takes an hour or more. Coming from Virginia to DC can take at least as long.

The vibe is extremely unpretentious for a serious-minded restaurant, there's a strong focus on local ingredients (including nearby antelope, which is served as a seared loin), and the cooking (playful but rooted) is sharper than many other places in its class I've seen of late.

Thanks for writing in.

You talk about "taste of Spring." It's funny how in all these paeans to the glories of the season you read about in the slick cooking magazines and in newspaper recipe columns — celebrations of "the taste of Spring" — no one ever brings up the one thing that is the embodiment of fickle, wet Spring: mud. 

Actually, there's a really interesting piece in the current Oxford American by Beth Ann Fennelly on geophagy — the eating of dirt, an ancient tradition in many cultures.

Thanks for the (lengthy, nearly exhaustive) report, SSMM.

As I said last week, I think 8407 is doing a lot of things right so far (not everything, but a lot of things), and it's going to be interesting to see whether, as it settles in, it can grow and improve.

And the list just grows longer …

Thanks for this, Alexandria!

I've got a review of Bistro Cacao out this week in the magazine, so you can read my thoughts at length then if you care to, but to be brief (well, relatively brief) I think this is one of those gestalt places — one of those places that does not come down to one or two things, but is a pretty smart and satisfying sum of many, many things.

You asked about dishes. I can tell you I like the rack of lamb, and the seared scallops, and the pate, but the reason I like Cacao is not because I'm so crazy about these things.

The reason I like it is because of the feel of it, and the accessibility of it, the charm of it, the excellent value of it, the way it clings proudly to a kind of rear-guard notion (rapidly fading, if not gone altogether) of what a bistro ought to be.

And I hear tell that Frank Ruta, the master craftsman of a chef there, has brought back his Spring consomme with morels and favas and asparagus — no lie, one of the greatest things I've ever eaten in this city.

The surprising depth and richness of the broth for something so strained and delicate, the burst of vegetal freshness from the asparagus and favas, the subtle pho-like spicing, the way no two slurps taste the same, the way the flavors stick with you for weeks and even months and maybe years — it's a really remarkable achievement. I can almost taste it now …

This is getting to be scary, Clifton. We're agreeing more and more on — well, just about everything.

Oh, you're funny, DC Reader! Funny, funny …

I'm really heartened to hear you read Kelley's book after seeing my mention — I really think he deserves to be much, much better known. It's one of those books that plays by its own idiosyncratic rules. When I first read it, I didn't want to finish it — because finishing would mean being done with it, and I wanted to stay in Kelley's mind.

As for my book, well — wow, I'm not even comfortable making the transition from talking about A Different Drummer to The Wild Vine. I mean, really — I just hope that people will read it. Read it, and read it with open eyes — not so literally, and not with an eye just toward information and "facts."

In our media-saturated age, everything is about niche-ing, and niche-ing is about pigeonholing, and pigeonholing is about limiting — tidily boxing and narrowing and, thereby, reducing. A simple, salable, easily digestible commodity. I wanted the freedom in this book to go my own way, and blend a variety of different forms.

I'm with you, bone-in is always better than filet — better, richer, more flavorful.

No idea why it's off the menu, and it wouldn't be right to speculate without some understanding of the restaurant's thinking. I wonder if maybe I'll hear from Buzz Beler by the end of the day–? 

I think Kushi is the most exciting, interesting restaurant to open in the city this year.

Excellent sushi, a long roster of skewered, grilled meats (including a duck sausage-stuffed quail and a lobe of foie gras), and Japanese small plates.

I don't think you could have a Kushi in 2001, when I first started reviewing restaurants in DC — I can't imagine anything with that narrow a focus making it. That narrow a focus, that daring a menu, that offhand an atmosphere.

It represents an exhilarating blurring of the lines. It's got a lot of the precision of a conventional fine dining establishment, but the mood of a bar. Quality ingredients, but not a lot of selling and hyping of them. An air of exclusivity (in that it assumes an acquaintance with exotica), but no hauteur *– actually, it's refreshingly accessible. 

This is, come to think of it, one of the best, most interesting restaurant seasons I can remember — maybe the best and most interesting.

Consider what has opened, or is opening: Kushi, 8407, Yannick Cam's Bistro Provence in Bethesda, Lyon Hall from the team behind The Liberty Tavern, and Ray's the Steaks at East River (which I think is the most important restaurant to debut in the city's history).

The common denominator? All are local, independent, and personal.

* until the self-consciously stylized begin showing up in droves.

I agree.

When they're on, they're really, really on. 

It is, it's very disappointing.

But with the current mood — the emphasis on simple, single-focus places, the prevalence of upscale downscale cafes and bistros — I have hope that somebody will come along and give it a go. 

And remember when chicken wings were discarded by the elite, and you could find them in the stores for a pittance?

Humble's become haute. 

Mayo? Mayo! Mayo?!?

I guess David Sax wasn't hyperbolizing. 

Re: the party — maybe Oyamel?

As for Bistro Bis, if I were you I would not miss the quenelles and the steak tartare. Nearly as good: the duck liver parfait, the mussels, and the apple tart. 

Lunch is calling.

Be well, everyone, eat well and let's do it again next week at 11 … 

[missing you, TEK]

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