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If you live in a city, you might have a window box or a pot of tomatoes on your balcony. You might even be lucky enough to have a small backyard garden. But do you compost?

Probably not: composting in a small space is tough, not to mention smelly. You could get a worm bin or a bokashi system, but the truth is: for city dwellers, composting is more often an ideal than a reality.

Enter Compost Cab, a soon-to-launch concept for city-dwellers in Washington, D.C. For $8 a week, Compost Cab provides you with a trash bin which you fill with organic waste. Then the company picks it up each week and trucks it to a nearby urban farm, which turns your banana peels and coffee grounds into soil.
Read the rest at National Geographic Green Guide

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“Bacon cereal.” “Bacon lollipop.” “Bacon spaghetti.” “Bacon bread.” “Bacon coffee.” “Bacon beer.”

In a sane world, none of these exact phrases would return any hits when plugged into Google. This is not a sane world.

A chocolate bar studded with bits of bacon sells better than any of the wines at Arlington’s Curious Grape. BLT Steak, just behind the White House, serves grilled double-cut bacon as an appetizer. For $9. There’s bacon-infused vodka. Bacon-flavored mints. Baconnaise, bacon salt, a bacon-print wallet, bacon Band-Aids.

“I was a vegetarian for a year,” says Michelle Harriott, 26, of Rosslyn, “and I had bacon dreams.”

Read it at WashingtonCityPaper.com

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WE’LL KEEP IT SHORT and sweet: Losing weight, saving money and learning a new language are old hat. This year, resolve to challenge your palate and try something new. We have a handy checklist for adventurous diners to refer to over the course of 2009, with options here for vegetarians as well as carnivores. Happy eating!

MEAT PROTEIN
Zombie Feast: There are brains on the menu at Bistro D’Oc. Sauteed with shallots and capers, the dish-that-was-a-lamb’s-cerebrum is available as a special roughly every other week; call ahead if you want to make sure the organ’s on the menu.
» 518 10th St. SE; 202-393-5444. (Metro Center)

They Promised Me Tapioca: Black pudding, aka blood sausage, is made from ground meat and filler cooked with blood until it congeals. CommonWealth’s version uses oats, bacon, onion and garlic, and served it with their Butcher Breakfast, along with eggs and four other servings of pig.
» 1400 Irving St. NW; 202-265-1400. (Columbia Heights)

Have a Ball: Until Jan. 25, Firefly’s serving up Rocky Mountain oysters in celebration of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s “Over the River, a Work in Progress” at the Phillips Collection. The exhibit traces the artists’ attempt to suspend fabric panels over the Arkansas River in Colorado. Apparently, this tenuous link to the Rockies isn’t enough to get the “oysters” flying off the shelves, says chef Danny Bortnick. “I think people come here with the intention [of ordering it] and then they back out.”
» 1310 New Hampshire Ave. NW; 202-861-1310. (Dupont Circle)

THE OTHER PROTEIN
Jump at the Chance: If you haven’t tried grasshoppers — if you’ve had peanut butter, you’ve tried grasshoppers — but if you haven’t knowingly tried grasshoppers, hop over to Casa Oaxaca right away. For only $9, you get an appetizer plate of Oaxacan cheese, salsa, fresh tortillas and crunchy bugs.
» 2106 18th St. NW; 202-387-2272. (Dupont Circle)
FROM THE GROUND UP
Smells Like Hell, Tastes Like Heaven: The infamous durian, said to be illegal on subways in Singapore because of its dirty-sock-like smell, is available in smoothie and bubble tea form at Song Que in Falls Church. The fruit’s secret weapon, of course, is its divine flavor.
» Song Que, 6773 Wilson Blvd., Falls Church; 703-536-7900. (East Falls Church)

Smelly and Stinky: “Either you like it, or you are crazy,” the hostess at Tachibana says of those who order natto. It’s a “sticky, stinky” and stringy fermented soybean dish from Japan that isn’t even enjoyed by all Japanese. At Tachibana, it’s served as “natto-maki” — natto rolled up like a piece of sushi.
» 6715 Lowell Ave., McLean, 703-847-1771.

My Mouth is on Fire: Dare yourself to eat the heat. Dave’s Insanity hot sauce, was invented when Dave Hirschkop wanted a way to get drunks out of his College Park, Md., burrito joint. Still one of the hottest sauces, try Dave’s Total Insanity at the Wall of Flame at any California Tortilla location. A few drops at a time, please.
» Caltort.com for locations

BEVERAGES
In One End and Out the Other: The so-called best coffee in the world comes out of a cat’s poo. Kopi Luwak coffee — made by harvesting partially digested coffee beans from the droppings of a cat-like animal called the luwak — is imported from Indonesia and costs $20 an ounce. Try it for $10 a cup at Zeke’s Coffee in Baltimore when it holds a tasting next month. Tickets are expected to sell fast.
» Zeke’s Coffee; for tickets, call 443-992-4388, e-mail admin@zekescoffee.com, or visit the roastery at 3003 Montebello Terrace, Baltimore.

Bit of Better Butter: At “super-secret” speakeasy PX, “liquid savant” Todd Thrasher whips up the seasonally-inspired Cold Buttered Rum, much like hot buttered rum except for the temperature. Thrasher claims that with this preparation, drinkers don’t taste oiliness, “just the flavor of the butter.”
» Learn more at restauranteve.com/eamonns/PX/px_home.html

Read it at ExpressNightOut.com

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Since Delle & Campbell’s has been cooking up halal food since ’07 (in a different location), and On the Fly’s green carts have graced D.C.’s streets for just as long, Capital Cart’s the new kid on the block. Run by D.C. Central Kitchen training program graduates, the cart’s takes on gumbo and healthy sandwiches are tasty and easy on the wallet.

PEDRO AND VINNY’S
First, there’s only one guy there, not two, and his name is John. Second, the line ain’t short. On a recent Friday, there were almost 20 people waiting for a bean-and-rice burrito from this shiny street cart parked across from McPherson Square.

The good news: The line moves quickly. “I make about one burrito every 30 seconds,” says owner John Rider. Since he only has to vary his single offering — choice of tortilla, beans, hot sauce and guac/sour cream options — you can have your lunch in less than 15 minutes. It also helps that Rider doesn’t deal with napkins or bags (they’re self-serve) and that payment is on the honor system.

Pedro and Vinny’s was AWOL for about a year — Rider spent that time trying to open an “indoors” version of Pedro and Vinny’s in North Carolina — but the cart made its triumphant reappearance in late September, and the line’s gotten longer each day since. Check the weather report and the site at pedroandvinnys.com to make sure the cart is open before you venture outside.

PUPATELLA
This Ballston-based cart serves Neapolitan pizza, stuffed rice balls and Italian-style doughnuts in flavors like Nutella and dulce de leche. Since its opening last October, lines have been long for the fresh-made pizza with fresh basil and buffalo mozzarella. Pupatella’s main problem seems to be inconsistent hours — complaints on online message boards are frequently along the lines of “I went yesterday, but they weren’t there!”

Of course, these big three aren’t the only vendors in metro D.C. to shake lunch up a little. The Bulgogi Cart — aka L Street Vending — has been serving kimchee, bulgogi and bibimbap for more than a year, and Columbia Heights’ Comida Truck garners rave reviews online. And with new regulations before the D.C. Council expected to loosen restrictions on cart sizes and storage, it’s only a matter of time before the only diners buying street-cart hot dogs are the ones who really, really like those dogs. And soon, quick, delicious lunch on the street will be a reality for all.

(Read it at ExpressNightOut.com)

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Ferial Welsh — aka “The Mushroom Lady” — can tell you about mushrooms. And if your experience is limited to sliced button ‘shrooms on pizza, thank your lucky stars you’ve got almost a full month left for your mushroom re-education.

At Welsh’s farmer’s market stalls in Penn Quarter, Dupont, Del Rey and Arlington, white buttons and criminis take up a tiny corner of table real estate. The rest of the stall is filled with boxes of colorful knobs, twisty ear-shaped fungi, and big hunks of something that looks like it was ripped straight off the side of a tree. Inhale, and your nostrils fill with the scent of … actually, they smell exactly like dirt, but in a good way. It’s not a smell Americans are used to.

“I was surprised when I arrived in the U.S. — it’s not that popular” to eat exotic mushrooms, Welsh says. She learned to love the mushrooms from her experiences mushroom-hunting in Austria in the 1970s. Upon arriving in the States and realizing she couldn’t find her favorite fungi, Welsh decided to find places where she could buy the mushrooms she loved and introduce them to others. Twelve years later, she’s the D.C. face of Phillips Mushroom Farms and Mother Earth Organic Mushroom Farms, based in Kennett Square, Pa., the “mushroom capital of the world.”

This month, take time to celebrate and savor some fantastic fungi. Welsh sells, in addition to crimini, white button and portobello, varieties like piopini, honey, lobster (smells and tastes like the crustacean, and is “good in a risotto,”), chanterelles and wood ears. Most of these are grown year-round in a mushroom house, but the chanterelles are harvested in the wild, and, according to Welsh, 2008 is a good chanterelle year.

Don’t feel like cooking? Charlie Palmer Steak offers side dishes of both a wild mushroom mix and a “hen of the woods” ‘shroom, which, Welsh says, is “packed with flavor, and health.” Michel Richard’s Central offers “mushroom cigars” — fungi chopped and formed into a tube, then fried — and the appetizer is only $14.

Porcini carpaccio, black trumpet gnocchi, mushroom strudel and more are yours at Nage, which is offering a “flight” of three rotating mushroom dishes nightly throughout September, for $17. And for true mycophiles, PS 7′s is offering a five-course mushroom tasting menu and piping hot mushroom bread.

“I love cooking something,” Welsh says, “that is not ordinary.”

ExpressNightOut.com

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The usual suspects are here: joggers with dogs, women with armloads of flowers wrapped in newspaper, and at the far end, Sara Guerre explains to a burly man in reflective sunglasses just how hot her Dragon’s Breath cheese is.

“It’s got three kinds of peppers,” she says. “Do you like hot sauce?”

“Not really.”

The man’s significant other pulls him away. She wants to keep shopping — presumably for something her guy will actually eat. Not to worry — there’s a steady stream of customers waiting to buy, taste or ask questions of the co-owner of the new thing in town: On the Gourmet.

Guerre, 34, and her friend Libby Rector Snipe, 31, opened On the Gourmet for business in May, after the duo decided a catering business would take too much of an initial investment. They settled on the idea of selling local and specialty goods from a truck.
But this is no mere delivery truck. Guerre and Rector Snipe and their husbands do drive the beast, but the store is inside, with a completely made-over interior. “We look at it sometimes and think, ‘Wow, we did a pretty good job’,” Guerre laughs.
Why do this, especially when both women have full-time day jobs?

The idea — from the grandma-ish blue cabinets to the nibbles of cheese and olive spread to the foodie chats that Guerre and Rector Snipe try to foster — is that being inside the truck should feel like “being in somebody’s kitchen,” says Rector Snipe. “It doesn’t seem like work. When we had our opening day … it was the funnest day ever.”

“We talk about food all the time,” she adds.

The two source their products — imported oils, fig vinegar, chocolate pasta, créme brulée almonds — from things they’ve tried that they like. “We want to provide the yummiest-tasting things we can find,” says Guerre, and ultimately, it’s probably taste, not fun, that draws the customers.

Half an hour after his first visit to the truck, the man with dark glasses returns and requests a sample. Minutes later, he emerges holding a package of Dragon’s Breath. “It’s really, um, sharp,” he says as he pays. “Might be good on a salad.”

And Guerre, she smiles, happy he liked it.

Expressnightout.com

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“Is there somewhere around here I can get a quick lunch, like a half-smoke, maybe?” The question catches the man pushing his Fayette Street door open for fresh air off-guard.

“Sure, there’s a Five Guys two blocks that way.”

Are you kidding me? You live three blocks from the greatest, oldest, stubbornest carryout in all of Alexandria, and you send me to Five Guys?

If the shack known as the Blue and White doesn’t attract attention on the corner of Henry and Wythe Streets, so be it. But it’s an endangered species: the Old Town Alexandria carryout.

Once, you couldn’t go a block without seeing a sandwich shack—and shacks they were, if they were even buildings at all. There was a time when these places were portable aluminum trailers and, like the taco trucks of today, the trailers went where the workers were.

“If I couldn’t find a cup of coffee, I’d go to a construction site,” says Clarence Webb, 74, a retired corporal with the Alexandria Police Department. “They’d have 100 or 200 workers; they’d need coffee and sandwiches and soda and whatever. What they’d do is build a little one-room shanty and put a stove in it and a counter and a window, and you could walk up to it. The very first thing the guy that was breaking me in did, he went to one of those construction jobs and we got a sausage and egg sandwich and a cup of coffee. They gave it to us. I couldn’t believe that somebody would give us a sandwich.”

“Don’t put that in the paper,” he adds, as if he were still a rookie and the chief of police would dock him for a free sandwich accepted 66 years ago.

Well, Webb ain’t a rookie, and it doesn’t matter, because the cheap places for a cup of joe and a tuna sandwich are gone. As clichéd as it is to point to Starbucks and high-end eateries as the driving forces behind the demise of carryouts, in Alexandria there’s some truth to the cliché. Look at King Street, with its glut of $30 entrees and that infamous $125 tasting menu at Restaurant Eve. Now there’s no Bar-B Q Chilli Parlor; now there’s no Mom’s Kitchen, no Joe’s Grill.

The latter two began as cop stops. In the ’40s, George Crowder, an Alexandria police officer, made the force promise to keep an eye on his place, Joe’s Grill at 728 Wilkes St. Joe’s was open 24/7 and everyone who worked the graveyard shift flocked there for a bite. Joe’s Grill sold burgers and coffee, sure, but also aspirin, cigarettes, chewing tobacco. It was CVS before there was CVS. Now there is a CVS next door.

Go a little farther north, and you’ll encounter more of those ugly little buildings and their ghosts: Here on Pendleton Street was Lil Jim’s. Here on Queen Street was Sgt’s, closed after a fire. There’s the old Weenie Beenie, now gone. A restaurant with the same name remains in Shirlington, but it isn’t related. Last, the improbably named Carry Out—closed now—and the survivor: the Blue and White.

The Blue and White’s exact age is hard to pin down—city directories show it appearing sometime around 1967. It was a cruddy-looking shack then, and it’s a cruddy-looking shack now, unchanged but for the enclosed area that lets customers order without being battered by the elements.

Every Tuesday, the owner, Alexander Truitt, buys a mess of chicken livers—a palletful, his customers say. (How many is it really? Company secret.) Every Tuesday, he sells out before 11 a.m. The rest of the week, there’re other popular staples: pork chop sandwiches, fried chicken, bean soup, half-smokes, bacon and egg sandwiches. But you get yourself one of those Styrofoam cups of livers, and you’re in heaven. Grab a forkful of liver, tuck it into the soft bread, scoop up smaller bits of liver and gravy and drippings, eat. Now is not the time to be squeamish about organs: These pieces of bird are juicy, rich, slightly chalky, but mostly just good. Sandwiches are epic; a pork chop sandwich comes with two juicy slabs of bone-in meat, both threatening to spill over the bread. Condiments? You get your choice of hot sauce, salt, and pepper. Beans are picked from a rotating menu of pintos, great Northerns, kidneys, limas and so on. Great Northerns, mild as they are, benefit most from a squirt of hot sauce, but the pintos are tasty on their own. Just beans, cooked almost to mush, with maybe some fatback thrown in for flavor. Fried chicken is crispy and moist; it ain’t free-range, but one bite and you might think you can taste the chicken skipping through the fields with joy. Yes, that’s right, it tastes like joy.

“I heard he makes a million dollars a year,” says George Crowder Jr. “Who, us?” laughs Candy Cureton, Truitt’s girlfriend. “I don’t think we’re going to answer that question.”

George Crowder Sr.’s widow, Rita, still owns both the Wilkes Street space and the former Mom’s Kitchen at 428 Pitt St. Mom’s has become a Chinese carryout, Ginger Beef Foody Goody (“open every day except Thanksgiving”). There, in addition to your General Tso’s and your egg foo young, you can get Crispy Shrimp with Honey Walnuts, Green Jade Scallops, and other fancy-sounding dishes. Everything’s sort of blandly greasy, but at 9:30 p.m. on a Wednesday, the three or four blocks around the place are dark, and that helps the bottom line: Stay cheap, stay open, or die.

The Blue and White, strictly breakfast and lunch only, combats limited hours with rock-bottom prices. Goody’s, another Chinese carryout on Queen, appears to have survived the past five years by serving “lunch” portions that feed four. And old Joe’s Grill, well, it’s now Corner Cafe and Sandwiches, and it’s neither cheap nor open. It closed in November.

“Everybody wanted to run this gourmet carryout with $4 and $5 sandwiches. It wasn’t meant to be like that,” says Crowder. The place became the project of Yvener Volcy, an accountant who got too busy when tax season rolled around to keep the shop open. “I had some good things,” Volcy says. “Steak sandwiches, ham and turkey, and I had some Caribbean stuff, which people like. [But] it didn’t work out the way I wanted it to. It wasn’t making enough to pay the rent.” Crowder says that Volcy’s lease is up in August.

And if the worst should happen to Rita, that may be the final nail in the coffin of the former Joe’s space as well. “She’s one of those people who doesn’t have any money, but she has a lot of property,” says Crowder. “[The city] will look for death taxes.” The place will likely be sold; it may become another carryout, or it may become townhouses. Another previous owner, Carmen Omeechevarria, swears Crowder told her he had a developer lined up to turn the land into housing; Crowder says he’s in talks with a guy who’d keep the place a restaurant—for now. “We don’t know in the future what it’ll be. It’ll probably be townhouses, but not in the immediate future.”

For now, Corner Cafe stands forlornly on Wilkes and South Washington. A sign reading menu and nothing else hangs next to the window. The adjacent parking lot is empty.

We may never know what the food there tasted like, but I like to imagine it tasted like joy.
WashingtonCityPaper.com

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The new DC Metro Food Tours takes tourists and locals on gastronomically oriented walking tours of D.C. hot spots. The company so far focuses on Old Town Alexandria, but the owner has plans for expansion.

Participants meet in Old Town, and founder Jeff Swedarsky, 27, plays tour guide. On a recent tour, he neglected the King Street strip (since, he says, tourists don’t need help finding the main drag) in favor of off-the-beaten-path spots. His group of nine visited four restaurants as well as Alexandria landmarks like Christ Church and the Torpedo Factory. At Union Street Public House, Swedarsky and his group dined on oysters Rockefeller and beef ribs; then guests learned about the first owner of the historic building (Captain John Harper, said to have fathered 29 children).

Swedarsky and his wife, Sharone, make almost too-chipper hosts, but their perkiness is infectious. Both Swedarskys eagerly join in the conversation and the food. At times, Swedarksy, who eats on his own tour, was the most enthusiastic diner of the bunch. “It’s kind of been a dream of mine” to start this business, he says, and his wonder at local history is unparalleled. “I can’t believe how many things have happened here,” he says.

Swedarsky still has a day job with the government but wants to take DC Metro Food Tours full time: “My goal is to have a big retirement party with a banner celebrating ‘His Four Meritorious Years of Service,’” he jokes.

So far, the tour seems to deliver. On one recent weekend, Virginia residents were as satisfied with the tour’s selections (which vary week to week) as a group visiting from New Jersey.

At the last stop on the tour — the spicy-scented Old Town Coffee, Tea and Spice — guests noshed on jelly cake before dispersing one by one. Were friendships forged, were grand dissertations on culinary history digested? No, but sometimes a little knowledge and a stuffed belly is all you need.
(ExpressNightOut.com)

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