Food from Northern Laos is distributing this cookbook online for free as a way of promoting their cultural diversity and cuisine. I know we have many Thip Khao lovers here that will enjoy this book. Enjoy!
-JAY
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19Jan
Khao Soi Noodle Making, Tai Neua style -
14Dec
Restaurants, bakeries, and grocery stores often have food left over at the end of the day that could go to waste. The Too Good To Go app is a marketplace where you can purchase food from business at the end of their day (or meal service). The items in these bags/boxes can be pretty random, even if you pick up two boxes at the same location (or on different days).
Ala 
Le Pain Quotidien
The food is usually already packaged as a mystery bag (or box) when you pick it up during the specified timeframe, but there were some exceptions. I didn’t mind waiting a few minutes if a place put a bag together while I waited.
Rose Ave Bakery 
Taim Falafel
Purchasing these deals can be competitive, with new mystery bags/boxes usually hitting the website 15 minutes after the current day’s pickup range ends. As an example, The Cakeroom‘s pickup range is 8pm to 9pm, which means that at 9:15pm on Tuesday, the mystery bags/boxes to be picked up Wednesday will populate on the app. There are exceptions such as Rose Ave Bakery that sometimes drop mystery bags/boxes on the app for same day pickup.
Zenebech 
The Cakeroom
Below are mystery bags/boxes I tried:
Ala ($3.99) in Dupont Circle has two pickups with different types of items, afternoon and evening (and I tried both). The above image is from the afternoon timeslot, and contained a Halva Croissant, Apple Tea (loose chopped dehydrated apples), an herbal teabag, Meringues, one Thumbprint Cookie, and Crunchy Chickpeas (dried).
Le Pain Quotidien ($4.99) gave me 3 pastries: a Cheese Danish, an Apple Turnover, and a Pan Aux Raisins. PDQ is much more readily available on the app than other baked goods options and has multiple locations (Dupont, 17th Street, Penn Quarter) you can choose from.
Rose Ave Bakery ($3.99) downtown offers fun Asian American-themed pastries. It is located at The Block DC food hall with Pogiboy, which is also on the Too Good To Go app. My Rose Ave mystery box contained green pastries: two Matcha White Chocolate Donuts, a Pandan Donut (green filling), and a Matcha Chocolate Cookie.
Taim Falafel‘s ($3.99) mystery bag included a Falafel Bowl and Tractor Beverage Company‘s Mandarin Cardamom. Their Georgetown and Dupont Circle Locations are both on the Too Good To Go app.
Zenebech ($4.99) is an Ethiopian restaurant in Adam’s Morgan. When I checked in, they put together a Vegetarian Combo for me with injera (spongy flat bread made from teff). I was lucky enough to score bags from both Zenebech and The Cakeroom to be picked up on the same evening, which was nice, because they are on the same street a few blocks from each other.
The Cakeroom ($5.99) put together a bag of mostly chocolate flavored items. There was a slice of Cherry Cheesecake, two slices of Chocolate Vanilla Cake, and two Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes.
I recommend Too Good To Go in DC (it’s in other cities too) but you need to be open to receiving really random items, especially at Ala. If you get something you can’t eat, share it with a friend. Too Good To Go is definitely a good value, since most of the mystery bags I received were worth 3 to 4 times what I paid.
-JAY
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19Nov
Sweet Hope, Central’s all you can eat dessert event for charity, is back! I can’t recommend this family experience enough! Kids love it! Reservations are staggered and required. This year, there will be live jazz and a balloon artist. This event is $25 per person for those 10 and over.
Previous coverage and a few words about the late Michel Richard are here. The flier for the event is below.
-JAY
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14Nov
There’s a great relatively new Asian Market in the basement of Rice restaurant in Logan Circle about a block from the P Street Whole Foods. The people working in the market are friendly and helpful.
I often see interesting produce like makrut limes, key limes, holy basil (tulsi), yuzu, Thai Basil, and Thai bird chilies in the market. They carry a variety of prepared foods (from the restaurant upstairs), dry goods including green, red, and black rice, and various types of noodles, condiments, and sauces. The selection is a bit random, with a different option for fish sauce being available on each of my visits. They have groceries from various countries in Asia including Thailand, Korea, China, and Indonesia. It’s a “go and see what they have today” kind of a shop.
-JAY
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13Nov
The Rounds sponsored a giveaway though Washington City Paper (and I won). It was random that a food blogger won, but I figured it would be nice to give back with a little publicity.
S’mores Pop-tart from Ted’s Bulletin 
Everything Bagel from Bethesda Bagel
Bread from Seylou Bakery 
Texas Sheet Cake Ice Cream from Jeni’s
Some wonderful local products/companies that The Rounds carries were featured — you can see the list in one of the above images. They even included a Wick & Paper scented candle, and gift cards from Jeni’s Ice Cream and Le Diplomate. For the record, the Baked & Wired Carrot Cake Cupcake was the first thing I ate. 🙂
Thank you The Rounds and Washington City Paper for this wonderful gift package.
-JAY
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12Nov
Glen’s Garden Market in Dupont Circle recently became Dawson’s Market. The store seems mostly the same, which is nice. I know that a lot of businesses haven’t gotten back to doing tastings, but Dawson’s is an exception.
Every Thursday, Dawson’s has a different brewery pour samples 5pm-7pm during a weekly cookout, but lately other tastings have been happening as well. Today, both the Dupont Circle and Rockville locations had a wine and cheese tasting (see the Siema Wines photo above for Dupont Circle), and this weekend there will be tastings from Dawson’s Thanksgiving Menu. In Rockville the Thanksgiving menu tasting will be on Saturday, November 13th 12pm-3pm, and in Dupont, it will be on Sunday, November 14th 12pm-3pm.
Dawson’s has an online event calendar.
-JAY
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18Feb
Mekhala‘s Asian cooking pastes are organic, vegan, and gluten free, and we were lucky enough to get our hands on a few of them. Of the dozen or so available varieties, the four that we cooked with were the Yellow Curry (Thai), Red Curry (Thai), Lemongrass Turmeric (Vietnamese), and Sichuan Mala Chilli (Chinese).
Lemon Turmeric Wild Coho Salmon 
Yellow Curry Cauliflower Stew
The Yellow Curry paste worked well with coconut milk in a vegan cauliflower, peas, and onions dish. This was my second favorite of the four dishes shown here, and my dining partner’s favorite.
We used the Lemongrass Turmeric paste with coconut milk on wild salmon, which was my favorite of the four dishes. The scallions absorbed a ton of flavor, which helped make this a tasty combination.
The Red Curry with coconut milk and Lotus Foods Organic Jade Pearl Ramen (green noodles) was a wonderful soup you might expect to find in a restaurant, so it was nice to have it at home. This was my dining partner’s second favorite dish of the four.
Sichuan Mala Chilli Bacon Salad 
Red Curry Jade Ramen
We combined the Sichuan Mala Chilli Paste with apricot preserves and a little lemon juice, and applied it to the bacon prior to cooking. This gave the bacon a nice sweet, sour, and spicy flavor, and a color that might put off people (like my dining partner) who aren’t used to eating bright red meat.
Whole Foods and Mom’s each carry a few of Mekhala’s varieties. I’m keeping an eye out for the Thai Basil Garlic paste. Mekhala also has a line of sauces and dressings such as Pad Thai and Thai Chilli. Once you have some of Mekala’s products in your pantry, you can use some of the recipes on their website, or experiment like we did. And yes, these dishes all involved some cutting and pastes. 🙂
-JAY
Editor’s Note:
Mekhala was nice enough to send several of these products for us to review. The Yellow Curry paste was purchased at Whole Foods.
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05Feb
While winter in the nation’s capital has proven to be exceptionally exciting this year, one calming elixir that always seems to soothe the soul is a cup of hot tea. Although having a large cold brew and focusing on every detail in life may be alluring, it’s important to take a step back every so often and just unwind with a simple yet satisfying brewed tea. That is what I have been doing for several days now, with the help of Jaf Tea. The 75-year-old Rainforest Alliance certified tea company sent me a box of some of their premium teas to taste and enjoy for this review.
The design of the box itself was sleek and premium. The tea bags were all wrapped in their own individual paper and foil packages. The selection included English Breakfast, Ceylon Earl Grey, Black Tea, Green Tea, Green Tea with Soursop & Banana, Green Tea with Strawberry & Kiwi, Chamomile Tea, and Cool Peppermint Tea. With 80 packets of tea, this box has a wide and plentiful selection of unique takes on some classic hot flavors while still offering a solid traditional basis of tea.
For this review, I brewed a cup of English Breakfast, the normal Green Tea, and the Black Tea. Each tea bag had instructions on the proper temperature and steeping instructions for Jaf’s optimal cup of tea. I tried each tea on its own with no additives, but then opted to add sugar to the green tea and sugar and milk to my cuppa English.
The English Tea was the most robust of the bunch. It has a base of black tea flavor with added notes of aged citrus, specifically bergamot. This tea is bold and potent to say the least. The English Tea really does add a whole new dimension to breakfast since and can be a bit overpowering. The addition of milk and sugar help mellow out the tea’s flavor and make it a smoother drink.
The Green was a much needed milder tasting tea. It was naturally sweet, with only some light bitterness on the backend of my sips. The matcha flavor was present and tasted very floral without any harsh chlorophyllic notes which often accompany lower quality green teas.
The final tea I tried was the fruity Black Tea. This tea reminded me of the milder and sweeter English breakfast. It was naturally syrupy tasting and didn’t require any additional sugar. The brew was lighter than the other two teas and had some of the least amount of color. While not the most memorable, this tea was still sippable and pleasant albeit a bit weak.
Overall, the teas offered by Jaf tea exceeded my expectations and were a delightful boost for my early morning and afternoon.
-ARM
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28Jan
Chef Big Rube (L) & Aaron Anderson (R)
The COVID-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic has been especially hard on the restaurant industry, since traffic and seating has been reduced across the country. The use of ghost kitchens may be one way for entrepreneurs to expand their businesses and minimize losses during this difficult time.
Philadelphia entrepreneur Aaron Anderson operates several Original Hot Dog Factory restaurants in Philadelphia. He has partnered with Chef Big Rube, who is known for his immensely popular chicken, to open several ghost kitchen concepts (chicken shack, halal burgers, cheesesteaks, and breakfast bars) through Cloud Kitchens, and a brick and mortar restaurant (steak and shrimp) in Philadelphia. Ghost kitchens like Cloud allow for Anderson to invest in innovation because he can open new food concepts without raising funds for the expenses of a full new restaurant.
“Back in the DC area, ghost concepts are allowing for interesting experiments. Although Foster’s Grill in Vienna is known for its Charburgers, they recently launched a delivery-only ghost concept called Chicken Frenzy from their own restaurant’s kitchen. Chicken Frenzy’s menu includes chicken sandwiches, chicken salads, chicken fingers, and wings, as well as onion rings, plant-based chicken sandwiches, shakes, brownies, and chocolate chip cookies. Some of Chicken Frenzy’s menu items have been added to Foster’s Grill.
On a larger scale, Ghostline DC opened in August in Glover Park. Ghostline DC is a multiple-restaurant professional kitchen (delivery and takeout). Some of the items flowing out of Ghostline DC include ramen, pizza, fried chicken sandwiches, cupcakes, breakfast sandwiches, and pastries.
Hopefully, food entrepreneurs here and throughout the country will continue to find ways to stay in business and possibly even thrive during this pandemic. Don’t be surprised if you see more chicken sandwiches (a recent trend) coming through ghost kitchens in the near future.
-JAY
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24Jan
Clarity in Vienna, Virginia has specials that change throughout the week. Tomorrow evening, there will be a guest chef cooking the food of Ghana, but the event is already sold out. This Thursday’s specials will be Dry-Rubbed Cherry Wood Smoked Barbecue Grass-Fed Brisket and Heritage Pork Ribs; Balsamic Pineapple Barbeque sauce comes on the side with either dish. I’m keeping an eye out for when Chef Jonathan Krinn makes pho again, since we missed it last time.
Clarity’s Smoked Beef Brisket Chili We were happy to pick up Chef Krinn’s Smoked brisket Chili special today. It came with sun-dried tomato corn bread. We also got to try three mini breads: baguette, garlic, and herbs de Provence. We didn’t take the sour cream of cheddar cheese, since we don’t use them.
The chili was very good but a bit spicier than we generally eat. We did add onions, scallions, and rice (with garlic) at home, which helped a bit with the spice level, as did the corn bread. I had planned on adding chopped tomatoes, but figured there was already enough going on the plate.
Sun-Dried Tomato Cornbread Chef Krinn’s father does the baking, and he is extremely skilled. Herbs de Provence was our favorite of the 3 mini breads, although all of them were quite good. The corn bread was tasty too. You should pre-order dad’s baguettes or gluten-free bread (for Thursday pickup), or his stuffed crust pizza when it comes up as a special again. This week’s baguette flavor will be “everything.”
Three Mini Breads My dining partner pickup up the food, and said Clarity has a great upscale NYC restaurant type of vibe. She was impressed.
-JAY
