Have fruit, will freeze

I'm typing quickly. For now, Pleasant Pops is generating buzz and brain freeze in equal measure, but it is still inches below the foodie radar, hyped by the DCist and Prince of Petworth but unsung by the good ol' mainstream media. Apparently, however, The Washington Post, Washingtonian and others have started sniffing around the Pleasant Pops bike cart, parked on Saturdays at the Mount Pleasant Farmers’ Market. So just so Pipón can say it is in the frozen desserts vanguard, here are a few shots of the Pleasant Pops action this morning at the farmers’ market, where the good people from Pleasant Pops, founded in March 2009 by a friend's brother, Roger, offered up a handful of their 60 original flavors ($2.50 a pop, literally) including strawberries-and-cream and watermelon-and-cucumber, and hunted-and-gathered for ingredients for next week, including fresh basil, blackberries and peaches. (I had the strawberry pop, and it was delicious, even if I had to eat it in 30 seconds before it melted.)






UPDATE: MSM has found Pleasant Pops indeed, http://n.pr/cwtJiU, http://bit.ly/akSIUN.

Bogart that bubble

The $3 Summer Sam "long necks" live up to the "best happy hour in DC!" come-on, but corralling the happy hour crowd in a cramped quadrant by the bar, even while most of Chef Geoff's (1301 Pennsylvania Ave. NW) sits empty, is the type of self-defeating cheapskating I'm more accustomed to seeing at hotels that still charge for Wi-Fi and cities that don't give free transfers between subways and buses.

In other news, I saw a great anti-smoking ad last night before The Duchess, who apparently hit the bottle pretty hard and liked to gamble, but was not a smoker.

Caliente, not picante?

No disrespect to the mega restaurant Lauriol Plaza (1835 18th Street NW), where the chefs manage not only to feed hundreds of people nightly, on three floors and a packed patio, but also to come up with appealing specials, like the hulking leg of lamb I ordered last night. But seriously, doesn't it seem upside down to serve the homemade salsa hot in temperature and mild in spiciness, and not the other way around?

Grind, Flatten

The AP says DC, "fertile ground for ground chuck," is capital of the country's "better burger" trend, where burger joints are grinding up "higher-grade beef" and topping them off with "fresher or more creative toppings." The evidence includes the success of Va.-based Five Guys, which the AP says is the country's fastest-growing restaurant chain. Pipón has not totally missed this development, commenting on the bison burgers at The Reef in Adams Morgan, the "Uncle D's Chili 'N Cheddar" burger at the Good Stuff Eatery in Capitol Hill, the "Campfire Buffalo Burger" at the The National Museum of the American Indian and the 8 oz. burger at Luna Grill & Diner in Dupont. Plus, I've been thinking long and hard about posting something short and soft about the grass-fed beef at brgr in New York City (287 Seventh Avenue, NYC) and its Thousand Island/Horseradish Sauce/Herb Mayo topping options.

Still, are hamburgers (however sustainably raised) topped with funky ketchup stand-ins (however tart the roquefort) really the most creative U.S. chefs can get?

Under my skin

It was no cod sperm or squirming, "freshly dismembered octopus," nothing that would impress New York City's "Gastronauts." But I'd say dinner last night at "El Pollo Rico" (932 N. Kenmore St., Arlington) was equal parts developing world deliriousness and first world deliciousness. This is not the haute Peruvian eats you've been hearing about lately on Pipón. "El Pollo Rico" (I love its inexplicable, but very Latin American, use of quotes) is about as simple an operation as the sidewalk fried chicken stand I fell in love with in Ghana a few years ago: there's just rows of chickens rotating on several charcoal rotisserie ovens and an assembly line at the long counter, including a man armed with a meat clever ready to quarter or halve your chicken, another ladling out the two sides (fries and coleslaw) and a third handing over the two sauces (a yellowy mayo and a pureed green chili sauce that go great together). You can order white or dark meat, and both come superbly spiced (beneath the skin). There is a stream of grease in the parking lot, a drab facade and a line out the door. As someone put it on Yelp, "El Pool Rico" has "all of the elements of a great hole in the wall. It's dirt cheap, it's got kind of awful atmosphere, and it's cash only!"


Unrelated, but perhaps of interest: I was eying the osso buco (braised veal shanks) at Cesco Trattoria (4871 Cordell Ave., Bethesda) the other day and I wondered (aloud, unfortunately) why the dish included gremolata. I was curious only because I was convinced gremolata was some kind of Italian ice cream. Woops. It's actually a "garnish made of minced parsley, lemon peel and garlic," an Italian chimichurri, and it is a traditional ingredient in osso buco.

The Surgeon

Graduate student austerity means no smoked salmon, an inhumane bit of belt-tightening for a New Yorker. Thankfully, my folks were in town recently, and so we're suddenly swimming in Nova, and I've been doing up lox-onions-and-eggs scrambles for breakfast whenever I have no bus to catch in the morning.

Alpaca on a plate

Intrepid Pipón correspondent Julia Oliver, self-portrait virtuoso, summited Machu Picchu the other day, hunting alpaca with a bow and arrow for lunch. I exaggerate. But after "eating my way through Lima," Oliver did survive a train derailment aboard Perurail to get to Cuzco, where she climbed to some Inca ruins and worked up an appetite for bacon-wrapped alpaca loin, topped with chimichurri and accompanied by mashed sweet potatoes.




Photos, including the passion fruit close-up below, by Julie Julia Oliver. More images of Peru's delicias culinarias here.


UPDATE: Megalomanical Me somehow missed the "copy" Ms. Oliver submitted with her great Peruvian photography. Here it is: "Alpaca are ubiquitous in the highlands of central Peru. They are employed not only as producers of soft, warm sweater material, but also as tourist gimmicks -- bait for a propina -- and gardeners to the Incan gods. This alpaca loin wrapped in bacon and drizzled with a salty chimichurri sauce is set off nicely by the sweet potato puree. Prepared by the Tree House, a charming and rustic restaurant high on a hill below Machu Picchu, this rendition was sampled with a glass of Peruvian red wine -- not the sweet stuff, but a dry Tabernero malbec. It was the perfect end to a mist-shrouded hike overlooking Peru's maravilla del mundo."

Red faced, not from the marinara

As if my unsophisticated palate, low food budget and amateur cooking skills did not make me insecure enough about publishing Pipón, I heard a great Marketplace segment the other day about the "food paparazzi" and the restaurateurs who, er, do not exactly love them. (Apparently, we food bloggers are famous for publishing photos that are "under-exposed, or taken mid-meal, bite marks and all" and for critiquing food "without really knowing what they're talking about.") And yet, here I go again, with a few Darts & Laurels (h/t to CJR) for some Washington restaurants.


Laurels

The toppings at The Pita Pit (616 23rd St. NW), in Foggy Bottom, including feta, avocado and tzatziki sauce.
Pretty much everything at the Thornton River Grille, in Sperryville, Va., in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, just off the Shenandoah National Park's Skyline Drive, one of the best thought-I'd-come-to-a-greasy-spoon surprises I've ever encountered, where the eggs benedict is served on a homemade baguette, the vegetable omelet special (there it is above) involves, count 'em, five eggs and all dishes get a pick-me-up of fresh fruit and the option of a few drops of the local pepper sauce, Chileman's.
The name (I didn't actually try the food, since the beer alone is bankrupting) of The Star and The Shamrock (1341 H St. NE), an Irish-Jewish pub.
The sauteed beef and onions at El Rincon Espanol (1826 Columbia Rd. NW) in Adams Snorgan (any chance that will catch on?), so tender you (almost, sometimes, when the door is mercifully closed) forget about the booming nightclub upstairs.




The "Sloppiest Joe" ($13) at Ted's Bulletin (505 8th St. SE) (see it above), part of the cloying home-style trend but way more exciting than an overpriced grilled cheese, so much so that it makes up for the poor service at this new restaurant and its odd decision to write "Breakfast Anytime" in large letters on the menu, followed by a small print advisory, "coming soon, we'll keep you posted." On the other hand, the $3 homemade strawberry pop tarts (see one below) are already on offer, as are a great $4 side of blue cheese Brussels sprouts (see one above) and TVs playing classics such as The Wizard of Oz and Breakfast at Tiffany's.
Finally, Laurels for the sliders at Bar Dupont (1500 New Hampshire Av. NW); the Five Guys at Nationals Park, where they do inflate the price a bit but still honor their all toppings free pledge (including the grilled onions, grilled mushrooms and jalapeno peppers); and the $12 "Tacos de Borrego" (slow roasted lamb with garlic and Oaxacan peppers) at Casa Oaxaca (2106 18th St. NW) in Adams Snorgan, where the menu inspires so much confidence, in its refreshingly small size and multicolored mole offerings, that I might actually one day, given enough mezcal, try the "Cazuela de Chapulines," the Oaxacan cheese fondu and grasshoppers appetizer.





Darts

The burgers (see one above) at Nellie's (900 U St. NW) are no joke, with free caramelized onions and only a $1 charge for blue cheese. Still, given the $10 price tag, you'd think they could afford to serve their mimosas in something other than a plastic cup.
The large chili con carne ($5.40) at Ben's Chili Bowl (1213 U St. NW) is good, no doubt, but it does not quite live up to the hype, or the description "large" for that matter. (Why does criticizing Ben's feel like blaspheme and a culinary conventional wisdom echo chamber at the same time?)

Mercat de la Boqueria

The Boqueria, in Barcelona, is not exactly obscure, so there is plenty of information out there to help you navigate its stalls, sniffing out the raw fish spreads, fried rabas, nuts and candy piles and Technicolor fruit salads, while marveling at how the market failure of imperfect information lets identical packages of freshly chopped watermelon sell for radically different prices.




So I'll leave it at this: If you're stopping by Bar Pinotxo, do it early, before the market-supplied, deep-but-traditional menu is whittled down to just tripe and teeny-weeny rabbit ribs. (If you do show up late, however, still stop by Bar Pinotxo; the rabbit is pretty tasty, especially if washed down with Catalan cava.)

L'Escala

Our friends Scott and Isabel gave us the keys to their family apartment on the beach in the small fishing village of L'Escala, and yet, even after night after night of hotel living, it was still tempting to eat all our meals at Cal Galan, where the walls are covered with photos of fishermen auctioning off anchovies, the appetizer ronyons (kidneys) platter must have left the entire coop organ-less, the steak is served with fried eggs and the sangria pitcher sells for just €8.50, or at Emporda in neighboring Empuries, where the paella Valenciana offers a nice siesta from seafood without sacrificing a big ol' pot of stewed rice.




Still, we're not total layabouts. We hit up Peixos Masafon, picked up squid and a few wild-caught, Mediterranean bruixa, kg did some serious beheading and sauteing and we served it all up with some lentils.

Patatas bravas

Patatas bravas sauce, at the low end, is a mayo miasma. (We found this tapas platter at Arts, by the riverside on Girona's Rambla Llibertat, and also at Txapela, an otherwise über creative tapas restaurant opened late into the night on the über fashionable Passeig de Gracia in Barcelona.) But a good jarred variety can be pretty heavenly on potatoes, a baguette rustica or just a spoon. We had no memorable meals in Figueres, but we did pass a restaurant called the "Dalícatessen," and an open-air market with barrels of olives and piles of dried fish.

24 hours in Santa Pau

The food scene is not exactly erupting in rural Santa Pau, a small Catalan village in a national park dotted by dormant volcanoes. But you will not go hungry (as long as the resupply route to Olot is open).

Breakfast: Can Menció, opened in the historic Plaça Major in 1940 beside the only hostal in town, serves up fresh bread, bags of raw Fesols de Santa Pau (the ubiquitous locally grown white beans) and a wine selection about as long as the village census roll. (Rooms just €45; breakfast downstairs cheap, but not included.)




Lunch: Fresh La Fageda yogurt, from the cooperative inside the volcanic reserve. (I'd say more, but we did not stop for a visit to the plant, and the Web site is all in Catalan.)

Dinner: Can Rafelic, where the locally raised, roasted meat is remarkable, even though the only real dinnertime competition comes from the frozen pizza and prosciutto-and-tomato sandwiches at the local pub.