Animal Boy

Between "Super Size Me," "Food Inc." and "King Corn," and Matt the Electrician's ode to the homegrown ("My ancestors grew something/Real food is all I know/We’re gonna grow a little boy/Just like 100 years ago"), I feel a little guilty (like the gnawing, "McStomach" feeling "Super Size Me" groans about) whenever I Piponerate only about eating out.







So here are few pizzas, including a pie with brie and orange bell peppers, and other treats we've been whipping up lately, like roasted kale chips and curried fingerlings with melted havarti, and Dark 'n' Stormy cocktails and fried mashed potatoes (Somerville, Mass.-Sound Bites style), with great help from our Radix Farm farmshare; from another of Tanya's beloved South African BBQs; and from my friend Art Jirut, whose Iron Chef competition last Sunday inspired an eggplant loaf (served alongside vanilla bean ice cream and crushed walnuts); eggplant tempura; sauteed eggplant polenta with sausages; eggplant and yellow squash tacos (sprinkled with turmeric and slathered in fresh mint raita); pureed eggplant bruschetta; and stuffed chicken breasts with diced eggplant, couscous, sundried tomatoes and capers.

Can Opener

For a minute, I truly contemplated okra tacos. But I flinched, in a moment of lame vegetable aisle wimpiness, and so sweet corn became the taco night headliner. "Sweet corn is an emotional food when you eat it picked fresh from the field, just full of feelings, you just sit and you weep" (A Prairie Home Companion). Perhaps at Lake Wobegon. Here in DC, the most I can say is it sure is cheap and crunchy.
   

Speaking of corn, I was excited to see Open City (2331 Calvert St. NW), the overrated Woodley Park cousin of Adams Morgan's underrated 24-hour Diner (2453 18th St. NW) and Tryst (next door to The Diner) trying to work some magic with creamed corn. You see, creamed corn was a childhood staple in our house, served with Heinz vegetarian baked beans and grated Parmesan. Open City's version? A concocted coconut creamed corn side sold for $3.50 a bowl. I'd hate to hate on the yellowy, gooey, crunchy gruel, since I'm a pretty nostalgic fellow, but I'm going to stick with the Gedan corn-and-beans recipe.

There are a few things that I can recommend. The beer flight at Meridian Pint (3400 11th St. NW, opposite RedRocks); the family style lunch specials at the shadowy Magic Gourd (528 23rd St NW, in Foggy Bottom); everything at Pho 14 (1436 Park Rd. NW, in Columbia Heights), the biggest food bargain in DC, and that's including the deeply discounted Morningstar products at the nearby Target; the happy hour cocktails at Bar Dupont (1500 New Hampshire Av. NW), but only out on the patio; the phoenix roll (shrimp tempura, spicy tuna and avocado) ($12), a nice mix of mushy mashed tuna and crunchy fried shrimp, at Perry's (1811 Columbia Rd. NW, in Adam's Morgan), but only up on the roof; the Texas Burger ($11), slathered with smoky chipotle BBQ sauce and topped by pickles, fried onion straws and coleslaw, but with the upper bun brilliantly held aloft by a toothpick, keeping it blissfully unsoggy, served alongside gimmicky but tasty Tater Tots, at Tonic (2036 G St. NW, in Foggy Bottom); and finally, arguably the best meal in South Dupont Circle (other than the once-a-year free burgers and hot dogs and pizza served up in the Circle by the DC police), the barbacoa burrito at Tomatillo Taqueria, the Mexican takeout lunch stand at The Big Hunt (1347 Connecticut Ave. NW), served best with the spicy tomatillo sauce, fresh pico de gallo and guacamole (it's an extra $1 for the avocado) and sauteed onions, but it's cash only and closed from August 9-13.

Sushi Phi Epsilon

Not one of the sushi chefs behind the bar was actually Japanese. More bizarrely (stranger even than the recent addition of "Asian Cuisine," including pork fried rice and drunken noodles), on the menu, opposite a snooty discourse on when it is appropriate to drink sake cold (only super high quality bottles, apparently) is "Tono's Bomb," a $7 "traditional sake bomb" with Gekkeikan sake and your choice of Japanese beer. (I haven't had a sake bomb since a strange dinner at Kaya, in Cambridge, in the late 1990s.) But I'll say this: the sushi at Tono Sushi (2605 Connecticut Ave. NW) is good enough to make you forget about a menu that meanders into pan-Asian fraternity territory. For the non-adventurous, there's the super low-priced "roll combo," $10 for a cucumber roll, California roll and tuna roll. For everyone else, I recommend the spicy, crunchy salmon roll. We also sampled the Oshinko  ($4), an artfully presented platter of assorted Japanese pickles, and dreamed a little dream about one day ordering the Kimchee tuna roll and the tuna wrapped Dragon roll, stuffed with sweet potato tempura.

Madiba

In November, a South African friend invited me over for what I imagined would be a traditional South African meal. (After all, she has a limited edition Nelson Mandela oil painting on her wall and a closet full of Springboks rugby jerseys.) I ended up happily feasting on scrumptious Greek salad and Greek orzo stew and ungraciously grumbling that I had missed out on authentic South Africa eats.

I made up for that on Tuesday in Brooklyn, stopping by Mandiba (195 Dekalb Avenue, Fort Greene) with my brother and mother for a South African lunch. An unexpected highlight of the Indian-accented menu: the vegetable curry, breyani style, is served alongside mango chutney, banana coconut and milk, cucumber mint and yogurt, and a salsa of onions, tomato and parsley soaked in white wine vinegar. (And I thought the funky mayos at Good Stuff Eatery stood out.) We also sampled the "Bushman Vegetable Platter," with grilled, fresh greens from the Fort Greene Farmer's Market including roasted corn on the cob, and the chakalaka, a "spicy mix of baked beans, carrots, tomato and onion."

My other food adventures in NYC: dinner at Sushi Sen-Nin (30 East 33rd Street) in Murray Hill on "Manhattan Island," as these sea-loving Japanese restaurateurs put it, where I bored my friend Craig with trivia gleaned from The Sushi Economy; and drinks at The Breslin (29th Street and Broadway), at the Ace Hotel, where I could only afford to order the spiced almonds ($4) after my $11 (plus tip) Maker's Mark, but still managed to mooch a bite of other interesting apps including the "Scotch egg" ($6), an interesting meaty and eggy hushpuppy, and the "Beef & Stilton Pie."

I also picked up this kooky recipe from "The Silk Road - Ancient Pathway to the Modern World" exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History: melt butter in a hot frying pan, add 2 cups of mashed pitted dates, crushed graham crackers, cardamom, ground fennel seeds and ground coriander, cook for about 10 minutes then spread on a baking tray, press (your favorite) nuts onto the surface, let cool and then cut into squares and serve as a 1,000 AD snack.

'The Sushi Economy'

I just finished The Sushi Economy, by a friend in Washington, Sasha Issenberg. Allow me to recommend it. It's a lively trip from Boston to Austin to Tokyo, and points beyond and in between. It's also packed, not only with bite-sized trivia for regaling dining companions at your next sushi outing (be it a budget-busting prix fixe at MASA or a bargain-basement all-you-can-eat adventure with Bobby Flay's body double, Jeff Novich), but also with plenty of practical tips such as this one, from a skilled but foul-mouthed Texas restaurateur:

"'I can pick out and choose every different cut of every different fish. If two women sit down and they're not going to taste a bit of the food - they're ordering a California roll - I'm not going to give them a good piece of salmon. I'm going to give them a piece of tail. If there's a forty-year-old Japanese guy who has been eating sushi since before I was born, I'm goping to cut him the best piece I've got.' Orders from a table in the dining room, distant and anonymous, all get treated like California-roll preferring women. 'I reserve the best cuts for the bar,' Cole says plainly. 'Wherever you go, you should always sit at the bar.'"