Breakfast + lunch

I wish we'd had the time to linger at Peg's Glorified Ham N Eggs, a brunch hotspot a few blocks from the riverside promenade in Reno's otherwise tumbledown downtown, because my favorite thing about the restaurant are the giant, circular metal trays that play the part of plates. But even after a few minutes at the counter and a to-go order of Peg's Glorified Huevos Rancheros ($9), served with hash browns, a black bean and corn salsa, a cabbage slaw (vinegar, not mayo), fresh pinto beans and warm tortillas, Peg's earned a spot on my go-to, best-of brunch list. (After breakfast adventure? J.R. Johns and his dog Skippy climbing ropes at the casino and indoor carnival at the Circus Circus hotel.)

Peg's in good company. Sound Bites (Somerville, Mass.). Olga's Cup and Saucer (Providence), the Brickway (Providence) and Modern Diner (Pawtucket, RI). Threadgill's (Austin). Loveless Motel Cafe (Nashville). Mother's (New Orleans). Thornton River Grille (Sperryville, Va.). Breadmen's (Chapel Hill, North Carolina). O'Rourke's Diner (Middletown, Conn.).

Tusker

Last night, at a pan-African happy hour, I felt subtly bullied into ordering the Tusker, a Kenyan beer I had never heard of but that apparently sells 700,000 hectoliters per year (whatever the heck a hectoliter is).

Then this morning, at brunch at Dupont's Stoney's Lounge (1433 P St. NW), the waiter (dressed in shorts, no less!) laughed hysterically when I asked for English Breakfast tea to wash down the undercooked, soggy, $9 chili cheeseburger that I had only ordered to recapture an once of masculinity.

Veggie bomb

Jane & Michael Stern inspired me to raise my game this morning, after I heard their Splendid Table account of a meal at Nick Tahou Hots in Rochester, NY, where they bravely dived into a "garbage plate," including Texas hot wieners, hamburgers, Italian sausage (or steak) served alongside baked beans and home-fried potatoes, cool macaroni salad, spicy chili sauce, mustard and chopped raw onions. I'm not nearly as hard-core, but I did up the ante on my Saturday morning "double burger," typically a MorningStar black bean patty topped by a MorningStar veggie sausage patty and doused in Sriracha, peanut satay sauce, and either Olde Cape Cod honey mustard or hummus. Today, inspired by the "garbage plate" (a distant cousin of the Uruguayan chivito?), I inaugurated the "veggie bomb," a MorningStar black bean patty crowned by a fried egg and drowned in Heinz vegetarian baked beans and mashed avocado.

By the way, I'm glad to see mainstream media love for Sriracha, but given its high profile these days, is it still truly the "underground king of condiment"? As I've said before, Sriracha is about as underground as Jarritos, whereas Marie Sharp's is the unsung hero of imported hot sauce.

Pas de deux

The sous-chef is Austrian, so I'll give him all the credit* for my favorite entree in 2010, making this the 2nd in an occasional series, as Pipón guest blogger Julia Oliver likes to say. I'm speaking, of course, of the "Duet of Duck" ($27) at Foti's, in downtown Culpeper, Va., by Shenandoah National Park, an inspired pairing of vinegar and juniper marinated crispy skinned Long Island duck breast, served smoothly rare and uninterrupted, alongside a complexly spiced duck and cabbage sausage, atop a caramelized onion, potato and bacon sautee, down there soaking up all that duck jus but somehow staying crunchy, set off by a bright blueberry gastrique and local green bean medley.

I lead with Foti's because visitors to Washington, Va., do not all make it to nearby Culpeper, whilst I can't imagine anyone would miss breakfast at the Foster Harris House, a 4-course extravaganza that today included out-of-the-oven currant and chocolate scones; fresh fruit in yogurt and homemade granola; pastrami smoked salmon with tzatziki; custard scrambled eggs, garnished with an Hawaiian volcanic sea salt; a pleasantly daintily fried zucchini fritter; and a short stack of miniature pancakes with shaved chocolate above and maple butter syrup below.

*Foti's chef and owner, Foteos “Frank” Maragos, a Johnson and Wales grad and the former executive sous chef at the Inn at Little Washington, Laura Bush's old haunt, probably deserves some credit, too.

New Jack Hustler

To clean up a sizable Pipón backlog, I say a few more Darts & Laurels (h/t to CJR) are in order.

Laurels:

The salmon tartare at Poste (555 8th St. NW), served in an ice cream cone, over crème fraiche, is so inventive and refreshing (and the Summer Selection of Farmstead Cheese, with thinly cut raisin-walnut toast is so lovingly assembled) that I have forgotten all about the whole mustard-ice-cream-in-the-gazpacho incident.

The remarkable beer list, scrumptious fries (with a highly recommendable chipotle mayo dip) and general just-hip-enough vibe at Granville Moore’s (1238 H St. NW) more than make up for the eye-popping price tag on the humble bison burger.

The traditional triumvirate in New Orleans: beignets at Cafe Du Monde (see photo), the red beans and rice at Mother's (see photo of hot sauces), and the Bananas Foster at Brennan's, a highly unoriginal, yet hard to resist culinary itinerary.


Darts:

The supremely lame, albeit understandable, no Wi-Fi on weekends policy at Tryst (2459 18th St. NW), from the same penny-pinching philosophy that leads Chef Geoff's (1301 Pennsylvania Ave. NW) to corral its happy hour crowd in a cramped quadrant by the bar.

The general laziness at Dos Gringos (3116 Mount Pleasant St. NW), a self-consciously quirky lunch spot that never offers Wi-Fi (social engineering), regularly runs out of ingredients (a supposed sign of freshness), and uses the microwave like it's going out of style. 

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.

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?)

Eye Bar cure

Keryn's Eye Bar (1716 I St.) hangover cure, frozen Tater Tots, a fried egg on an English muffin and Marie Sharp's. 

Top secret microwave

I was fortunate enough to spend a few days in Vail last week at a friend's elegantly appointed duplex, equipped not only with a mountain-view jacuzzi and passenger elevator but also with a giant, modern kitchen with a huge gas range, acres of counter space and a futuristic microwave hidden in a drawer in the kitchen island. As they say in Argentina, aprovechamos a full.




Friday night dinner, "Notisserie" chicken, seasoned and oven roasted, stuffed with garlic, thyme, rosemary and halved lemons and served with a mushroom risotto including porcinis lovingly reconstituted, by chef David Menon, with the hydrating aid of chicken broth and white wine.



For Saturday morning breakfast, I drenched and toasted up some grilled cheese in homemade schmaltz (rendered chicken fat) and served it with a medley of guacamole and spinach-blue cheese-pine nut dip. (Leftover "Notisserie" chicken also went to work in a crunchy chicken salad that we munched on at 10,000 feet.)

Chef David Steinvurzel, swineing around all weekend, skipped the après-ski hot tub on Saturday night to hunt (fruitlessly) for broccoli rabe and prepare (fruitfully) orecchiette (Italian for "little ears," a tiny disk-shaped pasta) with sweet broccolini (eats, shoots and leaves), spicy Italian sausage, shallots, Parmesan and thickly chopped garlic. (Admission: I dig broccolini, and I was kinda hoping he'd come up short on his broccoli rabe odyssey.) Speaking of Steinvurzel, he also shot all the photographs above.

Greater U Street

Breakfast: Busboys and Poets (2021 14th St. NW). I ordered the Mahi Mahi, blackened with a lemon-pepper aioli and served with sweet potato fries ($10), and sampled the Sweet Fuji Apple sandwich ($7.50), served with Gorgonzola and a fig spread on walnut raisin bread. The OJ is freshly squeezed.

Lunch: DC Noodles (1410 U St. NW). I ordered the "noodles in spicy soup" ($12), served with ground peanuts, chili pepper, bean sprouts, carrots, cilantro, spring onion and my choice of noodle (I had the wide variety) and "meat" (I had the tofu, hence the quotation marks).

Fredcation

I did a bit of traveling around the region this weekend, mostly in and around Frederick, Md., where my wife grew up and where my in-laws still live. There was some eating out, including a Christmas Eve dinner at Bangkok Thai Kitchen (1031 West Patrick St., Frederick, Md.), where we were the only customers, the TV was tuned in to a prerecorded "Larry King Live" broadcast that had Larry King wearing a safari vest and handling wild animals, the tom ka gai (chicken and coconut soup) artfully balanced sweet and spicy, and the ped krob (stir-fried boneless duck in chili and garlic sauce) was topped with delicate, flavorful, crispy basil, a flourish I'd love to replicate at home.


Sunday night, we grabbed an early dinner downtown at Brewer's Alley Restaurant & Brewery (124 North Market St., Frederick, Md.), a beloved brew pub operating out of Frederick's original City Hall, completed in 1769. If you ever find yourself on Market Street, odds are you'll be heading for the super trendy Volt, made famous when Volt's chef/owner Bryan Voltaggio appeared on "Top Chef" and (spoiler alert) finished second behind his brother, Michael. If you can't get a table, or you're frightened off by Volt's prices, try the winter stew and the oatmeal stout at Brewer's Alley.




A final Market Street tip: Pretzel & Pizza Creations (210 North Market St., Frederick, Md.), a fusion ice cream, sandwich and gourmet pretzel shop.




In a brief interruption of our Fredcation, somewhere between the Thai soup and the oatmeal stout, my wife and I hopped over the border to W. Virginia, staying at the Bavarian Inn, an alpine-style hotel in Shepherdstown along the Potomac River. The Christmas dinner menu ($45) included a wild game terrine of boar, elk and venison and a 7-ounce filet mignon (Hereford beef) served alongside a Cabernet reduction and allegedly accompanied by a "sweet potato dauphinoise," oyster mushrooms and "melted" leeks. (I only detected the mushrooms and some pickled red onions.)

As always, there was also some home cooking in the Fredcation. Sweet pan-seared, Soy Vay-ed salmon for 1 dinner. For 1 breakfast, a vegetarian version of Giada De Laurentiis's "Mini Frittatas," the role of sliced ham played by sauteed broccoli, red onions, sweet potato and red bell peppers.

How the sausage patties crumble

In the rush before yesterday's snowpocolypse, Harris Teeter ran out of a key staple of our Saturday morning breakfast: Morningstar veggie sausage patties. So we settled for veggie sausage "crumbles," introducing an unwelcome guest, cursed caraway seeds, into our scrambled eggs. As for the decision to go with Aunt Jemima (instead of Eggo) for our blueberry waffles, that was just Keryn's lunacy. I did manage to pull together a pot of roasted tomato soup (not pictured), that was well received by our downstairs neighbors. One misstep worth Pipónerating: I neglected to decapitate the unpeeled garlic gloves, and they ended up black as night and hard as rock, if you'll pardon the cliches (and the amateur cooking error). Thankfully, the roasted tomatoes, broth and heavy cream held their own.

Hard boiled couscous

My roommate had hidden the hard-boiled eggs in their, er, it's not called an "egg crate," is it? That's right, it's an "egg carton." Anyway, I found them. And I tossed them with leftover Near East roasted garlic & olive oil couscous, perhaps the fastest cooking food on the Earth, faster than an egg on a hot sidewalk, as they say. Of course, I also squirted on some Sriracha hot chili sauce, but only because I was eating (I don't yet use it as hair gel.)

Contrasts in Connecticut

The brunch menu at O'Rourke's Diner, in Middletown, Conn. (728 Main St.), is exhaustively extensive. Just contemplating the specials must give nervous breakdowns to hung over Wesleyan students on Sunday mornings.

Meeting up with our cousins there last weekend, Keryn and I explored the extremes, though we did not sample everything in between. (I liken the strategy to the Simpsons montage that shows Patty spreading a rumor around Springfield by calling "A. Aaronson" and later "Mr. Zykowski." "There," she says, looking spent, "Aaronson and Zykowski are the two biggest gossips in town.") I, not surprisingly, opted to sample as many of the absurdly long list of meats available, ordering "The Irish Embassy," with corned beef hash and bacon (I substituted Irish bangers), alongside home fries, a poached egg and Irish "brown bread."


Keryn had the yogurt, with granola and fresh fruit.


Everyone munched on the incredibly moist and mind numbingly flavorful pistachio bread and lemon poppy seed pound cake, both complimentary.

Diamond Princess

Breakfast aboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Alaska's Inner Passage.

Some factoids about eating aboard the ship:

• There are five dining rooms in addition to the infamous, 24-hour Horizon Court buffet, as well as "casual poolside dining," where Trident Grill serves up hamburgers and fries and Prego's Pizzeria throws 600 pies a day in the oven.
• Still hungry? Hunt for the warm, fresh, soft-baked cookies served daily.
• Still lazy? The complimentary fruit, tea and OJ is delivered to the staterooms every morning.
• In a day, the ship prepares 16,000 meals in the galley.
  
• In a 7-week cruise, the ship cracks 38,354 eggs and serves up 920 kg of shrimp, 6,691 kg of beef, 700 kg of king crab legs, 548 kg of lobster and 600 kg of pasta.