why i'm not a vegetarian

So yesterday I read the NYT magazine piece by Jonathan Safron Foer on why he gave up meat. Before I get into anything further, I want to say that I thought it was a thoughtful, well-written piece and, like the most effective arguments for vegetarianism, emphasizes personal choice without being preachy. In addition to that, it prompted me to write about my own relationship to a lot of the ethical issues linked to what we eat.

It's no small secret that meat, at least in the forms most commonly available to us, is unhealthy in a lot of ways: environmentally, socially, and even medically. America's relationship with meat is highly flawed. It starts with the fundamentally imbalanced role meat plays in our diets. Most of us grew up believing that every meal should include some form of meat. Meat, grain or starch, and vegetable is a pretty formulaic approach to dinner that many have a hard time moving past. I must admit that at a very basic subconscious level, there is something about the image of a plate with a steak, mashed potatoes, and a green vegetable like broccoli that just says "balance" to me.

But this idea of a formula for mealtime is unhealthy and incorrect. Every meal need not include some type of meat. Humans are designed to be omnivores. But just because we can eat meat alongside our vegetables and grains does not mean we absolutely have to. The nutritional requirements that meat fulfills, while important, hardly justify our culture's obsession with meat — particularly with regards to the portions we consume. A habit of lunching on 8-ounce burgers or sandwiches loaded with 3 kinds of deli meat followed by dinners of 10-ounce steaks is what makes obesity one of the largest (pun fully intended) problems facing our culture.

This reliance on meat as the foundation of the American diet isn't just bad for our health but it's bad for the environment. As Safron Foer mentions, most of the meat we consume comes from factory farms which have devastating ecological impacts. The factory farms themselves create massive amounts of waste that degrade the environment and the entire system is sustained by a supply of cheap grain (mostly corn) that is possible only because of a massive system of government subsidies complete with its own devastating social and environmental implications. Beyond relying on chemicals and fossil fuels to thrive, industrial farming of corn allows genetically modified super-seeds to exist as a monoculture that triumphs over nature. Fields that should be fertile and teeming with life are sterile and the only thing living in them is the corn.

Socially this is problematic too as the U.S. system of subsidies (along with those practiced by the E.U. and other developed nations) make it nearly impossible for small farmers in developing countries to compete in the international market. As a result of this, local agricultural systems and traditions all over the world are dying. Many developing nations are dependent upon cheap agricultural imports from the developed world. This sets the international system up for a devastating tragedy if anything should affect the massive monoculture-based systems of the world's largest food producing nations and alter the artificially low price of these staple grains.

We've already seen a little bit of this. The demands for corn to be used in ethanol production put stress on the amount of corn available for food causing corn prices to rise to heights that had not been seen in years. In our increasingly globalized world where what happens in one part of the world is closely linked to someplace far away, this caused a spike in the prices of all sorts of foods worldwide. The result of this was a series of food riots, none worse than the ones that eventually toppled the government of Haiti.

Bryan Walsh examines the negative effects of our reliance on cheap food in a recent piece for Time that I think does a good job of offering a look at the interconnected nature of the choices we make at meal time. Eating the cheap meat that is so unhealthy for us props up an agricultural system that is killing fish in the Gulf of Mexico, thereby undermining a crucial source of healthy protein. It's just one example of a vicious cycle.

All of this seems like a compelling reason to give up meat until you examine the problems present within our food system as they relate to produce and grains. While a one-shot solution to the problem of ethical eating like "stop eating meat" would be much easier, that is not really possible for several reasons.

First and foremost, very few people that stop eating meat go fully vegan. Which means that it becomes impossible to escape the ethical conundrum that comes along with non-meat animal products like dairy and eggs. Conditions on dairy farms and in egg houses are just as bad as the conditions for animals raised for their meat. Aside from the living conditions, dairy cows and egg laying hens also are fed the hormones and antibiotics that many people criticize industrial meat operations for using.

If a person gives up meat but continues to eat cheese, they are likely consuming a product made with rennet, which is an enzyme produced in the stomachs of mammals that helps them digest their mother's milk. Used in cheesemaking, rennet functions to help coagulate the milk and separate curds and whey. Most rennet used in modern cheese making comes from calf stomachs that are the by-product of veal production. So buying veal and buying cheese made with animal rennet are not that far apart on the ethical scale of avoiding cruelty to animals. While there are alternatives available and the ingredient labels of many cheeses (particularly at stores like Whole Foods) make clear whether animal or vegetable rennet was used, it's difficult to know in every case, particularly when eating out.

Even if you avoid dairy products and eggs, there are many issues with the fruits, vegetables and grain available to us that have heavy ethical implications. Perhaps most obvious is that conventional produce and grain is usually cultivated using large amounts of pesticides and fertilizers. The pesticides used to produce the perfect red delicious apples we see at the store have devastating implications for the environment. They often kill living things beyond the pests they are intended for such as birds or helpful insects. The fertilizers that make it possible to grow grains on the same plot of land year after year with high yields are fossil fuel intensive and are merely one more component of an industrial food system that is largely founded on oil.

Beyond the chemicals needed to grow these items, some of the produce and a lot of the grain we consume is the result of genetic manipulation. While this has been going on for centuries as farmers would carefully cross plant breeds to achieve better specimens, the agricultural biotechnology industry has taken this to levels never seen before. Tomatoes have been engineered with properties from the DNA of fish that allow them to last longer on the shelf. While that is scary enough (if there's fish DNA in your tomato, is it really still vegetarian?), the most disturbing trend in agricultural biotechnology is the engineering of seeds to be resistant to specific herbicides and pesticides. The primary advantage of these seeds is that you can blanket the land with chemicals to kill all life forms that threaten your crop and the only thing that is able to survive these deadly chemicals is the crop itself. That makes it possible for farmers to achieve staggering yields and to turn the process of farming into a sterile and highly mechanized endeavor.

But even looking past the environmental implications of produce and grains that are cultivated through introduction of deadly chemicals into the environment there is the issue of supporting the larger industrial agriculture system. There are a handful of companies that own the technologies for the seeds and they also own the technology for the chemicals. Buy genetically modified (GM) Round-up Ready soybean seeds from Monsanto and you can plant them and be assured that they will survive a blanket application of Monsanto's intensive herbicide, Round-up. This has created a system in which there are fewer but larger farms and, despite being owned by the farmers in theory, our food supply is largely under the control of a few large companies like Dow and Monsanto (the same people who brought us napalm and Agent Orange).

And while it would stand to reason that these companies would have a vested interest in the success of the American farmer, they really don't. Monsanto has sued farmers for saving seeds that they did not plant the previous year and using them the following year arguing that this violates the farmer's technology agreement with Monsanto. These companies have gone into developing nations, taken seed varieties that were created through hundreds of years of cross-breeding by farmers, patented the seeds, and, in many cases, sold these seeds back to farmers at a much higher price.

One way to avoid some of these issues is to buy foods made from non-GM ingredients. Many companies that refuse to use GM crops label their products to indicate that. Unfortunately, the US government (on the strong urging of the ag biotech industry's powerful lobby) has refused to require mandatory labeling for foods that contain GMOs (genetically modified organisms). USDA-certified organic foods are prohibited from containing GMOs so that's one outlet. But even organic food is laden with its own issues.

For one thing, many "organic" farms look very similar to "conventional" farms. While they may not be using the same pesticides and fertilizers, they do cultivate foods on a large scale. To do so without the use of pesticides often requires quite a lot of human labor, usually supplied by workers (often immigrants) who are poorly compensated and not always treated fairly.

Another problem with even organic produce is that one must still contend with the issue of food miles. Because we live in a culture that has us conditioned to be able to eat whatever we want whenever we want it, much of the food available to us in the produce aisle is grown quite far from where we are. Unless you live in the southern hemisphere, chances are the organic strawberries you're buying in November come from a place quite far away. And a number of exotic fruits and vegetables don't even come with local alternatives. As much as it pains me, I will never be able to eat a locally grown avocado. One of my favorite foods ever is incapable of being grown in the climate where I live and so I every time I pick one up at my grocery store in DC I am picking something up that has traveled many fossil fuel-consuming miles to me from California, Chile, Mexico or another warm climate where the trees thrive.

The way around this is to become a locavore and eat only items that were produced locally (although even within the locavore movement there is a lot of division on what the term "local" should include...how many miles away is local??) thereby also ensuring that you are eating within season. So by becoming an organic, locavore, vegan one can avoid a lot of the ethical issues associated with the simple question of "what's for dinner?"

But that is not where I am personally. I feel that if I can obtain meat, dairy, and eggs from locally-raised, humanely treated animals then the only thing difference between myself and a vegetarian is the question of whether or not it is ethically responsible to eat another living creature. Scientifically, humans can eat meat. We are designed as omnivores and have the capacity to chew, digest, and nutritionally profit from meat. Our bodies require a number of nutrients that are difficult to obtain without animal products (difficult, but not impossible). Ethically, however, that question is not so simple to answer. Some people feel it is wrong to kill and eat another living thing. Based on the structure of interactions among animals in the natural world (the food chain), I personally do not think that it's morally wrong to eat another animal.

Once a person has settled that issue for him/herself, the biggest reasons to become vegetarian center around how most of our meat is raised, its effects on the environment, and its effects on health. I think that a lot of those issues are handled by changing the amount and kind of meat one eats. My approach for the last several months has been to eat less meat and to be pickier about what I do eat. I will not have meat at every single meal. I may have it two days in a row but not for the next three days after that.

One way to ensure that I eat less meat is to be more vigilant about what kind of meat I buy. Making a commitment to buy only meat that was humanely and sustainably raised and, whenever possible, locally raised is an expensive and sometimes difficult lifestyle to follow. This means that, just because of the higher cost and more limited availability of meat that lives up to those standards, I buy a lot less meat to cook at home. Additionally, this fosters an attitude of appreciation for meat. Because eating meat happens less often and in smaller portions, it becomes easier to look at it as a treat and to remain conscious of everything that went into what's on my plate.

The same thing goes for produce. I try very hard to eat produce that was grown locally and in season. The easiest way to do this is to shop at the farmers' market. DC has a wealth of farmers' markets, including the year-round FRESHFARM market at Dupont Circle every Sunday and the farmers' stands open on Saturday and Sunday at Eastern Market. These markets offer local, seasonal produce and, in many cases, will also sell local meat, eggs, and dairy.

To bring back the point from earlier about appreciating what's on your plate, few things make this more possible than shopping regularly at the farmers' market. For one thing, you get to know the people who are growing your food. Additionally, as the seasons change, you can become excited about the foods that are available to you now that were not to be found just a few short weeks ago. Another great way to do this is to sign up for a CSA (community supported agriculture) share. A CSA share involves paying a set amount for a weekly box of produce (and some offer eggs and milk) from a local farm.

All of this is great information for eating at home but what to do when you eat out or when you're a guest at someone else's table? Well, this is where I think it all comes down to how you think about food and eating. For me, food is so much more than something that merely keeps us alive and functioning. I have always been taught that food is an experience. It's a sensory experience to be enjoyed and it's a social experience to be shared with friends and family. Most of my greatest memories involve food. And while I remember the food itself, what makes it memorable is the fact that it facilitated great moments with people I love. An extremely restrictive diet makes this difficult. That I may be more restrictive in the kind of foods I put on my table does not mean I cannot enjoy a meal that someone has asked me to take part in that may not conform to my specific ideals.

What all of this really comes down to is something that I think Michael Pollan explores very well in his book The Omnivore's Dilemma. In the book, Pollan examines a number of ways of eating — conventional industrial agriculture, large-scale organic agriculture, "beyond organic" (basically small local farms), and commitment to consuming only those items you grow, gather, or hunt yourself. He helps kill chickens on a farm near Staunton, VA in one chapter, hunts wild boar in another, "buys" a steer from a CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation) and follows it from calf to steak, grapples with the choice of whether or not to be a vegetarian over a dinner at a steakhouse, forages for local mushrooms, visits a large organic farm in California that produces much of the arugula and mesculun mix we find at the grocery store and much more. After all of this, the conclusion he comes to is to neither condemn nor affirm one way of eating over another.

He readily admits at the end of the book that, despite knowing everything that goes into it, he will likely consume food that is the product of industrial agriculture again. He acknowledges that, while fulfilling, eating only that which you grow, hunt, or gather yourself is not always practical for everyday living in our society. So what was the point of all that work examining the different ways to get dinner on the table? Pollan argues that the best approach is to always be mindful. Whether you are eating a Big Mac, a salad of organic arugula grown on a large farm and shipped many miles to your local Whole Foods, or a chicken from a local farm and seasonal vegetables, it is simply important that you know where your food comes from and what the act of eating it means to you and to the world at large.

It may sound like moral relativism, it may sound like an excuse to avoid making ethical food choices, but I think it's really a call to treat something so fundamental to our lives, food, with the same respectful consideration and thoughtful evaluation as we would the decision of buying a car or voting for a candidate. And after a lot of consideration, I find that I'm comfortable being an omnivore who knows my place in the food chain and endeavors to make the most ethical and responsible choices while still being able to enjoy the experiences and pleasure that food facilitates.

anniversary reflections

First of all, thanks to everyone who commented on the previous post I wrote about Teddy and his participation on The Next Food Network Star. It's weird, but somehow the detached nature of a blog made it easier to say a lot of things about my friend and mentor that I probably should have let him know long before now. But either way, I'm really happy I wrote it and I'm really grateful for the comments/support.

Since I wrote that, it's been a busy few weeks. Not so much work busy, while that's always something I spend time on, I've been slowly but surely developing a social life again. Which is awesome in that I now go out more and have fun. However, it's wretched for my sleep. I don't get nearly as much rest as I used to. But I'm hoping that I can just learn to survive on 5-6 hours of sleep. Some of the stuff I've been doing has been food related. Most importantly (especially to anyone who has been reading this blog for more than a little while), T and I hosted our now-traditional July 4th cook-in. That's right, we have no grill so we can't cook out. But we try to do the holiday justice and make some truly delicious food indoors.

This year was more low key than previous years. The first year was Southern Food Night (which apparently neither T nor I blogged about...lame). Last year was Degustation Day which I wrote about and which T failed to mention (epic fail!) and it became such a huge extravagant ordeal that I felt like this year we could probably stand to tone it down a bit. So we did. A smaller menu - although, really, it's hard not to get smaller than the insane 15 courses we did last year - and items that, while still delicious, were a bit less haute cuisine and a bit more haute comfort.

I won't do the full recap here because well, that's not why I set about posting tonight and also, no pictures. But the menu was as follows:

- Peppered beef/pork mini-burgers on garlic toast with blue cheese butter and balsamic onions

- T's ribs with his famous bbq sauce

- Baked garlic cheese grits

- Spicy sriracha slaw

- Truffled potato salad

- Fried shrimp with two sauces: veal stock based bacon sauce and a mango chutney

- Chocolate peanut butter pie

- Peach infused bourbon sweet tea

So yeah, it went well. The food was good, the company was even better, and the day produced a number of hilarious moments that will live in infamy.

Another fantastic occurrence from that week was the cocktail party T and I attended with a group of friends at The Gibson (a speakeasy-type cocktail mecca here in DC). We spent the night on their delightful patio eating delicious barbecue and enjoying some of the finest rickeys, juleps, punch, gimlets, and other summer cocktails that anyone can ever find. This place does pretty much everything it sets out to do to the highest level and that simple dedication to perfecting every detail is what makes it my favorite bar. I mean, for the juleps they made their crushed ice by blanching mint in water, straining it, and then freezing the mint water and crushing it into ice. Now THAT is dedication to your craft.

So, all that said, it's been a busy past few weeks. Lots of other events going on and what should be a pretty great night out on H Street for Taylor's birthday (you may know her from her previous appearance on this blog) happening this weekend.

But, none of that is really why I set my mind to writing tonight. As of midnight, it is now July 16th which makes today the first anniversary of when I started working at Granville Moore's. And frankly, I feel this is a big enough milestone that it deserves something to be said. Because unlike any other anniversary at a job, this one is special. This isn't just the day that I started a job but the day that my life changed in a massively significant way.

I wasn't really sure what to expect when I started working in a kitchen. Needless to say my feelings were a mixture of excitement, disbelief, and terror. Excitement because I had dreamt about getting to cook for a living for such a long time and I was finally getting the chance. Disbelief because I couldn't really fathom that it was finally happening. For so long it'd been merely a dream that I kept in the back of my mind but wasn't sure would ever really amount to anything. And terror because it was something so different from anything I'd done at any other point in my life and I wanted to be good at it but wasn't sure that would happen. I also didn't want to let down the chef who'd taken a chance on me and I didn't want to give anyone a reason to say "I told you so."

There were a lot of people who weren't sure I made the right choice. When I got the offer to basically start at the bottom of the food chain at Granville's I was also entertaining a job offer working in wine sales that was pretty much the exact opposite. Big salary, lots of perks, 9-5 hours, paid vacation, all the things that working your way up in a restaurant kitchen most certainly do NOT include. I knew that job would never make me as happy and that I'd always kick myself if I didn't at least try to work in a kitchen while I had the opportunity right in front of me. But it was still scary to turn down the financial security and predictable lifestyle for something that offered a decidedly hazier future.

So after a year, what do I think? A lot of things. First of all, I'm still really glad that I did it. I am happy that Teddy gave me the chance and I'm happy that I somehow found the balls to take him up on it. I've learned so much and this experience will forever shape what I go on to do with my life. No matter if I end up working for someone else or owning my own place, I'll always take with me the things I learned from Teddy and Granville's.

The second thing I think about it is that it just may be the best personal decision I've ever made. Sure it was a professional decision and it came down to a choice of careers. But in terms of how doing something I love every day has affected my personal life, I can't say enough. I am literally not the same person I was in my previous job. Well, okay, I am still a snarky, smartass, cynic. But I am a much happier one. I remember working at FMI and being so miserable in that job and that life that I would call my mom at least once every two weeks in tears because I missed my family, hated what I did every day, and it all made me feel really alone here.

Working at Granville's all of that is so different. Sure, I still miss my family. And it was especially tough when I didn't get to see them for Thanksgiving or Christmas this year. But the fantastic thing about working where I do is that it's more than a job and the people I work with are more than co-workers. They are my family and they've been there for me through two moves, one breakup, and countless nights of drinking, laughing, and making all the shitty things in life seem so much less important.

There are so many other terrific things about working there that I could list and some things that have been hard or difficult in that time but right now I mostly just want to think about the great things that have come out of it and how very happy I am with all the changes in my life over the last year.

my boss, the tv star

Alright, well I haven't blogged in a while and it's because things have been a bit busy. Work has been busy, thanks to a lot of publicity, and personal stuff has kept me pretty occupied as well. However, I'm not here to get into too much of that tonight. What I am going to say relates to the publicity mentioned before. As noted on this blog earlier, Teddy Folkman, my boss and the Executive Chef of Granville's, was chosen as a finalist for Season Five of The Next Food Network Star. For those who may not be familiar, it's a reality cooking competition show where ten finalists compete for a chance to win their own show on the Food Network.

So I've been pretty silent on the subject thus far for a number of reasons. During the actual filming of the show (January-February 2009) I kept silent because I had to. Teddy told us he was going to be filming but we weren't able to say anything. It was all very hush-hush. Which, to be fair, made me feel kind of cool to be a bit of an insider on something that big. And since it's been made public, I've mostly just been biding my time, waiting for the show to air and to see how things play out.

There's been a lot of press to cover his appearance on the show from The Washington Post to Roll Call to numerous food blogs. Too much coverage to link to here so if you're really interested in reading all of that you can just google “Teddy Folkman” and “Next Food Network Star.” What is causing me to break my silence on the issue now is the reaction to the first three episodes of the show that have aired so far.

First of all, let me just say that I am OBVIOUSLY a very biased party with regards to any commentary on the show or the contestants. Of course I think Teddy is the best and of course I'm going to root for him. So I'm mostly going to avoid commenting on other contestants because that's not really my point. What I would like to talk about is the reactions I've been getting to how Teddy is on the show. And more importantly, how they mesh with the person I know, respect, and consider a friend and mentor. For those who don't know how I met Teddy or got started at Granville's I'll just refer back to an earlier post that explains how I got into the job I have now since that handles it. No need to rehash that here.

So far the general reactions I've heard have ranged from “He's cute” (very true), “He's REALLY hyper” (also very true), “He seems sort of arrogant” (only in the way that most chefs are and need to be), “He's like a cartoon” (well, maybe he is but I have never thought of him as cartoonish) and to the more recent “He seems like a jerk” (so so untrue). Before I delve into my thoughts on the show thus far, let me say that I cannot provide any knowledge about who won. I don't know. Teddy knows but can't tell me, or anyone else for that matter, and we've even tried to weasel info from his girlfriend after she's had some wine and she can't and won't tell either. So, that said, on to my ranting.

I think it's important for people to realize that Next Food Network Star, like any reality show, is extremely edited. The cameras roll a lot but we only get to see an extremely small percentage of that on our tv screens. Much like how every drunken sorority sister on The Real Word cannot possibly be that drunk or slutty all the time in real life, neither is everyone on a reality cooking show the same person you may be led to think they are based on the almighty power of editing. That's the caveat to everything...the overarching disclaimer, if you will.

Here's where the ranting starts. I really dislike reality tv for the most part. While it is occasionally fun to get sucked into some terrible reality show (I'm looking at you “Real Housewives of...”), generally I think that tv which operates on the fundamental premise that every person fits some sort of easily recognizable character archetype is bad tv. Sure this happens on sitcoms and dramas too but those shows aren't cloaking themselves in the self-righteous mantle of “reality.” The general disdain I feel for the edited snapshot of personality provided by reality tv only becomes amplified when the subject is something I'm passionate about (food and cooking) and someone I care about.

I will admit right here that a lot of the goofier things Teddy does on tv are true to real life. Talking to a sauce and saying “reeeeeduuuce pleeeaaase” is not out of character for him. In fact, I think I've heard that exact phrased uttered in our kitchen. Getting into the mind of a crab and begging to be used in a dish is also pretty par for the course. One of the first exposures I had to Teddy was a demo video he did for the Washingtonian food blog on making blue cheese mussels in which he said the mussels need time to open up and talk to each other and then wondered what mussels said to each other...and then said he thought it'd be cool to be a “mussel whisperer.” Those parts of his personality are all extremely true. He's a goofball. It's part of what made me love having the opportunity to be in the kitchen with him 3-4 days a week when I was first starting. When you stumble in the kitchen tired and possibly hungover, someone who can make you laugh (even if it's at them and not with them) is a welcome way to ease out of the early morning doldrums.

As for the extremely hyper (and some have called it spastic) behavior that has had some of the judges saying he seems like a used car salesman, I can say that that is also somewhat true. Teddy is an upbeat guy. I remember one evening when he and I were sitting at the bar after a prep shift and he was talking about some of the questions he had to fill out on one of the many questionnaires that the Food Network sent him. One question was the standard “How would your friends and family describe you?” He asked me what I would say and I thought for a minute and came up with, “Like a hamster on cocaine.”

The guy has energy. Infectious energy. I'm normally a high-strung head case but being in the kitchen calms me. The kitchen is the one place I've always been able to feel confident, happy, and at peace. Being in the kitchen with Teddy changes that. I'm still all of those things but the energy level is taken up a notch. Instead of just thinking about what to do with the figs I brought in, we would excitedly bounce ideas off each other. Neither of us likely finished a sentence and it was really sort of hectic-sounding but it was just a result of Teddy's infectious energy.

It's impossible not to get excited about food when talking to him. It has always been my favorite thing about being in the kitchen with Teddy. I'm already passionately in love with food but somehow being in that kitchen with someone else who's got that same love for it just makes it more special. The only thing I could equate it to is the feeling of being at home in my mom's kitchen talking food with her. And she's the person that taught me how to cook, taught me to love food, and is hugely responsible for my even being willing to tackle the crazy adventure of diving into a restaurant job with no professional cooking experience or culinary training. So that's really saying something about what it means to be around the guy.

So whether or not that translates as “annoying” or “fake” on tv is something I can't impartially judge. I do know that not one moment of the time I've spent with him talking about food or cooking it has ever felt forced or inauthentic. Maybe it's just something that takes some time to learn how to translate on screen.

The thing that has bothered me the most about the show so far is the issue of “integrity” that has come up in the two most recent episodes. I'm sure some will point out that the two contestants he's “thrown under the bus” have been women and deduce something misogynistic in his person. Well, I can go ahead and say that's 100% false based on my experience. As I've mentioned on this blog before and as I'm sure many people know, the world of professional kitchens is largely a boys' club. The key players are usually all men, the language is vulgar, and vulnerability or softness are not cherished qualities. It's a balls to the wall kind of place and you either learn how to stay under the radar and try to just keep afloat, you falter and crack under the pressure and stress of it, or you learn to dish it right back and show every one in there that you are a force to be reckoned with. That's just how it is.

Teddy is the exception. Make no mistake, I love all the guys I work with. But as one of two women currently working in our kitchen and the only one who works line shifts with the guys AND has slightly higher level of responsibility, I get my fair share of shit. Whether it's the comments when I come in wearing a tank top before I put on my chef jacket (because our kitchen is about a 1000 degrees in the summer) or the all-too-obvious jokes after someone asks how many (duck) breasts I have left, I deal with it all. Some days I handle it better than others. I can say the one person who's never made me feel like I'm any different because I lack a Y-chromosome is Teddy. Which is huge. Because, trust me, if the person in charge of the kitchen sets a misogynistic tone all those comments and jokes become SO much worse. Fortunately, I've never felt like I was judged by anything other than the food I'm putting out.

With that out of the way let me tackle the larger issue of character that has been raised on the show. There's a fair amount I can't say because it's not my story to tell but I can note that, as mentioned in the opening caveat, they can do wonders with editing. A lot of stuff doesn't make the cut. They edit for what is most entertaining and for what creates the most controversy. So there, I've gotten that out of the way.

To move on to what I personally think about Teddy's integrity, I can just say that anyone with any level of doubt or questioning about it should just move on, they won't find what they are looking for here. Does he call people out on things when he feels someone isn't pulling their weight? Absolutely. It's what you have to do as a chef. And that's the big difference between a chef and a “Food Network Star.” If you're a home cook you rarely have to call anyone out on “pulling their weight” because you're the only one pulling anything. Do I say this to demean home cooks? No. That's how I started. It's only by choice and Teddy's questionable judgement to take a chance on someone completely untested that I cook for a living now.

But I do feel it's important to realize that a chef's job in a kitchen is to make sure every cook is handling their station and doing the best work possible. Because if one person isn't, it can screw up the entire service...for EVERYONE. If you go down in flames on the grill station because you can't time your tickets or plate your dishes then you aren't the only person affected. And maybe that's the part of what Teddy means when he says he's “coming at you from the mind of a chef” that people are missing.

A good chef can recognize the weaknesses in cooks and will do one or both of the following: call them out on it and try to make them a better cook or just step in and do what needs to be done to get the dish out. If you're a great chef you can do both of those without crushing a struggling cook's spirit and while working with them in that moment and beyond to get them to where they need to be. Teddy does that better than pretty much anyone I know. He can be the asshole when he needs to but he's right there afterwards to talk to you about what you did wrong, what to do next time and to show you hands on how to take it to the next level. In fact, if there's anything missing from his “culinary point of view” I'd say that he hasn't mentioned his skill at and love of teaching. He's a born teacher. I already had pretty good food knowledge when I started but that doesn't mean that every day I worked with him I didn't learn 10 or 12 new things and a way to do something better.

Unfortunately I think that part of “the mind of a chef” doesn't really mesh well with a cooking competition. It's a really different environment and it's hard, I'm sure, to find the balance between being the graceful competitor and wanting to be the chef that doesn't want to see things go down in flames. Even if it's not your food and even if it will make you more likely to win, it's hard to watch something not get plated in time.

To speak more specifically to the recent episode, “the crying episode” as I call it, it's tough to get stuck with something you're not that into. Dessert is a big one. Anyone who watches Top Chef knows that most chefs groan when confronted with the challenge of dessert. Pastry chefs are people I admire a ton because I just don't know that I can do what they do. And when called upon to make a dessert I usually approach it with the mindset of just trying to do the safest thing I can and the thing that requires the least amount of actual baking. Because baking is the devil. Seriously, it strikes fear into the heart of good cooks everywhere. Those who can do both are truly to be respected.

So I get why he was less than enthusiastic about doing dessert and why he probably felt he deserved credit for the meatloaf more so than the dessert. It seems the meatloaf took a lot of time and a much heavier investment that left little time to deal with the dessert. And also, it's really hard to get psyched about doing something you generally don't enjoy.

Perhaps it came out the wrong way in the elimination portion of the show but I don't think it had anything to do with wanting to hurt a teammate or take undeserved credit. I think it was likely the reaction that most cooks would have: if I spent 50 out of 60 minutes making a meatloaf and 10 on a dessert, the meatloaf was my dish. Sure, you have to stick with what you said you would do even if it blows up in your face and so maybe it can be perceived as a lack of integrity that he tried to back out of that in front of the judges. However, I can say with every fiber of my being that dishonesty and betrayal are not who he is as a person and it's not something he regularly practices.

I suppose we'll see what happens as the show goes on. Hopefully things get better from here on out and I'm obviously rooting for the guy who gave me a chance to do what I love for a living to win the whole damn thing. But I just wanted to set the record straight, if only for the few who read this blog, about the Teddy Folkman I know.

you say you want a a revolution...

One of the things that is always surprising, at times frustrating, and usually enlightening about growing up and the different directions that process takes you is how parts of your life that you thought you'd mostly shut the door on always find a way to come back. This is frustrating when it's something that comes back to bite you in the ass or make you question your current life and what it all means. But it can be enlightening when you realize that a part of your life you have let go of still motivates, inspires, and influences you.

For me that "forgotten" part of my life that just refuses to stay behind some mental door I've continually been closing is debate. That's right, debate. Though a few who read this blog are already aware of what I'm about to describe, I'm guessing the majority are not and so I'll go ahead and delve into it. From my sophomore year of high school through my third year in college, I competed in policy debate. For two years after college I coached policy debate at Catholic University here in DC. So needless to say it was a big part of my life for the better part of a decade.

When I finally decided to no longer be involved in debate - either competing or coaching it - it was a big decision and I pretty much tried to completely remove it from my life save for the close friends I'd made through it. But no more traveling to tournaments, no more obsessive research, no more talking debate all the time, life would go on to different things. And from being immersed in an activity that took place on college campuses across the country, early in the morning, on weekends, among a bunch of too-smart, hyper-competitive, type-A, nerdy, fact-obsessed people to working in a restaurant kitchen, I'd be lying if I didn't say that the two environments were vastly different.

There are a a number of ways in which debate factors into my life even still: a lot of friends I have I met through that process, the skills I learned can never be unlearned and have proved to be very valuable — skills like the ability to quickly research, to speak and articulate clearly, to detach oneself from an issue and try to see all sides of an argument, etc. But the most recent one I discovered (or rather, remembered) happened this weekend at a party.

While talking to my roommate who happens to work for a certain environmental non-profit, the subject of environmentalism as it relates to agriculture and food came up. Now you might think I'd have some opinions on this simply because I work in the food industry but the truth is that my feelings (incredibly passionate feelings) on this subject were formed quite some time ago. My last year of college, the topic that year was about the US relationship with the European Union and one of the subsets of that topic was about a US vs EU dispute before the World Trade Organization regarding genetically modified foods. The EU set up restrictions that banned products containing genetically modified foods from being imported and sold for consumption unless they were clearly labeled as such. The EU also banned the planting of genetically modified (GM) crops.

Without getting into too much detail, I'll just say that since you spent half your time in debate arguing for that year's topic (affirming) and half of the time against (negating), every team picked a specific subset of that topic they wanted to advocate when they were affirming. My partner and I chose the GM foods area that year. Not because we knew a lot about it necessarily, it just seemed interesting and it seemed like not a lot of other people were picking it so that was a bit of an advantage because it meant that in most debates, we'd be "experts" on it and the negating team would probably know very little about it since they likely hadn't heard another case about it all year.

As the year went on, I spent a LOT of time reading about GM foods and the agricultural system in general. It helped that another subset of that year's topic was about the US Farm Bill and the system of agricultural subsidies it dictated. My partner and I were arguing against GM crops but also against the system of conventional agriculture in the US that made these scientifically altered seeds seem like the answer. The more I read on both sides of the argument, the more I realized that the arguments in favor of GM foods were weak and largely driven by research funded by the companies that produced the seeds. And the more I came to really hate these companies. Monsanto, Dow, and Dupont were three of the biggest agro-chemical companies and all three were heavily invested in GM crops.

The arguments they set forth in favor of scientifically altered food crops were that modifications to seeds allowed for greater crop yields. This, they argued, would mean excess food and it would save the planet from hunger. They argued that seeds could be engineered to thrive with less water which would also make it easier to grow crops in drought stricken areas and, again, alleviate world hunger. Every argument they had was shrouded in a philanthropic cloak of alleviating hunger and suffering in the Third World.

Unfortunately, the reality of GM crops is very different. For one thing, the vast majority of these crops are engineered not to be healthier or easier to grow for the small farmer. The majority of them are engineered to be used by industrial farms because the companies that make the seeds are the same companies that make the pesticides and petrochemical fertilizers that are applied like a blanket to industrial farms. The companies engineer a seed that can survive an application of a deadly and intense pesticide so that a farmer can do a large scale application of the poisonous chemicals and everything that comes into contact with the pesticide is killed except for the crop. This creates a crop that exists in a sterile, lifeless, monoculture.

And, interestingly, a great majority of the American agricultural establishment and the Congress that supports that establishment is totally on board with the idea of these crops. When politicians and agricultural lobbyists talk about the American farmer, the picture they want the public to see is a small, family farm with chickens running around the yard, an old cow named Bessie, children that get up early every morning to milk cattle and gather eggs as part of their chores, a big old farmhouse that's been in the family for generations, and other such Norman Rockwell-esque visions of farm life. But that's not the reality of farming in America these days.

Farms used to be microcosms of diversity but today's farm is a sterile environment based around the idea that monoculture is okay. Monoculture is defined as a culture dominated by a single element and, as it's practiced in agriculture, it means an entire ecosystem defined by a single element. For huge swaths of the American Midwest, this is the standard. Farms in Iowa or Kansas that used to look like patchwork quilts of different crops and fallow land for grazing or that was being allowed to rest in a off year are the rarity. Now, multimillion acre farms are dominated by one crop, be it corn, soybeans, canola, wheat, or any of the other major subsidy supported crops.

Needless to say, this is not an environmentally sustainable culture. For one thing, it's simply an affront to nature because in the natural world, monoculture is far from the norm. But perhaps even more destructively, these monocultures are only made possible through the applications of fertilizers and pesticides. The amount of chemicals that are put on the land, combined with the failure to grow different crops means that the soil is being leached and destroyed. The beauty of diversity in farming is that each element has a role to play. Farmers used to have very specific schedules for rotating the crops on their land. Those crops that leached nitrogen from the soil would be harvested and replaced with a planting of something that replenished nitrogen in the soil and so on.

So while all of this is certainly bad and, at least to me, interesting, what does it have to do with where I am in my life now?

Well, I obviously learned a lot about agriculture, farming, science, and large chemical companies that year. The weird thing is though, unlike a lot of the topics before, I didn't simply stop reading about or being interested it once the year was over. Maybe it's because I have always been passionate about food and so this touched a nerve in a way that no other debate topic really had. Don't get me wrong, I still know a lot about many many random subjects and can explain the World Trade Organization dispute resolution process or the US arrangements regarding tactical nuclear weapons based in Europe or even how the UN governs war crimes tribunals. But this is the only topic that I have actively continued to read about and research once the debate year was over.

I have become passionate in my views about agriculture, food, and science and how those are and should be related. As someone that works in food day in and day out, I am not just a cook who prepares dishes without thinking about what's on the plate and why. And, even more so, as a cook that one day hopes to have my own restaurant (that's right, T and I have plans people) I have intense views about the kind of food I want to put on a plate.

Working as a cook at a restaurant that is owned and run by someone else means that a lot of what you do is executing a vision that doesn't belong to you. You don't make the decisions about where the food is sourced; you cook it, you plate it, you send it out of the kitchen. But if you have a dream about the kind of place you'd like to run when you're the one making the decisions, you consider a lot of things. Sure you think about a theme and a type of food you'd like to serve. Sure it's fun to think about what you'd want the space to look like, or the type of flatware you'd prefer or what kind of wine list you'd build. But, for me, before all of those things is a commitment to making sure that whatever style of food I'm sending out on whatever plates we're using is food that supports an environmentally conscious agricultural system.

So while I could go on about this forever, I'll just say that it was really enlightening to realize this weekend how my most passionate and deeply held views about food and farming all started with a debate topic from my junior year of college. Funny the way things work.

comcast = evil

So yeah, that title pretty much says it all but at least I'm happily back in the world of the internet. So the last few weeks have been pretty crazy. Around the time of the last post T and I had just cooked a HUGE dinner for some good friends that, I feel pretty confident in saying so, went well. Mostly everything turned out well. And the only really screw ups were a sauce that had too much bacon (believe it or not, there is such a thing as too much bacon) and the fact that I should never ever be allowed to attempt baking items for fancy dinner parties. I suck at baking. But I've accepted that and now we can move on to better things. You can catch T's recap of the dinner and the pictures on his blog.

So since then, things have pretty much been crazy busy. I can say it here now because the news has been officially announced, our head chef Teddy Folkman is going to be on the next season of the Food Network's reality cooking competition, The Next Food Network Star. Those of us at the restaurant have known for quite sometime but were sworn to secrecy. It's why Teddy was gone for about 6 weeks during January-February and it's why things at the restaurant are only going to get crazier.

In addition to the insanity that comes with crowds of people wanting tables at your place because you were on the Food Network, we're also launching a new menu this week. Teddy and our sous-chef Stephen cooked up a few of the new dishes on Thursday and did a tasting for the staff and all I can say is....wow. Spring is always great because of the things that come back into season and our new menu is a celebration of that. Lots of color, lots of light and fresh flavors, all tasty.

Aside from big news and new menus, things are rolling right along. I am grateful every day that we still seem to be popular enough to fill the place nearly every night of the week and that we pretty much always have a wait list. The more I read the news about the economy, the more I realize that having a successful restaurant is a combination of so many factors, so many of which are totally beyond the owners' control and so I'm glad that, in addition to great ownership and management, we have that X factor that keeps the seats filled.

oh no you didn't...

from the kitchen...

Brook (general manager): I have a customer who is a vegetarian and wants the veggie sandwich but no mushrooms and extra everything else? Can we do that special order?

Adam (line cook): No, man. No special orders. You don't go to McDonald's and ask for a Big Mac without the special sauce.

thanks for saying what we were all thinking...

a woman is sitting at the bar with some of her friends drinking and eating on a Tuesday night

woman: I want a table. I can't see you. I can't reach the fries. I have to keep getting up. I want a table.

male friend: I want you to stop whining.

look, I never claimed to be a nice person...

Brook: (wearing nantucket red pants and a magnolia print hawaiian shirt) I think this is a pretty sweet Easter outfit.

me: Sure, if you're Jimmy Buffett.

oh no you didn't...

So one of the most interesting and often amusing things about working in a restaurant is that you come into contact with a lot of people from a lot of different walks of life who are all extremely unique specimens of humanity.  One such group of people is the folks you work with on a day to day basis.  There's always an eclectic mix of personalities in a restaurant and learning to work with everyone can make for a trying and frequently rewarding experience.  From your fellow cooks to servers, food runners, hosts, and managers, it takes a while to get a read on everyone and know how to handle them.

Even working at a small restaurant like Granville's where there are not that many people on staff, it still has taken me a while to figure it all out and some people I'm still figuring out.  Some things are a surprise, like the bartender and server you think don't like you at first but that later turn out to be two of your best friends from work.  Some things are a constant struggle, like the always negative server that finds something wrong with everything and complains about every single co-worker.  There are some days when it takes everything you have not to lose your cool at this person and just say something like, "If you spent half as much time with your tables and doing your job as you do bitching about things then people would like you and you might not screw up so many tickets."  Or even something more simple like, "Shut the hell up!"

But in the end, it's worth it to put in the effort to learn how to deal with these people and you'll get some friends out of it and the ones you aren't friends with, well, at least you won't be surprised by the crazy things they say and do anymore.  But the other thing about a restaurant is that, beyond having to learn how to deal with your colleagues, you have another completely random element to figure out how to deal with: your customers.  Especially if you spend any amount of time out of the kitchen and in the front of house.  I work two front of house shifts a week, one as a server and one as a host (although that will be ending).  Even if you don't work in the front of house, you'll get to hear the goings on from the servers, bartenders, and food runners you work with so there are some events that become legendary.  Working in a restaurant you have to deal with customer's bizarre quirks, off the wall requests, and often really bad behavior.  And when they aren't directing all of this at you, you get the opportunity to overhear things they say to their dining/drinking companions and, while some of it is pretty unbelievable, some of it as also pretty hilarious.

So with all that said, I'd like to introduce a new feature to the blog: oh no you didn't..., a feature dedicated to the crazy things people say and do in the restaurant.  Some of these will be customer comments, some will be about staff, and some may even feature staff from neighboring restaurants on the block who are essentially part of our family.  Sometimes I may have an entire post dedicated to this feature, but more often it will probably be a separate section of a larger post.  So at the end of this post I'll kick it off with the inaugural oh no you didn't... featuring a selection of random and hilarious things from last night.

Before I get on to that though, this was a big week in terms of non-restaurant related cooking.  My boy Tahir and I decided a while ago that we wanted to cook dinner for some friends of ours who are really serious foodies.  The guests were Tahir's boss and his boss's wife and two amazing chefs that are friends to us both, Tom and Christy, who own one of my favorite spots to eat and drink at and are all around awesome.  Because we were cooking for some seriously sophisticated palates, we knew we'd need to step the food up to a new level beyond what even our normal dinner parties involve.  So we planned a menu and this past Saturday night it all came to fruition.  I know Tahir took some pictures of things so should he get those up on his blog I'll link to them here.  Until then, here's the list of what was served:

— amuse bouche of torched escolar with cilantro oil, orange bell pepper, lemon zest

— chilled corn soup with tarragon oil

— basil infused tuna with napa cabbage slaw and meyer lemon, honey, and sriracha vinaigrette

— "shrimp and grits" - chili and garlic shrimp, fried polenta cakes, red bell pepper and tomato sauce

— chicken consomme with scallions, oyster mushrooms, and toasted rosemary

— chili maple glazed pork tenderloin stuffed with red pear and blue cheese butter, sauteed dandelion greens

— 15 spice ribeye with chevreuil sauce, crispy potatoes with smoked seasalt

— cinnamon caramel ice cream with apple fritters

All in all I thought the dinner went well although there were a few things that didn't work out perfectly.  However, at the end of the night, there was good food, great wine, and even better company so I'll call that a success.

And now, to wrap it all up:

oh no you didn't...

This first one is an excerpt I overheard from a conversation at one of our tables.

blonde 20-something girl to her 3 friends: I would love to live in like the prohibition era when I could go out and wear flapper dresses and drink and smoke.  But I wouldn't want to keep living through the depression because that would be, like, really hard.  And I'd love to see, not live in, but just see the 50's and 60's.  You know cause there was so much stuff going on then with the blacks uprising and everything.

This next one is related to the first in that one of the blonde girl's friends is involved but this happened later, at the bar.

nikki (bartender): what can I get you to drink

blonde girl's friend (bgf): I'll have a white wine spritzer with tonic and without the wine

nikki: (confused stare) what?

bgf: well, like no wine, just tonic and spritzer

nikki: what exactly is spritzer?

This next one involves a server from a neighboring restaurant who walked up to a group of our staff while we were outside - he's an eccentric dresser to say the least and this night he was rocking a pair of red canvas keds.

russell (server from neighboring restuarant): my footsies hurt

me: is that because you stole some little girl's shoesies?

getting back into the swing of things

So I feel like life has been pretty crazy lately.  Once the move was all completed, my computer, of course, died on me.  The logic board went bad and so the computer was dead.  So on my second attempt at a new computer, I finally have a new (old) computer.  So with that set, I feel happy to be back and connected to the internet daily again.  It's weird how dependent on the internet we (or at least I) have become.  The week and a half that I was having computer issues were really stressful.  I felt extremely disconnected from the outside world and it was unsettling. 

But I'm back and happy to be so.  Aside from computer issues things have been pretty crazy all around.  Despite the doom and gloom of economic news these days, the restaurant is busy.  Really busy.  Pretty much all the time.  Which, given some of the slow times we had last August and September and this January, is really nice.  It's great to work a line shift and look up the first time the board clears and realize that it's already 8:15 p.m. instead of standing around bored as the minutes tick slowly by and you think the night will never end.  As we get ready to launch a new menu and with a lot of other exciting things coming up (some of which I can't quite mention yet but will hopefully be able to divulge in a few weeks) it's extremely comforting and pleasing to know that we're still considered one of the "hot spots" in D.C. and that people are willing to spend their time and money on us.

I'm extremely excited about the new spring menu.  I love spring foods because if I had to pick the one adjective that I most appreciate in a dish it would be "fresh".  I love foods that are light, fresh, bright, and bursting with flavor.  Spring and summer are two of my favorite food times because of the sheer abundance of food and the fact that so much of it has that fresh bursting quality.  There are spring berries, fresh corn on the cob, perfectly ripe tomatoes, pea shoots, green garlic, and so many other foods that in color, taste, and texture just ooze freshness and lightness.  So it's a no-brainer that I'm looking forward to a menu focused on these tastes and textures.

specials of the week

— lamb leg steak with blueberry and apple cider reduction - the flavor of cider, blueberries, cardamom, star anise, cinnamon, and black peppercorns over the slightly gamey flavor of lamb leg is just a delightful combination. I love fruit and sweetness with lamb and so this was my favorite thing of the recent specials

— duroc pork chop with sauteed apples and ginger - I love pork chops.  Especially when it's a thick and juicy bone-in pork chop combined with the deliciousness of butter, apples, and fresh ginger.

favorite things

— new computers

— the past Thursday's episodes of 30 Rock and The Office.  I love Tina Fey more and more with each passing day.

— Flight of the Conchords.  I am late in getting into this show but after my roommates forced me to watch it the other night, I am on board.  It's hysterical and this song pretty much got me hooked.

— menu planning.  T and I are having another ridiculous dinner party. Only this time the guest list includes people who've cooked us amazing food before (and one of whom is T's boss and my boss might possibly be in attendance as well) so it's a bit intimidating.  But the menu looks promising and I am pretty happy about it.

if you can't beat 'em...

So as mentioned previously, I was a little annoyed that we were left off Washingtonian's list of the 100 Best Restaurants in the D.C. area.  I mean, I'm not saying we're better than Komi and need to be #1, I just think that we're better than some of the things that happened to make it on the list.  I also noticed that there were only two places east of the Capitol on the entire list, so that says something as well.

However, after some soul-searching, I decided to be less ticked and channel my energy into something more productive — like making sure we get on that list next year.  I think there are a number of ways we can accomplish this.  One of them is making sure that we step up our game with the entree portion of the menu.  Everyone knows our mussels and fries are good and are, in the eyes of many, the best in DC.  But we can't make it on to the list with just mussels and fries.  I want to step up the game with our sandwiches although they are consistently really delicious.  But the biggest difference I noted, just from reading about the places that did make the list, was that our appetizers and entrees need to be taken up a notch or two.

Accomplishing that goal is going to come from a lot of things: menu changes, making sure we keep on track with the weekly chef meetings to plan out our orders of proteins and kick around ideas for specials, encouraging creativity and innovation among the other cooks, and making it clear that it's not okay to just send out a good dish but that it has to happen on a consistent basis with an emphasis on great presentation.

But one other part of my multi-faceted strategy for stepping up our game and making that list is to eat at as many of the spots that made it as I can to get a sense of what they do, how we compare, what lessons can be learned, and maybe even pick up a few ideas to bring back into our kitchen.  So far in the last two days, I've gone to two.

#100: Marvin

So I was really looking forward to this spot for a two reasons: 1) it was #100 meaning it was the last place to make the cut and 2) one of their signatures is offering several preparations of moules frites.  I went Sunday night before heading to a show at the 9:30 Club and we were seated within 5 minutes of arriving.  The decor is really hip with kind of a sleek urban vibe.  The noise level was actually a lot better than many other hip spots but maybe that's just because this was a Sunday and the snow outside was keeping the crowds away.

I decided to forego having a drink since I was on my way to the show and there would be plenty of booze there.  Neither I nor my dinner companion were super hungry and so we didn't mess around with appetizers and got right down to entrees.  He got the mussels with white wine, shallots, and fennel and I got the famous chicken and waffles.

The food came out relatively quickly and I was eagerly awaiting the verdict on the mussels.  My friend is a diehard fan of Granville's and our mussels and since I really can't eat a full order of mussels anymore (you try eating a bowl of them when most of your days are spent cleaning them, cooking them, and generally consumed with all things moules), I figured I'd let him order the moules frite and tell me how our fries and mussels compare.  His verdict: their actual mussels taste more like mussels whereas our broth takes on a lot more flavor and our mussels also have a lot more of the flavor of what's in the broth.  Basically their mussels and their broth are like two separate dishes whereas ours are a bit more connected.  

I suspect this is because of a difference in cooking methods.  Ninety-percent of places will cook mussels by steaming them in a pan with a lid.  This traps all of the water that would otherwise evaporate as the wine, beer, or whatever cooking liquid is being used comes to a boil.  So the mussels are steamed open and then the whole dish is plated by basically dumping everything in a bowl.  Our mussels are different.  We cook ours in an open sautée pan and toss the mussels around frequently to coat them with the hot broth.  This helps them open but I think it's also why the flavor of the sauce tends to infuse our mussels really well.

As for the frites...well, few things make me as sad as having frites that are less than spectacular. These, sadly, fell into that category.  The color was good, they were pillowy on the inside, but they lacked that crisp outside that I love and they could have been hotter too.  The fries at Marvin come with three dipping sauces: a horseradish mayo that I loved, a curry mayo that was way too eggy and sticky, and catsup.  

But, while Marvin gets acclaim for it's moules frites, the dish I was really looking forward to was the fried chicken and waffles.  This is the dish that gets rave reviews and, well, let's be honest, it's fried chicken.  How can you really go wrong with that?  And this dish had a lot of my favorite things on one plate: country fried chicken breast, Belgian waffle, white gravy, collard greens, and even a ramekin of maple syrup should you want a little sweetness.  After cleaning the plate completely, I have to say that I loved a lot about this dish and found only one thing that I would have changed.  The chicken was perfectly cooked.  Really crunchy outside and super moist inside.  It was resting on top of a soft, slightly sweet, golden brown waffle.  The white gravy underneath was great and I only wish there was more of it.  Midway through I poured the syrup all over the whole thing and I really loved the flavor of the salty chicken, the rich gravy and the sweet syrup and waffle.  The only thing I would have changed with this dish was the collard greens.  

Being from the South I have pretty specific ideas of what I want in collard greens.  The ideal serving of greens should be tender and slightly bitter (Marvin gets both of these right).  Where they missed was the acid and the smoked meat flavor.  I usually make my greens with either a smoked ham hock or some slab bacon.  If neither of those are available, then a smoked turkey leg works well.  But to me, collard greens thrive when their earthy bitterness goes up against that rich, smokey flavor.  And what balances it all out is acid.  I usually add in some apple cider vinegar before the greens have completely wilted so that much of the vinegar cooks down but still leaves behind a bright acidic finish.  However, other than that, I would say the chicken and waffles were pretty amazing.  On the whole, Marvin gets a decent rating from me.  The mussels (the two I tried) were tasty but I like more of the flavors from the broth to infuse the mussels, the fries were disappointing as was the curry mayo, the chicken was perfection as was the waffle and the gravy, and the collards were certainly decent although not perfect.

#6: Restaurant Eve

So within a twenty four hour span I went from sitting at the #100 restaurant to sitting at the #6.  I think it was a really neat experience because one of the things I noticed is that so much of what makes a truly great restaurant great is little details.  Restaurant Eve rarely misses on the details from the stellar drinks, each placed on the appropriate side (right hand side) of the guest, to making sure silverware was replaced between courses to the tiny garnishes like the fried capers on a salad that don't seem like much but if they weren't there the whole dish would be different.

I went with a good friend of mine who is a fellow foodie and who had just returned from a trip to NYC where she had the 9 course tasting menu at Le Bernardin so I figured she'd have a really great standard of comparison.  Especially since both courses she ordered included seafood.  But let's start at the beginning.

I definitely was not going to forego drinks here.  In addition to a great wine list, Restaurant Eve is home to Todd Thrasher, one of the best mixologists (aka fancy bartenders) in the country.  So a cocktail was definitely on the agenda.  I ordered "The Cure All" which is a palate-pleasing blend of Hendricks gin, Blanco tequila, tumeric, and basil coconut water.  The first taste of the drink is sweet with the tequila and coconut being the dominant flavors.  The second sip is a more developed taste that starts sweet, has an earthy middle from the tumeric, and finishes with a crispness from the cucumber in the Hendricks and the hint of basil.  My friend had the Molly Delicious, a smooth concoction of house-made apple cider, Calvados, and Makers Mark.  Bourbon and apple were made for each other and this drink proves why.  There's something about that combination that is just so refreshing and earthy at the same time.

For our first course, we both had the evening's salad special: bibb lettuce, fried fresh sardines from Maine, hard-boiled quail egg, fried capers, and a creamy dressing of some sort (I wish I had remembered to ask).  The salad was delicious.  The sardines were perfectly crisp and with a light ocean flavor that was not fishy at all.  The bibb lettuce was delicate enough to let all the other flavors shine and the fried capers made this dish.  That little bit of crunchy, briny flavor was the perfect garnish.  Like I said, it's all in the details.

On to the main course.  My friend had the rockfish over creamy polenta and swiss chard with a lobster butter.  The fish was expertly seared with a beautiful brown crust on the outside and a supremely moist interior.  The bitterness of the chard paired well with the meaty rockfish and creamy polenta.  I opted to go with the pan friend veal sweetbreads served on a bed of parsnip, bacon, roasted cipollini onions, wilted greens, and a whole grain mustard sauce.  This dish was heaven.  I would eat this every day if I could.  The sweetbreads were so crisp but so buttery inside and the tangy mustard sauce along with the sweetness from the parsnips and cipollinis was just amazing.  This was probably one of the best dishes I've had and I was really glad I went with the sweetbreads.  Given Cathal Armstrong's reputation for amazing preparations of offal I figured the sweetbreads would be great but they were still just so sublime.

After that main course, it would be hard for any dessert to compare since I'm not much of a sweet tooth but we decided to at least try something.  So we went with the banana creme tart with cocoa nib ice cream and caramel.  It was a really nice, light dessert and a good end to the meal.  

All in all I'd say that Restaurant Eve more than deserves it's #6 ranking.  The details here are never overlooked and it means that the entire experience is one of great pleasure.  

So that concludes part one of what I'm sure will be many posts as I continue to try out the best the DC dining scene has to offer.

it's getting better all the time...

In the timeless words of The Beatles, "I've got to admit it's getting better, a little better all the time."

So yeah, having to move (for the second time in 9 months) sucks and breaking up sucks even more. But things don't stay terrible for long.  The move is over.  Mostly.  There are a few things that I've got to retrieve from the old house but I'm in the new house.  Slept in the new room last night and I'm really feeling good about it.  The roommates are nice and normal and not musicians (not that I have anything against musicians, I just prefer to enjoy their work at a show and not while I'm trying to watch Top Chef or sleep).  There is a sweet kitchen, I'm 1.9 miles from work, and I have off-street parking - anyone who lives in the District and has dealt with the parking situation and the ridiculousness of tickets, booting, and towing will get why that makes me so happy.

As for work, things are going pretty well there.  I've worked a few less shifts lately but that's mostly because it was a night that we're not usually super-pressed for people and I've just had a lot going on in my personal life so taking a few Monday nights off wasn't a huge deal.  But now that I'm getting settled this week should be the last Monday night off for a while and I have to say I'm looking forward to getting back into my normal routine.  So, as I start spending less of my free time panicking about where I'm going to live, I should be able to get better at blogging.

In closing, I would just like to say though that the DC snow trucks suck.  Or at least the people who drive them do.  Because, in addition to having to cross behind the truck in the middle of the street when the driver decided to wait out a red light squarely in the middle of the crosswalk,  tonight I got the delightful sensation of being shot in the back of the leg with a bb gun multiple times.  How is this possible? The moron driver turned on the salt-sprayer as we were crossing behind his truck (which we had to do because of the aforementioned crosswalk-blocking).  So about 50 pellets of de-icing salt shot in the back of my calves while I was trying to run across the street.  This is not a pleasant sensation.  Especially not after standing on your feet for three and a half hours for a concert.

DC snow trucks...you are on my shit-list.

sometimes life is like a giant kick in the ass

So I haven't written in a while and it's not for lack of things going on.  Rather, too much has been going on.

But to update briefly:

— Inaugration was insane.  We had our best week by a lot and were packed.  All the time. For 5 days straight.  Good times but so tired afterwards.

— As a needed break after the craziness of Inauguration week, I went to visit the parents where they now live in Oklahoma.  Oklahoma is a pretty boring place but it was a nice break from the constant busy pace of life in DC.  And I got to do some serious cooking with Mom.  The parsnip soup...oh my lord, the parsnip soup.

— Life outside of the restaurant has been tough: breakup, moving, stress, stress and more stress.  But, thanks in large part to the fact that the staff at Granville's is the best surrogate family I could ever hope for, I am surviving.

— Had a chef meeting the other week that involved my new plan to really step up our game.  We were left off the Washingtonian 100 Best Restaurants list and, well, I was pissed.  Next year, Washingtonian, next year.

More to come later this week hopefully as I start to get big details like where I will live sorted out (that one's pretty crucial).

introductions

Well, due to the fact that the writer of one of my favorite blogs linked to one of my posts on his site (thanks again!), I've gotten some new readers and comments. Which is awesome. And so, it's prompted me to write a post that's a bit of an introduction. The focus of this blog has changed since I first started it and that's largely because my life has changed pretty drastically since I first started the blog.

First things first: my name is Alyse and I live in Washington, D.C. I moved here in fall of 2004 after I left college. When I first moved here, it was to figure out what I want to do with my life. And like most people who are only 20 years old when they decide to "find themselves," my visions of what I wanted to do for a living changed a few times. I got a job as an admin assistant in an office and while I knew I didn't want to do that, I was still pretty unsure of where I was going.

Summer of 2005 my parents moved to the D.C. metro area so my dad could get his second master's degree and I couldn't have been happier. I adore my parents; they are the greatest parents anyone could want. I spent at least two days a week with them and a lot of that time was spent in the kitchen. Cooking has always been Mom and I's thing. A lot of it started when my mom married my dad (who is actually my stepdad but he's always going to be Dad to me). Faced with not only a new dad but three new siblings, I began to miss out on the pleasure of having my mom all to myself. So I found ways to spend time with her and the biggest one was cooking. She's an amazing cook and I learned that if I was in the kitchen with her, it was a time to talk and enjoy her company while also picking up her love of food and cooking (and wine).

The year my parents were here and all the time I spent cooking with my mom made me think that maybe I could cook for a living. I hadn't found anything else that I loved as much as cooking or that relaxed me as much and I was a total culinary junkie. I looked into the idea of culinary school, found one in the D.C. area that was pretty good and very seriously considered going to school. And then I didn't. For a lot of reasons. At the time I wasn't sure I wanted to work in a restaurant for a living because I knew the hours were rough (I'd worked in restaurants during high school and college - serving and hosting). Culinary school is also really expensive and I wasn't sure I wanted to sink $30,000 grand into a year of education if I wasn't sure I'd be down for spending the rest of my life working in a restaurant. So I sort of shelved the idea but it always remained in my head and taunted me.

Soon enough I found myself working in the booming (at least if you live in D.C.) non-profit sector and while I enjoyed my work more, I was still never really fulfilled by what I was doing. I spent a lot of my free time cooking and shopping for food (the Dupont Circle FreshFarm market got so much of my money) and all of my extra cash went to food, kitchen items, or wine.

The summer of 2006 my parents moved to Oklahoma for my Dad's job and so I was seriously missing my cooking time with Mom. Fortunately for me, in the winter of 2007, a friend who I'd met at debate camp the summer before my senior year of high school (yes, I was a HUGE dork in high school AND college) moved to D.C. His name is Tahir — although I and the readers who've been with this blog for a while know him simply as T — and although we'd met almost 7 years before he moved to D.C., we had kept in touch on a very on-off basis through the years. So he invited me to his housewarming party where I ended up helping out in the kitchen and we discovered that we both loved to cook. We made plans to get together and cook and the rest, as they say, is history. We started cooking together on a regular basis, pushing each other to try bigger and tougher kitchen challenges and trying out our experiments on friends.

Somewhere along the way I decided to start a blog. At first it was simple. Just a note about something I'd cooked recently, maybe a picture or two, and that's all. Soon I started using the space to talk about all sorts of food things: books I'd read, restaurants I'd eaten at, my thoughts on food in the news, wine, and — perhaps the most fun and impressive — my cooking adventures in the kitchen with T. So my life-long love of writing and my love of food and joined to become something really special to me.

Thanks to encouragement from boyfriend at the time I submitted two writing samples for a chance to get a position as a food writer for a D.C. focused blog called, DCist. The editors were crazy enough let me on board and, while it wasn't a paying job, I was super excited to get to write about food and wine and do it in a way that was fun, informative, and let me be a bit sarcastic about it (I love me the sarcasm...as all who know me can attest).

All of that was well and good but I still wasn't happy at work. I spent most of my day getting the minimum amount of work done and then reading food blogs, coming up with ideas for posts, and dreaming about getting to cook for a living. And then a number of things sort of happened that would bring me to where I am today.

First of these was that said boyfriend took me to a little gastropub called Granville Moore's for our first date in March of 2008. Located in the "emerging" (read: gentrifying) neighborhood known as the Atlas District, it's a tiny, tiny place that's known for moule frites (mussels and fries) and a kick-ass Belgian beer list. He knew I loved Belgian beers and that I had recently discovered I liked mussels after shunning them for 13 years due to a bad experience. So he, rightly, assumed that it would be the kind of place I'd be into. He was so right. The food was great, I totally dug the hole-in-the-wall vibe, and the beer list was nothing less than phenomenal. (Just a few days after we ate there, Bobby Flay and his food network crew showed up and challenged the chef at Granville's to a moules frites Throwdown.)

The next thing that happened was that things at my day job (I'd left my previous non-profit and was now working for a food industry trade association) had gone south. I had a new boss with whom I was having a hard time working and I spent most of my nights incapable of falling a sleep or sleeping well because I was so stressed and had so much mental energy from being unhappy, unchallenged, and unfulfilled at work. After realizing that things weren't going to get better, I started looking for new jobs at the end of May 2008. I was focused on finding another non-profit job but the bf brought up the idea of looking for a job in food or wine. I entertained the idea, applied for a few jobs (wine manager, wine sales, event planning) that were kind of in that area but still was mainly looking for another office job.

With some pushing from him I started looking at the possibility of applying for a cooking job. I had no professional experience, had never been to culinary school but I adored food, devoured books about it, knew a lot, and was a pretty quick learner. I would certainly be starting at the bottom and would not get a salary that even approached what I'd get from another office job. But maybe...maybe this was my chance to do something I'd always wanted to do.

The final push into my new career came from a series of events over about two weeks in July. On July 2, while I was talking to him on gchat, the bf sent me a link for a job on craiglist. Granville Moore's was looking for a line cook. And the ad was so different from all the others looking for cooks. No mention of the experience needed or desired, just a few questions: what kind of food do you like to cook, what are your favorite restaurants, and why do you want to work here.

I took a deep breath and wrote. I emailed the chef the answers to his questions and, as for that final question, I was just honest. I love food. I have no professional kitchen experience but I am a good cook, I want to do this for a living and I think I've figured out it's better to be happy doing something you love than to be miserable making a bunch of money doing a job that makes it hard for you to sleep at night.

And so I waited. That night I got an email from Teddy, the chef/owner of Granville's and he asked me a few more questions and we set up an interview for the following Wednesday, July 9. The day before my interview at Granville's I went into work as usual and spent a lot of the day really excited about the two interviews I had the next day: the one at Granville's and an interview for a job in wine sales. That afternoon my boss called from the office of our HR manager and asked me to come down. I sat in silence while I was told that I was being let go. Effective that day I was no longer employed at the trade association. The details were explained to me, I went back to pack up my desk, and then I left. And I was really unsure about what would come next.

I called my mom from my car and, despite how much I had hated that job and my boss, I started to cry on the phone with her. I had never been fired before, I didn't know what I was going to do for a living, and what was going to happen if neither of those interviews worked out? She calmed me down and we both agreed that it was better that I wasn't still working there and I'd gotten some severance money that should help with things for a few weeks while I found a new job. After I felt better, I called the bf to talk and we decided to go out to dinner at Rustico, one of our favorite restaurants, to celebrate my being done with a job I hated. That night as we waited in the bar for a table, the TVs were tuned to the Food Network because the episode of Throwdown with Bobby Flay featuring Teddy from Granville's was finally airing. That's the great thing about the D.C. dining scene: everyone roots for everyone else and we're all just thrilled when we get any small amount of national recognition (and to wrap up the Throwdown story...Teddy won).

Wednesday morning I woke up and went to my interview for the wine sales job. I felt good about the interview, I know wine pretty well and if there's one thing I can do, it's talk about how great a particular wine is — which is a pretty strong skill for someone interviewing for a job selling wine. I had a bowl of pho for lunch and then went home to change and relax before my interview with Teddy at Granville's later that day.

Around 4:00 I walked into Granville Moore's and met Teddy in person for the first time. He had the sort of personality that just totally put me at ease. I relaxed and he gave me a tour of the kitchen (which lasted about 30 seconds since it's smaller than my parents' master bathroom) and the restaurant and we talked about food. He was funny, sarcastic, self-deprecating and clearly as obsessively in love with food as I was. He'd also worked in an office for 4 years after leaving college and then left it to follow his passion and cook for a living. I knew instantly that I could totally work for this guy and love it. I met some more of the staff, we chatted a bit longer about food, my restaurant experience, the Throwdown, he said he'd call me Friday and then I left.

When I talked to my mom afterwards she asked me what I'd do if I got offered both jobs. The wine sales job was more boring but it paid a ton. At Granville's I'd be making less than I'd made when I first moved to D.C. I told her, with only a little hesitation, that I would probably take the job at Granville's...because, c'mon, I'd be cooking for a living.

Thursday the wine company called and offered me a job. I told them that I was waiting to hear on another offer and that I'd get back to them the next day. I spent another night nervous, excited, and hopeful. When I awoke Friday morning I had an email from Teddy saying that they wanted me to come in that Sunday night and hang out in the kitchen for a shift and see what I thought of it. I wasn't sure if that meant I had the job or no and I needed to get back to the wine people so I called him up and asked if he was offering me a job or if it was a second interview. He said that the job was mine if I wanted it.

And that's how it started. I started working day prep shifts with Teddy (plus a few front of house shifts to make some money since there weren't 40 hours a week available for me in the kitchen) and it was great. I spent time in the kitchen cooking with him, learning, talking about food all day, managing to teach him a thing or two in the process, catching up on D.C. food scene gossip, and having a blast. It felt wrong that they were paying me for it. Things moved up from there. I got to create dishes, they made it on the specials, then onto the menu. I started working the line, and now, six months later, I'm the opening chef three days a week in charge of managing all of our prep and have realized the ultimate satisfaction of watching my dishes go out of that kitchen and satisfy diners.

And so there you have it. The long (but still pretty abridged) story of how I got here. I'm going to skip summing up specials, reading material, and other such things because it's late, I need sleep so I can go battle D.C. DMV tomorrow. But the next post I'll do a bit more of an intro to the restaurant and what we're all about.

inauguration: it's history

So the inauguration is over.  From a political perspective, this was an extremely exciting and important event.  However, from the perspective of someone who works in a D.C. restaurant, I'm extremely happy that it's over.  It was, in a word, madness.  Starting Saturday, we were opening four hours early every day and keeping the kitchen open an hour to two hours later than usual. Friday's prep shift was insane as we worked to get everything set up not only for that night's service, but also to make the prep load lighter on Saturday since the kitchen would be opening at 1:00pm instead of the usual 5:00pm — meaning four fewer hours to get things ready for Saturday night.

I normally love prep shifts because they are the time I get to create.  Line shifts are all about execution: get tickets done, done right, and done as quickly as possible.  Prep shifts are different. The printer isn't spewing out tickets; managers aren't running in to get orders changed because servers put them in wrong; food runners aren't taking the wrong mussels to tables, dropping the tops of sandwich buns, or forgetting to stab tickets.  The kitchen is relatively silent and  it's possible to enjoy the relaxing aspects of cooking.

Prepping for inauguration is not the same.  It's a mad rush to get things done.  Friday was a whirl of making double batches, braising as much brisket as could physically fit on the stove, and trying to see into the future and predict exactly what we would sell most of that night and Saturday.  Guess what?  It's hard to be a cook AND a psychic.

But we made it through.  Saturday night was craziness.  Twenty percent over what would normally be a really good Saturday for us.  Sunday night was a bit more relaxed but still the best Sunday we'd had in a while.  Monday night was Saturday all over again.  I was on the line and we went all the way until the stroke of midnight.  At 10:00pm we were still on a two hour wait.  The sheer amount of fries we went through was...scary is the best way I can think to put it.  Fortunately, Tuesday was a bit calmer.  But Friday through Tuesday we matched what had previously been our best seven day week of sales.

I'm glad it's over and happy to be heading back towards some semblance of normalcy.  More to come later though on the rest of this week.