An Effing Foodie

EF Eats DC: Founding Farmers, true food and drink, Foggy Bottom, DC

 

Dos Mattys, The Bombshell and I giggled a little when we walked into DC's cheekily named Founding Farmers.  Most of the places in NY that tout themselves as crafty farm-fresh tend to be smaller, softly lit, seemingly hallowed cloisters to pig.

Not so here.  It's a huge space, two floors, mostly modern with rustic flourishes--a big restaurant with a big menu crammed with big, unabashedly American flavors. (And lighting that behooves opportunistic bloggers to boot. Hooray!)

And the thing is...it works! Who can hate on a menu that has chicken pot pie, chicken and waffles, lobster rolls and french dip?

Take, for instance, our appetizers:

Puffed pastries filled with pimento cheese--a pinky-up version of the old-school packaged cheese-and-cracker snacks (y'know, with the flat red rods for faux cheese smearing?).  Classy and brassy, gone before anyone could blush.

Deviled eggs! We opted for the "classic" (there's a more baroque "Combo" egg platter, with seafood-decked eggs); eight halves to an order, besprinkled with chives, a straightforward, two-bite treat (and a STEAL at $4!).

Steamed mussels with chunks of chorizo and bounteous bread for sopping the magical marriage of seafood and pork juices; not to be outdone, a platter their bivalve counterparts, raw oysters from the west and east coasts.  There was mollusk carnage EVERYWHERE as we licked our briny chops.

Fried green tomatoes!  I've never been a fan, but they were a gloriously crunchy delivery module for the tasty green goddess (foreground) and blue cheese dressings.

The Dealie-O: Two-Handed Burgers and Pint Specials @ Irving Mill, Clinton St. Bakery and The Smith, NYC

EF, why haven't you written about recession specials?

Well, it's because it's a moot point, as I've always been broke!  Only real difference is, I've more company nowadays. 

Suckitup!  It won't be forever.  How 'bout a burger and beer?

• The Legendary SkeenBurger is being offered at Irving Mill on Monday Nights with a pint of Sixpoint's Brownstone for $15!  (Burger and pint at regular price: $23.)
• The folks that make you fine flapjacks at Clinton St. Bakery make a solid burger too, and on Monday through Saturday from 6 to 8 PM, it can be yours with a bottled beer (Brooklyn Lager, Red Stripe, or Stella) for $12!  (Burger and bottle at regular price: $21.)
• And, on Sunday Nights, burgers with a pint at The Smith come to $14--the rest of the menu is gently priced, too, and they're open until the wee early hours, for those who've gotten carried away with happy hour specials in the area.  (Burger and pint at regular price: $20.)

That's a burger deal for every night of the week, and GOOD burgers at that!  So don't be sad, fellow beleaguered NYers.  Cheers, and keep pumping out those resumes!

EF Eats DC: Hank's Oyster Bar, Alexandria, VA

A lucky gal was I, catching up with the newly transplanted Big-Eyed Curvy Bombshell and her serious-eater ex-roommates from Brooklyn, Dos Mattys (yep, that's two guys named Matt), in the reeediculously warmer climes of Maryland/DC.

I'm not sure I'd ever live in DC, but I've got much love for their vittles.  The dirty secret is, the Washingtonian passel of fratboys and sourpussed WASPs eat really well, often times at a much better value than we do up north.

Though Dos Mattys and I were there only 48 hours, any visit four foodies deep is bound by an unspoken pact of gluttony, and we were all too happy to comply as Bombshell hurtled us through her short-but-sweet wonderland of DC taste sensations. (Good LORD, how I miss her!)

Nothin' says "reunion" quite the way oysters do, so in oysters we trusted at Hank's Oyster Bar, in the rarefied/quaint 'hood of Old Alexandria.   

And here's where I got a little puzzled.  It was a gorgeous Sunday, warm enough so that people were busting out their sandals and sundresses...yet every person we passed on the street had nothing less than scowls on their faces.  What the HELL, Washingtonians?  Blossoms!  Sunshine!  The goddamned cherry Porsche convertible you're showing off for the first time this year! 

People think NYers are the meanest, baby-eatingest buttholes in the US, but yer average New Yorker on the street has a jaded, neutral-to-laughing-at-a-private-joke smile on their face when walking.  And on a glorious spring day--fuggedaboutit, we're all FN grinning like fools. 

But when we walked into Hank's, and waited...and waited...and waited for our table, standing crammed into the non-existent foyer, you'd think we'd brought the plague to the other guests.  Way to make NY look friendly, DC!

Anyway, when they finally got 'round to parking us, braving the icy stares of dead-inside-DCers was well worth it:

 

Lobster ROOOOOLLL!  Drool.  Had by Bombshell and Mild Matty (the other Matty has a penchant for hot sauce and curry, but this one...not so much), this was a fine specimen, not too heavy on the mayo and crammed into a liberally buttered, griddled hot dog bun.  

 

These lovely crab cakes were Spicy Matty's, and though they did not exist on the sandwich-heavy brunch menu, our waiter was happy to accommodate Spicy Matty's wish to be unencumbered by bread.  They were minimally bound, golden-crunchy patties of briny crab-as-puck.  Seafood this good goes mighty quick when there's no pesky exoskeleton to slow you down.

As various forms of shelled crustacean disappeared around me, I tucked into my own deep-fried, craggy treat:

Awwwwwww.  Yeah.  'Twas billed as an Oyster 'Po Boy, something that folks from Louisiana might take issue with, seeing as how these giant fried oysters were poked into the same grilled hot dog bun that the lobster roll comes in...but who cares???  The outsized oysters were fried to perfection, melding well with the watercress, schmear of mayo, and butter-bathed bread.  As Mild Matty would say...it was FILTH.  It was all I ever wanted out of cooked-mollusk-kind.

We also had giant Bloody Marys, a mixed platter of oysters to start (Sea candy! Whose specifics I do not recall! DOH!) and a killer key lime pie for dessert...all of which I neglected to photograph.  Mea culpa, all!  But if you get a chance, please do get some of that pie, it was a creamy-tart balm on our taut tummies, and the graham cracker crust was a fall-apart dream.

Many, many thanks to Momma Bombshell for this fab treat, and for taking us into her home!

Soon to come: Dindin with The Bombshell and Dos Mattys at Founding Farmers!

HipHipHooray for Häagen-Dazs Five and Helping Honey Bees!

In this age of "the New Authentic", where every schmuck is pretending to know the name of their artfully grizzled Brooklyn butcher and his starter hog, it's brazenly uncool to crush on a food corporation.

But crush I have!  I heart Häagen-Dazs.  In particular, I heart Häagen-Dazs Five.

I first got wind of this on The Food Section, and managed to snag myself a carton at my local A&P. 

Ingredient minimalism is the makeup and namesake; each of the 7 offered HD Five flavors (mint, ginger, vanilla bean, coffee, passion fruit, brown sugar and milk chocolate) contains only 5 ingredients (milk, cream, sugar, eggs, and said-naturally derived flavor). 

I got to try the passion fruit...and it's amazing!

First off, the ice cream itself was supple and yielding to the spoon, with a lush and custardy mouthfeel--a big departure from the petrified pints that we've come to expect from the Dazs. 

It was also far less sweet than your average pint of Dazs, the front-running flavors being clean cream and the tart, tropical fragrance of passion fruit.  It's sunshine churned into dairy!  WHEEE!

The premise is irritatingly on-trend, but it's a quality product nonetheless.  Consider the c*cksucking approval of uppity foodites mere collateral as you contentedly lick your spoon.

One more reason I'm crushing on the Dazs: I heart their Help the Honey Bees campaign.  

The Skinny: $10 Soup & Sherry at Restaurant Hearth, East Village, NYC

One of the few traces left of my Chineseness (don't gasp, my mom would be the first to call me a Twinkie) is the ever-present craving for soup.  Chowder or pho, bouillabaisse or caldo verde, laksa, ramen, borscht, hot-n-sour, even FN Cup-of-Soup--if it's hot, simmered and salty, BRING it, and if it's winter, just KEEP bringing it.

So I got a little bug-eyed when I read about Winter Soup Specials at Hearth.  $5 for a bowl of soup?  $10 for a soup and sherry pairing???  YES, please!  Soft-Spoken Feisty Lady and I peeled layers at Hearth's low-lit, limited bar area, keenly anticipating slurpage.

Why at the bar?  Such is the zoning for the Soup Special, but we settled into the window seat and weighed our options.

Turns out, we didn't really need to.  We could have ordered all 5 soups and still kept eating.

I'll preface this by saying that the soup was lovely and craftily made.  We liked the sherry pairings, which were patiently explained to us by our server.  SSFL and I moderately-to-enthusiastically enjoyed the 4 that we tried:

Ribollita with Black Cabbage, White Beans and Parmesan (paired with Oloroso, Asuncion, Alvear, Montilla-Moriles): The fave of the four, flavorful and rustic, reeking pleasantly of thyme and tomatoes, decked with crisped bread bits. (Pictured just above.)