sbarabu & topseller/shutterstock.com

Lovers Enjoy Sharable Dishes for Valentine’s Day

By Jennifer Whistler

A woman happily in love, she burns the souffle. A woman unhappily in love, she forgets to turn on the oven, a chef tells lovelorn Audrey Hepburn in “Sabrina.” Take the chef’s advice and let someone else take care of dinner. Treat your sweetie to one of Northern Virginia’s most romantic restaurants.

Restaurant Eve

Restaurant Eve sings with romance. From a cobblestone walkway lined with candles to plush booths inside, this Old Town fine-dining establishment offers charming service and elegant fare.

When Chef de Cuisine Jeremy Hoffman creates a special menu he uses lavish items such as caviar, truffles and foie gras. Presentation remains just as important. “I consider color a huge factor,” says Hoffman, incorporating holiday-hued beets, scarlet turnips, watermelon radish and rosewater.

Restaurant Eve, 110 S. Pitt St., Alexandria; 703-706-0450; www.restauranteve.com

L’Auberge Chez Francois

As a restaurant known for marriage proposals, celebrations and family memories, it’s no wonder locals vote L’Auberge Chez Francois as the most romantic area restaurant. Tucked away in the rolling hills of Great Falls, Head Chef Jacques Haeringer offers succulent dishes that couples can easily share. “Chateau Briand, salmon with puff pastry and rack of ribs, all made to be enjoyed together,” Haeringer says.

L’Auberge Chez Francois, 332 Springvale Road, Great Falls; 703-759-3800; www.laubergechezfrancois.com

2941

V-Day lets lovers indulge, and Chef Bertrand Chemel continues the tradition. The 2941 chef offers luxuries: “Lobster, fish, some Provencal black truffle [are all] things that people don’t get to eat very often,” Chemel explains.

After selecting five or six traditional items, such as filet mignon, the chef throws in a few surprises. Monchong anyone? “I play it 50-percent safe, 50-percent not,” jokes Chemel.

But that doesn’t mean the Falls Church resto will skimp on cocoa. Lovers can capture that cupid moment, as Chamel prepares “something for two that a couple can enjoy together.”

2941, 2941 Fairview Park Drive, Falls Church; 703-270-1500; www.2941.com

Photo credits: Anna Hoychuk/shutterstock.com (dates wrapped in bacon); Foodpictures/shutterstock.com (potatos gratin); holbox/shutterstock.com (bluefin tuna)

By Kris King

Eternalfeelings/shutterstock.com (bunny ears); Kletr/shutterstock.com (peanut); Yuliya Sysoyeva/shutterstock.com (wig); melkerw/shutterstock.com (mask)

If you live in Virginia for long enough—say, a week—someone, at some point, is going to give you a huge tub of Virginia peanuts. How the Virginia peanut became a go-to gift item for housewarming gifts or office Christmas parties is a bit of a mystery. Certainly it’s a great gift, but after a couple of fistfuls of the beefy legumes, peanut fatigue kicks in pretty quickly.

What else can you do with 32 ounces of peanuts? We quizzed Virginia peanut growers big and small to see what they do when up to their necks in the nuts. As it turns out, not much. “That is a tough subject for a peanut manufacturer,” Scott Stephens, sales director for Wakefield’s Virginia Diner, opines. “It’s almost like heresy to do anything with them.”

It turns out that among the peanut laureate messing around with the Virginia peanut isn’t far off from mixing soda with fine Kentucky bourbon. Dell Cotton, a kind of end-of-the-road authority on the subject and executive director of the Virginia Peanut Growers Association, treads along these purist roots. “I would rather enjoy [Virginia peanuts] the way they are, because you’ve got something there that’s very unique to start with,” he suggests.

Fortunately, not everyone is as revelatory of the Virginia peanut. The Good Earth Peanut Company often holds a recipe competition on their website (www. goodearthpeanuts.com) looking for the best way to try and stretch the Old Dominion’s signature product. Winning recipes range from soups to homemade chicken crust to fritters. “I have tried the peanut fritters; they are wonderful,” Good Earth co-owner Scott Vincent says, confessing that she favors adding peanuts to her stir-fries.

Even Cotton isn’t immune to getting creative with his nuts.

“There are many things in the kitchen that you can do to add any kind of peanut, but particularly you can add these, to spice up most any kind of recipe that you want to do,” he says. “You’re starting to see a lot more recipes incorporate peanuts whether it be the influence of Asian foods on our diet, which many of them use peanuts and peanut sauces, or … just adding them to a salad, but you can think of a whole lot of different ways to use a can of peanuts.”

(January 2012)

By Jennifer Whistler

Elena Elisseeva/shutterstock.com

Tired of drab dip? Sick of sleepy salsa?

Behold: Alicita Salsa—a locally grown product with international taste!

Founder and CEO Suzanne Fields is passionately committed to offering the best, freshest ingredients that satisfy every palate. The health-conscious consumer will love the all-natural ingredients and that it’s low in calories, while those with special food needs will love that it’s sugar- and allergen-free.

And did we mention the variety?

Fields’ scintillating salsas flirt with Japanese, Greek, German and Indian flavors. “We didn’t want to do just mild, medium or hot,” she says.

Alicita Salsa is available locally at Giant, Walmart, Bed Bath & Beyond and TODOS (Woodbridge). To learn more about the gourmet salsas, visit: www.alicitasalsa.com.

(January 2011)

By Johnisha M. Levi

Assorti Pie (Courtesy of Cafe Assorti)

While artisanal pies battle it out for dominance along the Clarendon corridor, Café Assorti, a sun-colored domain expansive as a grand salon and as comfortable as your living room, is cheerily serving up a core of Kazakh standards—with a supporting cast of Ukrainian, Russian and various other Eastern European delicacies.

Assorti is a hybrid creature in more than just its interior design. It is part fast-casual restaurant, part bakery. And it is the bakery portion of the operation that most intrigued me. Both Assorti and its owners, the Bekturganova family, are anything but newcomers to the restaurant business. The Arlington outpost opened nearly three years ago. And although it is their first American venture, the Bekturganovas own three other Assorti restaurants in their native country of Kazakhstan.

You can get lost in the pastry and dessert cases alone—which is what you should allow yourself to do. It will take you a while to fully explore the myriad menu options, all the more impressive given that virtually everything served is made in house.

The head pastry chef behind this bounty is Azamat Zhanizakov, who first began working with the Bekturganovas 15 years ago in his native Kazakhstan. He handles both sweet and savory baking duties, and crafts both from the same yeasted dough. Savory options include pirozhok, samsa, rasstegai and cheburek, while sugar junkies are sated with fruit- or cheese-filled vatrushkas and the rose, a spiraled pastry resembling the petal layers of its namesake flower, glazed in heavenly meringue.

Savory fillings range from egg and onion (bland and somewhat forgettable) to fish (tilapia and/or salmon) to familiar beef and vegetable (spiced potato, sometimes with cabbage) alternatives. Assorti distinguishes the fillings by varying both the pastries’ shapes and garnishes (peppercorns, caraway or sesame seeds).

And then there’s dessert.

You won’t find butter cakes here—the denser American dessert standards—but rather riffs on thin layers of air-leavened sponge cake accented by fruit, chocolate, nuts and/or coffee.

The Napoleon Cake both is and isn’t what you’d associate with the famed mille feuille. Paper-thin puff pastry layers: Check. Creamy filling: Check. The similarities end there. This torte’s alternating layers are bound by house-made “butter cream” (a whipped mixture of sweetened condensed milk and butter replaces standard meringue-based filler) rather than the standard, traditional pastry cream.

Assorti’s lemon pie—one of a whole line of fruit pies available whole or by the slice, including apple, cherry, apricot and a sweet cheese pie studded with raisins and apricots—is a reawakening for those immune to yesterday’s charms of lemon bars. The pie delivers a punch of citrus beneath its buttery crumb topping that makes lemon bars taste anemic in comparison. Both the filling’s boldness and texture owe to the use of the lemon’s pulp and peel rather than just its juice with a scanty pinch of zest. After testing the initial recipe on its customers, Assorti added a hint of cinnamon to slightly warm the palate and balance the bitterness of the citrus. Warning: This one is not for sharing.

Café Assorti: 1800 Wilson Blvd., Arlington; 703-465-0009. To learn more about Assorti’s pastries and menu favorites, visit: www.northernvirginiamag.com/tasteofassorti.

(December 2011)

By Kris King

Fer Gregory/shutterstock.com

In most corners of America, the iconic image of a beer is a frosty brew served ice cold and overflowing with a frothy, bubbly head. Order a beer in Northern Virginia, and nine times out of 10 that’s what you’ll get. Increasingly, though, bars in the area consider themselves “real beer bars” and are offering up an alternative: cask-conditioned ale, or “real ale,” as purists like to call it.

Cask-conditioned beers are stored in wooden casks, called firkins, and pumped into the glass manually in lieu of CO2, which draws kegged beer from its metal shell. The result is a beer that’s lightly carbonated and cellar cool (about 10 to 15 degrees warmer than kegged beers).

Cask was the primary vehicle for delivering beer until bottling and kegging technology took over in the last 200 years or so, and since then casks have fallen out of favor with most bar owners and beer drinkers.

However, over the past couple of years cask ales have made a resurgence among craft beer hounds, a trend that’s trickled into the beer bar scene. Pop into any of Northern Virginia’s craft beer spots, and you’re likely to find at least one cask brew on tap. “In this day and age, to be a real beer bar or a tap house, I think the expectation is to have a cask ale of some sort on tap,” Mad Fox Brewing Company founder Bill Madden estimates.

Casks have popped up all across NoVA in places like Vintage 50 (Leesburg), Fire Works Pizza (Leesburg, Courthouse) and Rustico (Ballston, Del Ray).

Greg Engert, the Neighborhood Restaurant Group’s resident beer guru, was the driving force behind the five casks on tap at D.C.’s Birch & Barley. He does not, however, agree with Madden’s assessment of cask ales making the beer bar. “I think being a beer bar is so much more than just carrying something,” Engert tells us. “It’s the day-to-day updates of the menu, the staff education that educates your customer, and the experience that you create around the beers rather than saying that you just have them.”

Can’t get enough of cask-conditioned brews? The debate continues at: www.northernvirginiamag.com/crazyforcasks.

(December 2011)

by Mai Nguyen

A few years ago, if a person was talking about “Koreatown” it was unanimously agreed on that they meant Annandale. These days, Centreville is also a big contender for the “Koreatown” title.

But what’s the difference between the two?

Not much really.

They both have every foodie’s favorites (Honey Pig, Bon Chon). So someone from Annandale would probably have no reason to go to Centreville anymore and vice versa, right? Wrong. We’ve uncovered restaurants in each that are well worth mixing up your dining routine.

To Sok Jip

They serve bibim bap (vegetables, beef, and chili paste served over rice), seafood pancakes, various stews, Korean barbecue, but they are known mostly for their fried fish; you can choose from mackerel or yellow croaker. Any fish order usually comes with two types of fish, so I hope you’re hungry. The fish are typically simply seasoned with salt, and fried until they are crispy on the outside with a fatty and juicy flesh on the inside. Be prepared to come early or wait because they only have a total of eight tables! 7211 Columbia Pike, Annandale; 703-333-2861

Mom Bossam

Hidden in a Centreville strip mall, once you enter you’ll be greeted by a bright yellow room and cute little paintings on the wall. A Korean restaurant specializing in traditional cuisine, their fried mandu (Korean-style dumplings) have a chewy and crispy exterior with a filling consisting of beef and vegetables. Their seaweed kalgooksoo is a light broth with thick noodles, packed with mussels, clams, shrimp—with pieces of squid and octopus. 14215X Centreville Square, Centreville; 703-825-7240
Though both cities have plenty of restaurants to cater to everyone’s tastes, it’s pretty apparent that Centreville is trying to catch up to Annandale in terms of nightlife. In both Koreatowns there are many businesses that offer noraebang (karaoke) services where you and a group of friends can rent a private room by the hour to sing your hearts out. These places offer popular American, Korean, Chinese and Vietnamese songs. Most of them don’t open until late afternoon and stay open into the late hours of the night. Many of them also serve alcohol if you need to calm your nerves before belting out a few hits in front of your buds.

Restaurants that Annandale & Centreville Share

Bon Chon

Cheogajip Chicken

Lighthouse Tofu/Vit Goel Tofu

Shilla Bakery

Honey Pig/Gooldaegee

Gom E Tang

(Nov. 2011)

by Johnisha M. Levi

For Orthodox Jews in Northern Virginia, keeping kosher can be quite the pickle.

Just ask Gary Holzman. Holzman, who has lived in Ballston and Alexandria, and currently resides in Rosslyn, readily admits that it isn’t easy “to live a kosher lifestyle in NoVA. The hardest thing is the lack of kosher markets, butchers and bakeries. I tend to have to go to Rockville or Silver Spring to get my meat and other kosher specialty products.”

But Holzman is not alone. David Weinberg prefers NoVA for “quality of life” reasons, but admits that he has been forced to make the pretty big concession of “keeping a vegetarian house” in order to eliminate the inconvenience of shopping trips for kosher meats.

So what is a kosher-adherent local to do? My hunt for kosher options in NoVA led me pretty quickly to Michael Medina of The Kosher Kitchen Catering Co. He is the only Glatt kosher caterer in NoVA certified by the (Orthodox) Rabbinical Council of Greater Washington (Vaad) as “Capitol-K.”

Medina tries to bring something different to the table in a region where not only kosher, but kosher-style dining, is dominated by traditional Ashkenazic and deli food. His catering menus feature “Mediterranean spices and flavors” influenced by his Moroccan/Spanish background.

So why aren’t there more kosher options?

“I am not sure there is a demand in this area,” chef Barry Koslow, formerly of Arlington’s Tallula, suggests.

Likewise, Michael Vidikan, who works in NoVA but recently relocated to D.C. to be closer to his Modern Orthodox shul, aptly characterizes the scarcity of options as a “chicken and egg” dilemma. Orthodox Jews are not moving to NoVA, he says, because it lacks a modern Orthodox synagogue and eruvin. And without a greater population of observant Jews, the likelihood of cultural institutions cropping up remains slim.

by Johnisha M. Levi

Courtesy of Michel Patisserie

If any dessert has nine lives, it just might be the cupcake. Blame Magnolia’s (NYC). Or maybe Sprinkles (Cali); after all, the origin of the cupcake craze is as controversial as Biggie and Tupac’s legendary rap feud.

Like them or not, pastry chef and Cookology instructor Brad Spates gets it: Cupcakes are a small “affordable luxury in a time when people can’t afford large luxuries . . . [and] they are cute and pink, and have flowers on them.”

At the same time, there are many of us who are feeling caught in the crosshairs of the cupcakery street wars. But what, if anything, can topple the delectable, resilient treat?

Carla Hall, the “Top Chef All-Stars” alumnus and newly minted co-host of ABC’s “The Chew,” is an admitted Georgetown Cupcake fan. But an embarrassing encounter with a chocolate lava cupcake proved epiphanic.

After consuming the delectable treat, she says she was practically “skipping down the street.” Although she ran into numerous well-wishers along the way, it wasn’t until she reached her car that she realized the damage that had been done.

“I had chocolate icing all over my nose, and nobody told me!” she exclaims of her ill-fated, treat-eating session. “This would never happen with cookies. This was one of the moments when the universe was saying, there is a place for my little cookies.”

Her debut line of thumbnail-sized sweet and savory cookies make all cupcakes (especially Crumbs’) look positively gargantuan in comparison. The “petite bites of love” were inspired both by Carla’s habit of grazing—“I don’t want to break off a piece of something, I want to have it all,” she shares—and one of her catering pet peeves (finding discarded bits of broken-off food on random platters). “These cookies are too small to break,” she laughs.

Hall’s cookies are also ground-breaking in that they make us reconsider what the word “cookie” connotes. Her savory flavors (Parmesan Shortbread, Cheddar Pecan) are as at home in soups and salads (Think: gourmet croutons) as her sweet flavors (Mexican Chocolate chip, Black Forest Crinkle) are astride ice cream and alongside tea.

If you are seeking the don of French macarons—not to be mistaken for the coconut-based confection with the twin “o’s”—in NoVA, look no further than Reston’s Michel Patisserie.

Michel Giaon’s flavors range from the classic (a speckled vanilla that reminds you why the bean persists as a staple ingredient in the pastry kitchen) to the tropical (a cocoa-dusted passion fruit showcasing an irresistible sweet-tart ganache). “What makes the macaron great is the cream,” Giaon asserts. “It has to be the perfect texture—not too liquid or too firm. It takes a lot of time to perfect.”

Meanwhile, Alli, Erin and Cat Blakely, the NoVA born-and-bred sisters behind the forthcoming Pie Sisters of Georgetown bakery, are striving to fulfill the food media’s long-held (but clearly contentious) prediction that pies will be the next “it” dessert.

Erin heralds the idea of pies as “non-gendered” treats and hopes to turn a dessert that people associate with “grandmothers and holidays” into both an “edgy” and “everyday” dessert, pitching plans to popularize individual-sized “cuppies.”

Northern Virginian Orthodox Jews have more limited options when it comes to finding kosher foods that meet requisite certification standards. However, for Conservative, Reform and even secular Jews—as well as vast numbers of non-Jews—kosher food is also in high demand.

Challah Bread (Shutterstock/Liza1979)

Kosher-style dining is not to be confused with kosher (certified) dining. Kosher-style dining is not supervised by a certifying agency, and it is a term used to describe a number of dining scenarios, including the service of traditional Ashkenazic Jewish foods and deli fare (that may or may not include nonkosher meats).

Growing up Jewish in Falls Church, seasoned toque Barry Koslow, formerly of Tallula Restaurant, ate more frequently at Chinese food restaurants, than at kosher or kosher-style eateries.

While Koslow has dismissed the possibility of opening a kosher restaurant, he has entertained the idea of a kosher-style delicatessen-fine dining hybrid. “I would probably kill myself to make everything in house, but that would be the fun of it,” Koslow posited. “It would be exciting to cure and smoke fish, and meats, and pickles. And then it would be fun to try to invent something and make Jewish cooking mean something in today’s scene [by] moderniz[ing] it and mak[ing] it approachable . . . The more traditional you make something, the harder it would be to have a broader appeal.”

Meanwhile, he waxed poetic about the decline of the American-style delicatessen.

“[Even] delis that are pioneers are going backwards,” Koslow argued. “Delis are supposed to be making everything in house” but now, the “artisan approach” of yesteryear, has been supplanted by “humungous diner menus” of “industrialized, and pre-cooked foods.” Koslow would like to see delis fall in step with current restaurant industry trends, meaning, “sourcing, buying local, quality ingredients, buying sustainably and doing it yourself.”

by Warren Rojas

Grilled kebabs are near and dear to my heart—grilled beef heart, naturally, being the most meta of my favorite meats-on-a-stick.

A Peruvian delicacy—I remember many late nights spent standing on street corners, waiting for a passing vendor to fire up a skewer (or two)—anticuchos haven’t been as lovingly embraced as other Peruvian staples (pollo a la brasa, ceviche, lomo saltado).

When it suddenly popped up on menus across Western Fairfax County, our heart definitely skipped a few beats:

While Las Tres Regiones piles on slices of expertly marinated muscle, the sheer quantity does not overcome the superior quality of Aguaymanto’s ultra tender slices. But the real coup de grace is Aguaymanto’s brilliant hot sauce (enflames every bite with searing bliss).

(October 2011)