Posts Tagged ‘Vienna’
Posted by ryan / Tuesday, May 17th, 2011
Saturday, May 28
-The Rolling Thunder Motorcycle Rally is starting their weekend off with a ceremony that is featuring special guests and live performances. It all starts at 11 a.m. near the Navy Memorial.
-The Viva Vienna Festival is a three-day celebration with food, crafts, music, carnival rides and tributes. Fun for the whole family!
-Evening tours of Mount Vernon are being offered between 6-9 p.m. Immerse yourself in the culture of the eighteenth century with live music, dancing, games, and wagon rides around the latern-lit grounds. Admission costs are $18 for adults, $12 for children under twelve, and free for children under the age of five.
Sunday, May 29
-PBS is sponsoring a FREE concert on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol. Actors Joe Mantegna and Gary Sinise are the hosts, while several guest artists accompany the National Symphony Orchestra. The gates open at 5 p.m. and the show gets started at 8 p.m.
-Wolf Trap is hosting a free performance by the U.S. Marine Band called “The President’s Own”. To be followed by a fireworks show. The gates open at 6:30 p.m. for an 8 o’clock show. Arrive early because the park closes once capacity is reached. Call (703) 255-1900 for more information.
-The Delaplane Strawberry Festival is taking place in Sky Meadows State Park. Starting at 10 am, this annual event has live entertainment, games, pony rides, hayrides, a petting zoo, a raptor exhibit, antique car shows, crafts, and food. Fresh strawberries will be for sale until 5 p.m.
-The Coastal Flats of Fairfax is hosting its first ever Outdoor Beach Bash from noon until 6 p.m. Featuring live music from Kicking Norma, delicious food, drinks, kid activities, and free admission. Fairfax Corner can be found at 11901 Grand Commons Avenue. Please call 571-522-6300 for more information.
-The Evening Star Cafe of Alexandria is celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of the Indy 500 with an All-American BBQ. Chef Will Artley is offering Black Angus burgers, hot dogs and slow-smoked smothered ribs. Traditional sides include baked beans and mustard potato salad. Miller Lite, Yuengling and PBR will be sold for $5, and Bear Republic’s Racer 5 IPA is $6. It all starts at noon, and there is no entry fee. For more information, call 703-549-5051.
Monday, May 30
- Marching bands and Veteran units from all fifty states are participating in the National Memorial Day Parade. Spectators will also see patriotic floats and helium-filled balloons. It all starts at 2 p.m. at the corner of Constitution Ave. and Seventh St. in NW D.C.
-Alexandria’s Jazz Festival features big band, swing, and contemporary jazz musicians throughout its six hour running time. Admission is free, and picnics are encouraged. It all starts at 1 p.m. in Fort Ward Park. In case of inclement weather, Lee Center’s Kauffman Auditorium is the back up plan.
-The City of Falls Church is celebrating the holiday with a festival of their own near City Hall. Starting at 9 am, attendees will see a parade, pony rides, craft booths, live entertainment, and plenty of good food.
-Café Saint-Ex is bringing back their annual Memorial Day Chili Cook-Off from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. All of 14th Street’s best chefs are coming together for a Chili Smack Down competition. Closing down T Street for the community street festival, the afternoon will offer chili tastings from the best local chefs, flowing brews, live music and kids’ activities. This is all in an effort to raise money for Garrison Elementary School. Please call 202-265-7839 for more information.
-The Mon Ami Gabi of Reston is serving its famous brunch until 3:00 p.m. Featured items include their irresistable blueberry French toast for $10.95, and waffles with Nutella is $9.95. Eggs Florentine and Crab Cake Eggs Benedict are just $12.95 and $14.95 respectively. Don’t forget about the Build-Your-Own-Bloody Mary Bar! Call 703-707-0233 to make your reservation.
Public pools and water parks are also open for business.
More events coming soon. Feel free to comment if you know of something.
-Ryan Robertson
(image: Shutterstock)
Posted by Warren Rojas / Thursday, March 3rd, 2011
The family of dedicated restaurateur Nizam Ozgur says he still gets up every morning determined to hightail it over to his namesake Vienna restaurant, Nizam’s.
But with the specter of his encroaching Alzheimer’s looming over their shoulder, the Ozgur clan was forced to make the painful decision to shutter their family restaurant this past Saturday.
“It’s tough but it’s better for our family and his health,” John Ozgur, Nizam’s son, said of the forced retirement that had befallen his father.
Ozgur’s desire to share his native Turkish cuisine and the family’s home-spun hospitality helped the deeply personal restaurant graduate from neighborhood favorite to metropolitan must-try during its 34-year run.
“We didn’t even need to pass out menus to 2/3 of our guests. They were all regulars,” John said of the tightly knit community that developed within those four walls. That community included: Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, a lifelong regular who just happened to celebrate his 67th birthday there this past September, TV personality Bob Ryan, he and his wife, Olga, were apparently big fans of zesty doner kebab:
plus assorted Turkish dignitaries (Ozgur suggested that this father was most proud of catering a dinner attended by Turkish expat cum Atlantic Records founder, Ahmet Ertegun).
“What he will miss most about the restaurant business is greeting the people at Nizam’s. It was his life,” John shared, adding that “home was just a place he slept.”
And it sounds like sleep will continue to evade him. John said his father has already mapped out plans to cement his epicurean legacy by developing a cookbook based on the dishes he developed both at Nizam’s and during his days as executive chef at Abdullah restaurant in Turkey (over 60 years experience).
“I have all the recipes saved. He taught me everything,” John said of the encyclopedic knowledge he gleaned while working at his father’s elbow over the past 24 years.
John left the door open to opening his own restaurant somewhere down the line–”I love the restaurant business,” he assured us–but plans to take some time to decompress.
And while he’s unlikely to fill up on as many doner kebabs and apricot baklava as he would were he still calling the shots at the restaurant, John suspects Nizam is looking forward to indulging some of his favorite, non-Turkish cravings–Maryland style crab-cakes (baked, not fried) and Costco hot dogs with sauerkraut (“his ‘guilty pleasure,’” John acknowledged)–whenever the mood strikes.
–Warren
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Monday, January 24th, 2011
Maple Ave team proves handy with exotic eats, longs for more elbow room
By Warren Rojas / Photography by Kate Bohler
Ma works his magic on sous vide veal cheek and grilled rapini.
It’s really easy to run out of space on these small tables,” one server sheepishly jokes while struggling to clear away extraneous menus and place settings in time to drop off our battery of dishes before they tumbled from his grasp.
Maple Ave chef/owner Tim Ma can certainly relate.
The one-time engineer cum French Culinary Institute grad bucked the advice of friends and family who warned him against launching his small plate-themed project in late 2009.
He’s been rewarded with a cadre of local followers who regularly file into the oddly shaped and tightly knit location—serviced by nine tables up front, with four more tucked away in the far rear—yet remains frustrated by his inability to properly capitalize on the rising popularity.
“It’s tough to make money here,” the recession-defying restaurateur grouses—though he clearly appreciates his unique predicament. “We’re lucky that we do need more space,” Ma offers.
The main dining room could have been assembled by someone attempting to illustrate the definition of “cozy,” its sage walls adorned with local art (most of it on loan from the neighboring Soundry) while bare wooden tables and chairs are reconfigured at will to accommodate whoever strolls through the front door.
What the location lacks in aesthetic charm the kitchen more than makes up for in culinary artistry.
Maple Ave GM Joey Hernandez taking a well-deserved break.
Ma and his trusted companions, sous chef Nyi Nyi Myint, a Burmese native who spent some time behind the burners at Busaba Eathai while in the UK and is rumored to have cooked for Britain’s royal family, and Nick Seo, a Culinary Institute of America grad who Ma maintains does “a little bit of everything,” are as non-traditional as you can get. The rag-tag trio embraces daring and surprise in lieu of the familiar or formulaic, mining their personal experiences to help compose each carefully orchestrated—and occasionally jarring—dish.
Their carte has run the gamut from caramelized okra drizzled with Thai chili sauce to foie gras-stuffed figs wrapped in duck prosciutto to a sandwich of pulled Polyface pork capped with pickled slaw to a sublime torte sporting alternating tiers of chocolate mousse, homemade peanut butter, chopped pretzels and roasted peanuts. Not to mention the fun they had—think: spicy fried cauliflower, sous vide tuna salad sandwiches and bulgogi banh mi—on their short-lived food truck, Maple Avenue Express (on hiatus until further notice).
“Foie gras and funnel cake don’t [usually] go on the same menu. But somehow, it works,” Ma suggests.
And for the most part, he is right.
A southern standby goes international in a shrimp-and-grits makeover that includes spice-crusted jumbo shrimp, their puffy white flesh studded with freshly cracked black pepper, piquillo peppers-laced grains and crumbly, blueberry-spiked venison sausage.
Surplus pork jowl (a benefit/consequence of getting chummy with local pork baron Steve Baker) was alternately too fatty or tough, proving jerky-like along its thinnest expanses but more luxuriant where the piggy stored its generous padding. A pile of cinnamon-sprinkled, slow-cooked apples offers some TLC to the seared jowl.
Maple Ave’s tightly-knit front dining room.
Bulgogi lettuce wraps, the pork soaked through with orange juice, ginger ale and soy, a la Ma’s mother’s recipe, teeters on the verge of cloying—until bedecked in the caramelized kimchee salvaged from the aforementioned pork jowl platter. The pickled cabbage kicks in just enough sour to cut through the marinade and cements the Korean-ness of the dish.
Melted cheddar seeps into every thirsty crevice of a panko-crusted chicken sandwich that delivers a cocksure, bread-backed crunch that gives way to a juicy-to-the-core breast. Briny pickle chips, truffle mayo and a buttery roll round out the sandwich experience, with herb-flecked fries contributing salt and starch to the dining equation.
A quartet of deep-fried, chocolate-filled dumplings is too cute to deny—at first. Each palm-sized pastry is lightly bubbled on the outside and oozes bittersweet ganache when pierced, eliciting “oohs” and “ahhs” from those who’ve been raised in the era of the omnipresent lava cake. But just a few bites in, I was already wondering why the obviously experimental kitchen didn’t choose to unite the dumplings and side dish of plain vanilla ice cream (dumplings a la mode?). Or perhaps drizzle them with dulce de leche or honey (sopapilla-style) or something?
The sugar-dusted funnel cake, on the other hand, is an undisputed winner. Each mound of fried knottiness— think: giant apple fritters pumped up with helium—slice easily, revealing an extra fluffy, wonderfully flaky interior that you’d swear would go airborne if separated from your fork. The very vanilla bean-y ice cream adds just the right touch of the exotic to the classic carnival fare.
Ma’s passion for creative cooking is matched only by his commitment to sustainable dining. Even though he’s not entirely convinced that the evangelism is worth all the headaches.
“These products don’t come cheap. And the time investment is kind of ridiculous,” he says of the energy he’s expended scouting out regional producers like Polyface Farm and Tuscarora Organic Grower Cooperative.
“Do people come in for that? I think most people don’t. But those who do know [how to] appreciate it and thank us for it,” he says. “The moment you say Polyface … the locavores perk up.”
Still, Ma seems optimistic.
At press time, he was seriously weighing his expansion plans/relocation options.
Ma pointed to the recently shuttered Panjshir II spot right down the road in Vienna as an ideal location, but suggests that the financials haven’t yet lined up to claim that specific parcel. So he’s also scouting locations in Falls Church and near Virginia Square.
If determination alone were enough, I suspect we’d be seeing Maple Ave 2.0 much sooner rather than later.
But until reality catches up to his ambition, Ma will wait. And plan.
Perhaps he’ll go a tad tonier the next time around. Just don’t expect anything too fancy.
“We’d want to make it a little more fine dining than it is here. But not so we couldn’t put a funnel cake on the menu,” Ma predicts.
Maple Ave
147 Maple Ave. W., Vienna; 703-319-2177; www.mapleaverestaurant.com
Hours: Open for lunch and dinner Tuesday through Sunday.
Prices: Average entree: $13 to $20 ($$).
(January 2011)
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Friday, November 12th, 2010
(Image: The Next Web)
This week was all about synchronicity on the Twitter, with lots of folks firing off commentary that unknowingly complemented/completed like-minded epicurean threads.
The simpatico scribbling awards go to:
* Protein purists Daniel Patterson (@dcpatterson) and Tim Ma (@gt3029b) for giving mystery meats some serious thought;
* Caloric nonconformists Mark Haub (@themarkhaubdiet via @cnnhealth) and Edith Zimmerman (@edithzimmerman via @thehairpin) for thumbing their noses at conventional dieting;
* Culinary leftists @NYMag (via @NaomiStarkman) and Paul Greenberg (@4fishgreenberg) for rightfully disputing what belongs on the center of the plate;
* Early birds Michele Humes (@michelehumes) and @swampynomo for chronicling what happens when the breakfast worm turns on you;
* Ecocurean Jackson Landers (via @mental_floss) for offering to fill his gut with offensive species; and,
* Circular sleuth Laura Miller (@magiciansbook) for giving the coupon pages a hard look.
Your fleeting thoughts spoke volumes to me.
Gracias.
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Tuesday, November 9th, 2010
This is no trick: Vienna lost a venerable kabob haven on October 31.
The owner of the original Panjshir said his brother (who had been managing the Vienna branch) was unable to broker a mutually agreeable lease with the landlord, electing instead to shutter the Afghan restaurant after 22 years.
“I don’t think he’ll be doing another restaurant,” the original Panjshir owner said of the possibility his sibling might give it another go in a new location.
Meanwhile, the owner of a neighboring restaurant has already scoped out the old Panjshir II plot. But the expansion-minded restaurateur doesn’t know if the financials will line up … (stay tuned).
–Warren
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Wednesday, October 13th, 2010
(Image: Simply Local Food)
For those who don’t know, we’re in the middle of yet another theme dining week: American Farmland Trust’s inaugural “Dine Out for Farms” initiative.
The plan is simple enough: patronize those restaurants that support your local farms and help perpetuate the circle of sustainable agriculture/conscientious dining while getting a fabulous meal in the process.
We tried (unsuccessfully) to glean any DOfF week specials from the AFT, but were able to cull the roster of participating local restaurants:
*American Flatbread – Arlington, Ashburn;
* Clyde’s – Reston;
* Cock & Bowl;
* Open Kitchen;
* Wildfire; and,
So, if you’ve got some coin to spend and are looking to put your money where your mouth should be anyway, why not add these eco-activists to this week’s dining rotation?
It might even become a habit…
–Warren
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Thursday, October 7th, 2010
(Image: The Craving Project)
Those still engrossed in passe food trends will be thrilled to learn that low-fat, frozen yogurt shops–the sweets-slingers of choice from, oh say, five years ago–appear to be making a comeback/staging a last stand here in NoVA:
* Bluberi burst onto the Centreville/Clifton scene (5760 Union Mill Road, Clifton) about a month ago and have been serving up their particular brand of frozen–four main flavors: plain, bluberi (tangy, fruit-spiked blend), green tea (herbal) and rotating (mango, raspberry, strawberry, chocolate, peach cycle through for about a week); field about 2 dozen specialty toppings, including: jimmies, pomegranate seeds, diced pineapple, m&ms, etc.–and liquid (hot/iced/bubble teas, yogurt smoothies) refreshment ever since;
* La-La Land export Pinkberry is hoping its forthcoming Fairfax Corner shop–scheduled to debut at 11942 Grand Commons Avenue on Friday, October 22–will serve as a springboard for a planned invasion of the Mid-Atlantic market; and,
* South Korean-born Red Mango plans to reinforce it’s local presence–they laid down roots with outposts in Clarendon and Fredericksburg–by venturing into Vienna (431 W. Maple Ave.) and courting Shenandoah University (1460 University Drive, Winchester) and University of Mary Washington (1301 College Ave., Fredericksburg) students, in the near future.
Bring on the brain freeze!
–Warren