A great rooftop option for beating the crippling heat waves hitting D.C. this summer is Masa 14 in Logan Circle. A central staircase leads up from a spacious, chic, under-lit dining room to a long, elegant second floor bar. This opens to a roofdeck with a living wall of plants inclining upwards from the center,…
I started writing this article on April 11th, a few days after starting my work on the Smithsonian Folklife Festival out of the Capital Gallery building at L’Enfant Plaza. Food trucks surround the building between 10:00am and 2:00pm and around 11:30am of each day the topic of office chatter would inevitably turn to which trucks…
I was first exposed to Balkan-chic Ambar a few months ago in the context of a patio happy hour event and wasn’t too blown away by just about anything. I had heard of their rakia program and Balkan wine selection, and was left thoroughly disappointed by the happy hour cocktail menu, which consisted of a margarita (tequila), a mojito (rum)…
Fusion sometimes gets a bad rep on the culinary mean streets, especially among the purists, regionalists and the more stubborn keepers of convention. While I agree that the grand majority of attempts to fuse two distant cuisines in one plate end in a tacky mess, I do appreciate the effort when research is conducted and…
Integration back into normal society after the “Night at the Museum” type chaos of the Marriott during the Folklife Festival was a process which certainly had its ups and downs. On the one hand, I had grown extremely weary of the hotel’s breakfast buffets and the constant availability of filling yet largely unsatisfying hotel food.…
I’ve made some really great friends here in D.C., ones who have broadened my perspective on the city and its surroundings and made me see it for more than just embassy events and Happy Hour. One place I’ve recently become familiar with is Herrington Harbour on the Chesapeake Bay, where a couple of cool kids…
My last stop in the Carolinas before a lonely Grey-dawg back to chilly D.C. had to be BBQ, and after just a tiny bit of research I found a place that promised to be good for it. Mac’s Speed Shop in Charlotte, NC seems like a pretty well known place, though some locals swear there…
Brunch is okay sometimes but paying such high prices for what tends to be the cheapest meal of the day gets old. And so do eggs. And bacon. And Hollandaise. I enjoy the culture of brunching, that of slapping on one’s Sunday best – perhaps a wide-brimmed hat and some wide-framed sunglasses – and getting…
A few weeks ago, before moving into this madhouse hotel and dedicating every ounce of my sanity to the participants of the 2013 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, I wined and dined with a new acquaintance of mine and left the “where” up to him. He brought me to a place in Logan Circle (which, I am ashamed to…
You dial a number and catch a key tossed out a window. Based on the relative location of this window, you approximate the apartment number and knock. The door opens to a Pueblan family seated around a single table the length of the small living room, a matchbox-sized kitchenette in the corner. As you walk…
That Best Bite 