Perfect for a Summer Side Dish

We dined last night al fresco in the rear courtyard of a friend's house. All of the food was wonderful, but I especially enjoyed the Mediterranean tomato-cucumber salad that our host served. It was ideal for a summer side dish.

The salad's flavors were simple, but I think the simplicity was what made it so refreshing. It included both red and yellow tomatoes, as well as cucumbers, capers and onions. It was dressed lightly with (probably) olive oil and some kind of wine vinegar.

I should have asked for the recipe. It can't be that difficult to replicate. Maybe this recipe is a good start. Or perhaps this one. And maybe I can steal the idea of using shallots from this recipe. Here's a slightly creamy version that includes mayo, sour cream and dill.

One change I would make from the version we ate last night is to replace the white onions that our friend used with red onions, which add color and a little different flavor.

Hidden Honey in NYC

Even though beekeeping is illegal in New York City, the N.Y. Times reports that there are some New Yorkers who are defying the law.

This Times article includes a photo of beekeepers maintaining a hive on the rooftop of their apartment/condo building in one section of Brooklyn. There's even an association for beekeepers in NYC. Pretty daring.

Review: Founding Farmers

I had dinner with friends Saturday evening at Founding Farmers, which is located in downtown Washington. Here is my overview.

Overall, the food was excellent. The highlight of our meal was the appetizers that we shared -- skillet cornbread, brown-sugared bacon on a mini-skewer, and (believe it or not) deviled eggs. Each was superb. If you haven't already figured it out, "comfort food" is what Founding Farmers is about.

Sandwiches are sizable, and they are a good option for those with a medium appetite.

The wine list is economical. Twenty Bench, one of my favorite CabSavs, is on their list for $40. That's fairly reasonable for a restaurant wine list.

The other thing that stood out for this restaurant was the space. Very pleasant, nice decor and plenty of ambient light. And you can feel good about the fact that the design and architecture has been certified "green."

Now, let me share a few less-than-glittering elements. It took them almost 15 minutes to bring our cocktails to the table. My salmon on a plank was just so-so and probably should have been removed from the grill a minute or two earlier. Don't bother with the "fresh cut" French fries; how they are cut doesn't matter nearly as much as what oil they are fried in and what temp the oil is.

All in all, some things flopped, but most of our meal was quite enjoyable. I will be back to Founding Farmers. If I have a worry about this restaurant, it's the menu -- much too large, I fear, for a chef de cuisine to maintain oversight and quality control.

The owners of FF also need to ditch the freestanding sign that's out front -- it looks almost identical to signs that are outside of Cosi coffee-sandwich bars. And that probably makes pedestrians assume that FF is a takeaway sandwich shop-bar.

McCutcheon's: This Is Good Stuff

There is a small, family-owned business whose horn I need to toot. It's a company called McCutcheon's and they make some wonderful jams, preserves, apple butter, relishes and other products.

What I especially like about McCutcheon's is that they make a lot of unusual jams that other companies don't make.

For example, McCutcheon's produces black raspberry preserves, which are great. And they make a raspberry-lemon marmalade that is out of this world. It made sound strange, but oh my God, is that good stuff. Just the right mix between tart and sweet. Wipe that on some toast or a biscuit, and you're in heaven.

Because McCutcheon's is based in Frederick, Md., I'm not sure if their products find their way to stores beyond the mid-Atlantic. But you can order them off the web through their website.

Dinner at Dino

I had a nice dinner at Dino last night in D.C.'s Cleveland Park neighborhood. It seems as though it had been ages since I'd eaten there.

My friend and I shared several small plates. One of them was a dish of marinated artichokes -- and they were excellent. Cooking or marinating artichokes can be tricky, but Dino managed to do this well.

The prosciutto-wrapped asparagus was pretty good. The asparagus was cooked perfectly. The dish would have been truly perfect if someone in the kitchen had stayed away from the salt shaker. Prosciutto is already salty so there was no need to add the amount of salt that was added to the asparagus.

The calamari fritti was mediocre. The marinara dipping sauce was fine, but the calamari tasted as though the batch I was served had been sitting around the kitchen for 15 minutes.

Wines by the glass are good here, priced fairly and offering as much diversity as you'll ever see for an all-Italian list.

The Man Behind Pitango Gelato

I've written a few posts about Pitango, the all-organic gelateria chain -- one location is on P Street, N.W., just east of 15th Street. Their gelati are wonderful, and they also serve excellent sorbets.

In today's Washington Post, there is an article profiling Noah Dan, the founder of Pitango:

The 54-year-old founder of Pitango Gelato is something of a milk connoisseur. In 2006, the Potomac resident spent nearly three weeks on a tour that took him from southern Virginia to New Jersey in search of the freshest, liveliest-tasting milk, which he says is the essential foundation of good gelato. He found it in Lancaster County at the farm of Mennonites Roman and Lucy Stoltzfoos.

Dan takes the same earnest approach to every ingredient that goes into his dozens of flavors. The organic milk and cream come from grass-fed cows. The fruits for sorbets are local and organic when possible. And Dan shuns stabilizers or preservatives, which are common even in some premium ice creams.

"It's a dirty little secret that if something is cold enough and sweet enough, people will eat it," Dan said. "The idea was to make a gelato that was good enough for me."

An Unexpected Home Base

For some time, Counter Culture Coffee has been supplying coffee to a variety of Washington, D.C. coffee bars. While reading this article about a soon-to-open coffee bar, I was surprised to learn that Counter Culture Coffee — which buys and roasts its own coffee — happens to be based not in Seattle or Boston, but . . . . North Carolina.

I guess that shouldn't be all that shocking. After all, coffee goes well with a slice of sweet potato pie.

Pittsburgh's Dor-Stop Diner

I travel two or three times a year up to Pittsburgh, and during my most recent visit I was pleased to check out the Dor-Stop Diner, located in the city's Dormont neighborhood. The Dor-Stop Diner was featured on one of Food Network's

Although the diner gets a steady traffic of customers, we didn't have to wait long on Sunday for a table. The food was hearty and quite good. I had the pumpkin hotcakes, which had a cake-like texture. Really delicious. The potato pancakes were also very good.

Neither of us had the Dor-Stop's Stuffed Raspberry French Toast, but it looked as good on a nearby table as it had on TV. The service was good too.

I didn't taste the Eggs Benedict, but these food bloggers insist that dish was the best they'd ever tasted.

There was a time when these kinds of diners could easily be found in every neighborhood of a city. It's sad that they are quickly becoming a thing of the past. Well, if life takes you to the Pittsburgh area, stop in. It's worth a detour.

Recessionary Veggie Gardens

From today's Washington Post:

After years in the doldrums, the consumer demand for vegetable seeds has abruptly climbed at a rate even industry veterans have never seen.

. . . Industry observers attribute the boost in sales to a concern for food safety following outbreaks of E. coli and salmonella poisonings and a desire by consumers to be a part of the local food movement. Michelle Obama's new vegetable garden at the White House may also be inspiring people, they said.

But the primary reasons, they speculate, are the recession, income loss and the need for people to lower their grocery bills by growing their own.

. . . At four community gardens in Reston [Virginia], coordinator Deana Demichelis said the wait list for 250 plots has climbed to 140 names, a backlog of about three years. "New gardeners are begging to get in because of the recession and the fact they can save money growing their own food," she said.

The Case of the Chocolate Bunny

Those six words sound like the title of an episode of The People's Court. But this is a high-profile case, as reported in today's Wall Street Journal:

This morning in Luxembourg, five crimson-robed and white-scarved judges of the European Union's highest court will issue a ruling on this most gnawing question: Can you trademark a chocolate bunny? Chocoladefabriken Lindt & Sprüngli AG of Switzerland certainly hopes so.

Lindt got a European trademark in 2001 on its marquee Easter treat, a gold-foil-wrapped chocolate bunny, squatting stolidly on its haunches, ears alert, a jingly little bell affixed to its neck with a bow-tied red ribbon. The bunny has been a big nuisance since.

Lindt has hunted knockoff rabbits in Britain, Austria, Germany and Poland. To shore up its franchise, it has sought -- unsuccessfully -- an additional trademark for the "naked" bunny shape without foil. For good measure, it tried to trademark a chocolate reindeer that looks an awful lot like a bunny.

. . . Like Americans, Europeans allow logos, graphics and words to be trademarked. In theory, both also permit shapes. But courts have been hesitant to hop into that minefield.

Adour: Still an Underachiever

Although I had a good dinner with friends at Adour this past weekend in Washington, I still can't say that I was blown away. And at this price point, a diner should feel blown away.

This was my second dinner at Adour. The first one was also good, but nothing really dazzled me or my fellow diner. Given that Adour's non-soup appetizers average a price of nearly $20, I think the restaurant should be held to a higher standard than a restaurant like Bistro du Coin (near Dupont Circle).

Here were the highlights from my most recent meal at Adour. The lobster medallions with diced advocado on a bed of Israeli couscous were marvelous. The simplicity of this appetizer allowed the wonderful flavors of the lobster to shine through. The poussin that Adour recently added to its entree menu is sublime -- moist and tender.

The macaroons, provided gratis at meal's end, are as yummy as I remembered them the first time I dined there. On that first visit, they were raspberry and chocolate macaroons; this time, they were coffee- and cassis-flavored.

On the other hand, the duck breast was simply okay. One part of the breast was much too rare and, even so, a bit tough to slice. The '06 red wine from Burgundy that our server recommended was very lackluster. Still, it was cheaper than the initial red wine we'd discussed with him so he clearly wasn't trying to torque up our cost. It gave off a musty odor and probably needed more time in the bottle.

I won't be hurrying back to Adour because there are too many other restaurants in D.C. that offer better value. But I still hope for the day when the kitchen lives up to the man (Alain Ducasse) who opened this restaurant.

Restaurants' Unwieldy Websites

Restaurant websites are my latest gripe. Too many of them are so Flash-heavy that it takes much too long for them to load. In addition, one usually needs to click past the landing page because it only provides a pretty "concept" image, instead of helpful links.

I sympathize with Jennifer Maiser who wrote this post at Bay Area Bites about restaurant websites that were far too theatrical:

A couple of days ago, a friend was asking me for a restaurant recommendation. Easy task, I thought. I had some restaurants in mind and just needed to check and see if they were open and send her the websites. What should have been a 5-minute email turned into a half-hour nightmare as I slogged through websites that are more intent on impressing me with movies, music, and other annoyances than on giving me direct information.

But my biggest beef with restaurant websites is that so many of them aren't updated regularly. Several of the wines shown on their online wine list are gone. They display menu items that have been replaced. Just a few weeks ago (late May), I was stunned to find a menu with what were obviously autumn dishes on it (hearty entrees, root vegetables, etc.).

Are these outdated websites the result of cutbacks in restaurant staff? Maybe. But it shouldn't be that tough for a restaurant to periodically update its website. The wine list isn't such a big deal, but menu items shown on a website should all be current.

Pity the People of India

Or at least one-half of them. Why? According to this article in Monday's Wall Street Journal:

The British candy maker [Cadbury] has been in India for more than 60 years and dominates the chocolate market. Still, it says, less than half of India's 1.1 billion people have ever tasted chocolate. Traditional milk-based sweets, or "mithai," still dominate the industry here, where they are given and eaten at festivals.

Instead of crunching and comparing GDP figures, perhaps comparing the density of chocolate consumption is just as valid a means of determining whether a country deserves First, Second or Third World status.

People of India: storm the barricades and secure your right to chocolate!