Jacob Grier

This classified ad sounds promising:

New cafe opening in cool part of DC needs a serious barista to help establish and oversee coffee operations. Looking for someone passionate about coffee-coffee making as a craft. We intend on serving the finest ristretto shot in the District. Duties include consulting with owner/operator on equipment purchase, hiring of other talented baristas, and helping to determine overall feel of cafe. not your ordinary coffee shop.

Sounds like my friends at Cato might have an option better than Starbucks in the near future.

That’s from Ugly Mug Cafe in Ypsilanti, MI. They roast their own beans, pull shots on a two-group Synesso, and are currently playing Dear Catastrophe Waitress. It’s like I never left DC! Between the coffee wastelands of Columbus and Cedarville, I’m glad to have found the place. The espresso is sweet, the capp smooth, and the barista happy to talk coffee. Thanks, EspressoMap.

I’ll be in the UP by evening. Not sure if I’ll have cell access while up there, but I’m told that we do have wi-fi now, so I should be able to get back to the regularly scheduled blogging.

Back to the road…

Grape and Bean, Big Bear, and Murky all get coverage in The Washington Post today in an article by Michaele Weissman, author of the new book God in a Cup. Weissman’s book covers the new wave specialty coffee industry from seed to cup, profiling the people at Counter Culture, Intelligentsia, Stumptown, and other roasters, along with baristas, farmers, and importers. Though perhaps too personal at times, it’s an interesting and sympathetic look at our sometimes weird and obsessive subculture. Definitely recommended.

There’s a new restaurant opening up in DC. It sounds intriguing and like something I might want to write about, so I clicked over to the website to find out more. And that’s where I stopped. It’s no Jared Allen’s Sports Grill,* but… damn. All Flash, annoying music, terrible sound effects, and confusing navigation. So screw it.

I’m not going to name the place, because it’s just the latest example in a long line of bad restaurant websites and I don’t want to reward them with a link. But more generally, what is it about restaurants and bars that makes them so prone to unnavigable, unlinkable, incredibly annoying Flash designs? Do owners just not use the internet?

Flash websites may look good, but that’s all they do. And that lack of usefulness cuts down on a restaurant’s web presence. The page can take a long time to load. If a reviewer wants to write about his meal at a place, he can’t copy the text or even link to the menu. Search engines can’t pick up key phrases people may be looking for. Potential customers can’t even cut and paste the address into a map search to find out where it is. The only person who benefits is the designer, who collects a nice check and hands off a complicated but worthless relic that no one will ever visit more than once.

If I ever open a restaurant, I can’t promise you yet that it will have wonderful food, reasonable prices, or appealing decor. But I will promise you this: it will offer permanent links, text that you can copy and paste, and no annoying music.

For the comments, what restaurant sites do you hate? Who has a site that works? I nominate Rustico as an example of good design: lots of text, working links, and frequent updates, all while giving a good feel for the place’s look and tone. Throw in an RSS feed and event archives and they’re golden.

*The website’s broken now, sadly, which might actually be an improvement. It was a thing to behold.

DC’s first location of the South African, Portuguese-themed chicken restaurant is now open in the city’s increasingly non-Chinese Chinatown (right next to Hooters and Mehak Indian restaurant). The specialty is spicy roasted chicken cooked with sauce seasoned with peri-peri, an African chili pepper. The sauce isn’t that hot, but it has good flavor and bottles on the table let customers add as much medium, hot, or extra hot as they please. The chicken is tender, juicy, and served on the bone with plenty of tasty skin. They also serve liver dishes, which sound intriguing but weren’t what I was going to choose on my first visit (despite Tyler Cowen’s general advice). The sides aren’t exciting — the fries were standard, the “spicy rice” very mild.

What I’d really like to see in this part of DC is a good Peruvian rotisserie chicken place, but Nando’s is a welcome addition to a neighborhood that has so many characterless restaurants. And call me insensitive, but this ad idea made me laugh:

Nando’s is known in South Africa for its humorous but often controversial adverts. One such television advert from 2000, involved a blind woman being led into a pole intentionally and knocked unconscious by her guide dog, which then proceeded to eat the chicken that the woman had just purchased. This caused an uproar within the blind community and caused the South African Advertising Standards Authority to call for the withdrawal of the advert.

Nando’s is at 819 7th St. NW.

I stopped by Boccato, the new gelato shop in Clarendon, last night for some refreshing dessert. The really exciting thing was lurking in the corner though: a not yet hooked up two group Synesso espresso machine, two espresso grinders, and a pour-over coffee bar. At the Yelp page the owner says, “Get ready for our coffee and loose leaf tea service coming July..!!! Mindblowing!!!” Sounds like there could finally be a great new coffee shop in the neighborhood, just in time for me to move a couple thousand miles away.

Check it out at 2719 Wison Blvd. Arlington, VA 22201, just across the street from the Whole Foods.

Jared Allen played defensive end for the Kansas City Chiefs. While in KC, he opened Jared Allen’s Sports Arena and Grill. A few weeks ago he was traded to the Minnesota Vikings, leaving KC with draft picks and Allen’s restaurant. I’m pretty sure Minnesota got the better deal.

Previously: Eli Manning: Leet skillz

How’s a guy supposed to have fun in this city? Last year I posted a video shot by Frank Winstead, obsessively nit-picky Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner, of an allegedly dangerous outdoor ping-pong table at Comet Pizza in northwest DC. Winstead was widely mocked at the time, but this being DC, he eventually got his way. Marc Fisher reports that the scourge of outdoor ping-pong has now been forcibly eliminated.

I finally paid a visit to Comet earlier this winter. It’s a charming place and serves up a very tasty pie. It’s sad that there are people like Winstead using the levers of the state to harass a business that adds so much life to the neighborhood.

[Via DCist.]

The previous post about New York’s calorie posting rule has kicked off a surprisingly long discussion. Here’s a point we haven’t addressed: Are the counts at all reliable? The blog Midtown Lunch examines Chipotle’s posted calorie info and finds two problems. One is that, with highly customizable items like burritos, the restaurant can provide, at best, a wide range of hypothetical nutritional information. According to the Chipotle sign a burrito carries anywhere from 420-918 calories. How useful is that information? And what’s next, requiring the restaurant to post the calories involved in each specific ingredient?

The second problem is reliability. Doing some math, Midtown claims that the ranges posted in the restaurant and the information on Chipotle’s website are not comparable.

If Chipotle’s case is at all similar to what we’ll see from other restaurants, New York’s much-touted regulation won’t accomplish much. Is anyone helped by seeing that their lunch will vary within a 500 calorie range?

Update: Hell, if we’re talking about burritos, the nanny state, and discovering people’s true preferences, I have no excuse for not linking to my old Magic of Politics post.

[Via Slashfood.]

L20 is an inventive, soon-to-open restaurant in Chicago, and the chef has been documenting the opening process on a weblog. It’s fascinating stuff, with photos that are sure to make you hungry. In the newest post, the staff shows that they’re paying attention to the coffee, too:

Our coffee undertaking began over six months ago. Our desire was to achieve the highest level of quality and consistency that we could, in order to provide the best cup of coffee to our guests. We started first with the beans.

After several cuppings of coffees from various roasters across the country, representing beans from across the globe, we finally made a decision—Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea. Their coffees were consistently better than all of the rest. It was very clear that their commitment to coffee mirrored our commitment to our guests’ experience.The passion and service displayed by their team assured us that we had made the right decision.

We will focus on direct trade coffees and source micro-lots whenever they are available to us. We will change the selections as new crops become available on the market.

I’ve written before about “restaurant coffee” and how chefs that pay attention to every little detail settle for really poor coffee, so it’s great to see another high-end place taking coffee seriously. They also adapted the coffee cupping process for vanilla beans, which sounds like an interesting experiment.

[Thanks to David for the link.]

Two weeks ago I posted about a trend in “speakeasy” dining, places or clubs where diners can go underground to enjoy meals from adventurous cooks without being burdened by city inspections and other formalities. They sound great — until someone tells the authorities. Gypsy, reportedly one of Seattle’s better dining adventures, has been forced to shut down. From an email they sent out:

Camelot has ended.

We wake up, we go to work, we come home, we occasionally eat out. Most lives are fashioned after this pattern. Most restaurant’s lives are as well: make food, sell food, clean up, go home. Sometimes, a very magical sometimes, restaurants are able to trancend the merely ordinary and in doing so, transform to some small degree the lives of its patrons.

Gypsy has been this magical place for many many people. New friends, new ideas, new love, a salon of creativity. But as with all things destined to touch hearts, evil waits to take it away. We have been betrayed. Gypsy as we know it was too scary a place to exist, so now it doesn’t.

We are going much deeper underground. Those who really know how to get ahold of us, please email (please don’t call us), we will start a new list, a more protected list. Dinners are cancelled for all intents and purposes. And to the traitor to the clan we offer you this: May you never sleep well, may laughter sound bitter in your ears, and may food always taste like ashes to you…this is our Gypsy curse. You have destroyed a good thing.

More details here.

I’m the guest contributor for this week’s “Five Bites on Friday” at the excellent DC restaurant blog Metrocurean. Today we’re giving Arlington some love with five of my favorite dishes from the other side of the river.

On Sunday the Uno pizza restaurant in the Fair Oaks Mall closed its doors for good. I’m not normally the type to mourn an Uno, but this one was special. It had fun, witty bartenders, friendly management, and a very laid-back atmosphere. Most importantly, it was one of only two bars in the mall that allowed cigar smoking, making it a natural hangout for the guys who work or relax in the John B. Hayes tobacco store. I didn’t go often, but the good company and the cheap beer were enough to lure me to Fairfax every once in a while.

A couple of the guys put up the following ad in search of a replacement. It well captures the appeal:

A guild of loyal patrons is hiring a drinking establishment to become it’s new preferred after hours destination. The candidate establishment must sufficiently satisfy the following legacy criteria.

1. Cigar smoking allowed, encouraged, and not subject to regulatory PM restrictions.

2. A range of moderately priced blended scotches regularly stocked (i.e. Johnny Walker Red/Black, J&B, Dewars etc.)

3. Tasty but likewise moderately priced cusine (ability to cater to special diets a plus but not a requirement)

4. A Bartender(s) who resent their station in life and are willing to castigate patrons in accordance with their existential dissatisfaction (a penchant for the vulgar and profane is a plus)

5. An acceptably mid range decible level of music sufficient to elicit cranial bobbing but NOT inhibiting verbal conversation and interaction.

6. An environment not altogether exclusionary of early 20’s patronage but sufficiently deviod of conditions which promote post meal/drink loitering.

7. Must comply with State regulations for cleanliness (we of the guild cast no judgements in these matters)

Candidate establishments should contact David or Johnathan

The friendly guys at On the Fly Diego tell me that their Rocklands BBQ cart is now open at 7th and F NW. It’s not Texas, but it’s a welcome option here in downtown DC. I’ll be by to check it out tomorrow.

Incidentally, Rocklands is finally back in Arlington, too, at 3471 N. Washington Blvd. That’s the same space where the wine bar I used to work in was located, so it’s a bit weird going in and seeing everything completely redecorated. But they’ve done a good job, and they have Bell’s beer, so it’s worth stopping in.

A few months ago I wrote about how the DC government has finally lifted restrictions on new food cart licenses, opening up competition and bringing in newcomers who can do better than steamy hot dogs. The newest addition is On the Fly, a Latin cart located at 8th and H NW.

I’d been craving tacos this week, so I stopped in for one each of pork and chicken. The pork was tasty, but the chicken estofado seasoned with apples, cinnamon, chiles, and thyme was the real standout. Company chef Jordan Lichman comes from the Inn at Little Washington, so it’s no surprise that these tacos are cut above the rest. It’s really good food and a fantastic value at just $2 a piece.

Aside from taking street food to a higher level, On the Fly’s other goal is to do it sustainably. The food is served out of electric smart carts, seling local products when possible, avoiding foil, and using compostable corn bags made from corn starch instead of plastic. This has its downsides, including less insulation when you’re carrying your hot tacos down the street on a wintry day, but it’s a noble effort.

Lots more carts are on the way, including a barbecue cart serving Rocklands and an Asian cart partnered with Teaism.

Update 12/11/07: Went back today for more great tacos and saw that they’re still tinkering with the packaging, coming up with better ways to insulate the food. Still delicious!

Thanks for the shawarma tip, anon, I’ll check it out. Why so anonymous? The love between a man and halal meats is nothing to be ashamed of.

At Agoraphilia, Glen Whitman wonders why bowling is more popular for dates than mini golf. The obvious answer is that bowling alleys serve alcohol, but that just brings up another question: why don’t mini golf courses have bars? I like his answer:

Drunken players tend to take longer to finish, thereby delaying other customers. In a bowling alley, this effect is very limited – you usually only get ten frames, you only get two shots per frame, and you can only delay people whose games have not yet begun. But in a mini golf course, slow play can affect every player behind you on the course. And while there is allegedly some limitation on the number of swings (6 swings max, I believe), players sometimes flout this rule, and in any case 6 swings can take twice as long as 3 (the usual par).

With most inter-customer externalities, the natural solution is to “tax” the players who create it. This could be accomplished by simply charging more per drink. But if the required tax is especially large – as it might be in this case, given how many other players are affected by any one player’s slowness – then the total price could be higher than most players are willing to pay. And with few enough buyers, it’s just not worthwhile to incur the fixed costs of setting up bars, acquiring liquor licenses, and so on. Boozehounds will just have to wait ’til the nineteenth hole.

I suspect another factor is that bowling alleys have broader appeal. Families can bring kids to bowl while not interacting much with drunken revelers in lanes nearby, whereas on the mini golf course there will be lots of interaction between holes. Bowling alleys can also bring in business on slower nights with league competition, something that I haven’t seen with mini golf. Though given the sudden rise of adult kickball leagues, this could happen.

Anyway, the real point of this post is to mention that by next summer DC hipsters will be able to enjoy their mini golf, drinks, and acute sense of irony all under one roof. That’s when the H Street Country Club is due to open:

According to [developer Joe] Englert, H Street Country Club will be replete with “a lot of wood benches that resemble a locker room” and “a lot of plaid.” The food will be all-American, no-frills “picnic” fare, and the holes will be littered with D.C. memorabilia celebrating go-go greats and bands like Fugazi. “The Positive Force hole is really amazing,” he raves, adding that his eight-year-old daughter has been one of the course’s chief designers.

The article also mentions that city regulations are, unsurprisingly, one obstacle to the venture:

The only question is whether Englert will need a special set of permits to make his mini-golf dreams a reality. For example, says attorney Michael Fonseca, Englert might have to get a mechanical amusement license, which, “in the old days,” regulated video games and pinball machines. In D.C., everything from Pac Man to pool tables warrants a special license, he says.

Fred Moosally, general counsel for the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, says there’s no precedent for establishments serving up booze and golf balls. “We don’t have any miniature golf bars,” he says.

This Saturday the Georgetown BID hosts the Taste of Georgetown festival, a day for Georgetown restaurants to hit the streets and show off their menus. There will be some delicious food available, including baked goods from my old employer, Baked and Wired. In addition, there will be free wine tastings provided by Bacchus Wine Cellar, the French Wine Society, and Potomac Wine and Spirits.

There’s also going to be live entertainment — including me! I’ve been hired to perform strolling close-up magic throughout the event. It looks to be a beautiful fall day on Saturday, so come on out if you’re free from 11-4. Tickets are $5 per taste, 5 for $20.

This is also a good time to mention that I have a new regular bartending night: Monday evenings at Open City in Woodley Park. The slow pace of Mondays makes it a great night for experimenting with obscure, labor-intensive cocktails and the occasional card trick. Consider this an open invitation to stop in at the bar after work, 6:30-11:30.