Thursday, May 7, 2009

Guest Blog: DC "Food Tour"

I have inspired a friend of mine to not only try out a food tour on her recent trip to DC, but also blog about it! Apparently the one she tried didn't actually get them free samples of all the food which is pretty lame, but it sounds like she had a good time anyway; if anyone knows of real food-tours in DC, let me know!

Here is her guest blog:

A couple of weeks ago, I had taken a vacation to visit my sister and her boyfriend in Washington DC. I thought it was a grand idea -- I hadn't gone to Washington DC since my 8th grade trip and goodness knows I wanted to go SOMEWHERE. So DC was perfect. And one of the most interesting things we did, besides explore ALL the Smithsonians, snap pictures next to ALL the sculptures in DC and see every single memorial, was signing up for a food tour.



Now I had never really heard of a food tour before but Ely had recommended that I try one for my trip and I thought, hey why not? I love food and I'm sure my sister does too. After doing some research online we picked a tour called "The movable feast-walking food tour of Washington DC." mmm. What could be better? You burned off the calories WHILE eating them. Brilliant.



Our first tour stop was light. It was at a tea shop called Teaism in the heart of DC. One of the first teahouses in DC, Teaism has a selection of approximately 50 different teas and offers a variety of japanese foods from bento boxes to tandoori kebabs and asian-style sandwiches (there's even a hamburger with ginger and jalapeno). This was probably one of the few places where you could find green tea lassies, which was what I ended up getting, and which turned out to be a milder and less fruity version of a classic mango lassie.



While sipping my lassie, we headed over to Cowgirl Creamery. Originally from San Francisco, Cowgirl Creamery is a small, quaint store that sells the largest selection of cheese I have ever seen, ranging from St Pat (a mellow, soft springtime cheese) to Red Hawk (a bold triple-cream cheese with a distinctive orange rind) and totaling about 3,000 pounds of cheese a week. I thought it was especially interesting that they made wasabi cheese of all things (not sure what you would eat it with -- crackers perhaps?) but at $12 I wasn't about to find out.



For lunch, we stopped over at the infamous Ben's Chili Bowl. At first glance, you think, wow this place is crazy! Half the experience is just about sitting in this cramped, smoky and noisy space. The other half though is about their smoky, salty spicy Half-smokes, DC's signature snack. Although similar to a hot dog, it's about ten time better because the sausage is slightly larger and tastier and doused in chili, cheese, and sour cream. Originally made famous by Bill Cosby, Ben's Chili Bowl was one of the first places Obama visited and ordered a chili half-smoke. Yes, I had set foot in a restaurant that had once been filled with greatness.



After scarfing down our half-smokes, we ended our tour by venturing to first Cakelove, which is a bakery, and then to Love Café, which was across the street and serves all the delicious baked bites created from Cakelove. In addition to being famous for their hand-made cupcakes, both places are known for their owner, Warren Brown, who quit his work as a prominent lawyer to follow his dream making cupcakes. Ever since starting his business, Warren has been featured in numerous shows such as the Oprah Winfrey show and the Today show as well as hosted "Sugar Rush" on the Food Network. Since CakeLove had recently started making red velvet cupcakes, which I love, I bought one with the intention of taking it home but instead ate it on the tram ride back.



All in all, the food tour wasn't quite what I expected it to be. It focused more on eateries unique to DC and their history rather than on really good food. I originally thought we would be sitting at various places taste-testing appetizers and trying a hint of everything instead of buying snippets of food to munch on while on the go. Yet even with these misperceptions, I thought the food tour was an interesting experience -- much better than an average tour of DC -- and will probably try another one again on my next vacation.

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Umami Burger

Apparently I am on a burger streak lol, I really do eat other things, I swear!

Burgers are just a prime comparison food since they take creativity to differentiate or make really good. Something like sushi is harder to do a direct comparison since it can vary so much; while one place could have great yellowtale sashimi, another could have amazing caterpillar rolls... Burgers are a single, simple dish that more and more places seem to be trying to take from fast-food to gourmet.

Anyway, now on to Umami Burger. I have been wanted to try out Umami Burger for a while now, I had heard about it a couple different places and as I said in my earlier post, it was #1 on the local yelp page for a while.

I'm not going to spend time on non-food related review stuff, see my yelp review for that stuff. My focus here will be the important part, the burgers! :)



I split 4 different burgers with my dining companions:
The Umami burger - apparently 6 different umami flavors (shiitake mushrooms, sundried tomatoes, fried cheese, umami ketchup, caramelized onions(are these umami?), the burger itself), the most unique burgers flavors I have had.

The Truffle burger - truffle cheese and truffle glaze, yum, amazing, this one is probably my favorite;

The Hatch - Spicy chilies top off a great burger, nice heat but doesn't overwhelm the other flavors.

and The Port & Stilton - Good Stilton flavors, not overpowering, probably my least favorite of the three and that is saying a lot because it was a very good burger. The other three were just more unusual and/or excellent, while this was just a good blue-cheese burger. Also since this one is directly comparable with the Fathers Office burger (the FO burger wins hands down over this one) I don't think I would order it again (despite it being good).

Next time I hope to try their other burgers: the triple pork, hopefully they have the mideast lamb burger back (it is on the online menu, but the paper menu didn't have it when we were there).


So in conclusion, here is my current LA-area burger ranking:

1. Father's Office
2. Umami Burger
3. The Counter
4. The Habit
5. In and Out
6. All other burgers fall into this category...

Just a note on this, I have only been to The Counter once and enjoyed it, but probably picked toppings based on things I like independently but maybe not altogether as a group. I plan to go back there soon and try again (maybe find some recommended combination online, if anyone has a favorite set of Counter toppings, post them in a comment!)