Edible DC

SHOPTALK

November 2, 2012 · Rina Rapuano

Homebrew Supply Shops

Homebrewing may seem daunting, so our advice to the uninitiated is to head straight for a homebrew supply store. Here, new customers are likely to find a community that is both willing and passionate about bringing new brewers into the fold.

My Local Home Brew Shop
6201 Leesburg Pike, Falls Church, VA
703-241-3874
MyLHBS.com

Since opening in 2005, this shop has become known among local homebrewers as a reliable source of specialty whole-grain malts and fresh well-maintained supplies of hops and yeast. Owner Derek Terrell prides himself on offering rarer brewing ingredients and equipment not available at

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WHAT’S IN SEASON: FALL 2012

November 2, 2012 · Edible DC

Design by Luke Atkinson

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THE HUNT

November 2, 2012 · Sam Hiersteiner

On the Trail of Interesting Ingredients with One
of Our Favorite Chefs: Scott Drewno

Photos by Bobby Bruderle

Scott Drewno must be harboring a Confucian secret that gives him the energy to juggle roles like he does. He’s the Executive Chef at blue chip Asian-fusion restaurant The Source by Wolfgang Puck. He’s the alpha dog on the local cooking competition circuit having won the last two Cochon 555 events (the “Pork Olympics”) and various other battles.

He’s a devoted husband to his high school sweetheart, Allison, and enthusiastically prescribes the scientifically proven formula “happy wife = happy life.” Ask around

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A Heartfelt Welcome

November 3, 2012 · Emily Hoppe

Review of Come In, We’re Closed by Christine Carroll and Jody Eddy

by Emily Hoppe

If you’re lucky, you’ve had a night out that you wanted to never end. Lingering over each flavor, enjoying each sip, the conversation with whomever is across from you meanders away and comes back around. It’s perfect, but as the evening winds down you begin to look longingly around you at the warm restaurant and low-key staff, wishing you could pull up a seat at the bar and kick it with them until well after close (preferably while noshing on leftovers).

This wish is satisfyingly

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Eating Ethiopian: A Primer

November 3, 2012 · Rachel Tepper

Illustration by Torie Partridge

Any night of the week, a step inside Adams Morgan restaurant Meskerem is likely to transport you far from the cold marble buildings and buttoned-up demeanor of downtown. Here, the dim lights cast a warm, yellow light over round silver platters of soft, spongy injera bread topped with colorful dollops of spiced meats and vegetables. The air is thick with the smell of cardamom, ginger, simmered onions and garlic, and filled with the chatter of patrons, huddled over shared plates and using their hands to to dip, eat and repeat.

Meskerem, which opened roughly 30 years

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THE SPICE IS RIGHT

November 3, 2012 · Catherine Down

A Local Source for a World of Flavor

An immunologist by training, Deepa Patke has turned her Northern Virginia home into a scientist’s laboratory for spice blending. It is impossible to find spices on the shelves that are fresher than Patke’s blends, which are ground to order and blended by hand each and every week.

And it shows. The pungent scent of her spices waft through their plastic packaging and perfume a room. By selling primarily at farmers markets, Aromatic Spice Blends is making a strong statement that spices are just as perishable as local produce and should be purchased

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Hooked on Hot

November 3, 2012 · Sam Hiersteiner

The Addiction To Pepper Sauce Hits Home

photos by Hannah Colclazier

According to a recent study, hot sauce production is America’s eighth-fastest-growing industry, expanding almost as quickly as yoga studios, self-tanning products and social network gaming. How is this possible? A brainy Slate writer named Matthew Yglesias provides the answer: “capsaicin, the molecule that makes hot sauce so ‘hot,’ is basically like heroin.”

I have gone to extraordinary lengths for a fix. Lifting bottles of Tabasco from restaurants. Bartering family heirlooms for hard-to-find small-batch varieties like Uncle Brutha’s #10. Showing up at a colleague’s desk, shivering, to ask for a

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Pilgrimage to Noma

November 3, 2012 · Justin Kennedy

How the “The Best Restaurant in the World” is Reaching Washington

Yogurt with Sorrel Juice
Photo courtesy of Charisse Dickens

Is there such a thing as “The Best Restaurant in the World”? I have my doubts. But for the last three years a list published by the UK-based Restaurant magazine has bestowed that honor on an unlikely restaurant located in an old warehouse on the docks of Copenhagen called Noma.

Noma—an amalgam of “Nordic” and “mad,” Danish slang for food—was opened in 2004 by chef René Redzepi and gastronomic entrepreneur Claus Meyer. By 2007, chefs like Fergus Henderson of St.

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WHAT’S NEXT FOR JOEL SALATIN?

November 3, 2012 · Steve Russell

The Rebel of Polyface Helped Plant the Seed that Sprouted an Eat-Local Revolution—and Has Become the Country’s Most Influential Small Farmer. So What Does He Do for an Encore?

Photos By John Robinson

Joel Salatin is spinning his wheels.

A steady drizzle has been falling over Swoope since dawn, and by mid-morning the lush green grass blanketing Salatin’s 550-acre Polyface Farms was as slick as wet soap. Regardless, there were chores to be done, so two farmhands were rounded up to help retrieve a mobile cattle-watering tank with a busted hitch from the middle of a rolling pasture. The young

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Chef Tony Chittum and his “muse”, wife Dominique

Iron Gate Inn

November 3, 2012 · Catherine Down

The Revival of the Oldest Restaurant in the City

By Catherine Down and Justin Kennedy

The famed Iron Gate.

Chef Tony Chittum and his “muse”, wife Dominique

Photos by Kristen Finn

“I was blown away,” Chef Tony Chittum says of the first time he stepped foot inside the Iron Gate Inn. It’d been vacant for roughly two years at that point, and you could stroll right past the ornate eponymous gate without ever knowing that the city’s oldest continuously operating restaurant had, for 82 years, existed on the other side.

To walk through the elegant iron gate, however—under the whitewashed

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