Tag Archives | feature

THE URBAN FORAGERS

Lifelong D.C. residents form interesting culinary collaborations across a number of fields

We met while picking edible weeds out of the cracks of the sidewalk.

It was an hour-long tour that lasted all of a city block in the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood. Roadside Food Projects designed the event in honor of Eat Local First Week to acquaint locavores with the bounty of their backyards. It doesn’t get any more local than tasting the terroir of the concrete in the heart of the city.

THE NUTRITION REVOLUTIONARY

Local activist instituted sweeping nutritional guidelines and innovative food sourcing programs to ensure healthy food access for all

When does a box of macaroni and cheese become more harmful than helpful to a hungry person? The box can cost as little as 99 cents at a local Safeway supermarket, can be kept on the shelves for years and is easy to make.

All pluses for food pantries that serve low-income communities. But that same box also contains over 1,500 milligrams of sodium (or two-thirds of a person’s recommended daily intake), 720 calories and contains no fresh ingredients or fruits and vegetables.

THE COFFEE PROPHET

Local coffee roaster transforming the lives of Ethiopian farmers and his local community through a newly formed benefit corporation

For Tebabu Assefa, native of Ethiopia and local coffee visionary, a simple proverb sums up his life’s work: buno dabo naw (“Coffee is our bread”). As the creator of Blessed Coffee—one of the nation’s first benefit corporations—no one better understands how coffee, both the beans and the beverage, are critical to the survival of Ethiopia’s identity and economic health.

THE REAL ESTATE CHEF

Out of the kitchen and onto the construction site, a former chef uses his kitchen experience to transform food retail

Last June, in the waning days of Café Atlantico, executive chef Richie Brandenburg cooked a six-course dinner for 30. The open kitchen was a glowing stage, a contrast to the candlelit dim of the dining room.

Dressed in chef whites, the 38-year-old Brandenburg stood in rapt concentration as he drizzled halibut crudo with vinaigrette. Satisfied, he looked up to a receiving line of wait staff and handed off plates in pairs. As the last of the

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THE ICE CREAM ENTREPRENEURS

Baltimore firm offers urban youth scoops of skills and opportunity

When Mike Prokop made a delivery to a customer last week, he could tell that they thought he was coming to rob them. Not expecting him, they seemed to breathe a sigh of relief when they realized that he was just there to deliver ice cream. Darius Wilmore, one of Mike’s mentors and a key leader at Taharka Brothers Ice Cream, noted the irony of choosing ice cream as the focus of a company dedicated to young black people: “You’ve got young black men, who

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THE MIX MASTERS

D.C.’s talented bartenders are putting the city on the map as a destination for quality drinking

It’s midday on a breezy Friday, and Derek Brown is insisting that I drink. I’m still on the clock, but I don’t argue. Brown, the owner and master mixologist behind The Passenger and its cool-kid secret bar, The Columbia Room, isn’t the type who relents when his mind is set on something.

We’re visiting with Owen Thomson, the lead bartender of superstar chef Jose Andres’ eight-restaurant empire. Thomson doesn’t hesitate to carry out Brown’s orders: He serves up an elegant “vegetal”

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THE AGRICULTURAL INNOVATORS

Diverse effort brings ag to suburban Prince George’s County

“Everything we imagine, we do. Sometimes in the same day,” says Margaret Morgan-Hubbard, founder and CEO of ECO City Farms in Edmonston, Maryland, speaking from within the Food Shed, an up-cycled shipping container in the process of being outfitted as a community kitchen.

The narrow space of the container itself is the manifestation of Morgan-Hubbard’s conviction. The day before, its exterior had been painted a sunny goldenrod by a group of volunteers. The very same weekend they built a new rain garden to help reduce erosion and remediate

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THE CULINARY INCUBATOR

In a small room with big plans, Seasonal Pantry is a hub for artisan businesses to flourish

Crouched on a set of stairs behind the dining area of Seasonal Pantry, Dan O’Brien is explaining in great detail— as if to an experienced chef, not a writer—how he slow-cooked salmon for the evening’s dinner. Hovering over a slab of leftover fish on a diner’s plate, O’Brien shows me how to gauge the perfection of this bright, thick cut of fish. He’s peeved that every last diner has not gorged on the dish flavored with smoked butter and

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THE GARDEN GURUS

Their harvest includes enlivened kids, revitalized community

Two years ago, the empty lot on Marion Street in D.C.’s Shaw neighborhood was blighted. Even the cats that skulked through the alley behind it passed without breaking stride.

Those were the pre–City Blossoms days, before Lola and Rebecca. The space looks a little different now, with its hand-painted signs, sculptures and islands of herbs and vegetables. More importantly, the community feels different.

“City Blossoms is a nonprofit dedicated to kid-driven, community- engaging, creative green spaces,” said Lola Bloom, who co-founded the organization with her friend Rebecca Lemos. “We

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