Come with us on a food journey supporting local dining spots
By 1 p.m. Wednesday Blue Door Smokehouse had sold out of brisket for the day.
Count at least one triumph for the beleaguered restaurant business in this uncharted world of social distancing thanks to the coronavirus.
I live within easy walking distance of Blue Door on Walton Avenue and, although I typically don’t eat out a lot, have been trying this past week to patronize local restaurants more often to stand with them in these difficult times.
When it was still okay to eat in a public dining room, I used it as an opportunity to spend time with friends. Now that it’s a takeout business only — how fast things have changed — it’s still an opportunity to get out of the house, usually on foot, interact a little with other humans and, of course, get something good to eat.
Blue Door didn’t disappoint. I ordered a pulled pork sandwich with their wonderful potato salad as my side (Samantha Fore and I agree it’s the best because it really tastes like potatoes) and two pounds of pork to take with me. Some I’ll share with an older friend who isn’t getting out much; some we’ll save to eat at home.
On Sunday I walked to Magee’s Bakery and got pecan Danish. Magee’s is about as local as it gets, a mainstay on Main Street since the ‘50s and one of the first places we visited when we moved to the neighborhood with a then 4-year-old daughter. In the ensuing years it’s broadened its menu to include not just sausage biscuits but also trendier options like a garden biscuit and avocado bagels as well as my favorite, Egg Nest, hash browns (the nest) topped with a fried egg, wilted spring greens and Siracho mayo. There’s also a full range of lunch sandwiches, which my nephew always likes to sample when he visits from New York. (I might add that Magee’s has been a special blessing to me this spring, generously saving coffee grounds and egg shells to boost the nutrients in my garden’s soil. After all, Linda Blackford told us to grow Victory Gardens.)
Another day, a friend and I walked to Sav’s, the West African restaurant that relocated to Main Street last year from its longtime location near the UK campus. You rarely go into the restaurant without encountering Mamadou Savané, its founder and namesake. On Saturday, he told us that business had been slow but that he was keeping his staff on, worried about the hardship reduced hours would cause those who are the primary support of their families. I had the Leaf and Beef, a delightful beef dish with spinach and peanut and African seasonings. My companion had the goat, which was complex and good, too. (Yes, you can still share, you just have to be careful about the timing. Split up all the food before any utensil touches a mouth. After that, stick to your own plate. Actually, you should do it that way even when we’re not in virus lockdown.)
The Bridge is the only new restaurant I’ve tried so far in my viral food journeys, perhaps the only thing that would cause me to link “luck” and “pandemic” in one sentence. It was a great fortune to reach out to yet another friend for a lunch and she suggested this wonderful Mid-Eastern/American restaurant on Romany Road in Chevy Chase. We shared a Fab Five, a collection of appetizers that were just wonderful – smoky babaganus, piquant cacik (yogurt, cucumbers, mint and garlic), creamy hummus and lovely saksuka, a mixture of eggplant, tomato ragout and garlic that was new to me but won’t be a stranger. Really, it was enough for the two of us for lunch but we also had an order of the spicy and tasty adana kabab.
And finally, I had to have a marinara pizza from Rolling Oven, our neighborhood pizza place on National Avenue inside Mirror Twin Brewing where we’ve had so many wonderful Wednesday evenings eating pizza and playing trivia. The cooks were good humored despite the slow business. The pizza was great at home with a salad and wine, but it was different. It was just sad not being in the Mirror Twin barroom with the beer-stoked trivia crowd.
My point here is that we want to insure that all these wonderful places, and many more in neighborhoods around the city that I don’t know, survive these dark days and live to feed and water us when we are, again, a carefree population.
To preserve the wonderful restaurant community that enriches us, culinarily, culturally and economically, and to support so many of the employees who make our lives better, make the sacrifice, get a great takeout and leave a big tip.