FOODSERVICE MONTHLY'S Sauce on the Side

December Foodservice Monthly Salutes WC&R

Guests who attended the recent coming out party for the Women Chefs & Restaurateurs' Crowning Cuisine 2009 Calendar could not help but be moved by the power of the women in restaurants in Washington and Virginia ... see my post Live from Arlington. They grace the cover of the December issue of Foodservice Monthly. Inside you will find a profile of Santi Zabaleta and his A & H Market, the Cornerstone Industry Awards of the Delaware Restaurant Association and another Immigration column from our expert columnist Becki Young. Check for the latest columns in the right sidebar that will all be updated in the next 24-48 hours.

Subscribers will notice that we have added a glossy wrap to the magazine ... I think you will appreciate the upgrade in quality.

Gaylord Tree Lighting: Fire, Light, Water ... and Snow

It was like a kid's dream (one of those sugar-induced comas) ... the Christmas kick-off: a 60-foot synthetic glass Christmas tree hanging from the atrium roof, a synchronized water fountain show in front of the tree and fireworks over the Potomac. Mrs. Claus stopped by and some elf with green hair who I learned later is Samy K from 99.5 (I thought he worked for Mr. Claus) with songs and the story of Christmas playing in the background ... that was all going on between 5:45 and 6 p.m. last night. Did I mention they can create indoor snow along the Holiday Lane? This was the year to see it without a fuss ...once the word gets out, the kids and strollers will fill the Gaylord National tree lighting ceremony for the annual event.

Congratulations Are In Order for ...

April Fulton of The Food Scribe, Tiffany McGettigan of The Garden Apartment, Colleen Levine of Foodie Tots, and Alison McConnell of The Humble Gourmand, who won an Eric Ripert photo contest where the NYC chef wants to create an interactive dinner party on his Web site Avec Eric.

Ripert's site introduced the contest with some guidelines: "It is always nice to capture the memory of a great experience with a photograph. We want to see what you can do and what you have made! So during the party, take plenty of pictures showing the dinner you have created. After everything is cleaned up and the guests have left, post your photos in our gallery and please feel free to share a short story or description of your dinner party with us and others."

As April says in her post announcing their win ... all she has to do now she has to figure out how to divide the winning prize: the Olympus Stylus 1030SW camera.

Be sure to read April's original post ...

Day Trip to the Beard House

After closing (literally, see the previous post) Les Halles on Monday night, I slipped away Tuesday morning on the 6:45 am train to NYC to cover a chef/restaurant appearance at the James Beard House for my friend from our learning days in the hotel world in Atlanta. Judith is now the GM of the Radisson Plaza in Minneapolis and I went up to see her chef Paul Lynch (FireLake Grill House) and their team prepare Minnesota "local" foods for the Beard crowd. I helped by photographing the event -- you can see a sampling in my FOTO GALLERY. One of my favorite dishes was the Heirloom Corn Crusted Star Prairie Crimson Trout served with brussels sprouts, house cured Duroc pancetta and cider dressing. They definitely won over New Yorkers with their natural hospitality and great food.

One power nap after dinner and I was back on the 3am train to NCR ... in time for Wednesday's adventures. 

Au Revoir Les Halles Washington

For fifteen years Les Halles has been the master of steak & frites at 1201 Pennsylvania Ave. It was perhaps never the best meal in town, but its very French and very bistro sensibility always made it a favorite stop for me. There was a hospitality and an ambiance that spoke to me in very positive, warm terms. Over the years I got to know owner Philippe Lajaunie from invites to his occasional Les Amis dinners. One year he gave us a tour of France's regions and cuisines. Every year he gave us the Bastille Day Waiter's race. Philippe is a tennis lover so he always supported tennis in the District. The reason why I am talking in the past tense is that at our Les Amis dinner tonight that was called on short notice, Philippe announced that his negotiations with the landlord of his 15 year lease had come to an end and that the restaurant would close tonight and not reopen in the morning. Poof ... Les Halles Washington is gone.

As we ate, some of the staff were finding out for the first time the reality of a rumor they had heard. I had steak and frites one more time ... creme brulee for dessert ... Chateau de Beaucastel 2004 in magnums (I thought to get Philippe to sign the last bottle). The 17 of us in the room toasted Phillipe, ourselves, the restaurant, the staff ... and life. It's my first restaurant wake ... and it had a surreal aura to it.

I went because I always enjoyed the diversity of a Les Halles dinner ... so many of these media events are the usual cast of characters. Sure at times we can freshen our stories, but we've bored ourselves silly with the pleasantries and inane tales. At the events Charlie Brotman and Kerry Bohen would put together, you would find a mix of food writers, politicians, television news people, academics, lobbyists, sports folks. You could talk without the fear of someone wincing at a story told one too many times.

Les Halles was a place where you could find mussels, tripe, escargot, charcuterie and of course steak and frites. That and a nice French wine can make the world go round.

It's over. Au Revoir!

foto: Philippe is telling us at this moment he is closing he restaurant tonight ... Bob Madigan, WTOP's Man About Town is getting it all down for the radio news with his microphone extended.

OpenTable Meets iPhone

 
OpenTable Inc.  has opened its online reservations for diners as a free application for iPhone and iPod touch. It is now available on the Apple App Store. OpenTable for iPhone allows diners to check the real-time availability of multiple restaurants in the area. It found a new place for me a mile from my home with its iPhone location toy. The app can get the restaurants’ location, make confirmed reservations, and then you can follow directions to the restaurant.

“The combination of allowing people to match their actual location with availability at nearby restaurants makes OpenTable for iPhone and iPod touch unique,” said Ann Shepherd, vice president of marketing at OpenTable. “All the necessary steps, from choosing a restaurant to actually confirming your reservation, can be done simply and quickly, without ever leaving the application or having to make calls to multiple restaurants.” UrbanSpoon has the cool cocktail party shake and find feature, but OpenTable users will be happy to download this more practical app.

OpenTable for iPhone was developed in close collaboration with Context Optional, a social marketing company.

FOOD WINE DRINK 29

What a delicious surprise to find the tunes for tonight's FOOD WINE DRINK sitting in my Inbox this evening from my friend CounterIntelligence ... I found in her list some old favorites, a couple of new versions of old songs and plenty of good music.

Enjoy. I did.

Oysters Taste Like the Sea

 Thanks to my friends at JJ McDonnell (Kurt Friesland, Steve Vilnit and George McManus) for inviting me to one of their educational seminars for friends, chefs and restaurateurs. Wednesday morning at Oceanaire in Baltimore close to 50 of us gathered for a class and tasting of oysters from Canada (Pangea) and Rappahannock River in Virginia.

It’s never too early in the a.m. to sample oysters from Virginia’s Travis and Ryan Croxton. Their Rappahannock River Oysters have brought back regional pride to the bay’s favorite briny delicacy. Sauce on the Side friend Melissa McCart at Counter Intelligence tells their story in a fine read in her Washington Post story that you can see they placed strategically on the table.

My favorite on this day was the return of one of the old favorites (gone for eight decades) … the Lynnhaven oyster sold as the Witch Duck. Grown by local oyster farmer Cameron Chalmers, Witch Ducks offer up the simple salty taste of the Bay. The taste thing about oysters is quite simply stated by author Rowan Jacobsen in his A Geography of Oysters: "Oysters taste like the sea."

foto: Ryan and Travis Croxton

And the Winner of the DCCK Foodfight 2008 Is ...

Well, I don't know. You see in the middle of round three of the annual DC Central Kitchen Capital Foodfight, I was asked to leave the stage. At the moment I was dismissed, I was in my neutral corner ... waiting for an appropriate moment to move to take a photograph of a chef in action. And then I would have moved back to my space out of the way. That's how I was operating. That's how I always work. People who are familiar with Foodservice Monthly know me for my foto choronicles of our great hospitality world. I explained to the DCCK official that If I had to leave the stage, I couldn't do my job and I would leave. She said goodbye. I said goodbye.

Up to that point Peter Smith (PS 7's) had defeated David Deshaies (Citronelle Michel Richard) and Stephen Lewandowski (Tribeca Grill, NYC) had won his bout with Tony Conte (The Oval Room). We were in the middle of the contest between the first two winners when I was asked to leave.

The final results should be on the DCCK Web site tomorrow. I will send the pictures taken at that point by me to the chefs for their own use. The non-cooking fotos will appear in the December issue ... as I met many cool supporters of the wonderful mission of DCCK.

I did meet Walter Nicholls (a key food writer for years at the Washington Post) who has just accepted the position of Washington Bureau head for BizBash. It will be great to see the Nicholls byline on a regular basis again.

(foto: Peter Smith working with his great knife skills in the middle of round two.)

Sheppard Mansion's Andrew Little Wins Mid-Atlantic Taste of Elegance

Andrew Little, executive chef at Sheppard Mansion, Hanover, Pa. won top honors at the annual Mid-Atlantic Taste of Elegance held Monday night at the Renaissance Harborplace Hotel in Baltimore. If you visit his blog you will see his three days of preparation for his winning dish: pork and sauerkraut. It's a wonderful diary of a working chef on a mission.

The competition is produced each year by Howard Greenblatt, National Pork Board foodservice marketing manager. Using pork as the center of the plate, 10 chefs created dishes for judges that included chefs  Mark Salter, The Inn at Perry Cabin, and Nancy Longo, Pierpoint Restaurant.

Little won with his Pork and Sauerkraut dish. Attending the event was his supplier of Berkshire pork: Beau Ramsburg of Rettland Farm in Gettsyburg.