Only in Utah

I like burgers. I like pastrami. But putting then together along with cheese and tomatoes is simply gross.

My favorite kebabs

Some Afghan kebabs over the fire

Kebabs – truly one of the best meals on earth and one quite readily procured here in the DC area, whether in its Lebanese, Turkish, Persian, or Afghan iterations. Here are some of my favorite local places for kebabs:

Proof of life… and insanity

Last weekend my girlfriend, Sam and I tackled an insane recipe for Chocolate Chip Brownie Pillows. That’s right, it’s a fudge brownie wrapped in a chocolate cookie, or as I termed it, the Turducken of baking.

Before people run out to find the recipe (PS: I think it was an insert in a recent Southern Living Magazine), I should warn you, that even with three people helping this recipe took around 4 hours from beginning to end. That said, it came out nearly perfectly.

This post goes to prove that Sam and I haven’t, in fact, fallen off the face of the earth and it proves that we’re little insane.

But come on, it was a brownie wrapped in a cookie!

Bourdain comes to DC

I finally caught up with the recent episode of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations where he comes to the DC area. Overall I thought it was really good. I thought it dwelled a bit too much on the “spy stuff,” but for reasons some of you probably know, I’ve heard a lot of that material. Though, I admit, I never knew the Chadwicks-Aldrich Ames story. I’ll have to add that to the list places on my DC Spy Tour.

Otherwise, I cannot complain about his choice of venues. Jose Andres is always great and I was thrilled to see that he traveled out to Falls Church to have Vietnamese and Ethiopian.

Show grade: A solid A-

What’s your favorite coffee place?

Inside Murky Coffee

I ask this question as I sit in my personal favorite, Murky Coffee in Clarendon. I call it the AOC Clarendon Office and it does often serve as my office closer to home. That said, I hardly ever drink coffee, just an occasional single espresso which, with my caffeine tolerance, is like sticking lit dynamite in my ear.

What’s your favorite coffee place in the metro area? Oh, and if I hear any chains like Starbucks or COSI, there will be much ridiculing in the comment thread.

It takes more than a fedora to make a “hell” of a burger

So in the past month or two, I got to go to two of the newly-opened upmarket burger joints in the DC area. One is an overhyped version of five guys and the other provides the city’s best burger in a unique atmosphere slightly reminiscent of the “soup nazi.”

The 1st Ever Two Foodie Brothers Pizza Prize

By both Aaron and Sam…

Sam: Looking back, we didn’t really know what we were getting into? On what turned out to be a crisp, autumn-come-early evening, Aaron, myself, and family friend and honorary Stollar, Katie Buoni, embarked on what should have been a fantastic, but otherwise normal evening out in DC. That’s before the first pizza was served.

Aaron: The original idea was just to go get some of DC’s best pizza. For the past 4-5 years, that has mean choosing between Pizzeria Paradiso in Dupont or Georgetown or 2 Amys up by the National Cathedral. The plan was to give 2 Amys a shot first. I was the only one who had ever been there, so I led the way. They’d just opened a small second floor dining area, so I thought the era of two-hour waits might be behind us. I was wrong.

We’re on it…

Sorry for the long delay. Sam and I have some stuff coming down the pipeline, don’t worry.

Reviews coming:

• Sea Pearl in Merrifield
• Sherwood’s Landing in St, Michael’s, Md.
• What makes a good pho place?

Here are some places I am going to try to get to and write about in the next month or so…

• Ray’s Hell Burger in Arlington
• New Four Sisters in Merrifield
• Yechon in Annandale

Stay Tuned!

Sam actually lived with these people

Of course, this guy is from Wisconsin…

I believe Big Macs fall right under the established food groups of beer, sausage and cheese and mainstays of the Wisconsin diet.

A post for Sam

As you’ll surely find from talking to him or reading his posts, my brother Sam is an immense fan of bacon. That is the understatement of the year but I’ll leave it to him to describe his relationship with that particular meat product.

That being said, when I saw this, I figured he would appreciate it. I know he likes bacon, and I know that as a graduate of a fine Southern university like UVA, he probably knows how to appreciate bourbon.

This tries to put the two together.

One of our new friends (I can’t remember her name — too many “Cool as a Cucumbers”, I fear) turned us on to the existence of bacon infused bourbon. “Surely,” I thought, “This cannot be real. I am not that good a person.” A few days and a little internet research later, I confirmed that, despite my moral failings, the Lord has indeed blessed the world with so grand a creation — nature’s two most perfect foods, fused as one!