Unlike most transplanted New Yorkers, I do not pine for the shadowy canyons of Wall Street, the ever-milling rugby scrum of its famed avenues, the night life or the the-ater. I do, however, miss the food. DC proper is not yet a food town, though the food revolution that has shaken the rest of America seems to be peeping through the keyholes. I am probably jaded, having grown up 10 blocks from Zabars, but both ingredients and equipment seem much, much harder to come by here than in New York, and while some cuisines are well represented (the Ethiopian is by far the best in America), others are practically absent (cough-Chinese-cough). But the two most gaping holes in my life are pizza and bagels.
To be fair, this is partly because to a lifelong New Yorker, there is no other sort of pizza than the large, thin, New York slice. We may disagree amongst ourselves about the theological details--crispy or floppy, thick border or thin, sweet sauce or spicy, and how much grease is too much? But basically, we're all in the same church, and it's a highly localized one. Chicago pizza may be a fine foodstuff, as long as one consumes it without trying to imagine that it is actual pizza. But it is no substitute for the One True Faith.
We will, of course, pass discreetly over the Dominosian Heresy. This is a family blog.
But in the area of bagels, the problem is not one of perception; it is one of all too grim reality. Outside of New York, what is called a bagel is almost never a real bagel; it is a round piece of bread with a hole in the middle. It is also a crime against humanity; as one friend said: "Einstein's bagels are so awful, they're anti-semitic." A real bagel, no more than an hour or two out of the oven, has a delightfully chewy exterior surrounding a core of soft, warm bread. It does not cry out to be split open and toasted in order to disguise the fact that the store owner has been using it to check erosion in his back gully for several weeks before declaring it stale enough to sell to the general public.
I have been bemoaning the lack of bagels in DC for quite some time--long enough that a friend just sent me this item from gridskipper, alleging that decent bagels can be found in the DC area. I am extremely sceptical--but not too sceptical to try all eight. I'll report back as I go.
Well, there's a spot not exactly in the D.C. area (Bodo's Bagels in Charlottsville, VA) that got approval from one of your fellow Atlantic bloggers, Matt Y, who also happens to be from NYC. Take a nice road trip to the 'ville...you can get some good wine too.
No great expectations for DC bagels (It's the water?!). But if you find yourself near Cleveland Park, try a slice from Vace's.
Please do! As a non-New Yorker (a half-Jewish one, at that), I have gone through life skeptical that a bagel could ever be exciting. I don't like them toasted and every non-toasted one I'd tasted was pretty bland. I was converted a few months ago upon finally getting a real NYC bagel at a place that didn't even have a toaster. What a difference there is! If you find such good stuff in DC, I want to know about it.
Just try to get real Italian bread anywhere but Upstate New York. Metro NY's "Italian bread" is simply a slightly larger French loaf.
As for bagels, it's a mystery to me why folks outside Long Island or NYC just can't seem to make real bagels. There are some Upstate places that come close, but they still aren't the same.
But why anyone should prefer NY-style pizza to Chigago-stkle pizza is a mystery to me. Dominos's represents everything wrong about NY-style pizza. When you can't tell the difference between the crust and the box it came in, there's a problem.
heh, I sense a whole new writing career in your future, M...
to-may-to, to-mah-to on the pizza, as I greatly enjoy both, having spent my formative college years firmly in the camp of Chicago, but never disparaging the NY style...
Could be worse... in the wilds of Colorado... you'se pretty much on your own.
When I met my wife, she had lived all over the western US, but hadn't been east of the Mississippi (or, for all intents and purposes, I-25).
Sometimes, if the subject of bagels happened to come up, she would remark that "Seattle has really good bagels." I would just shake me head and say, "No. They don't." She'd point out that I've never been to Seattle, but I would assure her that that didn't actually matter.
If you want a really good bagel, ignore New York City altogether and head north to Montreal.
Try the Chinatown/Verizon Center area if you haven't. I like Matchbox's pizza (and mini-burgers) the best of any I've had locally and the Chinese food in Chinatown is quite good (although not as good as I've had in Manhattan). Full Kee on worth a try.
I know DC has a Chinatown, so what's the problem with Chinese food?
Baltimore has a (very) Little Italy (about 3 blocks by 3 blocks). You might find something you like there. Also, the Pikesville suburb of B-more is where to look for decent bagels.
I agree with you completely on the bagel issue, except that, living in suburban Wisconsin, Einstein Bros bagels are so much better than anything else you can get around here that you can pretty much pretend they're good.
My solution is to make my own.
I've lived in all 4 corners of the country at one time or another and I've found good boiled bagels everywhere I've gone. (I second the Bodo's recommendation.)
Do not, however, get me started on the state of salmon outside the Pacific Northwest.
I'd lament the pizza and bagel selection in Denver (they have chocolate chip "bagels" here), but instead, I have two questions:
1) Patsy's or Grimaldi's?
2) Ess-a or H&H?
Definitely Esse-type over the undercooked soft H&H.
The big question at NYU was always who had the best village pizza; Ray's (the real one, on 11th and 6th), St. Mark's, both of which were great but too cheesy to be super, Ben's (my own pick) or John's (love the brick oven thing!).
I'm no NY-er or DC-tonion, but I like to go to this place when I'm in the DC area -> http://local.yahoo.com/details?id=12683037
I think they kick Einstein's ass lying down.
Try living in California, the place where ethnic food goes to die, and is resurrected as "California cuisine."
I spend a fortune having Gabila's Coney Island knishes expressed to me but, believe me, it's worth it.
I don't want to make great claims for Matchbox, but the guy who says it isn't bad for this area is right, plus it is vaguely NY style. As for the bagels, don't make the mistake of trying those eight places. Maybe try one of the kosher places in Wheaton, or ask around at somewhere like Firehook for a private baker who does them.
True bagels are from Montreal, not the big fluffy tasteless things they make in New York.
Huh? Have you ever been to San Gabriel? Garden Grove? Long Beach? Glendale? Don't try to tell me that California doesn't have a ludicrously wonderful variety of great ethnic food. I don't care if you're after Tongan or Persian, Cambodian or Salvadoran...we've got it (not to mention all the great Chinese in the San Gabriel Valley).
Bake your own? Move to East London?
The only way to get a real bagel in most parts of the US is to make a batch yourself. It can be done, and nothing else compares. (It helps to have a younger sister who likes to experiment with new bread recipes.)
As for pizza in Colorado...we have Beau Jo's (the original in Idaho Springs, not the branch locations, which don't do the name justice), and we have Woody's wood-fired. These may not be Chicago-style or New York-style, but they are excellent in their own right.
Years ago, in my folks' hometown, there was a local restaurant run by a couple with extremely thick Italian accents. Sadly, they were already in their elder years when I was young, and the business was retired at least 20 years ago when one of the two passed out of this world. I have just enough memory of the food to know that I have never tasted hand-made pizza or homestyle spaghetti like that since, and quite possibly never will again.
Rex the crap Dominos's makes can't not be compared to a real NY slice.
What is really hard to find out side of New York is a bialy. I bet most folks won't even know what it is.
The first thing I did when I got home for Thankgiving was eat all the pizza available in my parent's home. Little Kenny's in Miller Place, NY makes the best pizza on earth.
And why is the NY area alone in embracing garlic knots?
I've had lousy 'za in NYC, but Chicago has never done me wrong. Gino's East 4-ever!
It's actually surprising how few places in NYC make real bagels. Most places they are just rolls with a hole and they are as big as your head. Real bagels are small, have been boiled, and don't need to be toasted. H&H bleh.....
The best bagels in NYC are from the Bagel Hole on 7th ave in Park Slope.
Also, Cosi square bagels are a crime against humanity.
Try getting decent sourdough bread in NY or anywhere east of the Sierra/Cascade line.
"Try living in California,......... "
People go to LA and think they are in California. It's not called the West Coast of Iowa for nothing. That's as uninformed as going the NY and thinking you're in America.
And what do you mean by "ethnic food" - Southern Italian or whatnot? That's a pretty narrow notion of "ethnic".
Reference Chinese food - there is no one Chinese cuisine, so bear that in mind - don't go to "Chinatown" and look for Sichuan food. Most Chinatowns are Cantonese. The exceptions are Flushing, which is Fuzhou people. Don't bother looking for any other cuisine in those districts, because generally there is no demand to drive any kind of quality. Also it does you no good to go a "Chinatown" even for Cantonese food in most cases if the surrounding countryside doesn't provide good vegetables, and I don't mean good broccoli in place of gailan and so on. Not close to good enough.
San Gabriel Valley is basically a colony of Taiwan, so you can get the full array there, since all that is available in Taiwan. Richmond BC is also very good - restaurants popping out of the walls as you dive down the street.
I think this problem has actually gotten better in the past 10 years.
To add to your list, Brooklyn Bagel in Arlington is good. On a weekend morning you can frequently get bagels still hot from the oven.
The best thing that ever happened to my stomach was moving back to Jersey from DC. The pizza in the DC area alone was enough to send me into the fetal position. You know things are bad when a Domino's clone like Pizza Boli winds up regularly winning awards as the best pizza in the region...the thought just makes me sick to this day.
As for the bagels, well I just decided they weren't enough of a staple to even bother with. And don't even get me started on the lack of a decent chicken wing!
That said, I really, really miss El Pollo Rico in Arlington. If nothing else, the DC area has the country's best Peruvian chicken to go along with the great food in "little Ethiopia." Alas, the average American can't turn Peruvian chicken and Ethiopian food into a staple diet. We need pizza!
Best za in NYC is Two Boots. In the west village.
People outside NYC don't know food.
Absolute Bagels on 108th & Broadway. Run by a Thai family whose patriarch trained at Ess-a-Bagel.
Full Kee is indeed good. I can't compare it to NYC places but it is far better than the Americanized run of the mill.
I'm with you, M, on the sorry state of bagel-dom in metro DC. It deteriorates even further as you move out into the NoVA suburbs. We can thank the mass-market supermarket bakeries. A bagel is NOT a donut-shaped roll. Fortunately, my son's GF lives in that NW quadrant of Baltimore, I'm giving him orders he needs to come back next time he visits her with a few honest-to-goodness REAL bagels or I'm taking away the car keys....
Domino's is indeed much worse than a NY pizza, but they are the same style. In Domino's case, the crust is almost identical with the pizza box, and some NYC pizzas are not too far off that. When I lived on Long Island, my favorite pizza was actually from Pizza Hut! Is that sad, or what?
MMmmm, toasted bialy with cream cheese! Always better than a bagel.
"Try getting decent sourdough bread in NY or anywhere east of the Sierra/Cascade line."
Saying you can't get good sourdough bread in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania is like saying you can't get good beer in Germany.
NY Pizza is overrated - too much grease, sloppily made crusts. It's better in Philadelphia or Jersey - or it was 20 years ago anyway.
DC is still not a food town, but it is much better than it used to be.
With bagels you have a fair point, though Bagels and Baguettes (right next to the Heritage Foundation) is pretty good. But if you're looking for "food revolution" pizza, Matchbox has a brick oven and makes some awesome (albeit definitely not New York-style), ones. It's this somewhat pretentious pizza that is usually tied to the food revolution.
And it is nothing but the worst injustice to fail to note the various [Authentic/Original/Authentic Original] Jumbo Slices of Adams Morgan.
What's the name of that Ethiopian place in Adams-Morgan? Have not been there in quite some time, but that was excellent.
There's some good bagel places in Bethesda - Or there used be. Back in the 90s/
Re food:
Please shut up. Please shut up. Please shut up.
Thank you.
Bagels are one of the best examples of "can't get good ones here" food. Good ones really are hard to get outside of NYC and some other enclaves.
Pizza's a tougher call, since there are so many competing styles. I've eaten at Gino's East in Chicago, John's in NYC, Frank Pepe's in New Haven, and other pizza temples. They're all different, and they're all good. But there's a limit - I agree that any right-thinking person must agree that Domino's is hideous.
Coming from the Mississippi Delta as I do, I can add barbecue to that same category. There are so many regional styles (I'm partial to Memphis, naturally), leading to arguments even among people who know what they're talking about. (If Dave above really thinks that no one outside NYC knows food, I'd like to know where he gets barbecue or fried catfish and hushpuppies). Now I live near Boston, and I'm surprised at how many barbecue places have sprung up. None of them are great, but a couple are decent, and they'll do.
But my recommendation for any good regional or ethnic food is to avoid shiny places in nice neighborhoods surrounded by good shopping. Odds are worse there. You'll have better luck in ugly strip storefront shopping plazas and the like, whether its barbecue, bacalao, bialys, or biryani you're after.
Why don't you make your own? There's an adequate recipe for bagels in Joan Nathan's "Jewish Cooking In America".
Herself:
DC proper is not yet a food town, though the food revolution that has shaken the rest of America seems to be peeping through the keyholes.
So does this mean Sutton Place is gone? Maybe that's not what you mean.
I find it hard to believe that DC is the LAST PLACE IN THE COUNTRY to get hit by whatever "food revolution" you're talking about. If you're going to be a NY snob, be a NY snob, but don't drag in the rest of us who don't live in NY or DC.
I do enjoy both Chicago style and NYC style pizza, with a slight preference for the Chicago style. But in my experience, one significant difference is that you can get decent (not great, but pretty good) deep dish in many places throughout the US, whereas good NYC style pizza gets hard to find outside of NYC.
I've been made fun of countless times in Boston for the bagels and pizza business - but people quiet up fast when they head to NY with me.
Another thing that you can't get outside of the NYC radius is a good breakfast sandwich. Two eggs on a soft roll with sausage and cheese with coffee and juice for $3. Unavailable anywhere else to the best of my knowledge.
Rich,
Absolutely right. My fiance and her sister are both from Queens originally, but we're now living in the suburbs of Dallas. They've been generally very happy with the food here (we live in Addison specifically, which is packed with excellent restaurants) but have lately been asking me where they can get a good bacon-egg-and-cheese-on-a-roll, and I'm at a loss. There's all the fast food options, which really aren't terrible, but not much in the way of $3 hot, fresh, non fast-food breakfast.
I pondering this quite a bit during the years I lived in NYC. A co-worker and I often wondered - with practically everything in Manhattan being higher price than elsewhere in the country, particularly the suburbs, what miracle explains the cheap, hot, fresh breakfast?
I know that a New Yorker would not refer to it as "pizza" but when I was at the UMd 25 years ago, I loved Ledo's in College Park - as did everyone who came down to visit from Jersey. I understand that they've since franchised the place, so maybe it's not the same. It's a really bad sign that it hasn't come up in a thread about DC area pizza.
I grew up in NYC and lived in DC during the mid-1970s, when I attended Georgetown. There was not a decent pizza to be had in the whole city. I can't believe that there is still no good pizza there. I was baffled then and I am baffled now.
your right anony-mouse, I debated greatly about including beau's in Idaho Springs, because they are kinda one-off. I think the reason that the branch locations in the front range aren't as good, and why it's different from everyone else is just the basic physics of altitude. IdS is 7500' and the front range is 5500' So everything cooks just a bit different.
Perhaps that's the sense memory in all this... we act as though something should be the same kind of good wherever we go... but things are always different.
My experience has been that Beau Jo's is amazing pizza when eaten on the way home after a day in the mountains. Driving up there in the afternoon? Eh, not so much.
"Coming from the Mississippi Delta as I do, I can add barbecue to that same category..."
I led a barbecue-free existance until I was about 25. I went to N.Carolina and went straight from ignoramus to snob. I can't buy any barbecue I like here in the DC area, so I bought a grill and giant bags of charcoal and wood chips. It's not quite right yet, but it's gettin there.
I found good bagels when I saw a kosher/pareve bakery next to a Jewish community Center. Maybe I can find a good barbecue joint next to a Tarheel community center.
"Saying you can't get good sourdough bread in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania is like saying you can't get good beer in Germany."
No, no - you are talking about sourdough. You can get various kinds of sourdough lots of places. Rye bread in Germany is a sourdough. I am talking about Sourdough, with a proper chewy crust and the right structure to the body of the loaf. It has to be noticeably sour. The starters need certain climates, and the crust needs certain weather to form properly. Those conditions occur only in marine climates. You are probably eating some kind of German stuff in Pennsylvania and Ohio.
I will agree that DC is not a pizza and bagels town. But when I was in Manhattan in September for a concert at the Garden, I tasked my sister with researching the best place to get real, authentic NY-style pizza. Though what we got was excellent, and forgive me, I couldn't tell you the name of the place, it was super expensive. We spent $60 for a large pizza and two pitchers of beer!
All I know is that I left NYC much poorer and not particularly impressed with what we ate. We should have gone to Gray's Papaya for some hot dogs.
I constantly bemoaned the lack of bagels, pizza, and other staples of my northeast upbringing when I was in DC. This led to Peter's theory of cuisine development: immigrant groups help set the cuisine in any given city. Pretty basic, huh? The northeast attracted a lot of Jewish and Italian immigrants, and they got cuisine based on those staples. DC didn't start attracting large numbers of immigrants until the second half of this century, so the city (and it's environs) excel at those types of cuisine, like Ethiopian, or all the amazing asian cuisines in NoVa (which is where the newer Asian immigrants live)
"1) Patsy's or Grimaldi's?"
While both are quite good, they are both a cut below the best places like Luzzo's and Una Pizza Napoletana. Di Fara is also top notch, if you're willing to take the subway out to nowhere.
Elite pizza in America is weird in that 100% of the 30 best pizzerias in the Western hemisphere are in just two cities: NYC and New Haven. Live anywhere else, and it simply ain't happening.
montreal was an excellent tip.. while your at it try schwartz's smoked meat or several fine yiddish bakeries off bathurst st in toronto.... but the real winner in bagels at least (and this includes your new yonkers) is a small craft baker in vancouver bc 's kitsilano beach area called SEIGELS... true they must import their smoked meat from montreal but the bagels are truly authentic too bad for dc....can i overnight some to you at the pressclub?
regards
gert
When I lived in Adams Morgan I used to buy bagels from a liquor store called The Comet. I doubt they were really all that great. But they were usually warm. Plus I liked being able to do one-stop shopping for bagels and gin.
New York? bagels? um, I realize that New Yorkers see the place as the center of the world but that's about as provincial as claiming that the best dim sum in the world is from New York based on your narrow personal experience (i.e. you've never been to Hong Kong). As others have mentioned, you need to go up north to Montreal for the real thing. Same goes for smoked meat sandwiches.
Adams Morgan has the best Ethiopian restaurants outisde of adis-a-baba.
Check out Mr Chen's Organic Chinese Cuisine. Not a super great atmosphere, but they deliver and the food is great. It's near Woodley Park/Adams Morgan.
http://www.campusfood.com/restaurant.asp?campusid=39&mlid=18493.
I second & third the commenters who recommend Matchbox Pizza near the basketball arena/Chinatown. They make great pizza, brick oven style. The space is also pretty nice; very vertical building and exposed brick.
Bethesda bagels in downtown Bethesda...the closest you will find around here. The owner is a New Yorker and knows what he is doing. He may not have the water to help him, but it is the best you will find. I'm sure it isn't as good as a russian place in Brooklyn, but better than going to Charlottesville, VA???
Also, you are screwed on the Pizza problem. The closest you will find to good pizza is Vace (one in Bethesda and one on Connecticut in Woodley Park). Good. Try the white onion slice...
Full Kee for Chinese...China Town and Silver Spring.
Sam, Comet used to get its bagels from H&H (which ships them partly baked to other retailers, or something like that; they'd finish baking them in a mini-oven at the store). They were ok. For a little while Sid (may he rest in peace) was bringing down bialys, too, which were great, but he couldn't sell enough of them. Insane.
Matchbox is good brick oven pizza, as is Two Amy's, and a few other places. Vace is also quite good. But none of these are the kind of pizza the post is talking about. There's nothing of the latter in the region that I'd call 'good' by any stretch, but there are a few places you can go to push away the craving a bit: Washington Deli at 20th & I, the Italian Store in Arlington, Mama Lucia's or 3 Brothers in various MD burbs. Again, none of these are good, but they're not entirely unacceptable.
I'm glad Georgetown & Bethesda Bagels made the list, as those were my two bagel places growing up and I'm a big fan. But I will say that if you think you have it bad here, try going to Minnesota, where I'm at for college.
I'm a D.C. (suburb) native, and I think our bagels are okay (then, I grew up on them). But I've heard they're not so hot. Fine, whatever. That should just impress how bad Minnesota bagels are, which I physically cannot eat. I actually prefer frozen grocery store bagels. Minnesotans pronounce the "bag" in "bagel" like a shopping "bag", and I've decided that, rather than correcting them, I'll just accept that this is a separate product altogether -- like their wretched lutefisk (they also pronounce a shopping "bag" like the "bag" in "bagel". They are a bizarre people). It's gotten to the point where the Jewish organization on campus has been known to import their bagels directly from NY. We're willing to make sacrifices, being out in the rural mid-west, but these bagels are a step too far.
On the New York vs. Chicago pizza debate I have one comment: if you have to use a knife and fork it is not pizza.
I have an equally simple take on the NY/Chi-town hot dog debt: you have to be able to see the hot dog and eat it with one hand, if I want a salad I'll order a salad.
P Street Bagelry makes small tasty bagels. Make sure that you count your "dozen" bagels before you leave.