Tyler Cowen's Ethnic Dining Guide

Ray’s: The Steaks at East River, 3905 Dix Street NE, Washington, DC, 202-396-7297, Tue-Thu, Sun 12pm-9pm; Fri-Sat 12pm-9:30pm. (Metro Trip Planner – opens in new window) [Washingtonian | WaPo | Don Rockwell | Yelp]

They do some of the Ray’s classic dishes, but the real treats here are the southern specials. They have excellent smoked chili, fried chicken, and I bet the links are pretty good too. This is right now the best “Southern” restaurant around, at least if you decide to treat it that way.

There is safe, guaranteed parking by the way and fear of danger is no reason not to come here.

Eel Se Flounder Dong (Annandale Seafood Restaurant), web site, 7123 Columbia Pike, Annandale, VA, 703-642-0628 (Metro Trip Planner – opens in new window) [Yelp]

Lots of sushi and sashimi, fresh fish, above average in those areas, plus they specialize in octopus and eel. Maybe this place is best for the eel dishes. Across the street from De Moim. Fun atmosphere and a good crowd, recommended.

Elephant Jumps, web site, Thai food in Merrifield, 8110 A Arlington Blvd, Falls Church, VA, 22042, 703-942-6600, in the Yorktowne Center, more on Gallows than Route 50. (Metro Trip Planner – opens in new window) [Don Rockwell | Yelp]

Home-style Thai food, with four levels of spicy, culminating in “Thai spicy.” It’s not as good as Thai X-ing, but it’s probably better than any other local Thai competitor. They will watch you sweat and they will giggle.

Here is one good review of the restaurant. Here is a short bit on how elephants were viewed in antiquity. Here is my favorite book on elephants.

After we exchanged impressions of the other local Thai restaurants, the proprietor said to me: “You know a lot about food and you get around — you should be a food critic. You could write up what you think about all these places!”

If we’re not going to have much more economic growth, we can at least have a few locales like this.

Can elephants jump?

Againn (British Gastropub), web site, 1099 New York Avenue NW, Washington, DC, located on 11th Street between K & New York Avenue NW, 202-639-9830 (Metro Trip Planner – opens in new window) [Google | Washingtonian | WaPo | OpenTable | Don Rockwell | Yelp | Gayot]

They have real smoked salmon, pork belly, corned beef, oysters, country ham, a charcuterie board, and bangers and mash, not to mention fish and chips for lunch. Could it be the most exotic place around? If you are compare it to the really good places in the UK, it falls short. But if you compare it to a lot of other DC restaurants, it’s good fun and there’s nothing else like it in town. Not cheap, but they do use decent-quality ingredients. I’ll go back.

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Aroma, Shirlington, on the main street there, 4052 28th St S.  and no, I won’t give you the phone number.

This has to be the worst ethnic meal I’ve had in the last five years (and yes because of a movie time I had to eat in Shirlington).  Everything was badly oversalted and virtually inedible.  Although no one else was in the restaurant, at first they insisted that we couldn’t switch tables.  Service was irregular.  It wasn’t even that cheap.

Most bad places I won’t even review, but I thought this worth a note, since if you are stuck in Shirlington you might be tempted as we were: “Indian food, how bad can it be?”  Maybe they just had a bad night, but this was a total fail.

Paris has dozens of restaurants which are better than any in Berlin, and then hundreds more better than the rest. Yet it may be the case that you have, overall, a better food life in Berlin than in Paris.

Berlin has a weak reputation among foodies, but culinary life in the city is much improved. Here are my tips for a good eating life in Berlin:

1. Find a steady source of innovative rolls, buns, and dark breads. These are the glories of Berlin and in many parts of town there will be at least one such source per residential block. The more irregular the colors, seeds, and topologies of the breads, the more enthusiastically you should buy them. Do not treat this as the French bread buying experience.

2. Find a source for good spreads, such as cherry, raspberry, etc. and stock up. Repeatedly apply the spreads to the breads, until death of the researcher intervenes. This procedure is the basis for everything else you will do. It ensures that all of your food days will be good ones.

3. Seek out mid-level German restaurants, of the kind promoted in the Time Out Guide; Renger-Patzsch is a good example. The vegetables in such places will be consistently excellent.

4. The speed and service quality of most meals will be much better if you arrive before 7 p.m.

5. Don’t obsess over German food. It’s underrated, but still a lot of it isn’t that good. In Berlin, and many other parts of Germany, you have first-class delicatessens or stores with foodstuffs from France, Italy, and many other parts of the world. Use them. Berlin offers one of the best overall selections in this regard, better than New York City or Paris, for instance, in terms of real access. You can eat first-rate French cheese every day.

6. When it comes to Berlin German food, don’t eat anything in a sauce. It will be either boring or disgusting. Sorry.

7. The sausage spread at the KaDeWe (make sure you live near that place) is probably the best in the entire world. Go there regularly. They also have first-rate sausages from France, Spain, and other countries, as well as an unparalleled selection of sausages from the different regions of Germany, organized one region per case. This food source, like #1, insures that each of your food days will be a splendid one.

8. Go to Berlin’s numerous and varied ethnic restaurants, especially in the slightly lower rent districts. If the food is supposed to be spicy, you must repeat the following incantation several times: “Ich will es essen, genau wie Sie es zu Hause essen. Ich bin kein deutscher.” [I want to eat it exactly as you eat it at home. I am not a German."] Repeat especially that last part: “Ich bin kein deutscher.” Repeat it even if you are a German. This will usually work and typically your Chinese or Thai or Indian server will smile and laugh in response. If they view you as a German, you are screwed no matter what. Simply asking for the food to be “spicy” or even “very spicy” is laughable. It is showing yourself to be a fool and a sucker.

9. Food here is much cheaper than in Paris, and it is much easier to get into virtually any restaurant. Take advantage of both features.

10. Italian food here is almost always reasonably good, and reasonably cheap, but it is rarely great. Lots of cream sauces. It’s a good enough fall back and you find it virtually everywhere. A quite good pasta for $6 or even less is a common experience. Sometimes it’s actually German food in disguise, or not in disguise, such as when you get Carpaccio with Pfifferlinge.

11. For ethnic food, I recommend the following: Tian Fu in Wilmersdorf (very good Sichuan), Suriya-Kanthi (Sri Lankan in Prenzlauer Berg), Genazvale (Georgian food in Charlottenburg), Degirman is one good Turkish place of many, a slew of authentic Mexican restaurants (more than in Virginia), DAO restaurant in Charlottenburg (Thai food, best papaya salad I’ve had, all-around excellent), and Schneeweiss has first-rate Wiener Schnitzel.

Overall Sri Lankan and Nepalese and East bloc cuisines are better here, or more available, than in the USA.

If you visit for one day, you won’t be so impressed with culinary life in Berlin. If you stay for a month, you won’t want to go back to what you had before.

Originally posted on Marginal Revolution – click to see comments and suggestions.

This article is from Salon.com, I will reproduce the interview under the fold…

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This is a surprisingly good article. Countries covered include Argentina, Brazil, China, India (“Word of advice: Avoid street food.”), Italy, Japan, Lebanon, Russia, and Spain. With photos.

Safe is the usual choice for global travelers when faced with a menu of unknown dishes. Paani-puri? Anago-meshi? Uova con tartufi? “Um, I’ll take a burger.”

But a great meal transcends all cultural boundaries, and sharing the food of your host country is the best way to connect with its people, culture and the land. Still, short of a personal chaperone, what to order? Even if you don’t speak the language, take a cue from the locals when looking for the perfect dish to try. Look around. Smile. Point. To get the best quality, especially if you’re indulging in a local delicacy, always head to the same restaurants or street vendors as the locals.

Here, a prejudicial list of the wonderful and curious dishes, with a bias toward uncovering hidden regional or national food gems. Bold and brave taste buds are essential; in some cases, an iron stomach is encouraged. One thing’s for certain–take our advice and you’ll come home with a whole new palate.

“Must-Try Foods Of The World,” by Ruchika Tulshyan, Forbes, May 11, 2010

My favorite sight has been the mother-daughter pair I saw on the Bosporous ferry. They were hugging each other on the bench and had virtually the same profile features, yet the mother carried full traditional dress and the daughter wore a mini-skirt and was otherwise dressed comparably. They loved each other dearly.

How you interpret these women is central to how you view Istanbul. One intuition is that they are quite alike, another is that they are quite different.

And the food? You can eat the traditional dishes, in simpler settings, or you can pay extra to eat them — slightly modified — in more gussied up surroundings. The key to eating well here is to go simple and to look for the best and purest versions of straightforward dishes. World class raw ingredients are at your disposal, if only you don’t let anyone ruin them.

It’s not hard to find the good stuff. Thousands of street restaurants offer seafood (the fried small smelts are my favorite, then the sea bream or “levrek“), eggplants, fava beans, doner kebab, fried mussels, salads with cheese and tomatoes, lamb brains, fried and baked potatoes, Turkish ravioli (harder to find), spicy kabob with sumac, and other delicacies. It is common for the small restaurants to specialize, an indication of quality. A meal in these places, with one small portion, will cost six to ten dollars but you can (and should) order more. Turkish sweets are the dessert and I prefer something with pistachio.

The rest is a sideshow. Avoid all restaurants near the main sights or near clusters of tourist hotels. Avoid most of the places — even Turkish ones — on the main thoroughfares. Look for the neighborhood side streets with clusters of these small restaurants, just off the larger roads. If you order small dishes, you can visit two or three restaurants in one meal, no problem.

My favorite small Istanbul restaurants have been the soup houses, especially the tripe soup (NB: you don’t have to like most tripe dishes to enjoy these creations). You ladle in some liquid garlic sauce, paprika, a bit of chili pepper, and a green herb of some kind. Some of these places are open for breakfast.

Unless you’ve bled this city dry and sampled all the major dishes (which would take a long time), the return to going upscale, or seeking innovation, is not overwhelming. What happens is that you’re either paying higher prices to be in the company of attractive Turkish women or to impress attractive Turkish women who are already in your company. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but the basic market model here is segregation of restaurant type. If it’s food you’re after, don’t pay more for the culinary twists. The food will remain recognizably Mediterranean but it won’t be the classic treatment you are looking for and which to you is still original on the fifth day of your trip.

If your restaurant has a good number of attractive Turkish women in it, perhaps you made a food mistake. Or should I say a money mistake? Or what kind of mistake? The cuisine still will be good.

The good here is very good and the best isn’t that much better.

Originally posted on Marginal Revolution – click to see comments and suggestions.

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