Tyler Cowen's Ethnic Dining Guide

Little Serow, web site, 1511 17th Street NW, Washington DC (Metro Trip Planner – opens in new window) [WaPo | Washingtonian | City Paper | Don Rockwell | Yelp]

Imagine northeastern Thai street food, Issan style, combined with the quality ingredients and overall standards of fine dining. Right now it’s the best place in DC by a long ways and the best place this area has had in a long time. The tastes are sharp, hot, sour, pungent, musty, and occasionally sweet. The level of heat can be high. You cannot choose your food. Every course was a knockout, only $45 for a seven-course menu, no substitutions. There’s nowhere else like it. It is right next to Komi, and brought to you by the same people. Remarkably, the cook is Greek-American and not Thai. Could it be the best Thai place on the East coast?

photo credit: nakae

Their website and menu is here. Here is a Sietsema review. Don Rockwell says it may be the best new restaurant in the U.S. this year; there is more from Don here. A must. No reservations, so you must show up before opening at 5:30 or wait two hours to get in.

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

From Peter Seebach, I like this idea very much:

This leads to a concept: A restaurant called Placebo. What do they sell? A 50% discount. Which is to say: The entire menu is framed with everything at about twice the price you’d otherwise expect to pay for it, but then your check gets a 50% discount. So say you have a steak roughly of the same quality as the $13 steaks at the Outback Steakhouse. The menu says $26, your bill when it arrives has a 50% discount. But everything you order feels expensive.

photo credit: ayelienne

And a bit more:

For extra credit, you could do interviews and arrange waiters to adopt personalities which suit the customers. Someone comes in who likes Good Wholesome Cooking? We can set you up with a waiter who thinks fancy food is ridiculous. Or, we can set you up with a waiter who is a total food snob, and you can have a wonderful meal knowing that the waiter is missing out on Good Wholesome Cooking. Your call.

The basic idea here is… people aren’t going out to eat for the food, they’re going out for the experience. Why not sell the experience as-such as the product? And thanks to some lovely research done on placebos in the 60s or so, we know that in some cases they work even if you know it’s a placebo — they’ve been shown to treat depression effectively even when explained.

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

Sushi Yoshi, web site, 101 Church Street NW, Suite B, Vienna, VA, 703-242-1350 (Metro Trip Planner – opens in new window) [Don Rockwell | Yelp | Gayot]

photo credit: mdid

For some reason no one ever talks about this restaurant, yet it is surprisingly good. Above average sushi, with a reasonably authentic feel to the entire operation. Best of all they have real Japanese tapas (ippin ryori), ranging from grated yam to tuna with soy sauce to pork belly and a few dozen others. Those are what you should get here. Not perfect, but this place deserves more attention.

My favorite sandwich (ever) is the Hawaiiana, at “Tortas Chapultepec,” turn left out of the front of Hotel Camino Real in Polanco, and it is on the corner at Victor Hugo and Mariano Escobedo. They usually are open by 9:30 and I suspect they close fairly early.

photo credit: samurai_dave

Pujol does wonderful things with vegetables and is perhaps the best fancy place to try; I recommend the Menu de la Tierra.

They have done away with the food stalls at the Zócalo. In Mexico City calorie-counting menus are common and gelato is being replaced by frozen yogurt (!).

Tres Marias is a “food village” right off the highway on the way to Cuernavaca. Look for the place on the southbound side which specializes in green chilaquiles and also chorizo tacos, but in general standards along that strip are remarkably high.

Here is the most important food advice for Mexico.

Overall, Mexico City is becoming a safer city, and compared to four years ago one sees many signs of economic progress.

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

Ethiopic, web site, 401 H Street NE, Washington, DC, 202-675-2066 (Metro Trip Planner – opens in new window) [Google | dishtip | Washingtonian | City Paper | Don Rockwell | Yelp]

photo credit: treesftf

It’s funny how H Street NE has gone from a dump, to overpriced, without stopping for very long in between. This Ethiopian restaurant is not bad, but it can’t compare to the 9th Street row, much less West Alexandria. And yet everything costs more, sometimes twice as much. And the tastes are ever so slightly dumbed down.

This place has made lots of “best of” lists, but that’s just a sign they are desperate to pick out an Ethiopian place you can take your grandma to. It’s not a dump, but it is a dominated asset.

Mirage Peruvian Restaurant and Buffet, web site 1 web site 2 (formerly called Mirage Kabob and Sweets Café), 5916 Leesburg Pike, Falls Church, VA, 703-845-1600 (Metro Trip Planner – opens in new window) [zabihah | City Paper | NoVA Mag | Yelp]

(This is an update of the previous review.)

photo credit: MSVG

In the former home of Samadi Sweets, they have kept the savory desserts. I like this place, it is mostly kabobs but now they have koreshes (stews) too and a very good Fesenjan at that, not too sweet. Good zereshk polo, when they have it. They are also now bundled with the Peruvian restaurant that used to be next store. Right now the lunch buffet is all Peruvian, but the Persian dishes can be ordered from the regular menu. Sometimes on weekends the buffet is a mix of Persian and Peruvian, interspersed with no commentary or signs, it works surprisingly well. A good hangout, and both places have been improved by the merger. Let’s hope it last

Where should we eat? I’ve been there at least ten times, so if you’re recommending anything other than food, it should either be very recent or very obscure.

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

photo credit: Denis Bocquet

William Baude asks:

Is there any way to predict which celebrity-chef-branded restaurants will be better than others? Obviously one rarely expects such restaurants to be excellent, but there are times (airports, Las Vegas) when a celebrity-chef-branded restaurant may well be the best one around. Is the best chef likely to endorse the best restaurants? Or should one look for profligate branders like Wolfgang Puck and Emeril? Or something else?

photo credit: janiskapsis

When it is “branded” or when simply the genius chef owns and runs a few places (e.g., Thomas Keller) is a tricky distinction. That said, the Wolfgang Puck pizza outlet at O’Hare airport counts as branded, as do many of the fancy places in Las Vegas. Overall I find these restaurants to be a good bet, conditional on the fact that you are somewhere that encourages the proliferation of branded restaurants. I haven’t eaten everywhere in O’Hare but odds are if you are by the Puck outlet you should stop and eat there, relative to what you are likely to find and have time for. The branded outlets in Las Vegas may not be the very best places but again they are fairly wise choices, knowing that just about everywhere is frequented by tourists. Joel Robuchon’s restaurant in Las Vegas isn’t exactly hated.

Branded restaurants tend to be poor choices when they are offered as a protection against an ethnic food subculture, which maybe is considered inferior by many subgroups but actually is superior. Yes, Jean-Georges does have a place in Shanghai and probably it is quite good. Yet you should be out in the street looking for noodles and dumplings, waving your arms in desperation if need be.

My next book — An Economist Gets Lunch: New Rules for Everyday Foodies — is out this coming April.

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

America Eats!, by Jose Andres, web site, 405 8th Street NW, Washington, DC, 202-393-0812, where Café Atlantico used to be, note the place will be closing sometime within a year as it was intended as a temporary experiment. (Metro Trip Planner – opens in new window) [WaPo | Washingtonian | City Paper | Don Rockwell | Yelp]

Imagine a restaurant that goes back and resurrects some forms of American food which we have spent the last fifty years getting away from. They even will serve you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, with or without foie gras. I had some superb appetizers here, the fried chicken, the vermicelli (actually a form of macaroni and cheese, which I usually hate), the etouffe, and the crabcakes. That should be your meal. I sampled parts of five main dishes. As a combination they worked fine, but I would not have wanted any one of them as a stand-alone main course, too much sameness of taste on each plate. The desserts are as bizarre as you might expect. If you order perfectly, this can be fantastic otherwise it is at least interesting and worth a try.

Sabzi Authentic Persian Kabobs, web site, 4008 University Drive, Fairfax, VA, 703-383-1553 (Metro Trip Planner – opens in new window) [zabihah | Yelp]

photo credit: Ginger Brew

Excellent chicken kabob, zereshk polo (barberry rice), the best ghormeh sabzi in the area, quite fine. I wish they would do fesenjan, but in any case I am happy to have this place in the repertoire. Recommended.