Category — Restaurant News & Reviews

What better way to welcome the Year of the Tiger than to eat like one? Every year our friend Anny (don’t be fooled by the name, she’s Chinese) and her partner Sara host a fabulous dinner for Chinese New Year at Mark’s Duck House in Falls Church, VA, and this year we were lucky enough to score an invite.

Winter Melon Soup arrived in the giant gourd, its sweet translucent flesh offset by bits of pork. We devoured Drunken Garlic Prawns– heads, shells and all — and slurped down oysters the size of my entire hand (Three Mile Island oysters one of the guests called them.) Bamboo fungus, a new item for all of us, bounced like sponge between tongue and teeth and absorbed every bit of flavor, like a very porous tofu. But the highlight for me was the Peking Duck, so seductively fatty and crisp that we skipped the time-consuming presentation of individually wrapped packets and just dug in with our chopsticks as the lazy Susan twirled.

I know very little about Chinese traditions. But the New Year feast is one I strongly favor! Please chime in with any traditions you and your family and friends might have. (photos: Jim McCallum)

Oysters before.....

...oysters after....

Italy, where the first McDonald’s outpost inspired the creation of the Slow Food Movement, now praises the burger chain for its authenticity….

In Honolulu, they were places to kick back, drink beer, eat delicious, sometimes very unfamiliar food. My favorite izakaya hovered on the edge of  Kaimuki — a neighborhood whose name means “the tea oven” — and I loved it partly because no one there spoke English. Not. One. Word. We’d go in, sit at the communal table and just let the servers (in kimonos, of course) pile the vittles in front of us. They started off tame — standard sushi, dumplings. But we knew we’d proven ourselves when after a few visits they finally started delivering the fish with the heads on and the fermented soybeans. Sometimes they giggled mercilessly watching us eat. I’d like to think it’s because our adventuresome palates amused them, not because they’d let the chef spit in it.

But leave it to Mega Chef Wolfgang Puck (who once told me in an interview that he never wore underwear as an apprentice because he couldn’t be bothered to wash it — an aside, yes, but kinda fun to know, right?) to go beyond fermented fish eggs with his izakaya-style menu. Puck inaugurates pan-Asian izakaya at his DC restaurant The Source starting Jan. 20th. Look for executive chef Scott Drewno’s Chinese-inspired Pork Belly Bao, Vietnamese mini bahn mi (with pate — so colonial Vietnamese), and Korean-style short ribs. All of Asia, all in one place.