episode 14: grocery girl summer, gendered cocktails, and pizza.

as summer comes to an end, we discuss the grocery girl aesthetic, cocktail misoygyny, and a lot of data about pizza in America.

joe, whats going on?

trader joe’s (my favorite place for dumb snacks) had its 5th recall in one month - and I for one am concerned!! these products have been recalled for potential contamination with metal, bugs, and…..rocks? recalls like this can happen due to infrequent inspections. the FDA inspects most food products, save for eggs and meat which are inspected by the USDA. since Trader Joe’s sources products from smaller vendors, and the FDA is inundated w/a high quantity of inspections, contaminants can slip past inspections. don’t worry, the recalled goods are no longer on the TJ’s shelves, but if you have any of the following products at home, don’t eat them!!! —> cooked falafel, unexpected broccoli cheddar soup, dark choc almond cookies, almond windmill cookies, or multigrain crackers.

its Grocery Girl Summer 🍒🍋🍅

Grocery Girl aesthetics in Glamour

the food fashion news continues! a few episodes ago, we talked about fashion products from food corporations, like the Panera baguette bag. well, small brands and staple fashion brands are venturing into the food-inspired fashion space too. the umbrella term is the Grocery Girl aesthetic, which has been covered by fashion pubs like Glamour, InStyle, and Cosmo, but summed up nicely from the food perspective by Bon Appetit. basically, many of these TikTok aesthetics are food-themed (vanilla girl, tomato girl, lemon girl, cherry girl) and represent different flavors of a trend that has little to do with the food itself. you don’t actually have to wear a tomato-printed dress, you just have to somehow embody a wispy European Reformation-dress aesthetic to fit the vibe. why is it named after a food then?

“Food has become one of the most popular ways to label these trends—a food-themed aesthetic clearly propels to dominance in the Darwinist landscape of internet virality. Food is sensory and visual, optimal for eclectic moodboarding and convenient for playfully ambiguous ad marketing: Tomato Girl Summer sounds fun, but what the heck does it mean? Let’s click open this email to find out.”

essentially, like this quote, the only relation to food is the theme, not the consumption of a food product or a food print. I guess this gives me license to continue on my potato girl summer?

its also Saving Money Summer 💸💸💸

after Restaurant Week burned a hole through our wallets, we are gonna need some cheap eats for the rest of September, aren’t we! just in time, Washingtonian has many ideas in this list of lists: most affordable new restaurants, cheap dishes from DC staple restaurants, lunch deals at upscale spots, bento box lunch deals, family-style money savers, cheap sandwiches, happy hours, and Monday night dining. my thoughts: the Daru happy hour has been on my list foreverrrr, but sad that most of the sandwiches are not in DC - though I will definitely be adding St. Vincent’s half-off charcuterie boards on Mondays to my list!

men, grow up!

in episode 4738923847 of men being threatened by women 🙄🙄🙄 for years, some men have refused to order “girly drinks,” basically sweet drinks that might come with a ‘lil umbrella. now, this fear of the feminine has extended to the glassware too! one bartender described that she, “has fielded requests — only from men — to transfer a cocktail from one glass to another. She noted that a manly glass, to those asking, is always a rocks glass.” you’d think that pretentious cocktail dudes would know that cocktails are served in different glasses for a reason (such as dilution, ice ratio, aeration etc.) and they would mansplain this to you on a first date but nah, femininity is too threatening!

this NYT article describes that perhaps in response to this male behavior, more bars are indicating the shape of the glass on the cocktail menu itself. i’ve seen this at places like Service Bar in DC (I intentionalllllyyyyy get a drink in a cute coupe glass because it makes me feel fancy!) it is generally done to “mitigate the surprise” of the presentation of the drink for the customer. more information for the consumer is good - though annoying if it fuels more weird male behavior. you can read more about this cocktail controversy here.

(should we be?) putting the Cake in Ice Cream Cake 🍰 🍨

honestly something I had not thought about, but apparently others have! food outlets like BA have been stoking debate + discourse regarding the preferred method of ice cream cake construction. one BA test kitchen member is pro-cake, saying ice cream cake needs layers of traditional cake plus the ice cream layer, and another is anti-cake, alleging the cake dries out while refrigerated, and the classic DQ ice cream cake just has ice cream and fudge anyways, so that’s all it needs.

cooksillustrated

A post shared by @cooksillustrated

the main argument for the presence of cake is the insulation - with just ice cream, a slice would melt very quickly without that structural integrity. Cooks Illustrated had a good graphic showing how the cake and the whipped cream layers trap air bubbles because they are both foams - which are good insulators because those bubbles don’t conduct heat as well as a thicker solid component like fudge or cookie crumble. clearly the cake needs some layers, but the layers are your preference! top of mind, who is gonna buy an ice cream cake with me? cake or not - you pick! :)

How To Split the Bill

splitting a restaurant bill can be testy - and unless everyone got the exact same thing, you may find yourself looking to some etiquette standards to handle the bill in the best way. BA has a good guide on splitting the check for a variety of situations, including: if only one person is drinking (pay for your own drinks), if only one person is not drinking, if one person got a dish that’s wayyy more expensive relatively, birthday dinners (depends on who invites everyone), one person going rogue and ordering a round of drinks (they pay), dietary restrictions, and more. this was an interesting read, and I think some rules are more applicable to communities with certain income levels/cultural expectations. nevertheless, some good perspective.

speaking of the bill: the post-covid restaurant scene

“You’re waiting for me to mess up. I’m waiting for you to say something crazy to me. It feels like a game these days.” the dining scene in the past few years has changed drastically - restaurants are dealing with a multitude of issues, customers have new demands, and everyone is operating with rising costs. Jessica Sidman did a really good deep dive in the Washingtonian of the “battle” between diners and restaurants lately that has garnered a lot of buzz.

there’s many issues covered in this piece, so i’ll list the highlights: trained staff left during covid, so current staff are very green; customers are quicker to get mad; covid led patrons to view buying from restaurants as charity, resulting in entitlement over services provided; people feel snubbed expecting covid-level of creativity (think curbside delivery of fine dining); prices are higher for customers and restaurant owners; and the new world of tipping with service fees causes confusion. this piece did a good job of highlighting a lot of very valid gripes with the state of the industry here and the lengths people have gone to voice them. read the piece here.

the WaPo pizza blitz 🍕

USOP (united states of pizza)

the Washington Post really woke up and said wow we LOVE pizza!! they just published a series of deep-dives into deep dish and your other pizza faves. WaPo scraped data from 7.5 million pizza reviews of over 80k small-chain and independent pizza shops on Yelp to make their own pizza directory - from which their team wrote a whole set of articles called “Pizza in America.” it includes an informative breakdown of every style of pizza by region, an interactive map to look up the best of each regional style in your state, a series of maps of the top styles in each state and a roundup of the quirkiest styles of pizza in the US. there’s even a ranking of all the pizza shops in the DMV area! I learned that New York style is the most popular by far, the Quad Cities have their own style of pizza, and that Andy’s Pizza in D.C. really reigns supreme. check out the articles for more!

restaurant review: Little Vietnam x Himitsu

a fantastic drink and some Peking duck for this restaurant review! Little Vietnam is a restaurant on Upshur St in Petworth, and they have been hosting a pop-up from Himitsu, a Japanese fusion restaurant that formerly occupied the brick and mortar space by Chef Kevin Tien (also of Moon Rabbit). had a fantastic meal there a few weeks ago - the Peking duck and biscuits were so good and I also loved the dumplings, though my fav was the coconut/rum/basil cocktail. you can see my post here, and my friend

Merry

’s post (with much better pics) here too!

f*cked up food

a refreshing end-of-summer drink.

d.c. happenings

so many this episode they’re separated!

Openings/Reopenings

• HUGE! Spot of Tea standalone bubble tea café coming to Dupont

• yellow the bakery reopening in Navy Yard

• El Presidente, sister restaurant to Le Diplomate opening in Union Market

• Filipino spot Hiraya opening on H St

• Maman coming to Penn Quarter (omg another one?!)

• new bagel spot Pops Bagels coming to Eckington

• new taqueria, Bodega Taquera y Tequila coming to Foggy Bottom

• Bolivian spot, Saya Saltena opening soon

• San Matteo opened on Upshur St

• Taco Bell on H St!?!?!

• Soleluna opening a location in Petworth (LFG!!!!!!!!!!)

• The Square, a big food hall on K St, opens 9/5

• Commonwealth Cantina, previously Homestead, opening as Uno Mas from Taqueria Habanero folks!

Closings

• Laliguras closed in Van Ness

• Great Wall Szechuan House closing in December

• G St ABP closed

• P14 closed on 14th

• Capitol Cider House in Petworth closed

• La Jambe closing Shaw location

• Pica Taco closed on Florida

home cooking: tomatoes and potatoes!

tomato: Labor Day in DC meant some lovely terrace dinners with friends, so it was definitely fun cocktail hour! my friend Kelsey made some great tomato cocktails with a tomato simple syrup (grate/blend the tomatoes and strain to make tomato water, boil that with a few tablespoons of sugar to make syrup) gin, vermouth, and some muddled basil with a few drops of olive oil on top. tomato girl summer!

potato: found myself with a bag of small fingerling potatoes that were about to go bad, so I made Molly Baz’s salt and vinegar smashed potatoes recipe to use them up. i’ve made this recipe before and knew it needed a little pizzaz, so I added some chili crisp and chopped scallion for some freshness + spice.

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that’s all folks, enjoy!