episode 45: restaurant week, raw chicken, and The Red Hen

giving you all the recommendations for DC's winter restaurant week! plus, we discuss washing raw chicken, dinner at The Red Hen, and much more!

sorry for the Saturday newsletter friends, I got distracted with work, fleeing DC for inauguration, and trying to savor my last few days on TikTok. things are great! let’s get into it!

DC winter restaurant week ❄️

did you think you had nothing to look forward to in January? scratch that thought — because it’s Winter Restaurant Week here in DC! as usual, i’ve gone through the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington website listing of participating restaurants and made my own list of spots i’d recommend. this includes restaurants that are well-regarded in the city, places i’ve been to for restaurant week and have liked, and places I think would be a particularly good deal to try during this restaurant week.

if you’d like this list in a video format, check out my reel here and my TikTok here (in the last hours of this app we have left 😭)

Los Angeles wildfire relief donation resources 💸

the wildfires in Los Angeles have been devastating to watch. thousands of people are in need of basic supplies, and will eventually need serious resources to rebuild their homes and lives. i’ve compiled some food-related fundraisers below if you are interested in giving.

• World Central Kitchen

• LA Food Bank

• Los Angeles area restaurants donating meals locally

• LA Fire Mutual Aid Resource bank

also, this Eater piece by a chef who evacuated last week was a touching read.

should you wash your chicken? 🍗

raw chicken freaks me out! so much so, that I literally wrote it down as one of my 2025 goals: get over my fear of cooking chicken at home. at a friend’s house last week, as I watched her cook us chicken for dinner (because she is nice and I am also scared) we got to talking about the practice of washing chicken. major health organizations like the CDC and the NIH highly recommend against washing chicken, as the bacteria on the raw meat can easily splash off with the water and spread the everywhere. the most effective way to kill bacteria is to cook it off, not wash it.

but clearly, some people still do it! this article explains it well, the practice seems to persist because of household habits and chicken quality. on the quality front, mass-packaged chicken can tend to have residue that looks unpleasant, leading folks to wash it off. the other is essentially habit, people learn to do it from family, and have a hard time giving it up. ugh, maybe I continue to avoid cooking raw chicken a little longer…

not making it to Hot Ones anytime soon

if you’ve brought home a jalapeño only to find it wasn’t as hot as you thought it’d be (I haven’t, but maybe you have) you might be right! the peppers we buy at the store have gotten less spicy. the bulk of jalapeños are sold to processing plants for products like jarred salsa. manufacturers of these products require consistent heat levels, so they go for jalapeños with less heat, and add in chile extract later if needed. these peppers originally meant for processing have now been sold at stores for consumers because of their high yield and size, so these peppers have been milder than before. ah, the things we learn from Cooks Illustrated!

it’s sumo citrus season, after all 🍊

in the final days of TikTok (RIP) I came across this nice video explainer of the difference oranges and mandarins. I didn’t realize that the mandarin was a different type of citrus entirely, and not a subset of the orange. oranges are juicy and tart with a hard skin, and include blood oranges and navel oranges. mandarins, on the other hand, are less juicy, more sweet, and have an easy-to-peel skin. this category includes clementines, sumo citrus, satsuma, and tangerines. and if you’re reading this after the 19th, here’s the video on reels (ugh).

Doro Wat in DC 🇪🇹

anyone who said DC doesn’t have good food (the heyday of the Keith-Lee-DC-food-is-bad scandal) has not had Ethiopian food here. Bon Appetit did a nice roundup of all the DC Ethiopian spots with menus that feature doro wat, a chicken stew cooked in a spice blend called berbere. the list features Chercher in Shaw, Das in Georgetown, Ethiopic on H St and more. check out all the recommendations, here.

pimento cheese: an origin story 🧀

this week I had the pleasure of eating the Famous Biscuits at the restaurant St. Anselm, which are served with pimento cheese (they’re sooooo good). as we discussed the delicious cheese spread, we went to look up which Southern state it had originated in, and were surprised to find that pimento cheese didn’t come from the South at all!

pimento cheese actually came from New York in the 1870s when farmers started making cream cheese, and sweet red peppers from Spain were becoming available in America. these both became popular ingredients used by domestic science practitioners, or home economics, led by women in the early 1900s. the recipe was first featured in a 1908 Good Housekeeping article, for sandwiches filled with a cream cheese, chives, and minced pimento blend.

soon after, cheese manufacturers started making this in factories, and the product became popular in other states. the migration to the South occurred as Georgia started cultivating domestic pimentos, and it became a popular agriculture and canning product in the state. folks in the South continued to iterate the spread, replacing cream cheese with more firm cheeses, making it more akin to the chunky pimento cheese it is today. read more in this Serious Eats profile, here.

no more Starbies bathroom stops 🚻

Starbucks has instituted a new policy for the use of store bathrooms - paying customers only. for years, the bathrooms at Starbucks coffee shop locations were operating as open to the public, a policy instituted after an unfortunate incident of racial profiling against two men who were arrested for using the bathroom without having purchased an item. since then, former CEO Howard Schultz said the bathrooms would be open to everyone. but now, citing a prioritization for paying customers, the policy states the store itself is for paying customers only. employees will be trained on policy enforcement towards the public, and will be allowed to exercise flexibility - for instance, customers can use the bathroom before buying something if needed. read more here.

dry January bevvies 🥤

if you’re braving through dry January, here are some ideas for some fun beverages for you:

• a Bon Appetit guide to crafting complex and interesting NA cocktails, and even more recipes in this list

• a (trustworthy) taste test of popular and trendy NA spirits and drinks from creator Join Jules

• there really is a Wirecutter article for everything isn’t there? nonalcoholic bevs are no exception!

restaurant review: the Red Hen 🍝

when Resy Notify actually pulls through! the Red Hen is a fantastic Italian restaurant in the Bloomingdale neighborhood and because it’s so great, it’s often booked up. I used to Resy Notify feature to get notified if a spot opened up last weekend, and I shockingly got a slot for a 9:30 table on Saturday night (late night dining is chic!) it was a fantastic meal and we had such a good time. my favorites are the ricotta toast, the arancini, the squid ink pasta, and the carrot cake. this is the perfect place for a long dinner with friends!

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f*cked up food 🤢

sweet treat!!!

d.c. happenings 🏙️

openings

• new restaurant Tikka opening in old Laliguras space in Van Ness

• Karravaan from the folks at Pappe is opening at Union Market

• Shah’s Halal Food replacing Halal Guys at Dupont

• Pizzeria Uno closed in Union Station

• cocktail bar Kata coming to Penn Quarter

• another Maman Joon coming to L’Enfant

closings

• New Big Wong ordered closed by Department of Health

other

• St. Vincent Wine Bar is doing an event on inauguration weekend (if you need to escape!)

• complimentary churros at El Tamarindo

• workers at Starr Group and Ashok Bajaj' restaurants are unionizing - explainer and article here!

• The Diner in Adams Morgan is now open 24/7

home cooking 🧑‍🍳

the snow had left us nothing to do except cook at our own homes, and cook at each others homes. I did some jackfruit tacos this week, some buffalo chicken wrap situations (with Daring fake chicken, citing my aforementioned chicken fear) for lunch. I had some friends over and did a round of one of my favorite home cocktails - Drinks by Evie’s Pump up the Jam. I also tried her Apple Enzoni, which was good but probably would be better in peak apple season! lastly, I tried this patatas bravas - inspired chicken and potato dish - and i’ll let you guess on whether I actually cooked the chicken myself…

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stay safe in DC to all my local friends. and to everyone else, take care of yourselves too.