Localize It

Posted on by Sacha Cohen

Back in the day, you had your “local”–the restaurant or bar right around the corner where you were a regular and everyone knew your name. The Daily Dish in Silver Spring is just such a place.

Housed in the same space as the former Red Dog Cafe, the Daily Dish combines comfort food (think addictive mac & cheese, fresh home-made bread, wood-oven fired pizza) with a commitment to using local ingredients.

“The Daily Dish reflects our passion for food,” says co-owner Zena Polin. “As a neighborhood restaurant, we really believe in serving delicious food made with quality ingredients. We like to serve comfort food with a twist — food that is seasonally inspired and locally sourced, whenever possible.”

Starters include baked local goat cheese with roasted tomato sauce and focaccia, homemade soups, and salads. For dinner, you can tuck into a tender brined organic roast chicken served with green beans and mashed sweet potatoes or salmon made to order and served with creamy polenta and vegetables.

Owners Polin and Jerry Hollinger bring many years of restaurant and catering experience to the venture and have tapped Chef Michael Chretien, formerly of Rock Creek Mazza restaurant, to head up the kitchen. The Daily Dish sources produce from local farmers and the Takoma Park Farmer’s Market, grains from the Silver Spring Co-Op, fair trade coffee from Silver Spring-based Clear Mountain Coffee, ice-cream from Moorenko’s, and sausages from Let’s Meat on the Avenue in Del Ray. They are also looking into getting meat and poultry from Polyface Farms.

The wine list, carefully selected by Polin for both affordability and quality, includes three organic wines (Torrontes, Malbec, and Tempranillo) from the Santa Julia vineyard in Argentina as well as several offerings from Charlottesville’s Kluge Estate.

On Sundays, don’t miss the “Make Your Own” Bloody Mary Bar, house-cured gravalax, or challah French toast. To kick the recession blues, try three-course $30 Thursdays or half-price wine Tuesdays. Who knows–with great food and deals like these, you, too, may become a regular.

The Daily Dish is located at 8301 A Grubb Road, 301.588.6300, and is open seven days a week.

On-the-Go Green Carts

Posted on by Sacha Cohen
Sweetflow taking a nap
Sweetflow taking a nap

We’ve been fans of On the Fly’s Smartkarts for some time, and now, they have company. The other evening we spotted SweetGreen’s adorable Sweetflow mobile parked outside of E Street Cinema (after the Food, Inc. premiere) serving up their addictive tangy frozen yogurt.

The environmentally friendly, custom-built vehicle doesn’t have a generator, so it runs on 8o% less gas than a traditional ice-cream truck.

Sweetflow yogurt is made with Stoneyfield Farms Plain fat-free organic yogurt and many of the toppings are organic or local. And just like at the standing Sweetgreen locations, all the spoons, cups and lids doled out at the mobile are 100% biodegradable.

Owner Nicolas Jammet was manning the cart with a pal, and suggested we follow them on Twitter to find out where they can be found around town. Starting in July, the truck will have a fixed schedule during weekdays

If you’re willing to venture further afield, the Local Sixfortyseven cart, which was recently featured in The Washington Post, offers a seasonal menu featuring locally sourced ingredients. Husband-and-wife team Derek and Amanda Luhowiak serve everything from buckwheat pancakes with blackberry-rosemary syrup to burgers made with organic, grass-fed beef and locally made cheese.

You can find Local Sixfortyseven parked at the Centreville farmers market on Fridays from 3:30 to 6:30 and at the Winchester farmers market on Sundays from 9:30 am to 1:30 pm. For more info, email them at luhowiak@hotmail.com.

Brave Food World

Posted on by Sacha Cohen
Joel Palentin of Polyface Farms courtesy of Food, Inc.
Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms courtesy of Food, Inc.

Eat something organic before you head to see Food, Inc., the provocative new documentary from filmmaker Robert Kenner, featuring authors Michael Pollan (An Omnivore’s Dilemma) and Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) because you surely won’t want to eat after watching it.

The film serves up a stomach-churning look inside the highly mechanized world of food production, from chickens that never see daylight to cows forced to stand all day in their own feces. Even seemingly innocent soybeans are revealed to be “patented” by chemical giant Monsanto in their effort to control seed production and independent farmers.

Perhaps even more disturbing than the shocking reality of modern food production gone awry is that the agencies (FDA, USDA) that are supposedly there to protect us are in cahoots with the handful of corporations that put profit ahead of our health, the livelihood of the American farmer, and the safety of workers and our own environment.

Interspersed among the food borne illnesses and soul-less, window-less factories are interviews with colorful social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield’s Gary Hirshberg and Polyface Farms’ Joel Salatin. Says local hero Salatin,“Imagine what it would be if, as a national policy, we said we would be only successful if we had fewer people going to the hospital next year than last year? The idea then would be to have such nutritionally dense, unadulterated food that people who ate it actually felt better, had more energy and weren’t sick as much…  now, see, that’s a noble goal.”

Besides strengthening my resolve to not eat processed food and to support local producers whenever possible, the take-away for me was that we must pay even closer attention to what we are eating and why. Vote with your wallet by choosing locally grown food and organics, eschew mass-produced meats, corn syrup laden snacks and genetically modified produce. We can’t afford not to.

The Eco-Women’s Hour

Posted on by Sacha Cohen

Have you ever wanted to know about FRESHFARM Markets, those wonderful outdoor fruit and veggie-fests that sprout up around town this time of year? Well, now’s your chance. On Tuesday March 18th, Bernadine Prince, the organization’s founder and co-director will be the guest speaker at Eco-Women’s Hour.

Event details:

When: Tuesday March 18th, 6-8

Where: Teaism @ 8th & D Streets (400 8th Street NW)
Metro: Archives/Navy Memorial, Gallery Place/Chinatown, and Federal
Triangle.)

RSVP to info@ecowomen.org. If you are new to the list, please include your name and institutional affiliation. Sorry guys, the event is restricted to women only.

More about FreshFarm Markets: A nonprofit organization dedicated to educating the public about food and farming issues, providing vital economic opportunities for farmers, and celebrating the Chesapeake Bay watershed region’s agricultural heritage
and bounty. In 2007, the organization operated six producer-only
farmers’s markets in DC (Dupont Circle, Foggy Bottom, H St, NE and Penn Quarter) and Maryland (St. Michaels and Silver Spring) and directed a local foods and gardening program (FoodPrints) at Rudolph Elementary School (Ward 4) in Washington, D.C.

More about DC EcoWomen’s Hour: A monthly forum that provides
environmental advocates an opportunity to network with like-minded women.
Participants include women directly protecting the environment through
work in nonprofit organizations, foundations, businesses and government
agencies. Each month’s featured speaker is a leading environmental activist.