DC Restaurants Celebrate Earth Day

Posted on by Sacha Cohen
Tallula courtesy of Powers & Crewe

Dine deliciously and celebrate Earth Day with special events, menus, and offers from local area restaurants:

Sustainable Dinner at Tallula
Tallula will celebrate Earth Day with a special four-course dinner showcasing locally grown produce, humanely raised meats, and sustainable seafood.

Bev Eggleston, founder of EcoFriendly Foods and leading proponent of ethical farming, as well as Drew Koslow, biologist, clean water advocate, and brother of Executive Chef Barry Koslow, will also attend the dinner. The dinner will start at 7PM on Thursday, April 22nd in the restaurant’s intimate wine shop.

Priced at $85 per person including wine pairings (excluding tax and gratuity) the Earth Day dinner will feature dishes such as Bison Carpaccio, sourced from New Frontier Bison in Madison, VA, and a Pork Trio from EcoFriendly Farms. The dinner will also include dishes using local, sustainable seafood, such as Virginia Clams and Striped Bass and local Virginia wines.

Eco-Friendly Cocktails at JW Marriott
As an extension of Earth Day’s celebration, the JW Marriott Washington is creating a special menu of refreshing eco-cocktails and organic summer white wines by the glass to help raise awareness for preserving the rainforests.

The special beverage menu will be available at Bar 1331 beginning on Monday, April 19 and served throughout the summer.  Cocktails, including “Strawberry Fields” (muddled fresh strawberries, basil leaves, simple syrup), are $12.00 and organic wines by the glass start at $9.00.  Thirty percent of the proceeds from the new beverages will be donated toward the protection and preservation of 1.4 million acres of endangered rainforest in the Amazon, called the Juma Sustainable Development Reserve.

Sweetlife Festival
Sweetgreen‘s free outdoor music festival, Saturday, April 24 from 3–9 PM (behind its Dupont Circle location), will raise money for Farm To School, an organization committed to connecting schools with local farms. Live performances will feature Hot Chip performing a DJ set, U.S. Royalty, The Love Language, Phil Ade, Will Eastman, DJ Grant Shapiro and more. Limited complementary tickets are available via the Sweetgreen beginning on April 9, with donations requested.

Mixt Greens Offers Tote with Green Goodies
The first 150 customers who visit one of Mixt Greens three DC locations on Thursday, April 22nd, will receive a complimentary tote bag filled with goodies including recipes from Chef/Co-Founder Andrew Swallow’s upcoming cookbook, Mixt Salads, and packets of herb seeds to plant at home.

Green Hours
The official Earth Day 2010 Sustainable Feast DC initiative encourages restaurants across the DC area to highlight the responsible decisions they make when buying and serving local or organic, sustainable foods. Participating restaurants include Bread & Brew, Pitango Gelato, Busboys & Poets, and more.

Earth Day Menu at Restaurant Nora
Restaurant Nora will be featuring an Earth Day tasting menu that includes seasonal spring vegetables such as artichokes, asparagus, and spinach as well as seasonal cocktails. On April 20th and 21st, the restaurant will be donate $1 from each seasonal cocktail to Earth Day Network.

Local Restaurants for Local Kids

Posted on by Sacha Cohen

Guest post by Andrea Northup

Support locally-owned restaurants, the sustainable local food economy, and DC-area kids by participating in the DC Farm to School Network’s Local Restaurants for Local Kids Fundraiser on Friday January 22.

Select area restaurants will be donating a portion of their proceeds to the DC Farm to School Network, which works to bring healthy, local produce into DC public school cafeterias.  By simply enjoying a delicious snack, cocktail, or dinner at one of the great participating restaurants, you will help to improve access to healthy, tasty, and local foods in area schools.

DC Farm to School Network volunteers will be available at the restaurants to answer questions or chat with you about our work. For volunteer opportunities, contact Lauren@dcgreens.org.

Participating restaurants include:

Busboys & Poets, 5th and K Street NW (Mt. Vernon Sq. Metro); 14th and V Street NW (U St. Metro); 4251 S. Campbell Ave,  Arlington, VA.

Coppi’s Organic (from 6pm-11pm), 1414 U Street NW (U St. Metro)

Eatonville, 2121 14th Street NW (U St. Metro)

Bar Pilar, 1833 14th Street NW (U St. Metro)

Farmers & Fishers (All day!), 3000 K Street NW (Georgetown Waterfront—Foggy Bottom Metro)

Clyde’s, 3236 M Street NW (Foggy Bottom Metro); 707 7th Street NW (Gallery Place Metro); 5441 Wisconsin Avenue, Chevy Chase, MD (Friendship Heights Metro)

PS-7 (Lounge from 4pm-2am), 777 I Street NW (Gallery Place Metro)

Bread and Brew (5-8pm in bar), 1247 20th Street NW (Dupont Circle Metro)

Cafe Saint-Ex, 1847 14th Street NW (U St. Metro)

ris (Proceeds from seasonal cocktail and appetizers after 4:30pm), 2275 L Street NW (Foggy Bottom Metro)

DC Dirt with Chef Rob Weland

Posted on by Sacha Cohen
Photograph courtesy of Michael Harlan Turkell
Photograph courtesy of Michael Harlan Turkell

Poste Brasserie, part of the Kimpton Hotel family, is well-known for its environmentally sound practices and for its equally eco-minded star chef Rob Weland who has been at the helm since 2004.

Chef Weland is committed to using fresh, sustainable, and organic ingredients, some of which come from Poste’s own organic vegetable and herb garden.

In addition to overseeing the kitchen, he hosts the hugely popular market-to-market dinners and helped create the new farm-to-table ‘Poste Roasts.’

These farm-to-table dinners take place outside at the Chef’s table and feature spit-roasted meat sourced from local farmers and summer-inspired sides, all served family-style.

In this inaugural issue of DC Dirt, a new Q&A column with DC’s green movers and shakers, we sat down with Chef Weland who dishes on his favorite local green business, must-have organic staples, and more.

Favorite vegetable that you grow in the Poste Brasserie garden:

Heirloom tomatoes……But that’s considered a fruit….so garlic then!

Your cooking philosophy, in three words:

Simple, local, sustainable

Three ingredients you can’t live without:

Eggs, sea salt, good olive oil

Guilty pleasure:

Eggplant parmesan

Favorite local green business:

FRESHFARM Markets

Biggest eco sin:

Using too many paper towels at home,……according to my wife!

Organic “musts” for the home cook:

Shopping at their local market for eggs, dairy, and produce.

Your foodie heros:

Alice Waters, Larry Forgione, Marco Pierre White and Gray Kunz

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 Week in Green: August 08, 2008

Posted on by Sacha Cohen

This blog was created as an online destination for DC locals or those traveling to our fabulous city to find out about local green businesses, projects, tips, services, products, and events. The cool thing is that since I started writing in January, I’ve noticed a substantial increase in items worth covering. So much so, that I’ve decided to launch “The Week in Green,” a round-up of all the juicy green tidbits that I don’t want you to miss each week.

Enjoy!

-SC

P.S Have a green tip, local event, product, or news? Drop me an email.

The Week in Green: 8-08-08 to 8-16-08

  • Green Drinks

When: Tuesday August 12

Where: Ulah Bistro, 1214 U Street, NW, DC

When: 6:30-9/10

Featured in a recent issue of Daily Candy, this locally owned cleaning company uses natural products such as concentrated sage, lavender essential oils, and vinegar to keep the dust bunnies at bay. They even offer custom aromatherapy made from select essential oils designed to enhance your mood naturally. Green and Clean, take me away….

The team behind Mendocino and Sonoma have opened Redwood restaurant in the new Bethesda Row pedestrian mall. The 7,500-square-foot restaurant features modern American cuisine that emphasizes local and organic produce, wild and sustainable seafood, and ingredients from local artisanal cheesemakers, growers, ranchers, and fishermen. Reservations are difficult to come by; even Post food critic Tom Siestsema couldn’t score a table in the main dining room on his first visit. Check out an “early look” and a sample menu to whet your appetite until the hordes die down.