Washington DC: 2 Amys

My Maryland friends took me to dinner at 2 Amys, a very popular pizzeria in the District of Columbia. The decor is fairly simple and bright. The pizzas are somewhat rustic, more like what you would see in Italy than the New York variety. All our food was excellent.

I ordered a calzone because I saw one on the way in and the ricotta flowing out spoke to me. (They give their calzones some other fancy name, folded pizza as I recall, but a calzone is a calzone is a calzone.) I ordered one with meat and vegetables. The ricotta was just as luscious as I had anticipated. That red spot on the middle off the calzone is a thin slice of meat that was made crunchy in the baking. The texture was marvelous.

We tried a selection of desserts: cannoli (pretty light filling, very good), almond cake (great), and roasted pineapple ice cream (wow!).

The problem now faced by my friend Ankur is whether he can keep up the pace of excellent restaurant recommendations. Based on his recommenations so far, I've come to expect quality ideas. He can't just throw a hot dog at me and expect me to be satisfied. Can he keep it up? Or will he fold under the pressure? Time will tell...

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Asheville NC: Luella's BBQ

Luella's is a nouvelle BBQ outfit on the north side of Asheville. It is nestled among the trees in a lovely neighborhood. The restaurant has lots of windows for inside seating and plenty of outside seating. Service was courteous and amazingly fast. This is a combination plate with pork and brisket. Both were very moist and tender. For the pork, I tried both the mild and hot vinegar sauces. To my surprise, I preferred the milder one because it didn't assert itself too much. I enjoyed the spicy tomato sauce for my brisket. The hushpuppies were very good. The fried okra was fresh out of the fryer and excellent. The slaw was of the vinegary variety, which I usually enjoy, but this version is heavy on the white stuff and didn't have quite enough variety in tastes for me.

Pressure Cooker Candied Ginger

I made candied ginger a few years ago. It's not something I would do every day but I had a lot of fun doing it. I recently acquired a pressure cooker and it inspired an interesting idea to me: why not make candied ginger in the pressure cooker? It should be very soft and flavorful. Here is the result. I peeled two large ginger roots, cut them into small cubes, and put them in the pressure cooker with heavily sugared water. The traditional method first boils the ginger in plain water to soften it and then again in sugar water to candy it. The resulting candy was very tender but still with the characteristic ginger texture. It was also sweet without being overpowering. The traditional method leaves a lot of sugar crystallized around the ginger. The pressure cooker gives a much more subtle result. The ginger stays moist even after it cools but you can dry it in the oven at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes. That inspired me to dip it in chocolate. While I was in the b...

Everybody's Pizza

Everybody's Pizza is across the street from Emory University. It was founded in 1971 and has a seventies college feel. But it isn't musty or dated---you don't feel like you are eating in a museum. It's just pleasantly funky. They played a Big Bird song while I was there. What's no to like? The pizza is college-style as well, as contrasted to the Italian neighborhood style that is (or should be) the goal of a New York style pizzeria. I think that the cheese is the ingredient that most leads me to this feeling. In a New York pizza, the cheese would be central (even if it came from a low-grade Mob supplier), while in more suburban pizzas, the cheese is seen as one in a medley of ingredients that form the topping. (I think that cheese-centrism should be the essence of pizza. Remember that the modern pizza was created by adding cheese to traditional tomato sauce-covered bread.) I think the biggest fault of this pizza is the crust, which I found to be just a lit...

Atlanta etc.: Marilyn Wolf's Food Blog and Restaurant Blog

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