Ambar

We wanted to get into the super-trendy Rose's Luxury and in our delusion thought we could show up at 6 on a Saturday night and get in the no-reservation place. After they told us it was a three-hour wait for a table and standing room only at the bar, we retreated to the nearby Ambar, a Balkan restaurant, to mull our options and get a drink.

After an hour of sitting at the friendly bar upstairs, sampling their specialty cocktails and the mezze platter, we checked with Rose's that it would indeed be another two hours before we got a table and decided to eat dinner at Ambar. Our helpful bartender recommended his favorites on the menu, and we ended up getting four small plates and two large plates for our party of four.

The food was outstanding. The cheese pie was creamy beneath a fried crust, the sour cabbage stuffed with diced pork belly was scrumptious, the Brussels sprouts with bacon, lemon and garlic was as good as you would expect. The mixed grill was a gourmet version of the Balkan staple, with homemade sausage and marinated steak, and truly a large plate for two as advertised.. Less convincing were the Wiener schnitzel, for some reason served rolled up, and the roasted mushroom crepes, which seemed uncharacteristically heavy.

I ate at many Balkan restaurants during my time in Germany and I'm not sure too many people in the Balkans eat food quite this refined. Ambar is part of Richard Sandoval's restaurant empire (his El Centro DF is also great).

The Piquentum Malvasia Croatia we sampled first by the glass and then with a bottle was a nice balance of fruity and dry, and a great advertisement for the region. I would skip the slivovitz version of an Old Fashioned the next time around and order either the slivovitz straight or a regular Old Fashioned.

8407 Kitchen Bar

Silver Spring is really as close to us as Bethesda, but we hardly ever go there. This restaurant may change things. It is bright and warm, with delicious food -- described as farm-to-table artisanal American -- and good service. Installed in the shadow of Discovery in what appears to be an old garage or warehouse, there's no place like it in Bethesda, and I'd be hard put to name a place in DC that combines quality and comfort quite so well.

We trekked there from AFI (only two and a  half blocks but in freezing cold it was a trek) and sat at the upstairs bar. I had a Manhattan with their handmade mole vermouth, and Andrea had a house cocktail with Old Tom gin and sparkling wine that isn't on their online drinks menu. We ordered a plate of two handmade charcuterie -- the country pork terrine and the trottter tots -- both very fine. I had the pulled pork sandwich, which consisted of a homemade brioche stuffed with tender, sweet pork and very hot fries. Andrea had the risotto starter, which was tasty and delicate and made for a ample meal though both of us had the feeling it was not a true risotto but a baked rice dish. I had a glass of Fying Dog Raging Bitch on tap and Andrea had the Iris Pinot Gris from Oregon.

It was full, and fully booked, on a Saturday night and we were lucky to arrive early enough to get two places at the bar. The upper room is more sheltered and cozier, and livelier with all the table, but the downstairs looked like a perfectly acceptable alternative.

There were many things on the menu that looked worth trying, so we will certainly go back soon. We may even skip the movie and park in the garage right next door.

Cowgirl Creamery, RIP

It was one of the best things in DC but it was hard to get to. The owners of a really great cheese shop admitted that it was location that did them in as they shut the DC store at the end of the year. They seemed surprised that a location near the Spy Museum but far from the office buildings at 12th and 13th did not generate a lot of foot traffic of people doing their grocery shopping.

I'd like to think that was the only reason, and that if, for instance, they had located the shop somewhere in Chevy Chase, they might have had more luck. But I suspect not because I think there's more to it than that.

Washington is just not well suited to specialty food stores. To support these gems, you need living neighborhoods, where people shop and go out in the evening. Perhaps Capitol Hill or 14th Street are getting there, but even prosperous places like Chevy Chase and Georgetown don't seem that welcoming. After all, Marvelous Market failed at its original location at Connecticut and Nebraska and I don't think Stachowski's, for all the quality of its products, is long for this earth.

Which brings up a second point. There is no culture of service or knowledge in the operation of these stores. When we stopped in Stachowski's the other night we were waited on by two young men, one more clueless than the other, with little knowledge of the products or how to handle them. Our shoppers are content to do one-stop shopping at Whole Foods and our society generates young people capable of working as a cog in a supermarket system but with no love or feeling for food.

But there's more. The new Bethesda bakery, Fresh Baguette, has little chance of survival, I think, even though the bakers are genuine French and produce excellent bread and pastries. But they are making little effort to adapt to American tastes, offering up these pathetic sandwich fillings to a sprinkling of customers while Taylor's is mobbed. The butcher stores that have opened here are equally boutique-y, too precious, not something for daily shopping.

Cowgirl Creamery seemed to have well-trained staff who were knowledgeable and passionate about the product, but I rarely saw any of them a second time (though admittedly I went very infrequently). Were they not paid enough? Were the working conditions harsher than they seemed? Again, I suspect that American youth who would be good at the job can't work for what they're paid, and those that will work for that amount don't have the training or the interest in the product.

The long and short of it is that specialty food stores need an urban, foot-traffic culture to thrive and Washington, like most of America, is a suburban, car-driven culture. In that context, and given the stratification in society with no effort to train youth in artisanal food, it will be franchised, process-oriented food places that thrive.

Pan to oven veal chops

They sit on the cookbook shelf in my kitchen calling out to me in big fat letters -- "MEAT" and "TENDER." And yet I rarely use Hugh Whittingstall-Fearnley's The River Cottage Meat Book or Nigel Slater's Tender. But this weekday meal was a huge exception as they helped me throw together an impromptu meal that was easy and scrumptious.

The most appealing thing at Broad Branch was the big, thick veal chops -- always excellent and priced very moderately. Since the weather was too nasty for grilling I looked for an alternative and went first to the Meat book. There, hidden in the description for pan to oven pork chops was a note on a possible alternative with veal chops that was actually a different recipe. The chops are marinated with some peeled lemon zest, lemon juice, thyme and olive oil for just two hours. Then they are seared in a skillet and transferred to an oven dish heated in a 425-degree oven. The skillet is deglazed with water and lemon juice and the liquid added to the oven dish. The chops are roasted 20 to 30 minutes. The sauce is enriched with cream and capers and spooned over the chops.

Tender gave me the perfect complement, using the half-bag of potatoes I had left over from another meal. The potatoes (he calls for new but I just used these red boiling potatoes) get boiled till tender. Meanwhile, you simmer 1 cup heavy cream with 3 crushed garlic cloves and leaves from 8 thyme sprigs and salt and pepper, reducing by a third. Drain the potatoes and lightly crush them in a shallow dish, then ladle the cream over them.

To round it out I served arugula with grated lemon zest, lemon juice and our special Spanish olive oil. Very elegant comfort food! I don't know whether these are English country recipes or where they come from, but I will certainly be looking more often into these books!