Joe's Burgers

One reviewer says it's the best burger in metropolitan DC after Ray's, but who knows. It's a very good burger, and a very good bun. Fries are good and the sweet potato fries are divine, served with a buttermilk ranch dressing to dip them in -- and they are served hot, straight out of the frier. The BLT is also very tasty, with a layer of ripe avocado added to the traditional ingredients.

Joe's is a cozy little restaurant in McLean, on Old Dominion Drive, just off Chain Bridge Road. It has a bright, freshly painted interior with some old retro signs to give it a whiff of the roadside diner. Burgers are cooked from scratch, so it's not fast food. There are about a dozen different burgers to choose from, including the Millionaire's Foie Gras Burger for $26 with a seared New York foie gras in it, and burgers made of turkey, lamb and ostrich. (My Joe's Classic was $9.50, without cheese but including fries.)

I didn't have any onion rings but probably put on a couple of pounds just watching them go by to other tables -- big, fat rings with puffy crust fresh out of the frier.

The meat for the burgers comes from the Organic Butcher of McLean next door. This is another bright interior with a great butcher case displaying open cuts and some packaged specialties like wild boar shoulder, duck breast and fresh rabbit. They get some beef and regular deliveries of chicken from the Polyface Farm featured so prominently in Michael Pollan's Omnivores Dilemma. Much of the meat is local, they say, though some is not. It's all fairly expensive, of course, with pork chops at $13.99 a pound and steaks above $20 a pound.

It's a little far for us for regular visits. If I was going to venture across the river for a burger, I'd probably just go to Ray's. But a good butcher is hard to find and it is on the way to the Tyson's Corner malls.

Broad Branch Market

The reopened Broad Branch Market has become a real asset to the neighborhood. They have worked hard to cater to their audience and have become a combination of a convenience store and gourmet market.

The best feature, in my opinion, is the butcher counter, stocked with high-quality meat from local suppliers. The meat is pricey, with beef mostly at competitive prices and pork and chicken running high.

The big draw, though, is the prepared foods, which are generally quite good and reasonably priced. Our favorites are the fried chicken (not the best in the city -- Founding Farmers or General Store would contend for that -- but quite serviceable) and the prime rib or any other roast.

The roast chicken is uneven -- lately they have been underdone -- and they have stuck too much with stews through the summer.

That said, we had a great meal last night with their Malaysian beef stew, which we combined with North Carolina long-grain rice that we cooked at home and sauteed baby eggplants that we had bought at the New Morning Farm market on Saturday. These were small and tender and cooked very quickly in olive oil and garlic. Simple, quick and delicious.

Broad Branch also has great bulk foods, spices and teas. They have made an effort to stock good oils and other specialties along with some plain old convenience staples.

What they haven't mastered is produce. They don't give over much space to it and stocking is pretty spotty. It's not being able to count on finding the produce you want that keeps it from being a reliable one-stop shopping. If I have produce on my shopping list, I just go straight to Wholefoods and don't waste my time stopping at Broad Branch. It may just be a limitation imposed by the size of the store, but the co-op on Grubb Street manages to keep a produce section stocked.