Monthly Archives: August 2012

Music, The Daily Feed
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Hot Ticket: The Zombies @ The Howard Theatre, 8/9/12

The Zombies in the 1960s (Photo courtesy The Zombies)

Cruising the radio dial on any road trip or drive around the Beltway is going to yield a classic rock station and inevitably great familiar songs like, “Time of the Season.” You might pause and think, wow, that song always sounds better than I give it credit for. Who’s it by? Oh, yes, The Zombies. They had another big hit didn’t they? “She’s Not There?” Right, right. Good stuff.

Well, The Zombies were big in the 1960s and got together again a few times over the following decades finally to reform in 2004 as an ongoing concern. They put out a new album, Breathe Out, Breathe In, in 2011 and they are touring again now, landing at The Howard Theatre this Thursday. What better time this season to catch up with the UK trendsetters?

The Zombies are best remembered for their collaborations in baroque pop, a subgenre of rock championed by The Beatles. Yesterday’s baroque pop paved the way for today’s chamber pop — consisting of bands that use orchestral instrumentation to produce modern rock songs. Acts ranging from Belle and Sebastian to Florence + The Machine have benefited from the groundwork laid by The Zombies.

Tickets to this all-ages show are available online for $39.50 plus fees or at the door for $45. Newly reformed 60s baroque pop brethren The Left Banke opens. Doors open at 6pm; showtime is 8pm.

Food and Drink, The Features, We Love Food
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We Love Food: Food, Wine & Co.

Photo courtesy of bonappetitfoodie
Beets and goat cheese at Food, Wine & Co.
courtesy of bonappetitfoodie

There are funny little ways in which you realize you’re growing up sometimes. Maybe it’s when you find yourself in a restaurant’s “wine library” and commit to yourself in your head that you really need to start investing more time (and money) in learning about pinot noir and its intricacies rather than picking a bottle based on the attractiveness of a label and how much cash is in your wallet. Or maybe it’s when you find yourself cleaning a plate of beets–and actually craving more–that you realize you and your palate are maturing in ways you didn’t realize were happening. About five tasting courses into dinner at Food, Wine & Co. I thought, “Maybe growing up isn’t so bad after all.”

If you’re not paying attention driving up Wisconsin Avenue navigating rush hour traffic, you could easily pass by the Bethesda restaurant without knowing you’re missing out on a great restaurant. Food, Wine & Co., which opened in late 2010, has found its groove as the neighborhood bistro its been branding itself as, despite some early growing pains. There’s a lively crowd on a weekday night in the main dining room, and if I were you, I’d take advantage of their small outdoor seating as the weather cools down.

Photo courtesy of bonappetitfoodie
Artichokes at at Food, Wine & Co.
courtesy of bonappetitfoodie

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Weekend Flashback
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Weekend Flashback: 8/3-8/5

Photo courtesy of wolfkann
DSC06426
courtesy of wolfkann

It’s August! Most of us are either on vacation or “working.” I’d say kick back and keep Monday at bay, but this month Monday is kept at bay by little work. Instead I will say: watch yourself out in that heat, be sure to stay hydrated, and, if you must do work this month, do as little as possible. To help with that, here’s the pictures in the Weekend Flashback. Enjoy! Continue reading →

The Daily Feed
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Strasburg’s Sharp, Nats Beat Marlins 4-1

Photo courtesy of Mylar Bono
The Smoking Gun(ner)
courtesy of Mylar Bono

The plain and simple story of Sunday’s Nationals game versus Ozzie Guillen’s Miami Marlins is that right-handed starter Stephen Strasburg posted six innings of shutout baseball, allowing just three hits, in Washington’s eventual 4-1 victory.

Not only that, but Strasburg aided his effort by adding run-support. Strasburg’s single off Miami right-hander Rick Nolasco in the second inning drove in Jayson Werth for the Nats first run of the day.  Washington continued to score, having all nine batters in the line-up face Nolasco at the plate, by way of small ball. Continue reading →

The Daily Feed
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Cardiac Nats Comeback on Marlins with Six Run Eighth

Photo courtesy of Keith Allison
Danny Espinosa
courtesy of Keith Allison

There are many things that good teams do well, and one of them is to make costly errors into minor mistakes. To turn a missed call that led to a run into a footnote. It looked as if the story of this game was going to be how Espinosa and Lombardozzi struggled with defense up the middle and how homeplate umpire, Mike Muchlinski, called a strike three swinging a foul ball when even Reyes was heading back to the dugout.

Reyes would end up drawing the walk and coming around to score after a Lombardozzi error and Donovan Solano sac bunt. The Nats were down though not due to a bad call, but because of their up the middle defense. In the second inning Jordan Zimmermann did the uncharacteristic and gave the Marlins two free baserunners on a hit by pitch and a walk. With one out Gorkys Hernandez hit a tailor made double play ball to Lombardozzi who tossed the ball to Espinosa at short who then tossed the ball into the seats. It was the first of two errors on Espinosa, and in total the errors by Lombardozzi and Espinosa would lead to three unearned run and one extra earned run due to the missed double play.

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The Daily Feed
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Detwiler’s Consistency and LaRoche’s Bat Win It For The Nats

Photo courtesy of Matthew Straubmuller
Nationals Pitcher – Ross Detwiler
courtesy of Matthew Straubmuller

The Washington Nationals avoided a sweep against the Philadelphia Phillies Thursday night in a battle of the southpaws between left-handed pitcher Cole Hamels and Ross Detwiler. Long Story Short: It was most certainly Detwiler’s night.

Manager Davey Johnson was acting like a proud papa in the post-game press conference while explaining how proud he is of young Detwiler, who went on to pitch seven innings of three hit ball in the 3-0 Washington win. Detwiler’s seven innings of three hit ball combined with a line of two walks and three strike outs over 88 pitches (54 strikes) proved to be an efficient outing for the lefty.

But it woudn’t be a win without some run support, right?

First baseman Adam LaRoche went 3-for-4 against Hamels with a leadoff, first pitch homerun – his twentieth of the season – to right field to put the Nats on the board early in the second inning. According to Johnson, LaRoche has been the glue of the team this season and this game most certainly proved that to be true. Continue reading →

We Love Weekends
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We Love Weekends: Aug 3-5

Photo courtesy of mosley.brian
Penn Quarter – Half Mirage – 4-26-10
courtesy of mosley.brian

So it’s the weekend soon and the We Love DC writers are planning outings involving music, food, booze, and baseball. Shocking, I know, but the devil’s in the details. Which are below. You didn’t think we’d keep it a secret, did  you?

Rachel: This weekend will be one of good friends, live music, and Nationals baseball all starting with drinks at Iron Horse on Friday night to celebrate a friend’s new beginning. Can’t be out too late though! I’ve got a hot date with The Fashion District Stage as a performer at the MidCity Dog Days street festival down around the U Street area at 1 p.m. Listen Local First DC rallied all the performance artists for the festival and there are some great local names on the bill for both Saturday and Sunday so be sure to checkout the listing’s on their webpage for who’s on which stage and when. Then it’s back to Nats Park on Sunday for Michael Morse Bobblehead Day aka the Nats vs the Marlins for some day baseball at 1:35 p.m.

Photo courtesy of JAMES ANTHONY CAMPBELL
afi silver theatre
courtesy of JAMES ANTHONY CAMPBELL

Mosley: To paraphrase: “SPACEBALLS!!!  Of crap; there goes the AFI on Saturday.”  Other than that I’m hoping to try to do some museum going this weekend.  I’d like to get back over to the American Art Museum to see the Art of Video Games exhibit again.  And I still haven’t tried my hand at the National Building Museum’s Mini Golf course.  Both are things I want to do before the end of the summer.

Photo courtesy of MudflapDC
20100911-DSC_0261
courtesy of MudflapDC

Tom: Bring me your finest weekend, DC! I’ll start Friday by catching the Nats doubleheader against the Marlins, hopefully, after an afternoon strategy session on the upcoming redesign of our beloved site at Boundary Stone. I’m hoping to find some lane-swimming time at Turkey Thicket Rec Center, as well as a stock-up trip to the Wegmans, as our house is desperately short on standard provisions.

Photo courtesy of Montgomery County Planning Commission
Willow Creek Farm Market
courtesy of Montgomery County Planning Commission

Marissa: So few summer weekends left, so much to accomplish. It’s the MidCity Dog Days this weekend, so I plan on checking out all the good sales that are happening over on 14th street, specifically the Studio Theatre Garage Sale. Then Saturday night I’m headed out to Clyde’s Willow Creek Farm for their 10th Annual Slow Food Dinner. No, that doesn’t mean waiters serve food in slow motion. Rather, the slow food movement pays homage to the heritage, traditions and culture behind good food. Come Sunday it’s time to take it easy before a whirlwind trip up north to New York City to see some of our best and brightest chefs cook at the James Beard House. Stay tuned for that post and a zillion photos that will accompany it!

Photo courtesy of Jenn Larsen
Rickey Month tickets
courtesy of Jenn Larsen

Fedward: My big weekend plans are for the Rickey Month party at Jack Rose. Despite having eleven stamps on my passport I’ve only tried three of the finalists, so this will be a good chance for me to catch up.

Photo courtesy of meg linehan * part deux
[JUNIPER LANE] IOTA 08 OCT 11
courtesy of meg linehan * part deux

Don: My weekend starts promptly after work on Friday. My darling wife and I are off to Arlington’s Lubber Run Amphitheater for one of their free Summer concert events. This Friday it’s Juniper Lane, the band that’s 20% We Love DC designer extraordinaire John Athayde and 99% awesome. (I’m inclined to say they’re 100% awesome but I want to leave them some room for aspiration, you know?) I’d like to finally get out to one of Studio Theater’s garage sales but we’ll see how that actually works out. Ditto for Sunday night’s Rickey shindig.

Entertainment, Interviews, Music, Night Life, We Love Music
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Q&A with Millie Jackson

photo courtesy of Weird Wreckuds

Readers here might not know much about her, but Millie Jackson was a giant in the R&B world in the 70s – a skilled, smokey-voiced singer as famous for her raunchy on-stage monologues as she was for her lush, beautifully produced albums for Spring Records, most of which were recorded in storied Muscle Shoals Sound Studios in Alabama. While 1973’s “It Hurts So Good” was one of her biggest hit songs, appearing on the soundtrack to the blaxploitation hit Cleopatra Jones,  her breakthrough album Caught Up was a rule-breaker –  a soul concept-album with a cohesive gender-war narrative threaded through the covers and self-penned originals.    That and two of her other albums from that period went gold; Feelin’ Bitchy and Get it Out’cha System.  While these came out years before the beginnings of hip-hop, the genre eventually drew on Jackson for influence, as her spoken-word style and fierce, don’t-fuck-with-me energy laid the groundwork for decades worth of female rappers.

Her show Friday night at the Howard Theater is her first ever at the venue, since it had already been shuttered during her heyday.  It should be a good one, since the 68-year-old legend still knows how to throw down in her live set.  She tours with a large band, sings her old-school hits, as well as more recent songs (she never really stopped recording until 2001), and is always ready to break it down with stories or advice in her monologues, which draw her songs out into extended jams, and make her shows as comedic as they are soulful.

I spoke with Ms. Jackson on the phone the other day.  She can be as funny in an interview as she is serious, telling me about the state of R&B music, and laughing at contemporary production technique.  She just recently ended a 13 year run as drive-time host on a Dallas soul station, so messing around with her interviewer is second nature…

Jonathan Druy: Have you spent a lot of time in DC at all?

Millie Jackson: My horn players are from DC.  And Bill Washington used to bring me into Constitution Hall all the time. I played the Warner.  I think I played, what club used to be under the Warner?  Encore?  I can’t believe I remember that.  The name of the club! I had my strawberries today!

JD: How often have you been touring lately?

MJ: Usually I do some weekends with a Summer Soul/Blues Tour, but this year I did four weeks with them, so I’ve worked more this year already than I did all of last year. Continue reading →

Food and Drink, The Features
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Summer Loving, and Eating

Photo courtesy of kimberlyfaye
courtesy of kimberlyfaye

Dates. Those awkward, exciting, beautiful things we all go on at some point. I am by no means an expert in this field- quite far from it- and I don’t have a magical solution for how to make your next date the best you ever had, so unfortunately you won’t be finding the next We Love DC dating service here (sigh). The inspiration for this post really came from a conversation with a friend of mine the other day. He asked me where he should take a girl out, wanting to strike the right balance between serious young professional, trendy and casual. I realized many of us have gone through this mental exercise before. The exhausting over-planning and over- analyzing we do: choosing the right spot for that first interaction (or second or third), focusing on every detail from time, to dress code, to the big goodbye, mulling over tiny logistics as a method of defense to shift our thoughts away from the weirdness that could ensue.  But enough of that.

I think a shared meal is the perfect way to break the ice, a way to bond over something simple that brings anyone, no matter what level of culinary expertise you may have, together. We all share stories around a dinner table, have memories of a favorite meal, and can reveal oneself through a dish. So for me, sharing a meal is a perfect way of getting to know someone, whether it be a sit down dinner or a casual picnic. I decided to write some recommendations for where you can break bread and the ice along the way, in case you need to outsource thinking on the next time your big date is lined up. I polled some of the We Love DC crew for their suggestions as well, as not all of us are food focused daters.

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The Daily Feed
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Nats Fall 3-2 To Phillies

Photo courtesy of Matthew Straubmuller
Phillies vs Nationals 8/1/12
courtesy of Matthew Straubmuller

The Phillies beat Washington 3-2 Wednesday night due to a lack of run support. What Philadelphia did was take advantage of right-handed starter Edwin Jackson at the right times.

This was Jackson’s third career start against the Phillies, and while he has beaten them once before earlier this year, Wednesday was a different story. Jackson threw five and two-thirds innings and gave up eight hits, three earned runs, four walks (one intentional), three homeruns, and struck out six over 108 pitches (63 for strikes).

Wednesday wasn’t a complete failure though. Jackson managed to strikeout Ryan Howard in all four of his plate appearances. Unfortunately, that didn’t stop the Phillies leadoff man and shortstop Jimmy Rollins from going long twice — once in the third inning to put his team on the board and once in the fifth to tie the game up. It was the eighth career multi-homerun game of his career. Continue reading →

Capital Chefs, Food and Drink, The Features
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Capital Chefs: Ann Cashion of Johnny’s Half Shell (Part 2)

Photo courtesy of bonappetitfoodie
Scallops with beets at Johnny’s Half Shell
courtesy of bonappetitfoodie

We’ve done a a couple of scallops recipes on here by now, all ranging in difficulty. I’ve come to find that chefs in this town are really into scallops recipes for whatever reason. Maybe it’s because scallops are versatile, maybe it’s because the home cook can make them with minimal effort but still look fancy.

This recipe for scallops with bacon, roasted beets and a rice wine vinaigrette from Ann Cashion is completely accessible. The bacon adds a nice smokey flavor, and the beets in season right now are pleasantly sweet. That should count for something extra coming from someone that doesn’t think of herself as a big beets fan. Plus, the fried ginger slices and fried red onions for garnish make the dish stand out more. I had never had fried ginger before trying this dish and now I could see myself going hog wild with it as a garnish. It’s got that really nice bite to it.

After the jump you’ll find the full recipe. Enjoy.

Photo courtesy of bonappetitfoodie
Ann Cashion making vinaigrette
courtesy of bonappetitfoodie

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Capital Chefs, Food and Drink, The Features
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Capital Chefs: Ann Cashion of Johnny’s Half Shell (Part 1)

Photo courtesy of bonappetitfoodie
Chef Ann Cashion
courtesy of bonappetitfoodie

If I were to ever ditch the desk for a kitchen, I think I’d want to work for Ann Cashion. There’s a certain warmth about her–several of her staff call her “Ann” rather than “chef,” and the way she interacts with all of them you can see that she cares about everyone in her kitchen. In return, she doesn’t even have to breathe a word and the right prep bowls and ingredients wind up at her station when she needs them. “I’m very hands-on and I’m willing to do the same things others are doing,” says Cashion about her style in the kitchen and referring to some of the more “drudge” tasks.

For the chef and part owner of Johnny’s Half Shell,  leading and developing her staff is one of the most rewarding parts of her job. In fact, if you take a look around the city you’ll see more than a handful of chefs, such as Teddy Folkman, who have trained under Ann and have gone on to open their own restaurants or run their own kitchens. From our conversation, Ann’s approach to leading in the kitchen seems so nurturing and down to earth that if she were your boss, she’d be the last person you’d want to disappoint. “You can’t over-demand from your staff. I had to learn that,” she says. “I’m a perfectionist and perfection is something to aspire to. But if you don’t achieve it every time, that’s okay too.”

With her attention to mentoring other chefs and developing culinary talent, it comes as no surprise that the people behind the food are part of why Ann became a chef in the first place. “Food is a very wide open field. It’s a very human field,” she explains. “Everybody connects to food.”

In addition to the human factor, Ann liked that food “wasn’t so specialized,” unlike her doctoral program in English Literature at Stanford which she left early to pursue cooking. There are still instances when her background in literature peeks through in conversation though. “I think of food as a language–if you don’t have the vocabulary and syntax down, it’s hard to write poetry,” she says, explaining why traditional Western training is important for aspiring chefs. “Italian food was my first love. It formed the basis for my aesthetic,” she adds. “I liked the non-fussiness of it, the emphasis on the quality of ingredients and the idea of the slow food movement.”
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Sports Fix
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The Old Fox of Washington Baseball

Photo courtesy of The Library of Congress
[Clark Griffith, Cincinnati, NL (baseball)] (LOC)
courtesy of The Library of Congress

In order to earn a nickname like, “The Old Fox,” one cannot be anything close to what a prototypical pitcher is thought to be, and that is what Clark Griffith was as a player. He amassed 453 wins to 372 losses with a 3.31 ERA over 20 seasons. Clark Griffith lived up to his nickname using deception instead of speed to get players out, and after his playing career was over it would be slightly ironic that one of the greatest finesse pitchers would own the team that was home to one of the games greatest power pitchers.

Clark Griffith as a player has only a small role in Washington baseball history, but it is an important role. It was Griffith who while representing the players in a salary dispute with the NL had worked out a deal with Ban Johnson and Charles Comiskey to turn the American League into a major league with Washington being one of 8 charter cities. The city of Washington had had a professional franchise for a brief period of time when the NL Washington Nationals called Washington home from 1886-1889 before being folded due to poor attendance and overall mismanagement. When the leaders of the NL turned down Griffith’s and the players request for more money Griffith quickly wired Johnson and Comiskey to let them know the players were on their side.

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