If there’s anything that grips Y&H readers, it’s tragedy, and it doesn’t get much more tragic than the homicide of Nori Amaya, the co-owner of Coppi’s Organic on U Street. People were obviously desperate for information on the strangulation. Even our negligible little item was widely visited.

Here’s how the week shook out:

1. Nori Amaya’s Friends and Fans Express Their Grief on Her Facebook Page
2. A Certain Goddamn Budweiser Beer That People Can’t Stop Reading About
   
3. Birch & Barley Opens Today. What’s Inside? (This item is quickly entering Select 55 territory.)
   
4. Tom and Derek Brown to Channel Spirits and Iggy Pop at the Passenger
   
5. D’Acqua Shutters, Ping Pong Dim Sum Set to Open Next Month
   

This fascinating segment, from Al Jazeera English, doesn’t really explain why the foods were lost, but it does look at contemporary Beijing street foods, which date back centuries. That’s right, centuries. One vendor says his family has been selling street food for “234 years.”

But the wide-ranging segment also looks at the Chinese diet and how it has been affected by the country’s massive economic growth. In short, as China has opened its borders to Western fast-food chains like McDonald’s and KFC, the citizens have opened their mouths and gobbled down the American junk food. Their waist lines, like ours, are suffering from it.

Mark Furstenberg

The master baker says that revenues at G Street Food, in the first few weeks of operation, are down at least 40 percent from projections.  It’s enough to cause concern for the owners of the place, the Choi family, who “expected it to do well from the beginning,” Furstenberg tells Y&H.

Furstenberg doesn’t quite know how to explain the slow start for G Street Food. He takes part of the blame. He thinks he opened with too few items on the menu and the ones he did offer were not familiar enough to the professional set who crowd these downtown sidewalks looking for lunch options. He has literally seen people walk into G Street, look at the menu, and walk right out.

So he has done what he really didn’t want to do: He’s expanded the menu beyond street foods. Along with his banh mi and socca and merguez sausage, Furstenberg now sells a muffuletta, sloppy Joe, meatball sub, and even an egg salad sandwich.

Furstenberg’s not selling anything that he’s “embarrassed about,” he says. “But it’s not what I intended to do. Hopefully I will one day get back to street food.”

Tom and Derek Brown have pour, mixed, and stirred drinks at some of the best spots in the District: Komi, Citronelle, Palena, the Gibson, Corduroy, and Cork. But when the brothers decided to open their own joint, The Passenger, they didn’t want anything as formal as their former places of employment.

“I wanted a place where I could drink wine and play Motörhead,” says Derek Brown, the younger of the two siblings who grew up in Olney. “I’ve grown in my tastes. I haven’t grown in my want for a laid-back environment.”

True to their word, the brothers Brown are building a watering hole high on quirkiness — and low on pretension. It begins with the very building in which the Passenger is housed: the former bar/cafe space at the Warehouse at 1021 7th St. NW.  The space, co-owned by Paul Ruppert (who’s also a partner in the Passenger), dates back to 1890 and once was home to Ruppert Hardware, a fixture in D.C. for nearly 100 years.

The partners plan to let the building speak on its own terms. The old hardwood floor, much of which dates back to the late 19th century, will remain as is. The distressed concrete and exposed brick walls will go untouched, too. Even the old hunter-green booths, which date back to God knows when, will stay in place.

The main additions are few, but significant. The partners have built booths in the front window nooks, which will be perfect for larger parties. They have also redesigned the bar. But the biggest change will occur in the least-trafficked area of the place — at the back, near the entrance to the Warehouse theater itself. In that space, the guys have hired architect Brie Husted to design a room to look like an antique dining-car, complete with arched ceilings, hardwood floors, and old mirrors to look like windows.

So why a dining car?

Patrons “don’t hang out here,” says Tom Brown about the back of the bar. “We wanted to create something interesting…”

“More alluring,” Derek Brown chimes in.

“…to entice people back here,” Tom Brown finishes his sentence.

As far as the beverages, the brothers are striving for the personal on all fronts. By that, I mean that the brothers are, for example, stocking their wine list with a few offbeat labels, from a few off-the-beaten-track places, such as the L. Mawby Blanc de Blanc sparkling wine from Michigan or the Chateau Musar Cinsault rosé from Lebanon.  In all, there will be 25 wines available by the glass, ranging in price from $5 to $15.

In terms of cocktails, for which the brothers have earned a reputation for mixing the most inventive in town, the siblings plan to just wing it. They will not offer a cocktail menu, says Tom Brown, which, to him, can create the wrong impression with drinkers. He tells me about a cocktail he once designed for Corduroy; the menu listed its ingredients as tequila, green chartreuse, and sparkling wine.  Few, as you might suspect, ordered it.

When Tom Brown changed the language to read, “a blend of rare liqueurs,” the drink was “flying off the shelves,” he says.

He offers this anecdote as evidence that it’s better to try to understand his customers’ palates then to merely shove a prescribed list of cocktails at them. He plans to learn his patrons’ preferences — sweet or bitter, vodka or rye, for example — and then mix a cocktail based on them. It will require more work, yes, but “it helps cut down on disappointments,” Tom Brown says.

The last bit of personalization will be the most exclusive: the Columbia Room, located in a space near the dining car in the back of the bar. This is where Derek Brown will host his intimate “cocktail club and laboratory.” Though still in the formative stages, the Columbia Room will likely be a reservation-only space in which Derek Brown offers an omakase-like selection of cocktails, along with some background and history on each drink.

“Ninety-nine percent of the people will not enjoy it,” Derek Brown argues. I suspect he’s joking.

But will the Passenger really play hardcore music? Well, consider this: The name of the place is derived from the Iggy Pop song, “The Passenger.” “I’ve always loved this song,” Derek Brown says. “It always had great energy.”

There’s no real explanation for why the brothers chose to name their place after a Pop song — though, in retrospect, Derek Brown acknowledges that it could be read as a commentary on how “everybody is always passing through” the District. But the tune does reflect the siblings’ punk spirit, which will filter down to the music they plan to pump throughout the Passenger.

The music is “going to go all over the place,” Tom Brown says. “You might hear Bad Brains and hear Simple Minds right behind it.”  If you don’t like the song, just wait a minute, he adds. Something completely different will follow it.

The Passenger’s opening date is still up in the air. Derek Brown tells a reporter this afternoon that the bar should be finished in a “few weeks,” a remark to which his older brother immediately takes umbrage. It’s sibling rivalry right there at the construction site!

“Why did you say a ‘few weeks’?” Tom Brown carps. “I think we’ll be open much sooner than that.”

Our experience reflects a national trend. It’s been legal to brew your own beer since 1978, and that change in U.S. law has been responsible for the “Craft Beer Revolution” we’ve seen in this country over the last 30 years. These first homebrewers in the late 70’s moved from their garages to starting the first wave of microbreweries in the early 80’s, and then many like Sierra Nevada founder Ken Grossman developed their operations into today’s craft beer giants.

This general mania is what we think gets more people into homebrewing each year, but we are sure that the AHA’s annual event has helped things along a bit as well. Just last year, the group claims, 2,100 homebrewers taught 610 people how to brew, producing 2,800 gallons of beer in the process. So give it a try. After all, it’s not all that difficult and requires a relatively tiny upfront investment in equipment, most of which you can find at your local homebrew store or here on the web. If you are not ambitious enough to go out and buy your own carboy and ale pail yet, perhaps one of the local homebrewers’ clubs (DC Homebrewers or BURP) has something going on Saturday.

Meanwhile, there are two stores in the DC area that provide everything you need. We go to the Maryland Homebrew in Columbia and get plenty of advice from Chris and the other helpful folks there. If that’s too far, consider myLocal-Home-Brew-Shop off Route 7 in Falls Church. Happy brewing!

how dim sum is made from pingpongdimsum on Vimeo.

You’ll have to forgive Y&H for posting a video that’s so promotional in nature, but I found this inside look at Ping Pong Dim Sum quite fascinating, and not just because the London-based chain will open its first U.S. outlet right here in the District.

I mean, look at those knife skills! I can’t stop watching that dude with the Chinese cleaver as he shaves off pieces of dough, presses them into perfect little dumpling circles, and then flips them onto the finished pile.

It’s a problem that coffeehouses everywhere have to deal with: What to do with squatters who camp at tables all day, their laptops locked into the free wifi, as they nurse a cup of Joe and live in some fantasy world where their very presence somehow helps the owners pay the bills. It’s a particularly pressing issue as the economy continues to stall and more folks join the ranks of the unemployed, eager to exploit a shop’s free wifi for their own gain.

Tryst in Adams Morgan believes it has a unique solution. But before we get to that, I wanted to throw the question out to the friends and colleagues and followers on my social networks. Are laptop squatters a problem for you, I wanted to know, and should coffeehouses try to limit surfing hours or enforce a minimum purchase or charge for wifi? Below are some of the responses:

hillrat: People who squat at coffee shops for 3+ hours don’t care, they’re selfishly living off the fat of the land.

Cancemini4: Totally fair [to establish minimum purchases or time limits]. It’s hard enough to turn a profit in a coffeeshop, if people don’t want to pay they should go to the public library.

Sacha: yes! drives me crazy when someone buys a cup of coffee and sits at Tryst for 5 hours. I don’t know how these businesses survive.

Joe: it has nothing to do with “should” and everything to do with “what will best help me pay my bills and taxes”. They own a business and not a charity.

Lou: I’ve been so peeved about this since day 1, esp. when you got the jack ass just sitting there for hours just cruising the damn ‘net at a table for four.

Carol: If people want free Internet access, they can go to their local library (since most library systems in the DC metro area offer free wi-fi). Businesses have every right to charge for wi-fi or impose limits, and if they’re not, they should. By the way, you can write off all job-seeking expenses on your taxes — whether it be a cup of coffee along with those wi-fi charges, or an interview suit or shoes.

Zora: Remember when Borders first went national, and they had comfy chairs all over the store so their customers could sit and browse books? Pretty soon homeless people started camping out in them all day long, and now the chairs are gone. Unintended consequences involving freeloaders will undo the best of intentions, it seems.

Frank:  Bookstores and coffee shops without wi-fi are like sports bars without ESPN. The businesses have to attract customers, and wi-fi helps them do that. If they don’t have any tables open, it’s not where I want to eat (or surf), anyway.

Laura: No, it’s called “Freedom”

Mike: Only if other restaurants start a time clock for how long you have to eat your meal and leave:)

Bobby: i’m inclined to say no. but laptop slackers should have the decency to spring for a cup of coffee.

Deb: Yeah, I feel like a customer is entitled to one hour per paid cup. After awhile, the caffeine jitters would put him in a coma anyway and the laptop would be up for grabs.

Whew, OK, so what is Tryst’s solution? It’s not to set time limits or minimum purchases. It’s not even to charge for wifi. It’s to encourage laptop users to do what cofeehouses were originally intended to do: socialize, not hybernate in cyberspace. According to a release sent to Y&H yesterday, Tryst has recently…

launched its “Don’t Camp Alone” campaign with the goal of encouraging Laptop Users to share their tables with other patrons in the hope of addressing both the social and the economic dimensions of this dilemma. Guests who typically leave after looking but not finding a seat are now offered the option of joining a Laptop User’s table.

According to General Manager Stephanie Lair, the response has been overwhelmingly positive and “Tryst has increased sales” – she says with a smile. “At first, we too viewed them as a threat to our coffeehouse culture and our bottom line, but once we decided to engage them we found to our surprise that they actually want to connect and socialize with others.”

Owner Constantine Stavropoulos could not accept the notion that “discouraging or punishing certain patrons” was the answer or even an acceptable option for a coffeehouse. “Historically, Coffeehouses are the epicenter of social change and cultural movements and laptops are now part of our culture. At Tryst, we see ourselves as pioneers in defining the American Cafe/Coffee Culture and so for us, we don’t see this as a ‘dilemma’, we see it as our mission!” Stavropoulos doesn’t fault or judge other coffeehouses for seeing Laptop Users as a threat, saying “let’s not kid ourselves; the economic environment is scary right now. But our patrons are not the threat!”

The interesting thing is that Tryst, in the same release, doesn’t seem to think this solution alone will solve the issue. They have another “major Tryst intiative” on the horizon, which they won’t reveal yet.

Photo by Daquella manera via Flickr Creative Commons, Attribution License

Comerford and Flay get fresh (veggies) in the White House garden.

Jeesh, speaking of predictions, Y&H should have guessed this would happen as soon as the White House broke ground on its kitchen garden in March: Iron Chef America has trotted out three of its, ahem, heaviest hitters to cook a meal from ingredients plucked from the hugely symbolic garden.

The special two-hour episode of Iron Chef America, dubbed with a stunning lack of subtlety, Super Chef Battle, features Mario Batali and Emeril Lagasse, who take on Bobby Flay and White House Executive Chef Cristeta Comerford in the competition.

The episode has already been filmed, and according to The New York Times‘ account, First Lady Michelle Obama laid out the ground rules to the teams (they had to cook five dishes using ingredients from the White House kitchen garden) and put in a good plug for her Healthy Kids Initiative.

The show will air on Sunday, Jan. 3, on the Food Network.

Not surprisingly, the air date is politically tinged. So says Y&H’s virtual friend, Obama Foodorama, who writes:

The show’s January airdate is timed perfectly to be right before Congress comes back into session, when legislators will be addressing the reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act, which provides federal funding for school feeding programs. Better school lunches are one of Mrs. Obama’s priorities, and President Obama’s too; Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack frequently notes in his public remarks that this was the very first subject President Obama discussed with him during their “job interview.”

And here’s another interesting twist: The ingredients used for the actual cooking challenge in Kitchen Stadium were not from the White House garden. So says both The New York Times and Obama Foodorama, who notes:

Today, the chefs reunited in New York in the Iron Chef Kitchen Stadium, the stage set where the competition part of the show occurs. In addition to the “secret ingredient” of White House Kitchen Garden veggies (stand-in organic veggies were used for the actual filming–) the chefs were given a baby pig, and a pantry of dairy products to work with, among other things. Guest judges for the competition part of the episode were cookbook author/chef Nigella Lawson, actress Jane Seymour, and Olympic swimming champ Natalie Coughlin.

Photo courtesy of Obama Foodorama

Dave Chappelle is a comedic genius, and his skit for Samuel L. Jackson Beer compares favorably with any of the fake commercials produced by SNL. 

I wonder if Greg Engert at Birch & Barley/ChurchKey can add this to his 500-plus beer list? Maybe even hire Chappelle to do his Sammy Jackson shtick? It might actually clear out enough people at the Logan Circle hotspot so that I could get a seat.

We consider ourselves humble students of beer, always looking for a good new book or website, and frequently checking the ones we have grown to trust. Yesterday during a panel at the Women Chef and Restaurateurs National Conference, Tammy and several other regional beeries were asked for some good sources on beer.

It got us thinking: out of the non-blog resources out there about beer, what bubbles to the top? Below are our top five, in no particular order (and probably no surprise, since we mention these often). We’d love to hear what yours are, so cite those references in the comments section…APA format optional.

1. Anything by Michael Jackson, the end all, be all beer guru, is a must. Ask someone you consider to be a beer expert what they have read and MJ’s books are on their list. We guarantee it.

2. Beertown.org is the Brewers’ Association website and has a great beer info and education page, as well as tons of nitty-gritty info about homebrewing and the craft beer industry.

3. Beer Advocate has a very thorough set of Beer 101 pages in their education section and tons of descriptions and ratings for almost every beer known to man by regular old joes and janes just like you.

4. All About Beer magazine doesn’t have the sexiest or most up-to-date website, but we look forward to getting the actual magazine every two months. It’s always full of good stuff…all about beer (duh).

5. The Naked Pint came out earlier this year and is a very informative, witty, and thorough book by Hallie Beaune and queen of the popular blog Beer for Chicks, Christina Perozzi. Tammy’s reading the book now and we’re going to have the chance to meet the L.A. women beer expert authors later this month. (Sorry folks-it’s a media-only event, but we’ll write about meeting them and plenty more about the book soon.) The Lagerheads have Sam Chapple-Sokol of Humble Gourmand and Inkwell fame to thank for turning us on to it. We’ll get your copy back to you unscathed, buddy!