![]() ![]() #Rarify butter plusThere are 40 different items on the dinner menu, plus additional offerings downstairs in the bar they generally skew heavily toward seafood, to the virtual exclusion of pork. The sheer breadth of the offerings only heightens speculation that this supposed pop-up could pop-up again after its planned six-month run. The overall menu seems ambitious for an impermanent concept. Andrés plans to use rabbit, squab, and lamb instead. (The conversion from Atlántico, with its garish orange walls, into the minimalist stark white, almost museum-like motif of America Eats, took less than a month.) One manager related to me how incorporating the stew’s traditional elements of squirrel and blackbird would be illegal under current hunting laws. Ask about this rustic stew, however, and you get a good sense of just how educated the staff has become in a very short amount of time. One of the most obscure menu listings, the Kentucky-style burgoo, has proven so tricky to recreate that the restaurant has yet to actually serve it. It tastes fishy and seems like a waste of seafood that would be better served on the half shell, or grilled with butter (both of which, in fact, America Eats does pretty well). ![]() Decadent back in the day, the dish as presented here seems better suited for Denny’s. They discovered some interesting things: the Hangtown fry, for instance, was named for a rough-and-tumble California gold-mining town in the 1840s, when eating fried oysters mixed with scrambled eggs and bacon connoted status and wealth. Staffers from Andrés’ Think Food Group spent weeks at the Library of Congress combing antique texts for recipes. As disclosed in a footnote-yes, pupils, your menu has footnotes-America Eats is itself made possible via the financial contributions of the Dole Foods Company. As you learn from scanning the menu, the first known recipe appeared in 1896, when Helen Louise Johnson, memorialized as an “enterprising housekeeper,” dished up her formula for “Sweet and Nut Sandwiches.”Īnd, like so many American success stories, the sandwich’s humble origins were quickly directed toward corporate profit: Johnson’s recipe, the menu further explains, was published by the manufacturers of a hand-crank nut grinder hoping to cash in on her creativity.įurther menu scanning reveals that corporate sponsorship is by no means confined to the past. ![]() Like many entrees at the new eatery, the gussied-up PB&J is intended as a celebration of American culinary innovation. Thankfully, more cost-conscious culinary history buffs can order a down-market version, sans the foie gras, for $10. But, in this age of austerity, the kitchy aggrandizing of a third-graders’ lunch seems tone-deaf-even if it is quite tasty. history: A New York restaurateur once charged $21 for a similar foie gras and nut butter sandwich. True, Andrés’ version might not be the most expensive PB&J, and fattened goose liver in U.S. This precious little piece of Americana is a prime example of how Andrés’ temporary eatery, located in the former Café Atlántico space in Penn Quarter and featuring a menu culled from archival cookbooks, simultaneously delights, enlightens, and perplexes. Which means I had little time to waste in ordering myself a $14 peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Instead of becoming a local fixture along the lines of Andrés’ Jaleo or Zaytinya, America Eats is currently slated to last only as long as the exhibition. By most rights, a heralded chef like José Andrés would be offered such a courtesy even today, in an age of blogs and Yelp and other venues for immediate feedback.Īlas, Andrés’ latest venture, America Eats Tavern, would be most of the way through its run before it got any attention from a critic from the old school: The pop-up restaurant is being operated in conjunction with a National Archives exhibition on U.S. In the rarified world of restaurant criticism, it was once customary to wait a few months after a restaurant’s opening before reviewing the place-long enough to let staffers work out the kinks that critics will inevitably savage. ![]()
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