In the not-so-distant past, I’d be as likely to order restaurant food from home as Mitch McConnell would be to ask Nancy Pelosi out for beers. Most nights meant reservations. On the rare evening I wasn’t checking out the latest and occasionally greatest place to eat, I was content to give my stomach a rest and whip up an omelet using eggs and milk from what some people call a refrigerator and I viewed — past tense! — as an expensive water cooler.
Then the coronavirus pandemic interrupted everyone’s routine. Restaurants stopped seating customers, first in Maryland and the District and finally and completely in Virginia. Some of us stockpiled as if a war were on the horizon. Some of us, including a lot of infrequent cooks, tried to maintain a sense of normalcy by going about our ways, albeit in different fashion.
Restaurant food, delivered by courier, seemed like the natural thing to do. A newbie to the option, my online bookmarks have recently grown to include Caviar, DoorDash, Postmates, Uber Eats and other popular services.
Which provider performed best in my week-long survey? Caviar seems to list many of the better restaurants. Surprisingly, not one of my requests showed up after the promised drop time. Two — Caviar and Uber Eats — even arrived 20 minutes early.
Strokes of luck? I attribute the promptness of all the deliveries to the fact I placed my orders earlier rather than later (often before 6 p.m.) — as with restaurant reservations, everybody likes their deliveries at prime time, chefs and owners tell me — and the erasure of rush hour. Delivery services aren’t contending with heavy traffic in the age of coronavirus. It might also help that I live in the District, dense with places to eat, although twice I ordered from restaurants in the near suburbs. Tipping your courier feels like a no-brainer: as much as you can afford. The folks bringing food to your door are not unlike other first responders, putting themselves at risk so the rest of us can carry on.
For the seeable future, few of us, at least if we’re following instructions to stay home, are going to do much traveling. I say, let the world come to you, and have your favorite international food delivered to your door. Here are five recently vetted itineraries.
When it opened in Arlington five years ago, the namesake restaurant in a string in the region from Peter Chang had a rule: The signature scallion pancake couldn’t leave the dining room. The owners, including chef Lisa Chang, figured the steamed-filled blimp would be “impossible to pack,” says the Changs’ daughter, Lydia. They quickly discovered that appearances didn’t mean that much to their customers, who loved the bread whether it was fat or flat — cut and folded into carryout containers. So, to answer a question a fan might have: Yeah, you can get the scallion pancake to go.
Everything else in a recent drop-off reminded me what deliciousness the Changs have bestowed on the dining scene over the years. Shredded bean curd looks like a helping of pasta, except the “noodles” are chilled and tossed with sesame oil, ginger oil and garlic. Jiggly mapo tofu is just as hot and numbing as advertised, and cumin-scented lamb chops with fried scallions are worthy of a top-drawer steakhouse. Thoughtfully, warm minced chicken is kept separate in its box from the crisp lettuce “cups” meant to display them. Some assembly required with that last dish, but it’s so worth the effort.
2503 N. Harrison St., Arlington. 703-538-6688. peterchangarlington.com. Entrees $12 to $21. Order from: Caviar and DoorDash.
“I find solace in making pizza,” says Michael Schlow, who was doing just that at the Wellesley, Mass., outpost of his popular Alta Strada brand before returning to oversee his collection of restaurants in Washington. “Pots and pans, too,” adds the chef, who, like his peers across the country, has had to pivot to survive the mass shuttering of businesses. Unlike other pizzas I sampled at home, Alta Strada’s rounds pass for the pies diners experience in the actual dining room. Schlow thinks the reason his pizzas retain their integrity in transport is because they are baked twice: once for several minutes, after which the crusts are allowed to cool and set, and again for a few minutes to reinforce their crispness.
“Good Italian food is always comforting,” says Schlow. At a time of great insecurity, he says, the familiar cuisine doesn’t challenge us. Consider a recent spread chez moi: spicy Caesar salad finished with toasted bread crumbs, tender chicken Parmesan in a sheath of mozzarella and a lovely side of little potatoes roasted with rosemary, garlic and olive oil. There were “Mimi’s” meatballs as well, a riff on a treat that Schlow’s mother-in-law made for her grandchildren and that Schlow ate straight from the refrigerator. The restaurant’s all-beef version arrives on a drift of whipped ricotta in a little moat of tomato sauce ramped up with red pepper flakes. Like the chef, I like ’em cold as well as hot.
Icing on the torta: Alta Strada sells bottles of wine to go, too. Trust me when I tell you chianti in a bag never looked better than it did the night my gloved courier handed it over.
465 K St. NW. 202-629-4662. altastradarestaurant.com. Entrees $15 to $22. Order from: Caviar, DoorDash, Grubhub, Postmates, Uber Eats.
Co-owner Ralph Brabham says his twin Thai restaurants in the District are at a relative advantage right now. Even before the coronavirus outbreak closed restaurants for sit-down service, Beau Thai enjoyed brisk to-go business in Petworth and Shaw. “The pivot to exclusive delivery [and carryout] is not quite as challenging as for peer restaurants,” he says. All but six dishes from the menu are available for home consumption.
One of the most restorative dishes in the bunch is wonton soup, pale gold chicken stock with gently crisp bok choy and delicate dumplings stuffed with shrimp and garlic. “I love noodles,” says Aschara Vigsittaboot, Beau Thai’s founder and executive chef. Her affection for the soup goes back to her childhood in southern Thailand, when trips to the cinema were preceded by food at a noodle shop.
Fried rice is filling and festive when it comes scattered with crab, or scented with curry and blended with pineapple, raisins and cashews. The only flaw with the grilled pork belly dressed with spicy lime sauce and accompanied by thin rice noodles is the portion, sized as if for a kid. It’s the chef’s soups I most crave when I’m stuck in the same four walls for days. A touch sweet and plenty fiery, the “hot and spicy” noodle bowl is chicken broth jazzed up with lime, dried chile, peanuts and a choice of minced meat (go for the springy pork meatballs). Every spoonful feels empowering.
3162 Mount Pleasant St. NW, 202-450-5317; 1550 Seventh St. NW, 202-536-5636. beauthaidc.com. Entrees $13 to $15. Order from: Caviar and DoorDash. The restaurant also delivers free, for orders of $20 or more, within a mile or so radius of each location.
The award for the best-insulated delivery meal goes to the three-year-old Rohobot in Silver Spring, which bundles its vegetable combination like a babushka wraps a Russian baby: so completely, it’s hard to see what’s inside. Peel back the folds of injera, though, and you witness a kaleidoscope of yellow lentils, dark green collards, crimson beets and turmeric-colored cabbage with bright orange carrots. It’s all as luscious as it looks. Those chopped collards have lots of garlic, ginger and red onion going for them. Same for the earthy-sweet beets, which also get a stab of heat from jalapeños. The fire in the red lentils? Berbere, the Ethiopian spice blend that torches whatever it touches.
Chef-owner Tsehay Beferdu uses the recipes she learned from her restaurateur-mother as a girl growing up in Addis Ababa and later showcased in a trio of hotels she ran in Ethiopia’s capital. The meatier draws on her menu include awaze tibs — sauteed lamb, rosemary and jalapeño — and kitfo, blazingly spiced minced beef cooked (or not) the way you ask. Diners who forget to specify get the dish, often eaten rare, cooked medium. No utensils necessary, chowhounds know; the extra scrolls of spongy injera in your order are all the scoops you need.
7833 Eastern Ave., Silver Spring. 301-650-7595. rohobotrestaurant.com. Entrees $10.45 to $18. Order from: Bite Squad, DoorDash, Grubhub, Postmates, Uber Eats.
Listening to Manish Berry sing the praises of the food he was raised on in the state of Punjab in northern India, a customer can’t help but think of the Indian spice cabinet as a wellness center. Turmeric, cloves, ginger and garlic, among other staples, are good for the immune system, says the proud owner of the canary-colored Masala Story in Brookland, who remembers his grandparents giving him milk laced with turmeric whenever he got hurt as a child.
Scooping into a container of yellow lentils definitely feels like I’m doing my body good as ripples of warm spices wash over my tongue. Morsels of tender goat in a cloak of yogurt and roasted onion sauce resonates with ginger and garlic, too. Fried tilapia arrives almost as crisp as I remember it at the source, and the fish, liberally seasoned with cumin, coriander and more, definitely packs a punch. Masala Story’s fragrant rice is unusually good. Head chef Sunil Kumar and Arav Berry, the owner’s son, add bay leaves, black cardamom and cinnamon to every batch. Grazing with my eyes closed, I can summon the corner restaurant with the chalkboard menu, flat-screen TV airing something from Bollywood, and green and yellow benches. A diner can dream, right?
3301 12th St. NE. 202-885-9810. Entrees $14 to $17. Order from: DoorDash, Grubhub, Postmates, Uber Eats. The restaurant also delivers free within a 2½ -mile radius for orders of $20 or more.
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