Washington DC — Eats and Reflections From My Hometown

Everything I ate on my recent trip back, plus some of my all-time favorite recommendations.

I was almost born in a Trader Joe’s in Northwest DC—but luckily for me and Duke Ellington, Al Gore, and Katherine Heigl—before our birthplace was a grocery store, it was the Columbia Hospital for Women. I remember the hospital’s name was a sore subject when I was little—kids on the playground would ask me why a boy would be born in a “women’s hospital”— but in the same way that a hospital can turn into a Trader Joe’s, some things are simply out of our control.

When we were a family of four, we lived on Porter Street in Cleveland Park, and as a toddler I’d make a weekly trek to the National Zoo and Vace Pizza. I was also obsessed with the vacuum store on the same block. Fortunately, the Vace followed us into Maryland, because when we moved to Chevy Chase, where I spent most of my childhood, the Bethesda location was a bit closer.

For those of you who know the DMV as the place where you get your driver’s license—and not DC, Maryland and Virginia—Chevy Chase is a quaint area that overlaps with the top corner of DC and the “trigger” of Maryland (which is shaped like a gun).

Growing up in Chevy Chase felt like winning the lottery—not because it was particularly breathtaking or interesting, but because it always seemed like the best of both worlds: suburban comforts and easy access to a major city. By the time I was five, I could bike around the neighborhood and play until dark unsupervised—though since my mom also grew up there, we were never truly out of sight of a watchful neighbor or grandparent ready to report back. In that way, Chevy Chase felt distinctly small-town and suburban. But we were also just steps from the DC border, rode the Metro downtown for school field trips, and had to master parallel parking—even though Maryland eventually took it off the driving test.

Partially because Chevy Chase is actually half in DC and partially because I lived in the District when I was really young, I’ve always had a mini-identity crisis when people ask where I’m from, since I never felt particularly involved in Maryland culture, but also don’t want to sound like someone from New Jersey claiming to be from Manhattan. While it’s factually true that I’m from DC, I always feel just a little like a poser claiming it fully. Today, I also feel a bit out of the loop, since I haven’t lived in the area full-time since I left for college in 2018, aside from quarantine and another summer.

With all this in mind, I made an impromptu visit home earlier this month. I had a last-minute opportunity to work with a brand in Atlanta, and I found Iberia Business Class flights to DC a few days before—for just 30,000 miles, which in Jeremy Math is like paying $300 for a $5,000 ticket. I negotiated a flat rate for the work instead of having them pay for the travel and lodging, and took advantage of the situation to spend a few days at home before going to Atlanta, where I had the work and more family to stay with. Only my youngest brother, Evan, still lives at home with my parents (if you don’t count my four-legged sister), but I was lucky to coincide with Gabriel and Leo too, who both happened to be in DC for their own things. Outside of spending time with my immediate family, I caught up with close friends, grandparents, aunts, and uncles—and I got Carmen’s gelati four times. So overall, I’d call it a very successful visit.

Side note — Carmen’s cleverly calls their mix of soft-serve custard and Italian ice “gelati”, which is the plural of ice cream in Italian…and it’s the stuff of my dreams, even if there’s not anything else Italian about it.

Meals From This Trip:
While my mom mostly cooked for us at home (notably “Mexican feast”, where she makes rice, beans, grilled chicken, guac, and all the fix-ins), we also ordered an obscene amount of Mei Wah, an American-Chinese restaurant that we’ve been going to my entire life. As pictured above, we ordered general tso’s chicken both regular (fried) and sautéed versions, crispy shredded beef, Szechuan string beans, vegetable lo mein, and cashew chicken. Not pictured are the double orders of the string beans, sautéed general tso’s, and 10 containers of rice, which I polished off in the subsequent days. Additionally, I made stops to Tatte with my grandparents (the peach and chicken salad was nice), and Vace for a slice of pepperoni pizza and a spinach pie. I had one lunch with my Aunt Rachel and Uncle David at the Bethesda institution, Raku, which famously (within my family), you can plan to be in and out of in less than 30 minutes. As I mentioned, I managed to sneak in a trip to Carmen’s every day, and my Aunt Rachel (resident Carmen’s expert) introduced me to their marshmallow flavored custard soft-serve, which was so good. I’d been getting vanilla with my sour cherry and sour apple Italian ice this whole time like a peasant!

Other DC/MD favorites -

I am going to keep this list to around 10 places, because, as I said, I’m not particularly involved in the contemporary DC food scene, these are just spots that I like to hit when I am back.