Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [93]
The menu is vast, including other kinds of steak, seafood, and chicken cooked on the broiler, but we can’t imagine coming to the Home of the Fabulous Filet Mignon and ordering anything else.
Chutzpah
12214 Fairfax Towne Center
703–385–8883
Fairfax, VA
BLD | $$
While Chutzpah is not by any means a regional restaurant, it had come highly recommended to us by members of Roadfood.com, and so one afternoon on the outskirts of DC, desperately in need of comfort food, we sought it out. Located at the far end of a nondescript Fairfax shopping center, it is a modest-size storefront with an immodest personality. Billing itself as a real New York deli, Chutzpah features gigantic sandwiches, smoked fish platters, bagel plates, hot and cold borscht, and a full repertoire of Dr. Brown’s sodas.
Meals begin with bowls of sour and half-sour pickles and creamy coleslaw. We spooned into matzoh ball chicken noodle soup, which was as homey as can be, then feasted on wiener schnitzel, a big, thick slab of juicy meat in an envelope of crunchy, dark brown crust. It is served with lemon wedges and a large side dish of serious meaty gravy. We thought the gravy superfluous, but the latke (potato pancake) on the side was excellent. Of course, we also had to have a sandwich, but which to choose? Pastrami (annotated on the menu with the advice, “Please don’t embarrass yourself and ask for mayonnaise”), hot brisket, or chopped liver? We went for a Reuben, which is an extremely unwieldy heap of steamy corned beef, sauerkraut, melted Swiss cheese, and Russian dressing between two crisp-grilled slabs of rye bread. It comes with thick-cut steak fries and it is delicious!
High on the list of must-try dishes for the future are matzoh brei, blintzes, corned beef hash, chicken in the pot with matzoh ball and kreplach, and noodle kugel. We walked out with a nice black and white cookie, forgoing the seven-layer cake, carrot cake, and genuine New York cheesecake.
Dixie Bones BBQ
13440 Occoquan Rd.
703–492–2205
Woodbridge, VA
LD | $$
Roadfood adventurer Laura Key tipped us off to Dixie Bones for its macaroni salad, iced tea (available sweet or unsweet), and hickory-smoked pork. As far as we’ve tasted, the pork is the best barbecue in the greater DC area and an essential Roadfood stop along I-95.
Cooked at least a dozen hours over smoking hickory logs, the meat is velvet soft, served in sandwiches heaped on a platter with such side dishes as Laura’s favorite macaroni salad, French fries, baked beans, limp greens, and a terrific item known as muddy spuds. That last item is chopped-up baked potato dressed with barbecue sauce.
Dixie Bones offers three kinds of Carolina-style sauce (tomatosweet/vinegar-tangy), the hottest of which is not incendiary. In addition to boneless pork, there are ribs sold by the rack and half-rack, pork sausage, beef brisket, pulled chicken breast, and fried catfish fillets.
Pies are made here, and we found the apple pie endearingly soulful, i.e., well-sweetened and cooked long enough that the pieces of apple inside were virtually as tender as the pork that preceded dessert. Thursday is lemon chess pie day. Friday and Sunday feature coconut cream. Saturday’s pie is sweet potato.
Doumar’s
20th St. and Monticello Ave.
757–627–4163
Norfolk, VA
BLD | $
Doumar’s has been at the corner of 20th Street and Monticello Avenue in Norfolk since 1934, but it was thirty years before that and in the city of St. Louis that the Doumar name first gained fame. At the World’s Fair of 1904, Mr. Doumar introduced a novel way of serving and eating ice cream: the cone. The cone made it possible for fairgoers to walk and eat ice cream at the same time, and without utensils—surely, one of the great ideas in culinary history.
Today’s Doumar’s of Norfolk is marked by a sign with two big ice cream cones on either side, but it’s known also for pork barbecue, double-meat hot dogs, burger-and-French-fry plates, and flat grilled cheese sandwiches. As for