Behind...and in front of the scenes at LivingSocial's 918 F St. Inaugural Event

LivingSocial is getting...well, social.  The brick and mortar facility they've created is pretty cool.  A lot of good companies/people were involved with the project including Winmar Construction, VSAG Consulting, FDS Design, Streetsense, and yours truly.
Let's start by exploring the venue itself.

This is the demo/teaching kitchen.  It's beautiful if you get excited by shiny stainless and haute technology.  There are monitors all over that display the feed from the automated camera covering the action at the head cooking station.  Imagine you and 30 of your closest friends learning how to make signature dishes from the famous chefs who actually created them.  This is a stellar idea as these chefs would normally have to shut down their restaurants to do a teaching class like this, and the view wouldn't be nearly as good.

Acres of stainless....

A little artsy treatment from Snapseed and Hipstomatic.

All the tools you could need.  Top notch, shiny and new!

This is one of the mixed-use spaces that was set up as a dining room for the trial-run event I attended.

This shot was taken in the bar downstairs.  It has a cut-out in the ceiling that allows you to view the live music area from below.

Another mixed-use room.  This venue has many.  Too bad Bob Ross isn't still alive..it would have been fab to have him teach people how to make love to their trees here.

This is the restaurant kitchen where Mike Isabella was pulling it all together for our introduction to his new menu. This was the first night the Living Social facility on F St. was open, and Mike used the opportunity to showcase his menu for Bandolero, his new restaurant that will be opening in Georgetown in late spring.

Here are the items we got to try.  We had a table of four (and what a foursome it was) so we just asked them to bring us one of everything....

These glasses were being prepped for the appetizer cocktail which was a favorite of the table.

Various dips and guac.

Fresh tortilla chips and pork rinds for dipping.  Tasty.

Crispy fish....

Steak, crab...

The texture of this tamale was perfection.

More interesting beverages...they wanted to make sure we had a happy time!  My favorite was the City of Gold (in the champagne glass).

Short ribs braised to perfection.

Tasty veg soft tacos...

This is a shot I took just before Mike had all the servers gather round so he could explain the offerings to them.  He puts together some tasty food.  Graffiato is still one of my favorite places to go.

Here's a shot of Mike after the festivities, grabbing a much-deserved drink with John McCarthy of MICROS.

Home Cookin'! Graffiato's Pepperoni Sauce

Want to make your friends and family happy?  Those who are in the culinary cognizanti will remember this dish that got Gail Simmons...excited, shall we say?
Truth of the matter is it couldn't be easier, and it tastes damned good.
Mike Isabella was kind enough to share this recipe with the internets, so I thought I'd give it a shot and see if it turned out as well as it does in his restaurant, Graffiato.
Ingredients below are taken, without permission or credit, to the Washington Post's Recipe Database:

Ingredients:

• 6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 small onion, cut into small dice
• 5 medium cloves garlic, cut into very thin slices
• 1 pound pepperoni, cut into thin slices
• 1 teaspoon fennel seed, toasted (see NOTE)
• 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
• 8 to 12 ounces canned imported Italian plum tomatoes, chopped, with their juices
• 1 1/2 cups low-sodium chicken broth
• 1 fresh bay leaf

Start by getting all your ingredients prepped and ready to go.  Slice your garlic.

Dice your onion.

Toast your fennel seeds in a dry pan.  Keep an eye on it and shake often as they'll burn quickly.

Put the olive oil in a pan.  I made the mistake of using one that was too small right off the bat.  Use at least a 2 qt. heavy-bottomed pan.  Get it hot over medium, then add the onion and the garlic.  Saute until it's soft. 

 Add the pepperoni, toasted fennel seeds, bay leaf, cook and stir to get everything nicely coated, then add the tomatoes.

After a few minutes, add the chicken stock.  Wait until it's starting to boil, then reduce to low, cover and simmer for 45 minutes to an hour.  You want everything to be nice and soft.

After you've cooked it for the 45-60 minutes, take it off the heat and let it cool down a bit.  Then take the contents of the pot and puree the crap out of it!  You want it to be nice and smooth.

You'll end up with a quart+ of wonderful, spicy Pepperoni Sauce. 

This was so tasty I had to run some down to my neighbor.  His family was having roasted chicken and they used it as a topper.  They called me on speaker phone (all 4 of them) and gushed about how good it was and that it tasted JUST LIKE Graffiato's.

Give it a shot folks.  It's easy and awesome.  Great for dipping, using for pasta sauce (like I did that night) and possibly glazing. I haven't tried that yet, but I will soon.

Thanks for reading.  As always, comments and questions are appreciated.

Graffiato...makin' it from scratch

Paul Antolli, Mike Isabella, and me!

Congratulations Mike Isabella and team. You have a winner on your hands. I know that it didn't come without a lot of preparation, sacrifice, blood, sweat and tears.

Putting together a good restaurant is hard. Putting together a great restaurant is much harder. It's the details that make the difference. Mike and his team sweat the details.

The menu is mostly small plates. We started out with the king crab leg, which was kind of a King Crab Casino, with some crab salad to the side. This was the chicken thighs with pepperoni sauce. This is the one that made Gail all flush when she talked about it on Top Chef. I decided I liked it so much I threw it right on my shirt. Luckily, I saved a piece to taste and it was good. Sous vide the chicken then crisp it in the oven. Excellent preparation.

Mike gets his meats from a variety of sources, most of them local. Some were merely good, others were dynamite.

You talkin' to me?

I'm not sure what this is, but Jackie, who was sitting next to me at the pizza bar, ordered it. Obviously there are a couple of slices of lardo, or "white prosciutto" for the people who are uncomfortable with the notion that they are eating pure pig fat. It looked great.

This is the grilled octopus. Perfectly done. Nice char, good sauce, tender.

This is Paul and Mandy...good friends who drove us downtown and joined us for dinner. This is the head-on shrimp. It's served in a beautiful sauce that incorporates the ends and shavings from some of their meats from their charcuterie. Very tasty. Another one of Jackie's dishes...not sure what it was, but it looked great.

This was a slice of the truffled pie with a sunny-side duck egg. My favorite of the night.

A little seasoning...

Here is Mike's Agnolotti, made with sweet corn. Light, flavorful, gorgeous.

Another shot of that truffled pie. I could eat one of these every day....

Family friendly with good desserts? Who knew?

The prices are reasonable, the food is unexpectedly good, and it's a great looking place. Check it out when you're downtown. They open Thursday 6/23 to the public.

If you go, tell them where you read about it!

Until next time....