We recently tried out a week’s worth of Territory Foods‘ meals. Territory is based in the DC area. The meals arrive at your door (Sundays and Thursdays) already prepared and just need to be heated up. They do not use gluten, dairy, or refined sugars in their dishes. Currently, there is a discount code for your first order on their website. You can also check their menu out directly.
Asparagus Rice Pilaf – Family Style
Chicken Enchiladas
Chicken Fajita Bowl
Coconut Curry Chickpeas
Roasted Salmon – Family Style
Zataar Pesto Chicken
It is nice that all the ingredients are listed, so you can avoid allergens. We avoided two ingredients, one of which was in the salmon entrée, so instead ordered the family-style roasted salmon filets (three come in the package) and a family style side of Asparagus Rice.
The Zaatar Pesto chicken had a lot of ingredients, and would up being a bit muddled and one note (from all the spices), which could be corrected by serving it on white rice instead of cauliflower couscous (but they can keep the red peppers). It also was dry, which must be why they include a small container of olive oil. It still wasn’t a bad dish, but we were surprised at how good some of the other dishes (salmon, fajitas) were.
We definitely recommend checking Territory out.
-JAY
Disclosure: From time to time, we are given free items, meals, or entry to events. Our words are still our own.
Taqueria Capital is on P street in Dupont, below ChiKo. This small Mexican restaurant is from the same entrepreneur (Elias Hengst) as the Emissary cafes (one of which is across the street).
Assorted Tacos.
Chorizo Quesadilla.
What’s Left of Some Birria Tacos.
Their happy hour is Monday to Saturday 4 to 7pm with $6 beers and $7 glasses of house wine. It’s nice to find a restaurant with a Saturday happy hour.
My dining partner ordered a mescal margarita, which I was assured was quite good, and a tasty Chorizo Quesadilla. I ordered three tacos, with my favorites being the Salmon and the Carne Asada. My Chicken Tinga taco may have been a little over cooked. We enjoyed the the guacamole, which tasted freshly made. The Birria Taco image is actually from the waitress’ dinner. I’ll definitely be going back soon to try the Birria Tacos.
They even serve breakfast and brunch, coffee, tea, and house-brewed chai. I know, all you needed to hear was “brunch.” (It’s a DC thing.) Take a look at their full menu.
This is a restaurant that makes everything fresh (including the tortillas) from organic ingredients, and the food is quite tasty. Plus, the service was great, with the waitress and bartender both being friendly (chatty even). They even have some outdoor seating.
This topic reminds me of my recurring column from many years ago about eating in Arlington when nearly broke. Here are some Dupont Circle specials:
Dawson’s Market free beer tastings on Thursdays (City State are DC Brau are the next two events). Photos of some previous tastings and their event calendar were covered in a previous article. They also have one Friday wine tasting a month at the DuPont location.
Duffy’s Irish pub (which opened on P Street during the pandemic) has dine in 1/2 price burgers Mondays with the purchase of a beverage all night and dine in all day/night 1/2 price wings Wednesdays with purchase of a beverage. Every Thursday from 4pm-7pm kids eat free from the kids menu with the purchase of an adult entrée and drink.
Rakuya has Happy Hour (HH) food and drink specials including $3 shishito peppers or edamame, $5 yakitori, $5.50 gyoza, green beans tempura, shumai, crunchy spice salmon rolls, or spicy tuna rolls. They also have $4-8 beer, $7 glasses of wine, and a few $8-9 cocktails on HH.
Firehook Bakery has Buy One Get One pastries M-F 5-6pm, but not cookies, or cupcakes; it’s items like scones and cinnamon rolls.
Across the Pond has a special on Mondays 4-8pm: $6 hamburger and fries ($1 additional per topping).
The Admiral HH features 3 cheeseburger siders for $10.
Specials from our neighbors:
Chef Geoff’s West end (a few blocks from DuPont) has a number of food on their HH menu like $4 mahi tacos, $6 white truffle popcorn, $12 pasta Bolognese, $5 off of burgers, etc. And, a few $8 cocktails and $10 supermug drafts.
Ted’s Bulletin in Logan Circle during their HH Monday – Friday 3 PM – 6:30 PM has $3 drafts, $5 wines, $7 cocktails, and food specials like $6 fried pickles, $6 French onion dip with truffle potato chips, and $7 chicken parm sliders, $7 bacon cheeseburger empanadas, or Rueben tacos.
We recently sampled a few products each from True Primal, and BeanVivo Organics. True Primal produces a line of gluten-free and paleo-friendly soups, most of which are beef, but a couple are chicken. Bean Vivo specializes in seasoned legumes.
BeanVivo Curried Chickpeas and Purple Cauliflower Tacos
True Primal Roasted Chicken Soup, Garnished with Fresh Oregano
True Primal Savory Wedding (Beef) Soup
While I preferred the varieties of True Primal’s chicken soup (Roasted Chicken, Tuscan-Style Chicken) to the beef (Savory Wedding, Beef and Vegetable), the latter were fine if doctored up. The beef soups were a little one note as far as flavor but I added fish sauce, which helped a lot. A little lemon or cider vinegar should work if you don’t have fish sauce on hand. The beef soups are organic certified, but the chicken soups are not (although they are pastured).
We tried BeanVivo’s Coconut Curry Chickpeas, Baja Black Beans, and Three Bean Vegan Chili. We used the chickpeas and black beans in tacos, which we enjoyed. We absolutely did not like the flavor of the vegan chili, but this was the first time we tried vegan chorizo.
Food from Northern Laos is distributing this cookbook online for free as a way of promoting their cultural diversity and cuisine. I know we have many Thip Khao lovers here that will enjoy this book. Enjoy!
Restaurants, bakeries, and grocery stores often have food left over at the end of the day that could go to waste. The Too Good To Go app is a marketplace where you can purchase food from business at the end of their day (or meal service). The items in these bags/boxes can be pretty random, even if you pick up two boxes at the same location (or on different days).
Ala
Le Pain Quotidien
The food is usually already packaged as a mystery bag (or box) when you pick it up during the specified timeframe, but there were some exceptions. I didn’t mind waiting a few minutes if a place put a bag together while I waited.
Rose Ave Bakery
Taim Falafel
Purchasing these deals can be competitive, with new mystery bags/boxes usually hitting the website 15 minutes after the current day’s pickup range ends. As an example, The Cakeroom‘s pickup range is 8pm to 9pm, which means that at 9:15pm on Tuesday, the mystery bags/boxes to be picked up Wednesday will populate on the app. There are exceptions such as Rose Ave Bakery that sometimes drop mystery bags/boxes on the app for same day pickup.
Zenebech
The Cakeroom
Below are mystery bags/boxes I tried:
Ala ($3.99) in Dupont Circle has two pickups with different types of items, afternoon and evening (and I tried both). The above image is from the afternoon timeslot, and contained a Halva Croissant, Apple Tea (loose chopped dehydrated apples), an herbal teabag, Meringues, one Thumbprint Cookie, and Crunchy Chickpeas (dried).
Le Pain Quotidien ($4.99) gave me 3 pastries: a Cheese Danish, an Apple Turnover, and a Pan Aux Raisins. PDQ is much more readily available on the app than other baked goods options and has multiple locations (Dupont, 17th Street, Penn Quarter) you can choose from.
Rose Ave Bakery ($3.99) downtown offers fun Asian American-themed pastries. It is located at The Block DC food hall with Pogiboy, which is also on the Too Good To Go app. My Rose Ave mystery box contained green pastries: two Matcha White Chocolate Donuts, a Pandan Donut (green filling), and a Matcha Chocolate Cookie.
Taim Falafel‘s ($3.99) mystery bag included a Falafel Bowl and Tractor Beverage Company‘s Mandarin Cardamom. Their Georgetown and Dupont Circle Locations are both on the Too Good To Go app.
Zenebech ($4.99) is an Ethiopian restaurant in Adam’s Morgan. When I checked in, they put together a Vegetarian Combo for me with injera (spongy flat bread made from teff). I was lucky enough to score bags from both Zenebech and The Cakeroom to be picked up on the same evening, which was nice, because they are on the same street a few blocks from each other.
The Cakeroom ($5.99) put together a bag of mostly chocolate flavored items. There was a slice of Cherry Cheesecake, two slices of Chocolate Vanilla Cake, and two Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes.
I recommend Too Good To Go in DC (it’s in other cities too) but you need to be open to receiving really random items, especially at Ala. If you get something you can’t eat, share it with a friend. Too Good To Go is definitely a good value, since most of the mystery bags I received were worth 3 to 4 times what I paid.
Sweet Hope, Central’s all you can eat dessert event for charity, is back! I can’t recommend this family experience enough! Kids love it! Reservations are staggered and required. This year, there will be live jazz and a balloon artist. This event is $25 per person for those 10 and over.
Previous coverage and a few words about the late Michel Richard are here. The flier for the event is below.
There’s a great relatively new Asian Market in the basement of Rice restaurant in Logan Circle about a block from the P Street Whole Foods. The people working in the market are friendly and helpful.
I often see interesting produce like makrut limes, key limes, holy basil (tulsi), yuzu, Thai Basil, and Thai bird chilies in the market. They carry a variety of prepared foods (from the restaurant upstairs), dry goods including green, red, and black rice, and various types of noodles, condiments, and sauces. The selection is a bit random, with a different option for fish sauce being available on each of my visits. They have groceries from various countries in Asia including Thailand, Korea, China, and Indonesia. It’s a “go and see what they have today” kind of a shop.
The Rounds sponsored a giveaway though Washington City Paper (and I won). It was random that a food blogger won, but I figured it would be nice to give back with a little publicity.
S’mores Pop-tart from Ted’s Bulletin
Everything Bagel from Bethesda Bagel
Bread from Seylou Bakery
Texas Sheet Cake Ice Cream from Jeni’s
Some wonderful local products/companies that The Rounds carries were featured — you can see the list in one of the above images. They even included a Wick & Paper scented candle, and gift cards from Jeni’s Ice Cream and Le Diplomate. For the record, the Baked & Wired Carrot Cake Cupcake was the first thing I ate. 🙂
Glen’s Garden Market in Dupont Circle recently became Dawson’s Market. The store seems mostly the same, which is nice. I know that a lot of businesses haven’t gotten back to doing tastings, but Dawson’s is an exception.
Every Thursday, Dawson’s has a different brewery pour samples 5pm-7pm during a weekly cookout, but lately other tastings have been happening as well. Today, both the Dupont Circle and Rockville locations had a wine and cheese tasting (see the Siema Wines photo above for Dupont Circle), and this weekend there will be tastings from Dawson’s Thanksgiving Menu. In Rockville the Thanksgiving menu tasting will be on Saturday, November 13th 12pm-3pm, and in Dupont, it will be on Sunday, November 14th 12pm-3pm.
