Food, tied to place, is a great rarity in America. We have a national cuisine, but increasingly that national cusine is, in fact, what is America - an amalgam of cultures, tastes, and approaches. This is good, certainly, but it comes at a price. That price is paid every time you suffer through chow mein, through chicken tender kebabs, through spaghetti with meatballs, through nachos or fajitas, or any other number of culinary atrocities committed in the name of making the world acceptable to the American palate. That same palate, nurtured under the paternalistic eye of a government that would rather feed its people beef mixed with illegal meat packer than unpasteurized cheese, is utterly unprepared to eat food that is about something.

Spain is a start.

Food, tied to a place, is about something. And the food in Spain, still, is about something. Of course there are the ubiquitous McDonald’s (although thankfully not as ubiquitous as they might be), and there is - completely inexplicably - Starbucks, but there is also an enormous care for the food and the meal. At least for now, that is the greatness of Spain, and my most enduring reason to tell other to go. Quickly.

 Delicious Libertine regular readers tend to be the sort of people that leer at food like your ninety year old grandpa used to look at the newly married Mrs. Jeffries down the block.

Every once and a while we all have to pause and wipe our mouths. With the Hedofoodist tee, you don’t need to worry about awkward explanations after the fact. In fact, this way you can let your more, shall-we-say, fevered expressions of your love for that huitlacoche come through loud and clear.

Through the 7th of January, you can get the Hedofoodist for 20% off its normal, already super cheap, barely supporting of DeliciousL price. Click on the picture for the boy version. Girl version is here.

Happy hedofooding!

Face it.  We all love a little head now and then.  There is something about the pure pleasure we get from fondling the firm bulbous root, rolling it between our hands, imagining it coated in oil, wondering how many in a day we can handle, smashing the flat of a knife blade against it.  Wait?  What?  Oh, riiiighhht…the Garlic Sensualist tee is here for all of us that know what we like, can’t understand when we hear, “Garlic?  No way!  That’s too spicy”, and always, always, always know that it’s hard to have too much.

The Delicious Libertine Garlic Sensualist Tee makes the perfect statement.

Click on the picture for the Womanly Version; for the Manly Version, head off to the site.

This review is copied - verbatim - from Yelp, where I published it originally. I try not to do restaurant reviews on DeliciousLibertine, but with Kasbah I feel a certain affinity.

La Kasbah Restaurant

11424 Washington Plz W
Reston, VA 20191

There are, of course, hundreds of places for Northern Virginians to choose when contemplating dinner, or lunch, or even a coffee. The sad truth, of course, as any small restaurant owner will tell you, is that most of us will choose thickly populated areas with name brand eateries.

We are all the poorer for it.

Small places like La Kasbah, run passionately by people passionate about food and its power to bridge cultures, are always threatened by our own culture of mass undifferentiation. But despite this threat, and perhaps driven in some part by it, the passion at these places shines through in the food, in the service, in the attention to those little things that make a meal something more than an exercise in ‘filling the tank’. La Kasbah does all of these things brilliantly.

The food is classic, and I do mean classic, Moroccan. Chef “D” focuses on the most definable and fundamental flavors of the North African country with a sensualist’s appreciation of melt-off-the-bone lamb, flavors of raisins and nuts, citrus and ras el hanout. You can find kabobs of course, but also an exquisite lamb tagine, a variety of couscous, and more unusual dishes like an excellent chicken in confetti and green olives.

Although La Kasbah recently got their liquor license, the wine list, featuring both Moroccan specialties as well Italian, French, and new world bottles from California and elsewhere, has always had something to attract and hold my attention for a couple of hours. And, of course, if you cannot decide there is plenty of help available.

Yet, for all of this, La Kasbah, like so many equally good places, has to fight for every customer. And, in many cases, the reality is that it’s a losing fight. Were it located in the bustling streets of old Marrakesh, La Kasbah would be fantastically popular, but Lake Anne long ago lost out to Reston Town Center as the place to go, as the place to be. The crowds there, and the lines snaking out of restaurants serving much the same flavors in different packages, leaves little room for discovery. In Lake Anne, there is still the opportunity to be surprised. Pleasantly and extremely so, and nowhere more so than at La Kasbah.

12/15/2007

For an American, eating in Madrid is an athletic endeavor. It’s not a matter of quantity (except in the aggregate sense), it’s the sheer frequency that threatens to exhaust all but the most fevered and dedicated eaters. One doesn’t have to eat six times a day. Indeed, no. But, you’ll want to. Hence…the pretapas tapas.

Designed to hold you over between your lunch of bean stew, lamb, bread, a bottle of wine, desert, and a coffee and your inevitable pilgrimage to the tapas bars, the pretapas tapas can be had anytime after five or six in the afternoon (Madrid time). Best choices are something with a little substance, both to keep you from getting peckish and as a way to ward off the effects of the two bottles of wine you’re likely to enjoy over the next eight hours.

Here we have jamon (of course) on toasted bread with a drizzle of olive oil, and anchovies with tomatoes (also on bread with a drizzle of olive oil).