Olive Oil

My boys, ages 7 and 9, got in the car recently while the radio was chattering about Paula Deen's diabetes and a controversial obesity initiative in Georgia. After listening for a minute, my younger son asked, "Mom, is it bad to eat foods that have fat in them?" I realized, as I started to answer him, that his question is quite universal. In the United States, we have been led to believe that fat is bad for us. In some cases (trans fats) it is, but the right fats play an integral role in our health.

If you want to know why escargot hides in the hush puppies at Mintwood Place in Adams Morgan, keep in mind that Cedric Maupillier previously cooked for celebrity chef Michel Richard at Central Michel Richard downtown. "I needed to find my own identity," says Maupillier of his new gig, top chef of a 128-seat neighborhood restaurant that weaves traditional French accents with American food favorites. "I feel comfortable in this country," says the native of Toulouse in southwestern France, who has teamed with veteran restaurateur Saied Azali, owner of Perry's next door, on the project.

Paolo Pasquali does not like to be called a crusader for good olive oil. But when I visited his oleoteca, the tasting room he built at Villa Campestri , his "olive oil resort" in the hills north of Florence, it was impossible for him to talk of anything else. At lunch, dinner and breakfast the next morning, Pasquali rhapsodized about the storied history of the olive and fumed about consumers' feckless embrace of cheap oil. And, for most of the time, his pitch sounded like that of any number of upstart chocolate, coffee or cured-meat producers: Like wine, my product deserves more respect.

Nothing small leaves the kitchen at Brasserie Brightwell in Easton, Md. Ask for escargots and out comes a fleet of snails, drenched in garlicky herb sauce, on rafts of toasted bread. An order of roast chicken is enough to feed two. Its tender flesh and basting of butter make the entree easy to dispatch. Brasserie Brightwell all but bans petite portions. "I have an enormous appetite," says Brendan Keegan, the executive chef of the casual French eatery with an American sensibility.

I can't afford to make a restaurant," says Daniel O'Brien, 31. "No way. I don't have the capital. " While he waits to open the eatery of his dreams, the frank former sous-chef of Bibiana and Equinox is rehearsing for the part at Seasonal Pantry, a 240-square-foot food shop he opened last month in Shaw. The inventory on display in the narrow room, which he calls "a tribute to farm stands," showcases products he has made himself. They include pickled cherries and lemon confit on the shelves and duck liver pate and ice cream in the refrigerator.

The carrots were not beautiful. Lurking in the back of the root cellar after a long winter, they were lumpy and obese, some of them studded with little knobs. In the dark, stacked in plastic crates, they had begun to sprout comical top growths of frilly, pale, yellow-green leaves. They looked more like Muppets than carrots. Still, they were bright orange and had not begun to shrivel and go limp, so I brought them into the house to give them a good scrub. Normally we do not even bother to grow fall storage carrots.

Until recently, I hadn't been to the venerable Meskerem in Adams Morgan for a decade, the white-tablecloth Foti's in Culpeper since the recession hit and The Black Olive in Baltimore since shortly after becoming this newspaper's paid palate in 2000. The siren call of what's new — and there's a lot in the Washington landscape — kept me away. That's good and bad. Good, because our choices for breakfast, lunch and dinner keep multiplying; bad, because you might like to know how a city icon or a suburban trendsetter is faring these days.

Sunday, Nov. 27, 2005 Foti's is a textbook example of what a good education will do for you. The three principals behind this summer arrival to Culpeper spent a combined 14 years at the Inn at Little Washington, a destination that has won just about every top honor a restaurant can in this country. In their new environment, the three demonstrate, meal after meal, how much they absorbed from some of the best teachers in the business; in less than six months, Foti's has become A Restaurant You Really Need to Know About Even If You Don't Live Nearby.

An edited excerpt from Joe Yonan's new book, " Serve Yourself: Nightly Adventures in Cooking for One " (Ten Speed Press). It was a Facebook comment that finally did it. I had just posted a link to one of my Cooking for One columns, and amid the chatter about the recipes for mulled red-wine syrup and salmon braised in pinot noir , I got this: "At the risk of getting too personal, perhaps you might find someone to share life/meals with....

Want to feel welcomed? Head for Kababji Grill in Dupont Circle. As we approach the sleek newcomer, an import from Beirut, a hostess rushes to open the door for us. Inside, we spot a softly lighted bar to our right and a tidy exhibition kitchen to our left. The latter highlights a display case of chicken, lamb and other meaty swords, ready for a rendezvous with the restaurant's signature charcoal grill. The surrounding walls practically glow, thanks to their pumpkin-colored brick veneer.