The Flamingo Speaks: Elizabeth’s Gone Raw in Washington, DC – A Review

You’ve frequently heard me refer to “the Flamingo”, and I’ll bet you thought I was talking about myself, didn’t you? Well, today the truth comes out, and the Flamingo insisted on speaking for himself about one of our experiences at the Eat, Write, Retreat food bloggers conference in Washington, DC this weekend, and wrote a guest post for me. * Enjoy!

Cashew Cream Tartlet

Reneé has been busy, chatting face-to-face with her fellow bloggers at the Eat, Write, Retreat conference in Washington, so I, the real Flamingo of Flamingo Musings, am giving her a break. (Well, that, and they won’t let animals onto the conference floor, so I have to stay in the room and do something to amuse myself.)

The people at Elizabeth’s Gone Raw (1341 L St. NW, Washington DC) graciously allowed me to accompany my mistress to a tasting of “raw cuisine.” (Thankfully, they’re pro- rather than anti-avian.) I must admit, I was skeptical; it’s completely vegan, and so there’s no shrimp (and in my business, you need to eat a lot of shrimp to keep up the proper pinkness). I was, however, pleasantly surprised. We feasted on a buffet of vegan delicacies. We began with “mocktails” made from lime juice, agave, ginger and soda water, accompanied by kale chips dusted with spices, swiftly followed by a red pepper hummus, sushi using shredded jicama in place of rice and sunflower sprouts in place of fish, an olive tapenade served on “crackers” made of nut flour, as well as a divine shaved fennel and cashew cream tartlet. There was even dessert (which made my feathers flutter in anticipation!). Chocolate caramel nut squares vied with a blueberry “cheese” cake, and finally, a most interesting apple-celery sorbet, which was the brainchild of chef-author Michael Natkin.

Our host, Elizabeth Petty, owner of Elizabeth‘s, informed us that “raw” means never heating anything past 115°F in order to preserve the natural enzymes in the food. It’s a very healthy approach for people (if not for flamingos, i.e. no shrimp – even if I do generally eat them raw), but it has a few drawbacks. For one thing, my understanding is that some foods are actually more nutritious when cooked— like tomatoes. For another, it seems almost impossible to make a sturdy cracker without real heat; after several attempts to shovel tapenade onto one of the crackers and having the edible platform disintegrate in my beak, I had to rely on the kindness of one of the assembled humans to spoon some of the tapenade onto a nut-flour based “cracker” so I could eat it. My mistress found the textures of the numerous dishes tended to blend together, and she wasn’t entirely happy with the great reliance on ground nuts as a substitute for starch as well as dairy products in the cuisine.

Of course, everything is a matter of definition. Perhaps not everything has to avoid being hotter than 115°. We had a great many dessert items with chocolate, and cocoa beans, if I’m not mistaken, must be roasted at 250° or higher to make chocolate.

Aside from my “no shrimp” objection, there seems to be a considerable amount of labor involved in the making of “raw” cuisine. Ms. Petty revealed that the fare for her Friday night tasting menu (which we were sampling) takes the entire week previous to prepare. That time investment may be the price to pay for putting out interesting “raw” cuisine, but I think I’ll stick with my shrimp.

 * I can not tell a lie. Today, the part of the Flamingo was played by my husband, Mike, a darned good writer, who for the first time, asked if he could write a guest post for Flamingo Musings. Who could say no to that face?

Photo used by permission of Kathy Blake of The Experimental Gourmand. Thanks, Kathy!