Sitting a few stools down from me at Peter’s Carry-Out in Bethesda, Paul and Elsa Jewell say they are visiting town to pet-sit while their daughter is away on a cruise. They’re polishing off a pair of steak sandwiches, the go-to order for just about everyone who walks into Ned Saah’s old-school diner tucked into a modest commercial strip on Wisconsin Avenue.
Paul and Elsa call Kennewick, Wash., home but find their way to Peter’s whenever they travel east to see their daughter. It feels like home, Paul says. When I ask how many times he and Elsa plan to eat here on this trip, Paul says, “three or four,” then pauses for a beat.
“Or five.”
Peter’s is a place for regulars — or even irregular regulars, like Paul and Elsa — and after you eat here once, you understand why. When Saah is behind the counter, a 49ers cap perched atop his head, casting a small shadow on his salt-and-pepper beard, you get a taste of what life was like before the farm-to-table movement, before water sommeliers and multicourse tasting menus, before dining out became a kind of precious object to examine, measure and share with the world, like some important discovery. Peter’s is a place where you can just be.
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When I walked into Peter’s on a recent Thursday afternoon, the place almost empty, I introduced myself to Saah. I told him I was the guy who wrote The Post review more than a decade ago. I told him how much I like his place. He cut me off and cut to the chase: “Have you been back since?”
For a brief moment, I thought about lying, but knew that would be useless. Saah knows practically every customer by face and given name; he’d suss out a lie, no matter how white, in a nanosecond. So, I told him the truth: I had not. I explained that it’s one of the hard realities of a food critic. You’re always on the prowl for the next restaurant, not revisiting old favorites, especially ones far from home.
Then I explained why I was back: I’m retiring from this column (though not food writing at The Post), and I wanted to shine the spotlight once again on Peter’s. It was just one of hundreds of places that I reviewed, but its memory followed me around over the years, no matter where I traveled in the D.C. region or what delicious plates I encountered from parts of the world I had never experienced firsthand. It was a testament to the power of Peter’s — and maybe to the power that childhood exerts on our adult psyches and tastes, regardless of how hard we try to escape the past. More on that in a minute.
You may be wondering why I’m walking away from one of the greatest jobs on earth. I wasn’t asked to leave. I requested to leave. After 11 years, thousands of meals, hundreds of columns and more calories than I care to contemplate, I was ready to stop eating professionally. I was ready to stop eating as if my body were a portable whack-a-mole, custom built for abuse. You can gobble down only so many hamburgers and barbecue platters before you start to feel the effects.
When I told my doctor that I was dropping the column, she said simply, “I’m proud of you.” If you translate that from doc-speak, I think what she meant was, “You’ll live longer.”
My decision is not based solely on health. It’s also about time, which is just as precious. For more than a decade, my weekends were not wholly my own. Nearly every Saturday and Sunday, I would steer my car to some far-flung location, searching for a place worthy of your appetite. Some place that maybe you had not heard about.
My journeys took me to establishments I never could have imagined as a child growing up in suburban Omaha, the son of solidly middle-class parents, whose idea of a fancy meal was a trip to Mr. Steak in the shopping plaza near our house.
I wasn’t a curious eater as a boy, far from it. But I became one as an adult, and this job provided me with an opportunity to satisfy that curiosity in a region rich with restaurants, bakeries, takeouts and markets started by immigrants, eager to find out whether the American Dream was truth or fiction, or something in between.
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In preparation for this farewell column, I went back over every review I’ve written since the first was published on Feb. 28, 2013. I wanted to recall some of my favorite moments, dishes, places: I “narrowed” them down to 86 examples, and that was after some tough choices. Clearly, this job had more of an impact on me than vice versa. I was grateful for almost all the experiences. I was also grateful for readers who provided tips, challenged my opinions and even dined with me on occasion.
Consider the world of food that I savored right in the D.C. area: Kenyan goat wet fry at Swahili Village in Beltsville. Yunnan-style rice noodles at Northwest Chinese Food in College Park. South Indian rava sada dosa at Balaji Cafe in Herndon. Ground chicken stuffed in a tapioca skin at Baan Thai in the District. Sel roti at Royal Nepal in Alexandria. Philippine fried balut, or fertilized duck egg, at Matthew’s Grill in Gaithersburg. Senegalese thiebou dienne at Chez Dior in Hyattsville. Luosifen noodle soup at Yanzi Noodle House, formerly in Rockville, now in Fairfax. Mexican al pastor tacos, done the right way, at La Jarochita No. 2 in Arlington. The raw-meat kurt at CherCher Ethiopian Restaurant in Washington.
See more photos of Tim’s favorite spots
Some of Tim Carman’s favorite spots to dine from over the years.
Along the way, I met chefs, owners, butchers, bakers and countless others who shared their stories, many that I’ll carry with me to the end of my days. I’m thinking about octogenarian Wang Wen Fang, a stylish man with a fedora tilted rakishly atop his head, who was still carving Peking ducks at China Wok in Vienna when I met him almost a decade ago. Or Sayed Qayum and Sam Bahary, the guys behind Uncle C’s Chicken and Waffles in Alexandria, who explained the relationship between Afghan immigrants and fried chicken in America. Or Thanh Huong Thi Truong, chef and owner of Truong Tien in Falls Church, whose family has been decoding Hue royal cuisine for generations. Or Fernando González and Debby Portillo González, a couple from El Salvador who turned a love for Central Texas barbecue into the best smokehouse in the D.C. area.
Share this articleShareOver the years, I’ve seen restaurants that I adore close their doors (Great Wall Szechuan House, I miss you already), sometimes for reasons beyond their control, like a pandemic. I’ve seen seemingly white-hot trends (sushi burrito, anyone?) all but fade to black. I’ve seen some of the city’s most beloved restaurateurs succumb to sickness, leaving behind customers who mourn more than the loss of a late-night falafel fix. I’ve seen our barbecue scene evolve enough that it actually gets love from Daniel Vaughn at Texas Monthly.
This column has been used to elevate restaurants and to make amends. I’ve compiled more lists than my brain can recall, probably due to the lack of blood flow from all the cholesterol: lists on hamburgers, margherita pizza, pupusas, sandwiches, tacos, casual restaurants, Detroit pizza, pollo a la brasa, Ethiopian restaurants and, of course, barbecue. But I’ve also used this space to correct mistakes and oversights, the largest being the original name of this column, the $20 Diner. I changed it in 2019 for a lot of good reasons.
I’ve also used this column to learn about myself, which may not always be obvious from the outside looking in. But the lessons are there, darting in and around the sentences, perhaps in the words I chose, the people I wrote about or the way that I approached them.
Work can be a form of avoidance as much as other, less culturally sanctioned addictions. Journalism, in particular, can be a great way to avoid your own history, given its emphasis on examining other people’s lives. But you can dodge your own pains and sorrows only so long. They eventually catch up with you, or consume you. In 2019, I wrote about my struggles with depression, and those dark clouds can still form around my head and heart on lesser days.
But here’s something I’ve learned about my life: The loneliness and longings of my childhood made me a pretty empathetic kid (when I wasn’t lashing out, that is). For as long as I can remember, I’ve connected with those who felt neglected, whether by caregivers or society as a whole. Once I had the power, I knew I would try my best to lift up those who rarely saw their names, faces and foods in the pages of The Washington Post. Readers will have to judge whether I’ve succeeded.
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Which, more or less, brings me back to Peter’s Carry-Out. I feel comfortable here not just because the place is so unassuming. I feel comfortable here because there is genuine human warmth on both sides of the counter. One wall of the diner is covered, end to end, by photos of Saah with customers and family. His affection for them radiates from every frame, and his regulars return the love. They have given him TVs, stereos and even a new griddle and fryer, all free of charge.
If you need proof that karma is real, visit Peter’s and talk to Saah.
As Paul and Elsa pay for their steak sandwiches and prepare to leave, Saah asks, “See you Saturday for lunch or breakfast?”
“Breakfast,” Paul responds.
“I’ll look for you,” Saah replies, and he means it.
Now that I’m a normie again, free to eat anywhere my heart leads me, I hope to be a regular at Peter’s, where Saah will greet me like everyone else who enters: like a friend.
Note: The Casual Dining column will continue with a rotation of writers. Tim will continue writing about food and dining for The Post.
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