Capital Q - Washingtonian's 100 Best Bargain Restaurants

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Capital Q

100 Best Bargain Restaurants - June 2002
By Robert Shoffner

Open for lunch and dinner Monday through Saturday. Dinner until 10 Monday through Saturday. It is nothing if not eccentric: a purveyor of authentic Texas barbecue from a smoker in the back of a Chinatown storefront that is the smallest restaurant in the area with a bar. The Chinese pictographs on Capital Q's front windows translate as "Texas State Fire Bakery," and the menu features a Chinese Cowboy's Platter, a hefty mound of rice topped with the diner's choice of meat.

But barbecue--along with chili and football--is as close as Texas comes to a state-sponsored religion, so the foolishness stops at the pit's door. Owner Nick Fontana's barbecue beef brisket is the most authentic rendition of pit-cooked Texas brisket available in these parts. Unlike pork, beef brisket is a tough cut that must be coddled into tenderness by patient cooking in low heat so its tight-grained flesh is infused with smokiness but doesn't get dried out.

As good as Capital Q's overstuffed sandwiches are--be sure to ask for somecrunchy "burnt ends" along with the slices--Fontana's brisket is best appreciated when ordered as a platter, the better to enjoy slices of beef as moist, tender, and flavorsome as one of those aged, top-prime New York strips that cost $35 at the top-shelf steakhouses.

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