托福阅读材料(253)：垃圾食品占据美国国会

　　托福阅读材料/知识之垃圾食品占据美国国会，更多托福阅读背景材料/知识尽在新东方在线托福考试频道！

　　Junk Food 是一个让大家又爱又恨的东西，既喜欢它的味道又对它的没营养和有害物质无可奈何。难道美国的国会山的议员们也加入到了 Junk Food 的行列?

　　AS Congress passed a law last week that would stuff more fruits and vegetables into school lunches, several blocks away the people lined up for hot dogs. The choices were many: all beef with peppers and onions; a deep-fried Angus number; one wrapped in a pretzel roll, topped with Cheez Whiz.

　　The dog doings were at DC-3, a new aviation-themed hot dog spot that takes its place among many high-end junk-food purveyors that have popped up around Capitol Hill recently. Over at the White House, a farmers’ market has sprouted, a garden has been cultivated and holiday guests are being offered poached fruit. But the area surrounding the Capitol is awash in milkshakes, grilled cheese sandwiches and mildly baroque pizza.

　　Leading the charge is the Matchbox Food Group, DC-3’s parent company, which began with a pizza joint in nearby Chinatown and has recently opened a sister “pizza bistro” on Eighth Street, along with Ted’s Bulletin, a midprice comfort-food outpost.

　　On H Street, the other side of the Capitol, Liberty Tree is serving pigs in blankets, macaroni and cheese and fried clam sandwiches. On the pizza front, in addition to Matchbox, there is We, The Pizza, dished out by “Top Chef” graduate Spike Mendelsohn, and Seventh Hill Pizza, a new spot near Eastern Market.

　　Very little that occurs inside the Beltway is a genuine allegory for national passions, but the proliferation of food that is affordable, nostalgic and deeply accessible may be about as close as it gets.

　　Mr. Mendelsohn has worked with Michelle Obama extensively on her anti-obesity campaign. But that didn’t stop him from starting a Capitol Hill-area burger spot, Good Stuff Eatery, and We, The Pizza, which opened four months ago.

　　A major contributor to the spread of Everyman Eating is the steady rise of Capitol Hill as a residential neighborhood, with several chefs moving into the area. When they open restaurants, what they want, it seems, is not a crack at a Michelin star, but rather midlevel places where they could get food from their childhood, and attract residents who craved the same.

　　“The idea that created this was: ‘Where do we want to eat? What do we like to eat?’ And let’s put it in our neighborhood,” said Micheline Mendelsohn, Spike’s sister and an owner of his ventures.

　　They have company. “A lot of the neighbors thanked us up and down for investing here,” said Ty Neal, one of four partners in Matchbox Food Group, two of whom live in the neighborhood.

　　Their first venture, Matchbox Pizza, opened in 2003 in nearby Chinatown, and “there were hookers and gunshots when we arrived,” he said.

　　“But we had an idea of what was coming, and our landlord said this was going to be the next hot neighborhood,” Mr. Neal said. In 2005, when that vision became true, the group started thinking expansion. After a side stop in Palm Springs, Calif., in 2007, “we signed a lease on Capitol Hill with the same idea.”

　　The pizza place was an instant hit. Next came Ted’s Bulletin, an ode to his father, Mr. Neal said, and then the airplane-shaped hot dog place.

　　The new places around the Capitol also represent, if not an emergent dining scene, at least a steadily improving one in a city long derided for substandard eating. A number of New York chefs have decamped to the area, realizing that a permanent industry means an economy that has fewer dents than that of many other big cities. They follow trailblazers like Jos Andrs, the Spanish chef, who has long been on the forefront of bringing more innovative fare to Washington with places like Jaleo and Zaytinya.

　　“It’s true that D.C. is now a city you have to be in,” said Jimmy Haber, managing partner of BLT Restaurant Group, which operates 20 restaurants in a dozen cities. “You’ve heard that government is not getting any smaller, and big government certainly helps business.” Mr. Haber said that his company’s BLT Steak and Casa Nonna restaurants here perform almost as well as their counterparts in New York.

　　Next year Fabio Trabocchi, formerly of the Four Seasons and Fiamma in New York, is returning to Washington, where he first gained recognition for his intricate Italian preparations. He is an exception, though. In general, the great middle seems the safest bet here. In coming months, Bobby Flay is opening a burger place and Danny Meyer is adding a Shake Shack. “We don’t have esoteric restaurants” in Washington, said Mr. Haber, who hopes to open a burger place, too.

　　Well, there is nothing esoteric about a hot dog, nor do servers at most burger joints deliver lectures about the provenance of the ingredients. (“For the Gut Buster, Chef likes to use cheese food, locally sourced from Giant supermarket, aged for two months in its nonrecyclable receptacle.”)

　　Mr. Neal said that for DC-3, his group studied the regional dogs of the nation, then interpreted them. The most successful take is the Chicago 7, a Vienna all-beef smothered in peppers, relish and onions: “The reason you eat a hot dog,” said my colleague, Carl, whose favorite meal generally consists of something from a sad canteen at the bottom of the Capitol building.

　　The signature dish at Ted’s Bulletin is unadorned tomato soup with grilled cheese, the sort of meal your mom made when you came from school to veg out in front of “Guiding Light,” back in the days when parents did not pester you about joining the chess club instead.

　　The milkshakes are thick and properly taste like dairy, not candy. You can get them with alcohol, too. I tip my hat to the country fried steak, which so often offers a layer of grease masquerading as batter, and the elevated “pop tarts,” which are silly, but weirdly alluring.

　　Liberty Tree, which opened in March, takes advantage of this city’s minor obsession with constitutional high-mindedness, with artwork depiction American Revolutionaries.

　　There are white tablecloths here. And, yes, a pork chop and the like. But the draw is pigs in a blanket (made with Portuguese sausage), deviled eggs dabbed with bacon and brussels spouts that provide a closed case on why frying makes anything delicious. Downed with one of the many beers, a special of mac and cheese with lobster was less clich than bread-crumb-spackled heaven.

　　It will probably not win a spot on the White House nightly menu. “I wouldn’t say you should eat comfort food seven days a week,” said Scott Hamilton, the owner of Liberty Tree. “I think you have to mix it up, and I do.”

　　So, apparently, does the president. On a recent trip to Kokomo, Ind., he loaded up on pumpkin rolls, cinnamon rolls, apple fritters and doughnuts at a local bakery. Maybe he didn’t know there were Pop Tarts in his own town.