Popular Silver Spring eatery Money Muscle opened at Le Fantome food hall in Riverdale Park this week, continuing the barbecue boom on the Route 1 corridor.

After starting as a food truck during the coronavirus pandemic, Money Muscle moved to its first brick-and-mortar location at the food hall on Monday, part of the area’s entrepreneurial pipeline for new restaurants.

The eatery is run by Ed Reavis and Jennifer Meltzer, owners of downtown Silver Spring seafood place All Set Restaurant & Bar.

It serves a wide range of barbecue, including Carolina pulled pork, Texas brisket and Kansas City style, served along with trendy ingredients like quinoa and challah.

Money Muscle joins 2Fifty Texas BBQ in Riverdale Park and Federalist Pig, which runs a food truck and plans to open a sit-down restaurant in Hyattsville.

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Mom’s Organic Market in College Park sells edible insects, part of a broader trend toward sustainable proteins.

The Maryland-based grocery chain has a small section of the store near the entrance to the pinball area that includes dark chocolate-covered crickets, granola bites made with cricket flour and chile lime-flavored bug snacks, among other things.

The store also sells crickets in bulk in plain, barbecue and honey-mustard flavors.

Insects are a delicacy in many parts of the world, a crunchy alternative to traditional farm-raised meat with a dramatically smaller carbon footprint, and environmentalists have called for more people to eat them.

The grocery chain decided to add them in 2017 after two vice presidents tried them while on a fact-finding trip to Mexico City’s famed La Merced market.

A Southern Mexican food truck that occasionally sets up shop on the Route 1 corridor even serves grasshopper tacos.

If you’re unsure about the texture, you can also buy cricket protein powder, which has a mild, almost nutty flavor and can be added to smoothies instead of whey or used as a substitute for some of the flour in everything from cookies to pancakes.

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Two Route 1 eateries made the Washington Post‘s list of the D.C. area’s 10 best casual eateries, even though neither has a normal location.

Hyattsville home-based pizzeria Ramona’s Pizza Garden and miXt Food Hall tenant Spice Kitchen both made the list written by restaurant reviewer Tim Carman.

Ramona’s owner Will Crick sells pizza through a waiting list that is currently topped out at 700 people that he hopes to open back up soon.

Carman described them as “superb pan pizzas, which look like Detroit pies but conform to a style all their own.”

Spice Kitchen owner Olumide Shokunbi, meantime, uses his spot at the popular Brentwood food hall to try introduce D.C. to grilled Nigerian skewers.

“The skewers, simultaneously earthy and spicy, are served atop food-grade wax paper designed to mimic the newspaper on which suya is typically served in the mother country,” Carman writes.

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After holding a soft-launch today, Manifest Bread in Riverdale Park will officially open to the public on Tuesday, Jan. 10.

Located at 6208 Rhode Island Ave. next to the former home of Banana Blossom Bistro, the full-service organic bakery will sell everything from sourdough bread to muffaleta sandwiches, oatmeal date and chocolate chip walnut cookies, and a selection of pastries, including savory options like pissaladiere.

The bakery will serve a wide assortment of Annapolis-based Ceremony coffee drinks including espressos, macchiatos, lattes, cappuccinos, and even cortados. They will also have a selection of wine and beer to drink in-house or take-home.


For the opening, the bakery will feature jambon-beurre, bialy and sourdough using in-house stone-milled flours.

For now, they have one gluten-free cookie, and all of the breads are vegan. Owners Rick and Tyes Cook told the Hyattsville Wire they won’t focus too much on gluten-free breads because “there’s so much flour in the air” that it’s hard to guarantee that any particular item doesn’t have any gluten in it.

You can grab and go or dine in as there is a small seating area inside with seven seats and some standing room.

Manifest started out as a cottage bakery, selling in D.C. neighborhoods like Cleveland Park and at local restaurants, but it built a strong following along the Route 1 corridor through word of mouth.

The Cooks said that the project to open the bakery was put on hold before the coronavirus pandemic. They eventually set up a Kickstarter fund to help with the costs of the move and they originally planned to open last fall but were delayed by permitting, a common problem in Prince George’s County.

Ultimately, they decided to open a bakery in Riverdale Park because it is located within a neighborhood community, with a nice mix of established families and new young home buyers.

The bakery will be open Tuesdays 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.; Wednesdays, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursdays 8 a.m. to 7 p.m.; and Friday, Saturday and Sunday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

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Mount Rainier ceramics artist Joe Hicks has built an outdoor kiln at his home studio, part of a growing pottery scene along the Route 1 corridor.

An art professor at Marymount University in Arlington, Hicks has long made pottery using a variation on the traditional Japanese glaze called Shino, which is fired at a lower temperature for a longer period of time.

Made out of brick and wood on top of a concrete pad, the kiln can reach higher than 2,000 degrees, producing soot that can end up settling in the glaze to create distinctive designs, a process known as “carbon trap.”

“The results are always unique and ‘one of a kind,’ which is why I’m fascinated to work with this method,” he explained recently. “It persistently provides an opportunity for the unexpected.”

Hicks shares photos and videos of his pottery on Instagram and has taught workshops on carbon-trap Shino glazes at the District Clay Center at 2414 Douglas St NE, not far from Woodridge.

You can also see the kiln in person at one of his regular open studio events at 3709 37th St. in Mount Rainier, or buy a piece of pottery from his online store.

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Gourmet hot dog and burger joint Doghaus Biergarten is coming to College Park.

The California-based chain, which has 89 locations across the country, will open in the new city hall complex at 7401 Baltimore Ave.

The eatery serves hormone- and antibiotic-free all-beef hot dogs, sausages, burgers and chicken on King’s Hawaiian rolls. It also has breakfast burritos, certified-Angus beef chili, loaded fries, onion rings and coleslaw on the menu.

As the name suggests, it also has an extensive list of local craft beers on tap as well as a cocktail menu, making it one some calls a “craft-casual” restaurant.

In the D.C. area, Doghaus already had locations in Silver Spring, Gaithersburg, and Bethesda and another planned for Dupont Circle in a former Chipotle location.

The chain first opened in Pasadena, Calif., in 2010 and began offering franchises in 2013.

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As the year comes to an end, the Hyattsville Wire is kicking off our sixth annual Best of Route 1 reader poll.

Now is the time to tell us about your favorite place to get a beer or go for a run, the best places to take young kids or go out on date night.

The Best of Route 1 is a great way to share your favorite spots with other Hyattsville Wire readers as well as the broader D.C. area and to let the people working hard behind the scenes know you appreciate them.

Picks must come from the following communities: Woodridge, D.C., Mount Rainier, Brentwood, North Brentwood, Bladensburg, Edmonston, Hyattsville, University Park, Riverdale Park, College Park, Berwyn Heights, Calvert Hills, Greenbelt, Laurel or Beltsville.

You can answer as many or as few questions as you like, but there’s a limit of one entry per person. To prevent ballot-stuffing, we require an email address to take the survey, but we will not share your address with anyone or use it for any marketing purposes.

If you have any comments on why you chose a particular person, restaurant or shop, feel free to add them in your choice. We may quote some entries without using your name or email so that other readers can understand what made something the best.

Submit your entry by 11:59 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2023. Poll winners will be announced later in February on the Hyattsville Wire. Two entrants will also be randomly chosen to win a $25 gift certificate to a business on the Route 1 corridor.

You can check out the 2017, 201820192020 and 2021 winners here.

Click here to fill out the 2022 Best of Route 1 reader poll.

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