ANNOUNCER: And now, “Signature Dish,” a WETA original series.

SETH: Today on "Signature Dish," 'tis the season for soup.

We're ladling out tidings of comfort and joy.

We'll give a French classic a garden-to-table twist.

Chef, award-winning cheese pull right there.

When are you going to stop?

Experience an explosion of Thai flavors.

Soft-shell crab.

One of my favorite things in the world.

SUNTHARA: Yummy?

SETH: And savor a soup fit for a president.

MARGUERITE: Got a little chowder ready for you.

SETH: Chowdah?

MARGUERITE: Chowdah.

SETH: Chowdah.

There we go.

I'm Seth Tillman, WETA producer and DC native, and I love good food.

That's why I'm traveling to restaurants across the DMV, at each stop looking for the one thing you just gotta try... That signature dish.

I'm starting my soup sampling in Navy Yard at Shilling Canning Company where Chef Reid Shilling is building on his family's legacy.

REID: Looking back, my family was involved in two areas.

One was construction, and the other side of my family was involved in farming and agriculture and gravitated towards Carroll County, Maryland, and that's where the original Shilling Canning Company was.

As a kid, I was just always involved in food.

When I was nine years old, my parents took me to my favorite restaurant called Linwoods in Owings Mills, Maryland.

They had an open kitchen, and so I walked in and I just stopped dead in my tracks and I said, "That right there, what those guys are doing, that's what I want to do when I grow up."

From there, it was just kind of this never-ending quest to always learn as much as I can about food and product, plating, technique, execution.

We care significantly about the ingredients that we source and select and use.

It's all intentional and where it comes from.

The overwhelming majority comes from farmers here in the Mid-Atlantic that we know personally.

Rather than writing a menu and sourcing product, we find the product and figure out what are we going to do with this?

What's the best thing to do with this zucchini, these tomatoes, this Virginia Wagyu?

We have about 350 or 400 square feet of garden bed space literally surrounding our restaurant right here in the Navy Yard.

The plants will change over, of course, with the weather.

It's kind of hidden in plain sight.

A lot of people don't even realize that it's there.

And right when we clip it, right before service, it doesn't get any better than that.

SETH: Chef.

REID: Seth.

SETH: Good to meet you.

REID: Nice to meet you.

Thanks for coming to Shilling Canning Company today.

SETH: You're working with the bumblebees today?

REID: Yeah, this is our culinary garden.

Many different things out here that we use in all of our dishes, but right now I'm clipping English thyme.

SETH: Some English thyme.

Beautifully aromatic.

REID: This is going to go in our French onion soup today.

SETH: I love French onion soup, and it doesn't really get much more classic than that.

REID: Yeah, ours is a really lengthy process.

Let's go peel back the layers on the onion.

SETH: I like what you did there, chef.

REID: Yeah, let's go.

SETH: All right, chef, I'm excited to see your elevated and lengthy take on French onion soup.

REID: It's a very basic dish and simple at heart, so the process needs to be flawless.

So we're going to build a sachet.

We're going to start here with a hefty bunch of thyme that we just clipped, some parsley, some fresh bay leaf, black peppercorn.

Unique for us here, we're going to take the rinds from this very special cheese that we use.

I'm going to start to wrap up the sachet, start with cheesecloth, and kind of tuck everything in here really tight.

This is some butcher's twine.

I'm going to use that twine to tighten up the sachet.

Before we get into beef jus, the caramelized onions, I want to show you two things that make our soup really special.

Would you hand me our house-made sourdough?

SETH: Speaking of wonderful aromas.

REID: Yeah, we use a starter that's over 30 years old that my wife and I brought back from California.

We go kind of thick on the croutons, right?

Because we don't want something that's just going to disappear in the soup.

Seth, would you mind handing me the bowl and the salt, please?

SETH: All right, you're going to season these croutons up?

REID: Yeah, and while I do that, we don't use the end piece here for the crouton if you'd like a snack.

All right, so just some salt, a little bit of olive oil here and into the oven to dry them out.

And Seth, no French onion soup is complete without the cheese.

Jordan, would you mind tossing Seth the cheese?

SETH: Oh my goodness, this thing weighs a ton, chef, what is this?

REID: So this is St. Malachi Reserve from the Farm at Doe Run.

They're out of Coatesville, Pennsylvania.

At Shilling, we're all about the bounty of the Mid-Atlantic, and this cheese is no exception.

This is their alpine style, akin to a Gouda or a Gruyere.

They make a regular St. Malachi.

This one spends an extra year in the caves.

We're going to take a little taste.

SETH: Ooh, I like that.

REID: It's going to be really nutty.

You're going to get notes of toffee, but really creamy.

It doesn't really have the funk that a Gruyere would have.

So this is a little more mild, but it's every bit as rich, if not richer.

SETH: All right, well I could just sit here and snack on this St. Malachi all day, but I know we have a whole soup to make.

REID: Yeah, we do.

Let's grab the sachet and dig into the two stars of this dish.

First here we have our beef jus.

Our process starts with a first boil of beef stock.

It goes 10 hours overnight and then it's drained off in the morning.

Then we refill the same pot with the same vegetables, the same bones, and we boil it for another six hours.

When those two boils are complete, they go into the same pot and then over the course of the third day are cooked down into a jus to the perfect flavor for this soup.

SETH: So we're honoring the French onion soup with some very traditional French stock-making techniques here.

REID: Exactly.

I'm going to take this sachet and we're going to go right into our beef jus.

And remember Seth, the cheese rinds from the St. Malachi we put into the sachet.

That's the same cheese that you're enjoying right now.

SETH: Enjoying quite a bit, indeed.

REID: The cheese rinds will actually add a little bit of umami and roundness and carry the cheese profile all the way through in the completed soup.

SETH: But of course, we're here for the onions, right?

REID: That's right.

We start with 40 pounds of sweet onions out of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

SETH: So, some more Mid-Atlantic produce going in here.

REID: Exactly.

SETH: And 40 pounds to get to this.

That's like the bag of spinach when you're done cooking it.

REID: Exactly.

This was two full pots of hand-cut onions cooked down into a fifth of the pot, maybe.

This is where the technique comes into play.

You can't burn them or the soup is dead, right?

SETH: You wasted 40 pounds of onions.

REID: 40 pounds and all the labor that goes into that.

So we've cooked these down really low and slow over the course of about two days... SETH: Wow.

REID: And right now there's a little bit of moisture remaining.

And so I'm going to take a little bit of flour.

It soaks up the remaining moisture from the onions, but what it will also do is to help suspend the onions in the broth.

SETH: So you're getting a little bit of onions with every spoonful of this soup.

REID: Exactly.

SETH: Brilliant.

REID: All right, Seth, we're going to skim the impurities off of the top of this stock.

The idea is to end up with a shiny almost mirror-like jus.

Now we're going to add these onions.

You can see in here, right, is that the bottom of the pot doesn't have any burn on it because we've carefully had a watchful eye on these onions the whole time.

After this comes up to a boil, we're going to leave it at a simmer for 45 minutes.

We're going to season the soup with salt and sherry vinegar.

We'll take our croutons that we made earlier from our house-made sourdough.

I'll take a few pieces of Emmenthaler because the Emmenthaler has a good moisture content to it, so we'll get that nice pull on the cheese.

And then we'll grate the St. Malachi over the top.

Then we'll place the soup up in the salamander, which will give us a really lovely gratin all the way across the top.

We'll finish it with chives, and benne seeds for presentation, and we'll be ready to enjoy it together.

SETH: All right, chef, this looks spectacular.

REID: Be mindful.

I warn guests all the time.

It's super hot.

SETH: Just a literal cauldron.

REID: It boils in the bowl.

SETH: So what's the best plan here?

REID: In a moment I'll show you how to vent it.

But we're having French onion soup, what a better pairing than champagne?

SETH: Finally, something not coming from Maryland and Pennsylvania.

REID: That's right.

They can't make champagne here, only in Champagne.

But we do get our beef from Paris, Virginia.

SETH: Of course, you do.

Sante?

REID: Ah, Sante.

God, that's so good.

SETH: That's a perfect way to start the meal.

I also want to get that perfect cheese pull.

I want this thing to be Instagram-worthy.

REID: You got to vent it, right?

So you get a little bit of some space there, and then your cheese pull.

SETH: Oh wow.

Cheese Louise.

REID: Oh, boy.

SETH: I love that.

Even on that first bite, there already were some onions floating in that stock, but the clarity of that broth, it's just fresh, but yet hearty and beefy all at the same time.

REID: Yeah.

Beef, onion, cheese.

That's it.

SETH: And I think I did pick up a little bit of the acidity from the sherry.

REID: Yeah, it really helps to balance the soup.

SETH: This is just taking it to the next level.

Oh, look at you.

Oh, chef, award-winning cheese pull right there.

When are you going to stop?

REID: It's not up to me.

SETH: Wow.

Do you ever worry that all the technique, all the days of labor might get lost on the diner?

REID: It might, right, but I think subconsciously when you put our food in your mouth, taste buds tell you, wow, this is different.

This is special.

Even if it looks like something you've seen every day.

SETH: My sound guy mentioned to me that I have to also scrape a little bit of the cheese off the side of the bowl here.

REID: Yeah, absolutely.

You got to get those crusties off the side, man.

SETH: Oh, wow.

REID: We encourage enjoyment over manners in a situation like this.

SETH: We're down in the Navy Yard.

You're going to go catch a game, come here, scrape little cheese off the side of the bowl, and then go enjoy yourself.

REID: That's right.

It'll be perfect when the Nats get into October baseball and it's a little chilly outside.

Start with a bowl of soup.

SETH: But this goes to show hot summer day, picking fresh herbs.

Soup season should just be all year long.

REID: Exactly.

SETH: Thank you for a fun and delicious visit to the Shilling kitchen today.

REID: Seth, pleasure was mine.

SETH: After getting my fill of a fine dining classic, my next stop is to Vienna, Virginia to savor vibrant street food flavors at Kiin Imm Thai.

CHARUWAT: I am from Bangkok, Thailand, and I came to US 12 years ago as a student.

CHOLLADA: I'm from Khon Kaen, Thailand.

I'm like eating person.

I like to eat.

I like to try the food.

People know Thai food already, just like Pad Thai.

I would like people to try everyday food that we eat in Thailand.

CHARUWAT: We not see a lot of Thai restaurant in street food category, so we decide to start the restaurant with our friend and family.

CHOLLADA: And people start love it, and we very surprised.

People, they open mind with the new food.

SETH: Chef Sunthara runs the show in Kiin Imm's Vienna Kitchen.

SETH: I'm off to Kiin Imm to try a Thai street food favorite that a popular foodie website ranked as the world's greatest soup in 2022.

Chef, nice to meet you.

(says "Hello" in Thai) SETH: I'm excited to be here.

I see a lot of colorful Thai spices.

What are you making today?

SETH: All right.

So chef, how do you get started on making this homemade curry paste?

SETH: And no oil?

Just a dry fry?

SETH: It's amazing how quickly they start to cook when they're already nice and charred.

SETH: Oh, that smells so good.

SETH: After the lemongrass, Chef Sunthara toasts each curry paste ingredient separately due to their different cooking times.

SETH: It's just a parade of flavorful ingredients, one after the next.

Yeah.

SETH: These chilies look like they mean business right here.

SETH: Well, we'll see if medium spicy for you is high spice for me.

SETH: Lot of color going in as well.

SETH: So shrimp paste is going to also give it a little bit of, little bit of funk.

SETH: Once the curry ingredients are blended, Chef Sunthara starts to build the soup.

SETH: Chef, as impressive as the aroma of that curry paste is, the color of it too.

I love it.

SETH: After the chicken simmers, it's time to season and assemble the khao soi.

While you can enjoy the soup with chicken or shrimp, you can also splurge for one of my personal favorites: soft-shell crab.

After a dip in tempura batter, the crab is deep-fried and added to the bowl atop a bed of egg noodles and curry.

The dish is then finished with a variety of toppings, including a nest of crispy fried noodles.

Chef, this bowl is just absolutely beautiful with all these colors.

CHOLLADA: You have to mix this, and with your crispy noodle on the top too and a little bit of soft shell.

SETH: Oh, so before I do anything, we got to mix it all together.

Okay.

CHOLLADA: Right.

SETH: Here we go.

CHARUWAT: Squish a lime a little bit.

Do you like more sour?

SETH: I'm always happy to add a little extra flavor.

All right, here we go.

SUNTHARA: Yummy?

SETH: Yummy.

That is just masterful.

Everything about it's just so vibrant.

The spices just really come alive, the moment you take a bite.

CHARUWAT: It's like medium spicy for you?

SETH: It is about medium spicy for me.

I can handle that chef.

Thank you.

CHOLLADA: Some people like salty, if you like more spicy.

And then this one is chili oil.

SETH: A little more chili oil.

CHOLLADA: Yeah, to make it more spicy.

SETH: Yeah, I'll add just a tiny little bit to take it to the next level.

CHOLLADA: Yeah.

But for me, I like more sour, so I gonna put more fresh lime juice.

SETH: So everyone can kind of season to their own particular taste.

CHOLLADA: Yeah.

Right.

SETH: Well, speaking of favorite taste, soft-shell crab, one of my favorite things in the world, so I just got to go right for it.

Is this soft shell crab coming from Thailand?

CHOLLADA: Yeah, it's coming from Thailand.

Originally khao soi is come with beef and chicken thigh, but now everything changed.

People next generation, they like something new and different than traditional.

So we also have this option for everyone to, if you'd like to try something like trendy right now in Thailand.

SETH: I mean absolutely dynamite.

I'm going to dip this leg into a little bit more of that amazing broth that you made, chef.

SETH: Well, I really enjoyed this next-gen Thai street food approach.

I can't wait to come back for some year-round soft-shelled crab.

Thanks to all of you.

CHARUWAT: Okay, Seth, I got to teach you some, proper way to say thank you in Thai.

SETH: Oh, please.

CHARUWAT: You just follow me.

Okay, just do like this and say... (speaking in Thai).

(Seth speaking in Thai).

CHARUWAT: Yeah, it's like you say thank you in English.

SETH: Oh, well absolutely.

(speaking in Thai).

SETH: I'm feeding my final soup craving at a true Washington landmark.

Tucked away on the top floor of the Kennedy Center is the Roof Terrace Restaurant, a spot for an elegant pre-show dinner.

MARGUERITE: DC is just such a special place, and especially the Kennedy Center.

A lot of people don't know there's a restaurant up here.

There's so much to experience just in the center alone, and we've tried to really bring in new fresh menus, all seasonal items, things local to DC.

SETH: Senior sous-chef Marguerite Bottorff helps oversee the restaurant's operations.

MARGUERITE: I'm a fourth generation Washingtonian with a southern grandmother, so food has always been a huge part of my life.

I left college and then I kind of fell into the food world and became an allergy-friendly specialist after I was diagnosed with many fun food allergies, but I still wanted to eat really, really well.

So I decided let's make it a career and landed here somehow.

SETH: The restaurant's Signature Dish pays homage to the center's namesake.

MARGUERITE: President Kennedy's secretary had come up to him and gave him a handwritten memo and said, "There's an 11-year-old girl named Lynn Jennings who really wants to know your favorite dish to eat."

And so he wrote her back and gave her this wonderful fish chowder recipe that said, "It reminds me so much of home.

It reminds me of New England."

And so it then became a staple in the White House.

We just elevated it a little bit to bring it to the 21st century and make it really delicious for all of us.

SETH: I'm making my way up to the terrace level, but first stopping to ponder the 35th president's legacy, as well as taking in the world-class view.

MARGUERITE: Hey, Seth.

SETH: Chef.

MARGUERITE: How are you?

SETH: Good to meet you.

MARGUERITE: Great to meet you.

Welcome to the Kennedy Center and the Roof Terrace Restaurant.

SETH: I could get used to this being the view out my office window.

MARGUERITE: It's not the worst view.

SETH: What you guys have cooking today in the kitchen?

MARGUERITE: Got a little chowder ready for you today.

SETH: Chowdah?

MARGUERITE: Chowder.

SETH: All right, we got to get that out of my system right now.

Chowdah!

MARGUERITE: Chowdah.

SETH: There we go.

I'm done.

MARGUERITE: It's one of JFK's most treasured recipes.

Why don't you follow me inside and we'll get started.

SETH: Let's do it.

MARGUERITE: All right, Seth.

Welcome to the Roof Terrace Restaurant.

SETH: All right, so these are all the ingredients for the chowder?

MARGUERITE: Yes, it is.

So the original chowder really started only with ten ingredients.

We wanted to elevate it, we wanted to make it a little more refined, a little more DC and kind of take it out of 1961.

SETH: And so how do you get started on the dish?

MARGUERITE: Well, we have to actually render out some delicious fat.

This is Nueske's bacon, so it's got a little smoke to it.

They actually used salt pork in the original recipe, but we wanted a little deeper flavor just to really set the soup off right.

SETH: You can never go wrong with good bacon.

MARGUERITE: Absolutely not.

We have plenty of fat in here to get started.

So we're going to remove our delicious Nueske's bacon.

SETH: Are you going to save that for later?

MARGUERITE: Oh yeah, this will definitely be added back.

All right, so now we're going to start with our "Mirepoix Plus," as I like to call it.

So we'll sweat down our onions.

We want to get them a little translucent, so they're really taking on that porky flavor.

SETH: Porky flavor.

That's the technical term?

MARGUERITE: Yes.

Yes.

That's what everybody learns in chef's school.

These are sweating down really beautifully.

We're going to add some carrot, some leek, celery, and some fennel for some sweetness.

And last but not least, our ever-important potato.

SETH: And potato is a key part of any chowder dish.

MARGUERITE: Of any chowder.

SETH: Chowdah We snuck it back in.

MARGUERITE: Chowdah.

SETH: Chowdah.

MARGUERITE: You can't help yourself.

And then classic to the recipe as well, a couple bay leaves and let's stir those puppies in.

I'm going to do a little white pepper.

Now we're going to add the roux.

And this is what's going to thicken it up.

SETH: And what's in the roux, chef?

MARGUERITE: It's just butter and flour.

And that will also thicken it and make it a really, really luxurious texture.

So we've added flavor, we've added a little depth.

Now we're adding texture.

And now time for our fish stock.

So we make this in-house.

It's nice and gelatinized.

SETH: That means that a lot of those bones and everything just cooked out.

MARGUERITE: All those bones got in there.

SETH: All the collagens in there.

MARGUERITE: Oh, yeah.

So the original recipe doesn't actually call for fish stock.

They use heavy cream and a little bit of water.

But again, we really want to heighten the flavor.

We're going to also add a little white wine to it.

Really nice dry Pinot Grigio.

SETH: Another elevated touch.

MARGUERITE: It is an absolutely elevated touch.

SETH: Wine not?

MARGUERITE: That was a good one.

We're going to add our corn now.

This is our bi-color corn, locally grown, which is again going to add a touch of sweetness, but also a little thickener as well.

SETH: So this is dish you'll even be willing to change up throughout the year, depending on... MARGUERITE: Throughout the seasons.

Yes, absolutely.

We always want to start with delicious, and start with seasonal, and start with sustainable.

Because we're very passionate about making sure we're keeping local but also wonderful flavors.

SETH: But if the aromas any indication ... MARGUERITE: I'm going to go ahead and add our little Nueske's bacon right back to it.

SETH: No, I was just getting ready to snack on that, chef.

MARGUERITE: Now is time for the cream.

So we want to turn it down just a touch because you never want to scorch the cream.

We're going to just slowly stir it.

It mixed with a little bit of half-and-half to lighten it up.

No reason to make you fall asleep in the middle of a show.

Just starting to simmer and come up to temperature.

So we're going to add in our delicious rockfish here.

But the original recipe called for haddock.

When I think of New England chowder, I'm thinking clam chowder.

So this is very much Kennedy's ...

He really liked the haddock.

He didn't really love the clams.

SETH: Oh yeah.

And as a Mid-Atlantic guy myself, I mean, I've been eating rockfish for ages.

MARGUERITE: Forever.

SETH: It's one of my absolute favorites.

MARGUERITE: So we've added our rockfish in and it's going to cook down for about ten minutes.

And once the chowder's done cooking, we're going to finish it off with a little bit of crunchy bacon on top for an extra texture.

Some micro-greens, a drizzle of our herb oil that we make in-house.

And then just a touch of Maldon salt, and the chowder will be ready to enjoy.

SETH: All right, chef.

So many colors on this bowl.

Just going to dig in.

MARGUERITE: Let's get after it.

Oh, with the bacon on there too.

SETH: Oh, that is a treat.

MARGUERITE: Oh, I'm so glad.

SETH: There's a freshness while also being hearty at the same time, which I think is a hard balance to strike, but you've clearly done it here.

MARGUERITE: Awesome.

Thank you so much.

SETH: There's no mistaking the smokiness that's coming from that bacon as well.

I'm not even sure I got enough of these crispy bacon bites on the top.

MARGUERITE: Bacon party.

SETH: It's hard to imagine what this would be like without the addition of that fish stock and all those other ingredients.

MARGUERITE: Yeah, from what I've heard, it is delicious, but I feel like it'd be a little one-note.

So here we really wanted to hit a symphony of flavors while keeping it fresh, keeping it bright, still really celebrating the rockfish and everything the dish is originally about.

SETH: And we've actually talked on "Signature Dish" about the way the Kennedys popularized French dining in this area.

They were obviously very cosmopolitan, very worldly, but I have to imagine that those flavors that he knew from summers on the Cape had to be very near and dear to his heart.

MARGUERITE: Absolutely.

Food is really the thing that brings you home.

It gives you the nostalgia, it gives you all of those memories and they come flooding back, especially with a nice hearty bowl of soup.

SETH: And speaking of memories in childhood, you and me, native Washingtonians spent a lot of time here.

Do you ever get tired of having this little corner of Washington, DC to yourself?

MARGUERITE: Absolutely not.

Sometimes I'll go eat lunch and stare at Georgetown.

Sometimes I'll stare at the monuments.

There's so much to look at and so much to admire that I see it every single day.

I'm still like, oh, I'm just in awe of the city all the time.

SETH: Well, I have loved this little peek into part of the Kennedy Center that I didn't even know existed.

MARGUERITE: Not many people do.

So I'm so glad you came.

SETH: Well, I'm always late to everything I do.

So when I do come to the Kennedy Center, I'll make a point of leaving the house early enough so I can come up here to the terrace and enjoy a great meal.

MARGUERITE: We'll save you a seat.

SETH: Thanks, chef.

(music plays through credits) ANNOUNCER: To find out more about great food in the Washington Metro area, visit weta.org/signaturedish.