Get into your car and drive to the tropics

As depressing as it sounds, urban living is now a "niche" lifestyle, like living on a farm or a houseboat. Immigrants no longer move to big cities as soon as they land, and no longer form the ethnic enclaves that make city life so interesting for adventurous eaters.

A new ethnic restaurant opening within city limits is less likely to be an unassuming but excellent hole in the wall catering to transplants and more likely to use the words "fusion" or "refined with hints of authenticity" to describe the food or the decor. Especially in DC, if you want ethnic food eaten by the people who cook it at home, you're gonna have to brave the 'burbs.

If you want a fake Jamaican patty, go to Julia's Empenadas in D.C. If you want a real patty, spicy, orange, flaky and perfect in every way, go to York Castle Ice Cream in an unassuming strip mall just south of the Beltway on Georgia Avenue in Silver Spring.

Yes, beef (spicy and mild, chicken and vegetarian too) at an ice cream shop. Believe it.

And believe that the ice cream there is also a cut above. Passion Fruit, Soursop (just try it), and Guiness are not something you're going to find at Cold Stone Creamery, no many how much money you spend for some flunkie to pound candy into your ice cream. It's all delicious, so feel free to choose anything, even if you're not sure what it looks like in fruit form. I had the Guiness (tart but sweet) and Soursop (like a mango, but less, umm, mango-y) and it was great.

Another great thing: two patties and two two-scoop cups of ice cream ran about $11. That's a whole meal for less than the cost of a dirty look at TenPenh.

York Castle Ice Cream
9324 Georgia Ave
Silver Spring, MD
301-589-1616