Our Food Critic's Favorite Fall Comfort Dishes

"which began as a pandemic pop-up and has evolved into a sleek Penn Quarter dining room/mahjong parlor-aims to make tweaked but still recognizable versions of Chinese/American classics. But the heaping pile of lo mein here is far more luxe than anything you'll find in a takeout box. For starters, it's tossed with hunks of buttered Maryland blue crab. The best part of the dish, though, is the umami bomb of a sauce, the result of a happy accident when a cook spilled creamy, caramelized whey into dashi."

"The menu borrows heavily from the New York original, including this straightforward but stellar onion soup. It's everything you want in the bowl: a deeply flavorful beef broth packed with caramelized onions, just enough crusty bread, and a seriously generous cap of burnished Gruyère. "A lot of people tell me it's the best they've had outside of France," our server said. Count me among them."

Lucky Danger began as a pandemic pop-up and is now a sleek Penn Quarter dining room and mahjong parlor serving tweaked Chinese/American classics. Its crab lo mein is tossed with buttered Maryland blue crab and finished with a sauce born when creamy, caramelized whey accidentally spilled into dashi, balanced with kaffir lime, chilies and cilantro. The Occidental's buttermilk biscuits are made by freezing and grating high-quality butter into the dough and served with extra butter sweetened with honey. Minetta Tavern, a New York transplant in Union Market, offers a deeply flavorful onion soup topped with crusty bread and burnished Gruyère.

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