Fed up with diners serving burgers and steaks and hot dawgs? Looking for a change? (This recommendation is not strictly a market - though if you got your food to go it would qualify - but a suggestion for winter warming food.) Visit Kera Carpenter and she'll introduce you to a neighborhood not known for restaurants as well as an unfamiliar cuisine: Eastern European food, in...Petworth! She's the owner chef of Domku Bar and Cafe.  'Domku' means Little House in Polish and, if I remember rightly, Russian. (Darren Santos and she were responsible for the photo.)

Kera will feed you a range of Slavic and Scandinavian dishes, from Naselika - fried bread stuffed with spinach and covered in cream, to Swedish meatballs, Czech potato dumplings, Russian salad, pretty pink buttermilk and beets soup, pierogies, eggplant caviar, and more, washed down with unusual cocktails involving lingonberry juice, East European beers, or thick, sweet Polish black coffee. The setting is kind of 'coffee bar retro', very casual and home-y, as befits the cafe's name.

Domku Bar and Cafe, 821 Upshur St NW, 202 722 7475.

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