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Under the heading “Food Flash,” which the Post likes to use as a chest-thumping device to announce its breaking news, Tom Sietsema wrote yesterday:
The area’s best-known Vietnamese restaurant—-Huong Que, also referred to as Four Sisters (6769 Wilson Blvd., Falls Church)—-will be leaving its base in the Eden Center for a larger home in Fairfax County next year, according to Le Lai, Sister No. 2 at the family-owned business.
Hate to break the news to you, Posties, but we reported that fact more than a year ago, in our August 25, 2006 cover story. Here’s the pertinent passage:
Ly’s future does not lie with Song Que, however. She plans to join the family at Huong Que’s new location at the corner of Lee Highway and Gallows Road in Falls Church, which is scheduled to open late next year. The plan is to move Huong Que in its entirety to the new spot, a combination residential/retail space, but the family hasn’t decided yet whether to sell its lease at the Eden Center or transform the current location into something different.
It’s the same story that explained the conflicted feelings that each of the Lai siblings has toward the restaurant that made their family famous. But you wouldn’t have known it from Sietsema’s last paragraph, which reads: “Just for the record, Four Sisters is a bit of a misnomer—-and has been for years. Lai concedes that she and Sister No. 4, Lieu Lai, and a brother, chef Hoa Lai, are the only siblings who work regularly at the restaurant.”
This is the second time that the Post has “reported” details from one of our food-and-wine covers without crediting the little guy. In March, the Post wrote about Montgomery County’s stranglehold on alcohol distribution and how it affects fine-wine service. It came a month after our own cover story on the issue.
Oh, and by the way: That attempt at a rhyme in the headline of Sietsema’s Food Flash—-Pho to Go—it doesn’t work. It’s pronounced “fuh.” As in “pho-king” Washington Post.