Don Rockwell, founder of the online foodie board donrockwell.com, has come to Tom Sietsema’s defense after the Washington Post retracted the restaurant critic’s First Bite review of the Commissary in Logan Circle. Writes Rockwell:

This is a tough standard, and I stand solidly behind Tom on this one (while at the same time understanding the Post’s decision). Perhaps he should have mentioned a disclaimer, but from what I know about Tom Sietsema, he is professional enough to remain objective, regardless of any potential conflicts of interest, actual or perceived. He’s done it in the past with Breadline, Stoney’s, etc., and from where I view things, he’s maintained extremely high integrity, year after year. I’ll come right out and say that I’ve dined with Tom in the past where he is recognized (and fawned over), and it did not affect his reviews in any way that I could see. Ever since I became forum host at eGullet, I’ve used aspects of his approach as models for my own behavior, and these remain in place to this very day.

Your turn: What do you think about Sietsema’s mini-review and the Post’s retraction?

The partners of EatWell DC, which own the Commissary on P Street NW, requested and got what they wanted following Washington Post restaurant critic Tom Sietsema’s harsh early look at their new Logan Circle eatery: They got the Post to retract the First Bite article, which was originally published on Wednesday in the Food Section and is still available on Mediabistro.com. And they got this nice mea culpa in the Sunday paper:

Critic Tom Sietsema should have recused himself from reviewing the Commissary, a restaurant featured in the Oct. 29 Food section. He and one of the restaurant’s owners had earlier had a personal relationship. The Washington Post regrets that he reviewed this restaurant, and will remove the review from its online archive.

When contacted on Monday, EatWell DC managing partner David Winer said he didn’t want to comment any further on the matter. “I can’t be party in the destruction of another human being,” Winer said during our brief phone conversation. He said he had hoped to keep this ugly situation out of the media, which is why he didn’t send me (or other members of the local food media) the letter that he e-mailed to the 5,000 members of the EatWell DC mailing list. I told him that I had received a copy of the letter and would run it. Winer agreed that, at this point, the letter was essentially a public document. It runs below the jump.

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7-Eleven likes to say that its 7-Election coffee cups have called the last two presidential elections, which bodes well for Barack Obama. The convenience store chain’s customers have been purchasing far more Obama cups than McCain cups; the Democratic nominee leads the GOP candidate 60 percent to 40 percent.

But over at BGR: The Burger Joint, the results are leaning more conservative. At last count on Friday afternoon, Mark Bucher, the founder and co-owner of BGR, says that the McCain burger is besting the Obama burger, 862 to 848. Does this mean that the national polls and the 7-Election cups have it all wrong? That the race is tighter than everyone believes?

Doubtful. It’s probably just a reflection that the Southwestern McCain burger, topped with poblano chili and chipotle peppers, is far tastier. The Obama burger is a dubious meat-on-meat combo: a patty topped with a Vienna beef hot dog from Chicago. Personally, my stomach will vote for the McCain burger every day.

Eddie Gehman Kohan, one of Los Angeles’ cheeky Haphazard Gourmet Girls, e-mailed me this afternoon to share her recent experience at Michel Richard Citronelle. She was on the war path, clearly. She wasn’t after Richard’s head, but that of the maitre d’, who stopped Kohan on the way out of Citronelle and said that her young companion’s denim wasn’t appropriate for the Georgetown institution.

Writes Kohan:

How, we wondered, had our dinner turned into that scene in Pretty Woman, y’know, the one where Julia Roberts, ultra-fetching whore, gets dissed by the shopkeepers on Rodeo Drive because she’s dressed “wrong?”

Kohan told me that the Haphazard Gourmet Girls “agree with the loss of that star in the Wash Post dining guide.” She went on to say this at the end of her hilarious rant:

Dining, these days, is as much about having a good experience as it is about good food, and Citronelle fulfills only half this equation. We’ll not be returning any time soon; the very special Crow a la Hubris tasting menu that’s being offered is not to our liking. We didn’t get food poisoning at Citronelle, we got mood poisoning. And sometimes, that’s far worse.

OK, let’s hear your thoughts? Is this Haphazard Gourmet Girl being too harsh? Or is she right on the money? (Oh, and please read her whole rant before commenting. It’ll make the discussion so much more interesting.)

Mike Mozart has some ideas on how to put the trick into tonight’s Halloween treats.

I hesitate to poke at this hornet’s nest, but what the hell. We need the site visitors. A couple of weeks ago, Waiter Rant (a must read, if you never have) posted a letter, ostensibly from a U.S. waiter to the prime minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, bitching about Brits who don’t understand the American custom (read: requirement) of tipping in restaurants. The money graf is here, in all its grandiloquent and ungrammatical glory:

Personally I find the British charming, polite, urbane, civilised, and otherwise of a generally agreeable lot. Not having had the pleasure of personally attending an Arsenal or Manchester United football match, I leave the reputed hooliganism and accompanying rows to cultural idiosyncrasy, one not evidenced in my experience. Nevertheless, the one behaviour of your citizenry here in America of which I find the most annoying, disturbing, and ultimately maddening is the ignorance of a peculiar American cultural artefact, which manifests itself most obviously in the act of the tip. As a waiter, and one who has served the Queen’s subjects (and your constituency) on more than several occasions, and because of the vagaries of the American economic system, professional waiters in America depend wholly upon the tip, which, as I understand in Great Britain and Europe, is meant to be an extra reward for good service, due to the fact that waiters there receive a salary of liveable degree. In America, waiters receive a pittance salary, usually of an hourly nature, and far below the minimum wage, which is more often than not applied to income tax; subsequently the majority of waiters in America owe taxes at the end of the year. To put it simply: American waiters depend upon tips for their livelihood.

From the comments to this item on Waiter Rant, it seems clear that…well, Canadians don’t have enough to do. What’s the experience like here in D.C.? Do foreign visitors know to leave tips? I mean, we’re a foreign-visitor magnet here. There has got to be stories.

Deb Gottesman sounds like a sensitive soul. She requests that I not pick on her, if somehow I find her submission not up to snuff for our Shill for Your Favorite Restaurant feature. Gosh, I feel like I need an anger management course. No worries, Deb. Everything is cool. Thanks for the submission. (Also, don’t forget, y’all can register to become a City Paper Restaurant Rater and write mini-reviews on our site. If they’re good, they’ll even get printed in the dead-tree version of the paper.)

1. Zengo: #1 for sure. Whether you splurge for some fancy fusion (Black Cod with chile chipotle is amazing) or just get the $11 Give-and-Take Chicken Salad (most delicious salad in town and totally satisfying as a meal), they always treat you like their favorite customer. Great food, great drinks, great atmosphere and won’t break the bank.

2. Olazzo in Silver Spring: delicious, affordable, very grandma-made-it tasting pasta. Cozy place to have a martini or to bring the family. Beyond reasonably priced.

3. Bardeo: Always loved the little bar next to Ardeo. Tapas that’s delicious and not too frilly; easy to make it into a real meal. Fabulous drinks and fun vibe.

Want to be featured in Shill for Your Favorite Restaurant? Send an e-mail to tcarman@washingtoncitypaper.com and give me the three restaurants in the D.C. area for which you would risk your reputation, the three that you’d shill for without losing sleep at night. I need specifics -lots of loving details-why you’d serve as their pitchman (or woman).

Tim and Nina Zagat, the couple behind the wildly successful Zagat guides, argued yesterday in the Wall Street Journal that the restaurant biz will survive the economic downtown (can we call it a recession yet?). Their argument was forcefully made, based on historical data, tax laws, and social trends. But they overlooked one important factor: the rising cost of ingredients, all sorts of ingredients, from flour to oil.

In other words, people are eating out less often, and restaurateurs are paying higher prices. These two trends cannot coexist without some sort of fall out. Jeffrey Buben, owner and executive chef of Bistro Bis and Vidalia, told me recently, “It’s when you have inflation on the other end, that’s what clobbers you.”

Granted, Buben works the high-end side of the restaurant equation, but rising food costs (not to mention rising rents) affect everyone, not just fine-dining owners. I fear this economic great storm will be much nastier than previous ones, and the Zagats should have addressed it.

I made this salad in September when my local farmers market was overflowing with tomatoes. I know I should be thinking of squashes and pears and mushrooms and game and apples, but I really miss my tomatoes. Already.

The local food boards are starting to light up over a rumor that Bread & Chocolate (and maybe Ben & Jerry’s) on Capitol Hill will be closing. I’ve tried call B&C several times, but the lines are busy, busy, busy! Calls to B&J are rolling straight into voicemail.

More as we know it.

In the meantime, let’s recount some of the restaurants that have already died this year: Butterfield 9, David Craig, M’Dawg Haute Dogs, Montsouris, New Orleans Bistro, Colorado Kitchen, Meridian Restaurant, Bistro 123, among many others.

Man, it’s getting ugly out there. If you have a favorite restaurant, go there. Now.

The prevailing wisdom goes something like this: If you want the best barbecue the area has to offer, you must drive down to Southern Maryland. Two weeks ago, the wife, some friends, and I did just that, taking two separate vehicles to Bear Creek Open Pit BBQ in Callaway, which is just a few miles from where the Chesapeake sloshes up on the shores of the southern-most tip of Maryland. It’s a long drive for lunch.

Let me be the first to say: You can have mediocre barbecue much closer to home.

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This Food Network segment on how to make candy corn brought back some fond childhood memories. I always ate my corn from the top down, one colorful segment at a time. It was a psychological tactic more than anything. I wanted to extend my eating pleasure for as long as possible. Frankly, I still employ similar tactics when I encounter good food, which fortunately goes way beyond candy corn these days.

Erin Connealy from Mt. Pleasant was the first to respond to our Shill for Your Favorite Restaurant feature. Erin’s obviously a teacher’s pet, because she followed directions perfectly, even if she needs to learn how to spell “their.” Her PR pitches are unedited.

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Food & Wine magazine (hey, no hard feelings for not hiring me!) has a creepy slide show on its home page breaking down the world’s seven scariest dishes. I have to admit, it’s the best food-oriented Halloween feature I’ve seen so far this year. (Aside to F&W editors: So you’re liking my tone now, aren’t you?)

Anyway, it’s impossible to flip through a photo feature like this without asking yourself: Would I eat these suckers? So let’s make it official. Grab a pencil and a piece of paper, and let’s do this thing. My answers are below. Give me yours in the comments field.

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Does anyone really think dressing up as a taco or a banana or a PEZ dispenser is a good idea for a Halloween costume? Halloween is all about creativity–and free candy. C’mon, folks. Use your imagination. Going as a piece of meat is just a bad idea on all fronts. Going as a walking product placement for McDonald’s or Wonder Bread without remuneration is even dumber. (Yes, I say that even though I’m wearing an Adidas hoodie as I type; but I’m not wandering from house to house either.)

If any of your kids want to go as a food product, veto that idea with extreme prejudice. Help them make their own costume instead—maybe go as gestation crate pig. At least they’ll be making a bigger statement than that they support a faceless multi-national corporation.