Gaitán asked me to start with a slow dribble out of my mouth. “Try to look sad,” she said. I let the corn syrup pass through my lips, and down my chin, and, since I was perched on my knees in front of her black backdrop, it landed in my lap. She asked for more, and I opened my mouth further and it came out much faster now as her camera clicked away, pouring through my lips and pooling in my lap. There were cherries in my mouth still. She wanted me to spit them out. Whipped cream slid off my chest, down the corset, onto the pants. I was ready to try again.

Sorry if we ruined your lunch.

The Office, July 6

M St. NW in Georgetown

Change is coming to Georgetown. Or, at least, more booze is coming.

In a ruling handed down Wednesday, D.C.'s Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) Board unanimously voted to amend a decades-old liquor license moratorium in Georgetown.

Since 1989, Georgetown has been notoriously stingy with its liquor licenses—at any given point, no more than 61 licenses were issued in the neighborhood. But Wednesday's ABC Board ruling will add seven licenses, extending the allowable number to 68.

New license applications will be accepted by the D.C. Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration (ABRA) on a first-come, first-serve basis, starting tomorrow at 8:30 a.m.

ABC Board member Nick Alberti, subbing for Chairman Charles Brodsky, argued that the increase would not adversely affect the neighborhood, as some residents claimed at last Wednesday's public hearing.

"The implementation of seven new [licenses] would not adversely affect the public peace, order, and quiet or the moratorium," Alberti said. "Specifically, testimony revealed that adding seven restaurant licenses would create a healthy balance of ABC establishments in the commercial mix of businesses in Georgetown."

The Board will revisit Georgetown's moratorium in three years to evaluate if any additional changes need to be made.

In a separate decision, the Board also denied a motion filed by the Citizens Association of Georgetown (CAG) to place seating restrictions on restaurants with Class C and Class D licenses along Prospect St. NW. To support the decision, Alberti cited over 100 letters mailed to the Board protesting the proposed seat limitations.

"[The proposal] could inhibit the economic development of the neighborhood," he said.

Photo by brostad. Creative Commons Attribution License.

Haydee Vanegas

The co-owner of Haydee's, a Salvadorean restaurant at 3102 Mt. Pleasant Street NW, sparked a neighborhood fight earlier this year when she decided to apply for a CN-class nightclub license, a move that would unburden her eatery from the city's stringent food-sales requirements and allow her to expand its hours of operation.

After months of arguing the issue on neighborhood Listservs and meetings of the local Advisory Neighborhood Commission, Vanegas and her detractors finally got to duke it out in front of the Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) Board on May 26.

At the hearing, though, Haydee's opponents were thrown for something of a loop. A group of five nearby residents who had formed to protest the nightclub license were not allowed to testify because they had not filed the proper paperwork.  While the Mount Pleasant Neighborhood Alliance's Sam Broeksmit was permitted to testify, the topics that he was allowed to discuss were more limited than he had anticipated.

Broeksmit had planned to argue that a tavern license would meet Haydee's needs, that many of the signatures on the petition in support of Haydee's application were not from Mount Pleasant residents, and that Haydee's food sales are consistently above the 45 percent threshold it needs to meet as a restaurant. The ABC Board, however, only allowed him to speak to issues of peace and quiet, property values, and parking.

"They basically instructed Sam saying, 'You've got to defend the assertion that the conversion to a nightclub will cause problems under one or all of those categories,'" says ANC Commissioner Jack McKay, a supporter of Haydee's application. "He really wasn't prepared to do that."

"I definitely had to change on the fly," Broeksmit admits. "I guess I would say it was uneven. There was a very narrow box being put around what we could say and then a broad box around what Haydee's could testify to and what the Board to ask questions to."

The limited scope of what he was allowed to testify about was just the latest hurdle in what has been a "frustrating" process for Broeksmit.

His neighborhood association has pushed without success for Haydee's to instead apply for a tavern license with an entertainment endorsement, a compromise Broeksmit says would let Haydee's achieve its desired goals of longer hours for dancing, greater capacity, and a lower food-sales requirement but without near-total lack of restrictions that comes with a nightclub license.

"We support almost everything she wants, yet she wants it within a nightclub for no clearly articulated reason," Broeksmit says.

Given the bad blood between Broeksmit and Haydee's, though—the two were foes in the 2008 battle over the ban on dancing and live music at Mt. Pleasant Street restaurants—it's perhaps unsurprising that Haydee's is resistant to the tavern compromise. Haydee's owner Vanegas says she feels Broeksmit's group is "anti-business" and that the tavern license would come with "too many restrictions."

"They would still be at the mercy of the MPNA, and that's basically what Haydee objected to," McKay says. "I think largely because they have such a long history of conflict with the MPNA, they don't want anything to do with the MPNA."

The ABC Board has 90 days after the hearing to review and decide the case.

Photo by CarrieA, Creative Commons Attribution License

Washington Harbour

The Issue: Six Georgetown restaurants, including four along Washington Harbour, are trying to back out of their voluntary agreements with neighbors. The VAs, as they're often called in NIMBY circles, legally bind the operators to certain hours and methods of operation as a condition of their licenses to sell alcohol. Violations of these agreements tend to draw the ire of the District's Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration (ABRA). Buzzkill!

It's About Flexibility: On Tuesday, the Georgetown eateries (Cabanas, Los Cuates, Mate, Riverside Grille, Neyla, Tony & Joe's Seafood) formally asked local Advisory Neighborhood Commission (ANC) 2E to let them back out of their existing VAs. "We need more flexibility to extend a little more hours and also expand," says Luis Merchan, co-owner of Los Cuates at 1564 Wisconsin Avenue NW.  "When we got this place, we got it empty. After six or seven months, this place started picking up and crowding. We see that it needs to be upgraded and expanded."

It's About Decibels: Condo owners at Washington Harbour, at least, are none too pleased at the prospect of restaurants reneging, particularly when it comes to restrictions on amplified music. "As soon as you've got amplified music, then you've got people who speak at a higher voice level because they have to speak above the amplified music," says ANC commissioner Tom Birch. "I would like us not to permit any kind of amplified music. It just deteriorates the scene, aesthetically, socially and civilly."

What's Next? Certainly not cranking the volume. The ANC unanimously rejected the restaurants' request to terminate their voluntary agreements.

Photo by Alex Burchfield

Capital City Diner, February 23

Mallios was first among a relatively small cadre of D.C. attorneys representing restaurants, bars, clubs, and hotels in front of city liquor authorities; his services helped myriad establishments navigate an arcane licensing process and fend off countless neighbors and advisory neighborhood commissions.

He had been battling cancer for more than five years, says his law partner Steve O'Brien. Mallios had been active and practicing before his illness suddenly worsened a week ago.

O'Brien, a longtime competitor of Mallios' before their practices recently merged, says he cut a swath in the legal community that will not soon be filled. "Dmitri was my partner for three years; he was my friend for 30 years. Everything I know about alcoholic beverage law I learned from Dimitri. He is irreplaceable."

Legendary trial lawyer Jacob Stein counted Mallios as a friend for 40 years. "Personally, he had a great sense of humor," he says, and as a lawyer, "he was practical, sensible, empirical, and had no traces of ideology....A client who retained him would get the best service on offer."

"He was splendid with clients," Stein added, "and the clients are often very difficult to deal with."

Laurie Collins, a former ABC board member and a fellow parishioner at St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral remembers him as "a sweet, sweet man and a good lawyer."

"He was loved by not only the business community, which he mostly represented," she says, "but I think the community was very fond of him. He was very fair."

Andrew J. Kline, general counsel to the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington and another titan of the liquor bar, remembers him as "someone who was respected by his clients, his colleagues....He knew how to represent folks in the hospitality industry and represent them well."

The "dean" label, incidentally, was well earned—Mallios was referred to as such in a footnote to a D.C. Council committee report on a late '90s rewrite of the city alcoholic beverage laws. LL will also add that Mallios' checkbook will be missed by city officeholders—he was a frequent donor to local candidates.

But his friends will miss him more.

Says Kline, "I loved him. He was my friend, and we'll all miss him a lot."

Adds Stein, "I really, really miss him. He is a part of my own existence. There are certain things that he and I knew about that we would talk about, and now have I no one to talk about them with."

UPDATE, 2:49 P.M.: Lynne Breaux, RAMW president, notes that Mallios was recipient of her organization's Duke Zeibert Capital Achievement Award this year. That honor goes to "an individual whose dedication and leadership have helped transform Washington’s restaurant scene into today’s vibrant and thriving industry."

His write-up in the awards program: "Known as the dean of Washington’s Alcoholic Beverage Control attorneys, Dimitri Mallios is also called THE man to know…and the man to thank when you order your next margarita. Dimitri grew up in the restaurant business in DC – Trio, one of Washington’s classics – and attended GWU, undergraduate and law, giving him a distinct advantage of native regional knowledge. As described by the Washington Business Journal, Dimitri is “soft spoken but effective. Direct but respectful. Tough but good hearted.” A rare individual and an exceptional lawyer, we toast Dimitri Mallios and his significant contribution to the restaurant industry in the Washington Metropolitan area." More here.

UPDATE, 9/21: Restaurateur and impresario Joe Englert offers a less reverent but plenty heartfelt tribute to Mallios at Young & Hungry.

• Vincent Gray loves wonton soup. Loves the stuff. Had it for lunch today. His chief of staff regularly picks up a double order for him from the Meiwah Express stand at the Reagan Building food court.
• There's a great debate over which Starbucks to patronize among John A. Wilson Building denizens. There's the regular old Starbucks on 13th Street NW, then there's the "Secret" Starbucks inside the J.W. Marriott Hotel on 14th Street NW. The former is slightly cheaper, on the way from the Metro, has a better food selection, and is patronized by Dan Tangherlini. The latter is secluded, a good spot to eavesdrop on a secret political rendezvous, offers better service, and takes you past a cardboard cutout of President Obama on your way there.
• Kwame Brown and David Catania are closet McDonald's fans.
• Harry Thomas Jr. enjoys Smoothie King.
• Jim Graham, Ward 1 councilmember and WMATA board chair, likes to eat Subway on the dais. "Ironic," says one council wag, "because he never rides the Metro!"

That ends LL's Food Day. He's kinda hungry.