Quick hits on the meatless beat. One Last Taste: Fine dining turns Mediterranean as 2941 plans to shift focus from fancy French to pastas, starting next year. This also means the Falls Church restaurant will quit its vegetarian tasting menu at year's end. Book now for artful, yet soulful, courses of meatless tastes. (Six courses [...]

"The customers never have to know," Matthew Carroll told me during a party for Gilt City's D.C. launch, as he explains the hand gestures that will govern front-of-house service at Rogue 24. The hugely hyped eatery from former Vidalia chef R.J. Cooper opens tonight in Shaw's Bladgen Alley. At first, it looks like every other restaurant [...]

Blagden Alley Tease: Over in Shaw, chef R.J. Cooper partially removed his shirt in an alleyway "in a demonstration of badassery" in advance of the opening of what promises to be his culinary center-stage spectacle at Rogue 24. [The Feast] In-Depth Vegetable News: "When buying asparagus, girth is key." Baby asparagus, you see, is just [...]

Short ribs and baby octopus may dominate many menus in the city, but that doesn't mean local chefs can't find love in an acorn squash. In our ongoing series, Chefs Veg Out, we'll prove D.C.’s chefs can play with more than just meat. Name: Matthew Carroll Title: Wine Director, (Sommelier Advanced, CSW) Restaurant: 2941 Restaurant Twitter: [...]

Red Hook Lobster Pound truck: street food makes the Dining Guide WaPo's Tom Sietsema released his 2010 Dining Guide online yesterday, and in between other tasks, I've been combing through it to understand how the critic views the current restaurant scene. Before I get to the nuggets that I've mined, though, I should note what [...]

With the inexorable contraction of the fine-dining market—both in the number of restaurants and in the people willing to drain their bank accounts to eat in one—I’m heartened that 2941 continues to fight the good fight in Falls Church, in essence arguing that any metro area that wants to be taken seriously must maintain its [...]

Pizzeria Orso is open for business. The man who normally occupies this space has been waiting a while for this day. "Can you please open already?" Tim wrote in January, declaring that "of all the pizzerias scheduled to open soon, none gets me more excited than" the then-mythic Falls Church joint which had been in [...]

Birch & Barley and 2941 each took home a pair of RAMMYs at the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington's annual awards ceremony and gala on Sunday evening.  Scott Drewno of The Source by Wolfgang Puck won in the "Chef of the Year" category. Birch & Barley was named the association's best new restaurant and, along with [...]

Last week, chef Jon Mathieson, GM Jonathan Krinn, and sommelier John Wabeck decided to pull the plug on Inox, their experiment in upscale dining in Tysons Corner. Mathieson took a few minutes yesterday to talk about the venture — why it went under, why it was a hard sell in Tysons, and what his future [...]

Yesterday, as everyone with a honey knows, was Valentine's Day, one of the busiest restaurant days of the year. After mother nature took a giant snow dump on us last week, some restaurateurs were worried that their V-Day reservations might not be honored or might be canceled altogether (even as they secretly hoped to compensate [...]