Chef Rusty Holman, the chef at Eatonville

My tablemate and I are sitting at a two-top by the large picture window at Eatonville, which provides a semi-comfortable, climate-controlled view of the parade of mini-skirts and flesh that walks up and down the bustling 14th Street NW corridor.  We’re half way through our appetizers when the food runner brings our entrees. She seems oblivious to the fact that we’re still eating our first course; she’s also a little slow on the basic laws of physics. Our tiny table barely contains all the plates she has just unceremoniously dropped off, her job here done.

Read More “Spot Check: Eatonville” »

Washington City Paper food critic Tim Carman’s piece “How Not to Hire a Chef” (5/22) has been selected for inclusion in Best Food Writing 2009. It is the second year in a row that Carman’s work has been chosen for the anthology.

Carman’s piece examines, or maybe more precisely spatchcocks, local restaurateur Andy Shallal’s Top Chef-like contest to choose a toque for his new eatery, Eatonville. Reached in line at the drugstore, where he says he was picking up prescriptions to help him “overcome my lack of palate,” Carman says that Shallal maintained “radio silence” after the piece. “He sent me an email after the Marion Barry cover saying he should consider himself lucky that it wasn’t any worse for him,” Carman says.

Conry takes a break from his job interview to answer questions.

As I noted in today’s cover story on the Eatonville chef contest, Trent Conry was, without much question, the most accomplished toque among the nine finalists who competed for the $75,000-a-year gig at Andy Shallal’s new Southern restaurant. And yet: The former executive chef at Ardeo and 701 didn’t even make it to the finals in the cooking contest.

During the semi-finals, Shallal told Conry that his modern approach to Southern cooking — and perhaps even his personality — wouldn’t make for a good fit at Eatonville. During a long phone interview several weeks after the competition, Conry says he wasn’t surprised by his dismissal, even if he looked stunned and hurt when Shallal delivered the blow.

Read More “The Eatonville Chef Contest: Trent Conry’s Perspective” »

What a week! We here at Y&H Central started it off with a bang — or more like the pop of a bottle top. We introduced the Lagerheads, who immediately chimed in with posts on Dogfish Head’s new Sah’tea beer and D.C.’s ultimate suds map. But we also spent a good amount of energy chasing down Spike Mendelsohn and trying to find out the story behind Hollywood East Cafe’s pending move. All of these posts attracted a lot of eyeballs to the blog, for which we are always grateful.

This week’s most read blog items:

1. Spike’s New Pizzeria Is Coming to Cap Hill. But First: Souvlaki!
2. Hollywood East Cafe OUT of the Boulevard. New Mall Location Coming.
3. Furstenberg’s Street Food Restaurant Will Stretch Far Beyond Bread-Based Snacks
4. Andy Shallal’s Eatonville to Symbolically Reunite Hughes and Hurston
5. The Latest from the Streets: The Fojol Bros. and Zola’s Cart
   

Eatonville Chef Search episode 1 from Electric Communications on Vimeo.

Eatonville, restaurateur Andy Shallal’s homage to Zora Neale Hurston, is scheduled to open in mid-May, says the founder of the mini-Busboys & Poets chain. But the Southern eatery on 14th Street NW will debut, Shallal adds, without the winner of the Eatonville chef competition, held earlier this year at CulinAerie cooking school.

Shallal and the winning toque, Chris Newsome, had a falling out while traveling together down South following the contest. One of the sticking points between the men was the very subject they were researching: Southern cooking, specifically the cuisine around Eatonville, Fla., Hurston’s childhood home. Newsome, who grew up in Alabama, had a pork-centric concept of Southern cooking. Shallal did not.

“Now we have swine flu, so I was right,” Shallal jokes. “You don’t want to open a menu with all pork.”

Read More “Shallal’s Eatonville Set to Open in Mid-May with Its Second Chef” »

Thanks to the Almighty Power known as Google, several oldies-but-goodies rose to the top of the hit parade this week. Of course, even the oldies took a backseat to a Power Larger Than Google: Old Ebbitt Grill. This week’s faves, according to you, Y&H’s readers:

1. You’ll Never Guess the No. 6 Restaurant in America in Sales
2. An Israeli Candy Bar for People Who Want Chocolate With a Pop
3. Granville’s Teddy Folkman to Compete on ‘Next Food Network Star’
4. Andy Shallal’s Eatonville to Symbolically Reunite Hughes and Hurston
5. Best of D.C.: A Confession About Best New Restaurant

Last month, a law went into effect that officially adds the name “Langston Hughes Way” to the stretch of V Street between 13th and 14th streets NW. It’s the part of V that bisects the original Busboys & Poets and the forthcoming Eatonville restaurant, so of course owner Andy Shallal had a hand in the renaming.

Shallal has been working to get the District to do more to honor the Harlem Renaissance—and D.C.’s contribution to that important era. Shallal’s expanding Busboys & Poet chain already pays tribute to poet Hughes (who, according to lore, was “discovered” while working as a busboy in D.C., never mind that his work already had been published), but the restaurateur wants more. He was talking to Jim Graham about what the city could do, and the Ward 1Councilmember suggested the name change for V Street.

The council passed Graham’s bill in December, and it went into effect on March 21.

The street signs, however, have not been updated.

Read More “There’s No ‘V’ in Langston Hughes, But There’s Langston Hughes on V” »

A pre-saved Shallal chatting with Top Chef-er Carla Hall

For those who thought the protracted chef competition for Andy Shallal’s new Eatonville project was a sinful act of pride, you might be happy to learn that the Busboys & Poets owner was saved yesterday. Fittingly enough, Shallal’s salvation came in Eatonville, Fla., the town for which his forthcoming Southern eatery took its name.

Read More “Busboys & Poets’ Andy Shallal Has Been Saved!” »

Note: Busboys & Poets owner Andy Shallal is taking an Iron Chef approach to hiring the chef for his forthcoming Eatonville, a Southern-oriented restaurant that pays homage to Zora Neale Hurston. This is the second in a series of blog posts chronicling the competition. This series will not announce the winner; it will be revealed later in the City Paper.

After four previous rounds and God knows how many tastings in CulinAerie’s smaller classroom, the competition for Eatonville’s chef had come down to two men. Both had grown up in the South, which no doubt helped them grasp the cuisine they were expected to prepare, but both chefs also had dramatically different personalities. One had the gift of gab, the other a gift for silence.

Read More “Finale from the Eatonville Chef Contest: We Have a Winner” »

Note: Busboys & Poets owner Andy Shallal is taking an Iron Chef approach to hiring the chef for his forthcoming Eatonville, a Southern-oriented restaurant that pays homage to Zora Neale Hurston. This is the second in a series of blog posts chronicling the competition. This series will not announce the winner; it will be revealed later in the City Paper.

Christina Giallourakis, a former lawyer who now does health counseling, had nothing bad to say about the chef’s dishes. ”I think his whole array of food is like two notches above the others’ food,” the judge said, refering to the other two chefs competing last Friday in the semi-final round of Andy Shallal’s hunt for an Eatonville chef. Giallourakis could, without much doubt, see herself driving across town for this guy’s cooking.

Read More “Scene 3 from the Eatonville Chef Contest: Too Fancy for His Own Good” »