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 [...]

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 first in a series of blog posts chronicling the competition. This series will not announce the winner; it will be revealed [...]

Andy Shallal, the man behind the concept-bending Busboys & Poets chain, loves food shows. It's no surprise, then, that Shallal has taken a reality-show approach to hiring a chef for his forthcoming Eatonville, a southern-food restaurant located across V Street from the original Busboys & Poets location. The owner's requiring his top candidates to compete [...]

How busy was it at Busboys & Poets on 14th Street NW during inaugural weekend? Well, according to owner Andy Shallal, it was so busy that three employees quit, including a manager. "They just cracked and left...I had one employee just say, ‘I can't do this'" and walk out, says Shallal during a phone conversation [...]

UrbanTurf has an interesting, if puffy, piece on its site today about Busboys and Poets' magnetic attraction for condo shoppers in the District and Shirlington. Developers apparently love the lefty enclaves for their ability to draw potential tenants to pricey condos. Writers UrbanTurf: [Busboys owner Andy Shallal] noticed early on that condo sales at CityVista [...]

I just got off the phone with Kevin Tyldesley, director of operations for the Neighborhood Restaurant Group, who tells me that the company behind such eateries as Rustico and Vermilion will not be, as previously reported here and elsewhere, a partner in Andy Shallal's upcoming Eatonville project.

Restaurateur Andy Shallal was on the phone this afternoon, explaining to me how the 1930 play Mule Bone drove a wedge between its two creative collaborators, Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. Apparently, Hurston copyrighted the play in her name only, a slight that led to a falling out between the two Harlem Renaissance legends. [...]