Top Chef recently announced the contestants for its upcoming season, which will not only feature D.C., the city, but also a couple of D.C. area chefs. Two of the competitors include Tamesha Warren, sous chef at the Oval Room, and Timothy Dean, owner/chef of Prime steakhouse in Baltimore and a forthcoming steakhouse in D.C. Dean [...]

Just call Derek Brown, left, Mr. Outstanding Wine and Spirits Professional Y&H is a behind on this (hey, if you want excuses, I got a million of 'em!), but I wanted to offer my congratulations to the local semi-finalists for this year's James Beard Awards. It's an impressive list, one filled with many of Y&H's [...]

It hasn't even been a week since the 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit Haiti, but I bet you've already been hit up 500 times for a donation to help the victims. You can barely turn to a Web site, a restaurant, a party, or a social network without finding some solicitation asking for more cash for [...]

So says GQ magazine, which runs down the list of D.C. heavyweights in its November issue. Most of the folks on the list are pols or the power behind pols or the eyes watching pols. Ashok Bajaj makes the cut, apparently, because he feeds the pols and treats them all with respect. Bajaj tells GQ [...]

Tom Sietsema won't confirm it, but sources indicate that Rasika, restaurateur Ashok Bajaj's upscale Indian establishment in Penn Quarter, will receive four stars in the Post critic's next Dining Guide, which should hit the Web on Thursday. It would be the first so-called ethnic restaurant to earn four stars in Sietsema's nine-plus years as dining [...]

Ashok Bajaj put his Bibiana cooks and servers through six different practice runs this week, in preparation for what was supposed to be a Monday, Sept. 7, opening. So why did the downtown osteria and enoteca open today instead? "Practice, practice, practice," Bajaj tells Y&H this afternoon. "Like everything else, we needed a little bit [...]

Bibiana has hired Douglas Hernandez, pastry chef at Central Michel Richard, to handle the desserts at the forthcoming downtown osteria/enoteca from Ashok Bajaj. Bibiana will have its "soft" opening on Monday, Sept. 7. Hernandez has been with Central for more than two years, says Mel Davis, spokesperson for the celebrity chef. At Central, Hernandez has [...]

Bibiana Osteria and Enoteca, the latest entrant in the area's escalating Italian Restaurant Wars, will indeed serve pizza, just like a number of other combatants in this wide-scale skirmish, including Potenza, Ristorante Posto, and Kora. But owner Ashok Bajaj doesn't want pies to define his new place at 1100 New York Ave. NW, which will [...]

One by one, we’re running through the 50 restaurants that made the cut on this year’s Young & Hungry Dining Guide. If you have visited the day’s featured restaurant, let us know what you think. If you’re planning to visit for the first time, tell us about your meal when you return. Enough about the [...]

French Non-Resistance: Petits Plats goes Italian with Pizze. It's a sign of the times that local restaurateurs continue to place their trust in the good ol' Italian pie. Cheaper to produce than many other dishes — and one with an expansive, built-in fan base — pizza has become the low-risk option for a number of new and/or [...]