The Chicago Tribune handicaps the restaurants. (And you thought the D.C. media were obsessed with the Obamas’ dining habits.) By the way, if the First Couple eats at California Pizza Kitchen on V-Day, I will take it as a sign that they’ve sold out to corporate interests!

Image by Flickr user cliff1066

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 today. “We had one person decide to go join the circus.” Shallal can’t stop laughing at that memory.

“But weren’t they already working at a circus?,” I wondered to Shallal.

“Yeah,” Shallal says about the employee who had designs on circus life well before the three-ring inauguration. But during the crush, the employee said, “Since I’m already there, I might as well as go do it,” Shallal adds.

Read More “B&P Employee Quits to Join the Circus During Inaugural Weekend” »

Associated Press writer Nancy Benac pours some cold water on the idea that Barack and Michelle Obama will be able to continue their regular Friday date nights now that they’ve entered the White House. The White House bubble, Benac reports, is historically hard to escape, even for notorious flirts like Bill Clinton.

Writes Benac:

Now that Obama is president, though, it will be hard to escape what’s known as the White House bubble, with all its security strictures and complicated logistics.

When Obama walked the last leg of the inaugural parade route up Pennsylvania Avenue, it may have been the last stroll in public that he takes for a long time.

Read More “Obama May Not Frequent D.C. Restaurants As Much As He’d Like” »

Jones Soda is commemorating Barack Obama’s inauguration with this limited edition cola, which is infused with a “hint of orange,” according to the press materials. The “citrus,” whatever it may be, gives the company’s marketing department the chance to brand the product with this groan-worthy slogan: “Orange ‘You Glad for Change’ Cola.” (I still don’t understand the quotes-within-quotes thing, but maybe you do?)

I’m not a big cola drinker, but I found this stuff quite quaffable. It has a dark-tea color, a nice fizzy carbonation, and a sweet caramel cola taste, with just a background note of orange flavor. I’m not sure there’s real orange in the drink, though. The ingredient list mentions no oranges, only “natural flavor,” which covers a lot of turf, from what I understand.

The orange soda, of course, makes me wonder what flavor Jones might have used if McCain won? Some sort of berry perhaps? So they could have called it the Berry Berry Old Soda?

Fresh from hosting the Obamas on Thursday for the future First Lady’s 45th birthday, Equinox chef and owner Todd Gray was only too happy to talk about the big event: No, not Barack and Michelle Obama’s dinner, but Gray’s tent that will be pitched outside his restaurant on Inauguration Day.

The curbside tent on Connecticut Avenue NW will, from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., sell hand-held foods that you can take directly to the Mall for the inauguration or, later, to the parade route on Pennsylvania Avenue NW. Gray will be selling house-made apple cider, hot chocolate, oatmeal-raisin cookies, chocolate-chip cookies, blueberry muffins, and mac and cheese.

It sounds like a great, delicious idea, but, really, how was the Obamas’ visit?

Read More “Equinox, the Obamas, and the Food to Go for the Inauguration” »

The great thing about the blogosphere? Other people can now do your work—and you get all the reading traffic. Hey, it works for Huffington Post! Sorry, back to the topic. Below is a collection of inauguration dining guides compiled by bloggers, journalists, advocacy groups, and God knows who else.

• DC Gastronome has a round up of 10 or so inaugural options.
• Campus Progress gives us the low down on ACKC’s ChocObama, a mint-infused bar, as well as other goodies.
• Washingtonian has produced a pretty decent guide to inaugural eats (though it kinda runs out of steam at the end of the alphabet).
• The Going Out Gurus break down the breakfast options for Inauguration Day.
• Capital Spice has something for the tourists: a guide to D.C.’s historic eating establishments.
• VegDC.com reports that, among other vegetarian-friendly options, Sticky Fingers Bakery in Columbia Heights will be offering “an animal-friendly” Chicago-style hot dog.
• Metromix has compiled a list of cheap places to eat for those who have already shelled out too much for inaugural housing.
• OpenTable, of course, has a long list of restaurants doing something for the inauguration. It may be as little as selling you a bottle of wine for $44.
• And, finally, your dedicated Young & Hungry scribe offers his take on the inaugural eating madness and gives you some practical stuff, too: places serving special inaugural pizzas as well as places serving something a little sweeter. 

Image by Flickr user jurvetson

As you might have guessed, Inauguration Day/Obama posts captured most of the top spots:

1. Inauguration Eats: An Early Look at Obama-Related Food and Drink
2. Liberal Cause Alert: Protect Seals by Avoiding Canadian Seafood
3. New York Food Snobs: They Love Us. They Love Us Not.
4. Obama Doesn’t Know What a Half-Smoke Is? So What. Do You?
5. And, as predicted: Where Will Halle Berry Be Dining During the Inauguration?

Image by Flickr user tostie14

While the Obamas’ decision yesterday to celebrate the future First Lady’s birthday at Equinox may have been just a matter of convenience—the restaurant, after all, is not far from the family’s temporary residence at the Blair House–I tend to think it was also symbolic. Barack and Michelle Obama had to know their first visit to a white-tablecloth restaurant in D.C. would generate a lot of media publicity, which is why I think they chose Todd and Ellen Gray’s place on Connecticut Avenue NW.

Gray is one of D.C.’s pioneers in local, regional, sustainable cooking. The dude is so serious about sourcing his ingredients he raises his own line of Black Angus cattle. If you need a refresher course, or just an education, on Gray’s career, read Missy Frederick’s interview last year with the chef for Washington Business Journal.

Of course, as he proved with Young & Hungry’s Shelf Reliance challenge last year, Gray can also make something out of nothing.

Rustico Executive Chef Frank Morales has turned to Chicago’s hearty (if not heart-stopping at more than 400 calories per slice) deep-dish pizza traditions for inspiration. He’s created a small line of deep-dish pies, including one with housemade Chicago-style sausage. (Never mind that Obama’s favorite pie comes from Italian Fiesta Pizzeria in Hyde Park, which serves a decidedly thin-crust round.)

Building his own deep-dish pies was not exactly a labor of love for Morales, who prefers the thin, Neapolitan-style pizzas that emphasize dough over toppings. Chicago-style is “sort of the opposite,” he says. “It’s a pizza that’s overly topped.” Nonetheless, the chef invested countless hours in researching Chicago deep-dish—only to realize that he couldn’t really afford to make the real, real thing. True deep-dish pizza can be more than two inches thick and require 45 minutes or more of cooking time; diners just won’t wait that long for pizza at the Alexandria gastropub.

“It takes about 11 minutes to drink a beer in a noisy place and 14 to drink one in a quieter place,” says Morales. “So it would be several rounds” before they got their pie.

Read More “Inauguration Eats: Pizza, Chicago and Otherwise” »