Y&H has already listed his 10 favorite new restaurants for 2009. Now it's time to start pondering the possibilities for 2010. Here's a short list of the upcoming restaurants I'm itching to dine in this year. Galileo III: Can Roberto Donna overcome his dwindling reputation and poor recent track record to reclaim the heavyweight crown [...]

First it was Esquire, which recently stirred the pot by selecting Blue Ridge's Barton Seaver as chef of the year. Now comes GQ, which just named José Andrés as its chef of the year. GQ's Alan Richman virtually gushes over Andrés and his approach to tapas: America in recent years has became obsessed with undersized [...]

The scene inside the Reagan Building Blue Ridge's Barton Seaver was gunning for the title for the third straight year at the 2009 Capital Food Fight, held last night inside the Reagan Building. His competition included not only last year's finalist, Peter Smith from PS 7's, but also two Top Chef contestants (Mike Isabella from [...]

Controversy over Esquire's selection for Chef of the Year. The passing of Ben Ali. The New York Times' investigation into commercial ground beef. All of these have been major subjects on the blog this week. And yet: The most-read item this week beat out Select 55 by a mere five clicks. Barton Seaver to Be [...]

Hey, look, a celebrity chef! We're all slaves to celebrity — or at least celebrity chefs. This week's top item is devoted to a freakish coincidence: I happened to be at G Street Food right when Rick Bayless popped in for a sandwich to go, to take with him for his flight out of town. [...]

Looks like there will be a lot of empty bags this Halloween. It's time, once again, for our semi-regular news round-up, handy for those folks who actually have to work during the week and can't obsess over their favorite food blogs. After nearly 10 months of speculation following  the abrupt closing of Fiamma, former Maestro chef Fabio [...]

Jane Black over at WaPo posted a dandy item today about Esquire critic John Mariani naming Barton Seaver "chef of the year" in the upcoming November issue. As Black chronicles, the New York magazine's decision flies in the face of local D.C. opinion on Seaver's latest venture, Blue Ridge, in Glover Park. Whether a good [...]

Y&H has been talking to chefs about fish and shellfish lately, and one of the subjects that most interests me concerns "freshness."  Exactly how fresh is that "fresh fish" on your plate and, even more pointedly, how fresh do you want it to be? It sounds like a stupid line of inquiry, but it's based [...]

Michael Voltaggio's surprising departure from the Bazaar by José Andrés — at least surprising to me — left a rather large hole to fill, given that the Top Chef contestant helped the Beverly Hills restaurant earn four stars from the Los Angeles Times. So who did Andrés and THINKfoodGROUP tap to fill those oversize shoes [...]

Last week, over at Brand X, I wrote a piece about fishing for Spanish mackerel with my in-laws. Well, to be more precise, it was a piece about not fishing for Spanish mackerel, since I got sicker than a Hill intern on a weekend bender. Among the haters who commented on the story was united100, [...]