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 a few of his rules for navigating the political waters in this town:

• Know Your Client. “You can feel the temperature of the person,” he says. Last winter, with our economy teetering, that meant giving Geithner the privacy of a corner table when he dined alone at the Bombay Club but seating the more sociable Bernanke “in the thick of things” when he took his wife to dinner at the Oval Room.

Read More “More Good News for Bajaj: He’s One of D.C.’s Most Powerful People” »

It’s official. People have gone batshit for Select 55. Or at least batshit for our post on the beer. It tops the list once again this week.

I think I’ll go drown my sorrows in a real beer.

1. Budweiser Launches Select 55, Light Beer Arms Race Gets Absurd
2. Looking for a Little Practice, Bibiana Jumps the Gun and Opens for Service Today
3. Oh, the Noise, Noise, Noise, Noise in Restaurants
4. ‘Two Left Feet’ for One Big Steak
5. Did Vidalia Use “Inferior” Ingredients During Restaurant Week?

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

You can’t throw a meatball — no, sorry, a gnocco slathered in goat ragu — without hitting some downtown Italian restaurant these days. I wrote about the crowded field in a recent Y&H column, but since that piece, Bibiana has opened and more Italian places are planned for neighborhoods just around the perimeter of downtown, including a Penn Quarter outlet of the NYC red sauce house, Carmine’s, and a Cap Hill location of the Italian export, Acqua al 2.

What’s going on here?

It’s a good question, and it’s one that host David Furst put to me during this week’s edition of Metro Connection.  You can hear Furst and I delve into the subject today at 1 p.m. (and 5 a.m. on Saturday) on WAMU. That’s 88.5 FM on whatever the hell device people use nowadays to listen to the radio.

I don’t know what frequency that is for Rep. Joe Wilson. He’ll just have to turn the foil-wrapped strainer on his head until the signal comes in loud and clear.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

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 of work.”

Because Congress returns to work next week, Bajaj wanted to make sure that his latest restaurant would be performing at its peak before the power players start to stumble in following their fisticuffs over health-care reform. “No matter how good you think you are, you can always get better,” he says.

Read More “Looking for a Little Practice, Bibiana Jumps the Gun and Opens for Service Today” »

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 been in charge of executing Richard’s justly famous dessert menu, whether his clever, crunchy take on the Kit Kat bar or the chef’s luxe version of a banana split.

Read More “Bibiana Hires Central’s Pastry Chef Hernandez” »

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 have its soft opening on Monday, Sept. 7.

Y&H spoke with Bajaj yesterday, and he told me that chef Nicholas Stefanelli’s offerings will be purely regional Italian, none of this Italian-American silliness that creeps into some menus around town. The pastas, the owner added, would be made in-house, with prices ranging from around $14 to $20. Pizza will also be available, he said, but only at lunch and only at the lounge during dinner service.

So why downplay the pie?

Read More “Owner: Bibiana Osteria Will NOT be a Pizza Joint” »