If the reviews submitted for our Restaurant Week writing contest are any indication of the places you frequented during the come-hither promotion, then Hook was very, very busy. No less than three readers entered reviews of the Georgetown seafood emporium. Perhaps this explains why the gifted chef Jonathan Seningen left the restaurant shortly after RW was over. [...]
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 [...]
Technically, I guess this is more like Appetizer of the Week, but the sardine antipasto ($12) at Bibiana packs so many humble pleasures on one plate that I couldn't resist plugging a starter instead of an entree. Chef Nicholas Stefanelli buys his fresh whole sardines twice a week from Portugal, debones them in house, and [...]
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 [...]
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. Budweiser Launches Select 55, Light Beer Arms Race Gets Absurd Looking for a Little Practice, Bibiana Jumps [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
