You have to salute Mike and Elizabeth Bober over at Capital Spice. They know how to take one for the team.

The husband-and-wife food bloggers have compiled a Google map featuring the places that made the Washington Post, Washingtonian, and the Washington City Paper’s annual best restaurants lists. Just as helpful, they’ve also included the highest-rated eateries from the 2009 Zagat guide and have plans to add the 50 restaurants on Northern Virginia’s list once it becomes available online.

In a post today on their blog, the couple explained why they invested so much of their free time in providing this public service:

With the announcement of Tom Sietsema’s annual Fall Dining Guide in the Washington Post last month, we found ourselves comparing it to similar lists like Tim Carman’s 50 Best Restaurants list in the Washington City Paper and Washingtonian magazine’s annual 100 Best Restaurants list. We were eager to see which restaurants were universally celebrated and which ones were personal favorites for each critic. As we were looking at the lists side by side, inspiration struck.

Wouldn’t it be helpful if all of these lists were available in one place? We could check out everything that Tom, Tim and Todd (Kliman at Washingtonian) had to say about an establishment all at once.

Y&H e-mailed the couple this morning to gauge exactly how much time they invested in this project, which must have been as work-intensive as the inauguration after-hours booze map they compiled earlier this year. Here’s what Mike Bober wrote back:

I’ve been working on this off and on for a few weeks – adding 10 or 20 restaurants at a time and working my way through each list. On Saturday I got called into work during the healthcare debate and finished it off during some downtime mid-debate. All told, I’d say there’s probably a good 7 or 8 hours’ worth of work in this…bringing up each review in turn, copying the URL, adding it into the tab for each restaurant.

Somebody needs to buy these folks a drink.

Everywhere I go, all people are asking me about is pumpkin beer! Well, OK, no one ever actually recognizes me, but I have a habit of bringing up beer in the first minute of any conversation. The other person usually ignores this and inexplicably keeps the conversation on some non-beer topic like telling me what they do or asking me to please be quiet, the movie is playing. But if I talk long enough for the person to find out that I write about beer, then they ask me: Which pumpkin beer do you like?

I don’t know. I know I liked the squashy, not-too-sweet Pumpkinator at Capitol City, which will be in the Beerspotter column next Thursday. But there’s so many, and most of the time I don’t get down with a pint of cinnamon syrup. So bless the people at Capital Spice, who tasted 13 (!) pumpkin beers and rated them on presentation, flavor, and the all-important label art. Personal favorites by Southern Tier and New Holland were sipped, as well as more mainstream ones by Blue Moon (ahem, MillerCoors) and Michelob (A-B InBev).

Which pumpkin beer was the best? Read the results, and quit asking me!

Mike and Elizabeth Bober, Y&H’s friends over at Capital Spice, were the ones to introduce me to the Gondar Fine Dining service at Almaz, the subject of this week’s column.

On their blog, the husband-and-wife team have posted a bite-by-bite break down of our dinner together at Almaz, and I think, between our two pieces, you get a good idea of what to expect with the Gondar service. Their recap, in particular, includes one moment that I had wanted to write about, too (but ran out of space!):

We made a tactical error when our servers came by to inquire about what we enjoyed most: we answered. In short order, we found ourselves facing another helping of each of our favorite dishes. Next time, we’ll know to keep quiet – or offer our compliments with an apology that we’re too full for seconds.

This was an awkward moment for us at the table, but once I talked to Jabriel Ballentine, the man who created Gondar for Almaz, I learned that it was just part of the hospitality required of the host. If guests in an Ethiopian Orthodox home say they like a particular dish or dishes, you, as host, are practically required to bring them more. Otherwise, you would be failing to serve and thus, in a sense, abandoning your religious beliefs.

This is where, I thought, the economics of a traditional restaurant would clash with the religious tenets behind the Gondar service. I suggested to Ballentine that overserving your guests, night after night with Gondar, would create enormous amounts of waste. Waste, of course, is anathema to restaurant owners.

I asked Ballentine if Gondar could sustain itself over the weeks and months with such waste. The host just paused, smiled at my question, and told me politely that wastage is built into the cost of the meal.

Spoken like a man who knows how to balance religion with economics.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Hey bloggeroos, don’t forget that tomorrow is the Blogtoberfest happy hour (which admittedly sounds way more fun than “planning meeting”). Throughout the month of October we’re getting local bloggers, foodie and non-, to share their beer stories on their own blogs. Cross-linking and conversation will ensue. Meet at 6:30 p.m. tomorrow at Axis Bar and Grill.

And one week later, come out to CommonWealth for October’s Food Blogger Happy Hour. Meet fellow bloggers, swap links and ideas, and say the word “blog” more times than you’d ever want to. Thanks to Capital Spice, Arugula Files, Gradually Greener, Modern Domestic, and We Love DC for their organizational prowess in putting it together.

Flyers for both after the jump.

Photos by alceste99 and mccun934 via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution License

The traffic is outrageous on Vermont Ave. during rush hour!

No one needs to tell you, least of all Y&H, that in this blog-eat-blog, 24-hour news-cycle world everyone is required to have an opinion. But, really, shouldn’t everyone wait until the object under criticism has actually opened?

I’m speaking about the new FreshFarm Market by the White House, which the busy non-profit opens today with guest appearances from First Lady Michelle Obama, Mayor Adrian Fenty, and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.  Last month, Mother Jones was first out of the block in predicting dark things about the market:

[I]f this idea becomes reality, the Obamas should be careful to make it a sustainable market for local farmers rather than a kitschy tourist attraction bogged down by pins and t-shirts that say “Yes We Can Farm” and “Change We Can Grow In.” But let’s face it, due to the massive security detail the market would require and the overwhelming draw for Washingtonians and tourists alike, the latter is more likely.

(Just for the record, Capital Spice has an excellent run-down of the vendors, none of which appear to be hawking pins and t-shirts.)

WTOP continued the early hand-wringing with a story about potential rush-hour traffic snarls:

Word has been circulating through local Advisory Neighborhood Commissions in D.C. and has some on edge.

“I take this road every day, and imagine this will worsen gridlock since 15th Street just north of this block is a major northbound artery out of town,” writes a concerned resident to WTOP. “There are so many roads already closed for security, it will only make the H street corridor even worse.”

WTOP followed that story with another worrying piece today. But leave it to Obama Foodorama, the take-no-statement-on-its-face blog, to put those traffic fears to rest. The picture above comes from ObFo, which snapped it at 4:55 p.m. yesterday, presumably a rush-hour period.

ObFo also smacks down a lot of the media frenzy over who exactly conceived the idea for the White House market and whether the First Lady had a hand in it. Frankly, Y&H thinks this last issue is a tempest in a teapot. If the White House did have a hand in the market’s creation, perhaps even helping to push it along, then good on the Obamas. It’s an abuse of presidential power that I can live with.

Photo via Obama Foodorama

This is embarrassing — for Y&H and for many other sources that have consistently equated the dishes served at Makoto to the more formal kaiseki dining found in Japan.

I spoke with Michiko Lecuyer, a manager at Makoto, who assured me that the tiny Palisades restaurant does not specialize in kaiseki. Rather, Lecuyer says after consulting with the kitchen, Makoto prefers to be known as an omakase house, where the chefs prepare a free-form, multi-course menu based on their own tastes and the whims of the season.

I pressed Lecuyer on this because so many food outlets refer to Makoto as a kaiseki or kaiseki-style house. Y&H has committed this sin. So has the Washingtonian (even in passing). Ditto for Capital Spice, Chowhound, Food & Wine, Fearless Critic, and no doubt countless other writers who have temporarily escaped my attention.

Lecuyer acted surprised by this information, as if the folks at Makoto had never read any of these sources. But she insisted that the tiny restaurant is more accurately described as an omakase house, even if, like with kaiseki cuisine, Makoto’s chefs are strictly tied to the seasons. “The spring has to be the spring,” Lecuyer tells me.

I asked Lecuyer to help me understand the difference between Makoto’s omakase and the more traditional kaiseki meal. She put down the phone and made a trip to the kitchen, where I could hear the chefs giving her rapid-fire answers in Japanese. She returned to tell me it’s complicated to explain, but one difference is that kaiseki cuisine is more hidebound. Certain vegetables must be served during the spring, for example, or certain fish. Or certain vegetables with fish. “We don’t have that kind of a rule,” she says.

Y&H doesn’t pretend to be an expert on Japanese cooking and culture, but he’s enough of a journalist to know when to turn to an expert. Trevor Corson, the Sushi Concierge and the author of The Story of Sushi, first mentioned the word “kaiseki” to me in connection with Makoto. It was when he was giving me a lesson in nikiri.

So I e-mailed Corson again this morning to help me better understand all the confusion about kaiseki — and whether Makoto does or does not specialize in it. Here’s what he wrote back:

Kaiseki is one of those culinary concepts that has a sort of mythic status but about which there’s not a great deal of agreement as to what exactly it means — or rather, there are a variety of interpretations, the two basic of which are that it’s a) elaborate and sophisticated courtly tea ceremony food or b) ascetic temple dining for vegetarian mountain monks. When it’s used by laymen in an average context, people often are simply referring to an elegant, multi-course tasting menu of small dishes, like at Makoto, but to a traditionalist and purist, real kaiseki would be defined by the following of a variety of rules having to do with the order in which things are served, how they’re prepared, and certain types of arrangements of ingredients. Check out this guy’s take on the topic, which is pretty involved, yet points to the difficulty of precisely defining kaiseki:

http://www.fractiouscolloid.com/06_09_21_1.html

Based on Corson’s comments and those buried within the link above, it seems fair to me to call Makoto a kaiseki-style restaurant, even if the owners would balk at that description. Clearly, Makoto follows some of the principles of kaiseki — its soup starter, its seasonality, its multi-course format. But to say it specializes in kaiseki….well, that’s dead wrong. Y&H humbly apologizes for perpetuating this falsehood.

Interestingly enough, Corson believes that the tasting menus at the revamped Sushi Taro “are possibly a bit closer to real kaiseki than Makoto now, but still I wouldn’t say they’re like what’s served at a traditional kaiseki house in Kyoto.”

Guess where Y&H will be going soon?

D.C. Restaurant Week is in full swing, which means that you’ll likely do one of the following: 1) Fight with hundreds of others for the best places to enjoy this twice-annual promotion; 2) Suffer the indignities of small portions, large upcharges, and limited menus; or 3) Ignore the whole damn ordeal and just wait out the weekly promotion until it’s safe to return to your favorite restaurant.

Whatever your experience during Restaurant Week, few people are without strong opinions on the event. Over the years, City Paper writers and critics have just about experienced it all: the good, the bad, and the surprising. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you can trip all the wires in one week.

This time around, we want to hear what you have to say about Restaurant Week. I’ll publish the best reviews daily on the Y&H blog, complete with your byline. Here’s all you have to do: Find the restaurant you visited in our Rater database and start dishing about your RW experience. When you’re done, drop me a line at hungry@washingtoncitypaper.com so I know that your review is in the system (or write me if your restaurant is, perhaps, not in the system yet).

There are plenty of resources to help you get the most out of Restaurant Week.  D.C. Foodies offers a pair of tools to build a better experience: One features tips on what restaurants to pick (and which to avoid), while another actually provides a lengthy list of RW menus (and which places will extend the promotion for another week or three). Capital Spice has, once again, compiled a convenient map of this year’s participants. Todd Kliman offers his picks for the promotion, while both Ezra Klein with the Internet Food Association and Alex Nicholson with Brightest Young Things explain why you should just skip the whole freaking thing.

As for Y&H? I’ll likely take advantage of a lunch special or two — even if three courses will leave me more comatose than a zoo bear — and skip altogether the dinner promotion, which I don’t find particularly cost-effective. Truth be told, I don’t need a full dessert after most meals. In other words, during RW, I’m usually shelling out for a course that I’ll normally split or perhaps even skip if I’m overly stuffed.

I don’t like being forced to have my cake and eat it, too.

• Prince of Petworth sort of, kind of reports that Radius at the Ohio is on hold, which adds another chapter to the troubled history of the H Street NE location.
• Fritz Hahn over at Going Out Gurus says that Adam Bernbach, the mixologist behind our 2008 Best Cocktail Menu at Bar Pilar, will be leaving the 14th Street NW operation. But not before a final blow out on May 19.
• Frozen Tropics breaks the news that Derek Brown — this year’s Best Bartender and The Atlantic food channel’s resident distilled muse — has created a line of cocktails for Sova Espresso & Wine Bar. [Also of note in the item, Dan Searing is looking to open his own wine bar, Room 11, in Columbia Heights.]
• Speaking of the Atlantic,  the online food channel has mixed feelings about CityZen. Corby adores it. The chemistry dude: Not so much.
• Capital Spice caught Food Day fever and blogged their own “average” eating experiences. (They also stole my Facebook profile!)
• DCist was the first to announce that organic grocer Ellwood Thompson’s is putting its D.C. project on hold. The company still has a lease with DCUSA but can’t afford to build the store in Columbia Heights.

Image courtesy of Bravo’s Top Chef

Young & Hungry’s ever-obsessive buds over at Capital Spice have done it again. They’ve invested countless hours, time that they could have used celebrating the golden anniversary of the aluminum can, creating yet another Google map for the benefit of the rest of us slugs. This one surveys the landscape of this winter’s D.C. Restaurant Week.

Aside from the usual rewards of such a map—one click access to phone numbers, addresses, and directions—this baby also shows the sheer reach of this season’s Restaurant Week, which extends north to Frederick (VOLT), west to Herndon (Sake Club), south to Alexandria (Farrah Olivia, among others) and east….well, east only to Northeast (Napa 1015). It almost makes you wonder why Alexandria even bothered to develop one of its own.