One by one, we’re running through the 50 restaurants that made the cut on this year’s Young & Hungry Dining Guide. If you have visited the day’s featured restaurant, let us know what you think. If you’re planning to visit for the first time, tell us about your meal when you return.

The influx of celebrity chefs to D.C. can excite local diners, but it can deflate local chefs, who see these carpetbaggers stealing their customers, their line cooks, maybe even their thunder. Back in 2007, before Eric Ripert or Michael Mina or even Alain Ducasse opened doors here, chef R.J. Cooper at Vidalia was one of the reigning badasses in the kitchen, fresh off his Mid-Atlantic Beard Award, which he split with Frank Ruta at Palena. But if Cooper and/or Vidalia have suffered since these culinary hawks have swooped into town, you wouldn’t know it from eating at this downtown institution. Cooper, in fact, seems to be cooking with a renewed passion since the competition increased. My most recent meal at Vidalia included a number of dishes that blew me away, notably a pigtail croquette with strawberry-rhubarb mostarda and an artistic plate of mix-and-match bites, from raw cubes of hamachi to squares of lime gelee to tiny diced pieces of watermelon to little slivers of jalapeño. Cooper even plated something I had never seen before—a deep-fried blowfish from the lower Chesapeake, commonly known as the “sugar toad.” It tasted a thousand times better than the name would suggest.

 Vidalia, 1990 M St. NW, (202) 659-1990

Grant Achatz writes a regular column for the Atlantic Food Channel, in which the Alinea chef ruminates over a variety of subjects in a straight-forward, no-nonsense style. His latest piece argues that celebrity chefs, such as, well, Grant Achatz, can do more good for their restaurants, their employees, their brand, and even their customers by not spending all their time in the kitchen, cooking your outrageously priced meal.

Writes Achatz:

Read More “Grant Achatz Argues That Celebrity Chefs Shouldn’t Be Tied to the Kitchen” »

Y&H loves Anthony Bourdain, because he’s not afraid to say things like this: Celebrity chef shows are “the new pornography. It’s people seeing things on TV, watching people make things on TV that they’re not going to be doing themselves any time soon, just like porn.”

That’s the question food writer Lauren Shockey asked as she prepared to crack open the cookbooks of three different New York City chefs. Her essay on the at-home adventure was published today on Slate. I have to say, I think the article might have been more interesting had a non-culinary-school grad taken up the challenge. What do you think?

My friend Lou is a terrific home cook, particularly with desserts. Get a load of his red-wine poached pears—the treat that was almost too gorgeous to eat. (Almost.) As you can see from that one example, Lou doesn’t take shortcuts, even when it comes to a cookie-baking contest for a holiday office party. The dude really wants to win.

Lou e-mailed me yesterday, saying that it “might be an interesting column” if I’d ask “big shot chefs/pastry chefs in town to divulge or come up with their great Christmas cookie recipe.” Little did I know that Lou was working me for his own ends. I found that out this morning when I called him on the way to work, informing him that the Post had just devoted its Food Section to holiday cookies. None of the paper’s recipes, he thought, would win him the office-party bake-off.

He wanted something more fanciful. He wanted something more elaborate. He wanted something from Michel Richard. I reluctantly agreed to contact the city’s master chef for a recipe. By day’s end, Richard’s PR coordinator Mel Davis e-mailed me a couple of cookie recipes (you can see them below the jump). I forward the recipes to Lou for review. His response:

They “look like fantastic cookies but they’re just cookies. I need something that’s gonna wow ‘em. Any thoughts on what I could fill them with (a la sandwich cookies) that’s holidayish?”

Tough crowd.

Read More “Michel Richard Cookies for the Holidays: Not Good Enough?” »