Young & Hungry colleague Lydia DePillis, in this week's Housing Complex column, examines the world of franchise flirtations. As was noted earlier this week, there was a big franchising expo at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center last weekend, which if you were there, gave a taste of what's coming to D.C.—or, at least, what [...]
In the world of fast-casual food concepts, it’s a little too easy to write off Cava Mezze Grill as a Greek version of Chipotle. In front of a sneeze guard-protected front counter, you’re ushered through a series of meat-and-topping construction stops, where you select fillers to go inside a pita instead of a tortilla (or [...]
Elevation Burger, the Arlington-based burger chain with locations in seven states, is preparing to open a new location on Route 1 in Hyattsville, near Jefferson Street. Per a release, "Entrepreneurs and brothers David and Christopher Wallis along with their wives have signed a seven-unit franchise agreement for the greater Washington D.C. area, the first of [...]
You might have read that Sweetgreen is headed to Philadelphia. The ever-expanding chain plans to open its first shop outside the D.C. area with a store in Ardmore, the suburban community that co-owner Nicolas Jammet describes as Philly's Bethesda. The three Georgetown grads who started Sweetgreen — Jammet, Jonathan Neman, and Nathaniel Ru — had [...]
Based on my mouth-watering experiences at the Nando's Peri-Peri in Chinatown — and I mean that literally, since the African pepper-laced peri-peri sauce caused pools of saliva to form at the base of my tongue — I went easy on myself at the new Nando's in Silver Spring. I ordered a quarter chicken "medium," which [...]
File this under Fightin' Words. Burger-meister Josh Ozersky posted this on his Twitter account earlier today: Also: Five Guys is as bad a burger as there is. Their fans are basically the fast-food equivalents of Juggalos. I don't get it. For the uninitiated (like me, until five minutes ago when I Googled the term), Juggalos [...]
This week's Young & Hungry column takes a look at two very different dim sum parlors, Hollywood East Cafe in Wheaton and Ping Pong Dim Sum in Chinatown. One is a local, family-owned operation, the other an import from London. We're publishing the full version of the column in the blog, so that you can [...]
The weather was so warm on Saturday, really more summer than spring, that Carrie and I decided to wander the streets of Chinatown/Penn Quarter, going from lunch to dessert to cheese to beer to wherever the spirit took us. I feel bad in retrospect. We didn't explore Chinablock, the small strip of real estate that [...]
You have no doubt seen the self-mocking commercials in which Domino's Pizza lays out the public's complaints against its product (cardboard crust, ketchup-like sauce, the sweet aroma of a dying company) and swears it has rectified the problem. The company even has a Web site dedicated to thumping its chest about rebuilding Domino's pizza from the crust up. I [...]
It's not enough, I guess, that the Five Guys hamburger earned a spot in our inaugural D.C. Dish Hall of Fame. The burger's many fans want the respect that goes along with the honor. Everyone's respect, in fact, and either you give it or you are, in the words of commenter The Truth, a "douche [...]
