Imagine Y&H's surprise when, just two hours after posting this item, chef Eric Ziebold was on the phone defending the decision to rename Cafe MoZU and identify it by the restaurant's location within the District. Ziebold was not at all defensive. He even agreed with my basic premise: that MoZU's new name, South by Southwest, [...]

The Post's Tom Sietsema broke the news yesterday that the Mandarin Oriental and chef Eric Ziebold will be transforming Cafe MoZU—the pan-Asian restaurant best known as the place everyone wanders into when looking for CityZen—into a more modestly priced outlet featuring Eastern Shore flavors. CityZen's second-in-command in the kitchen, Rachel Harriman, will be the chef [...]

Rachael Harriman, the sous chef at CityZen in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, has been fielding questions of various weight and sophistication over at DonRockwell.com for the past couple of weeks. I was particularly interested in Harriman's response to this inquiry: With all of the time you spent in Thomas Keller's kitchens, it's obvious that he [...]

This is sort of like reporting that, new flash, no one was killed today in Congress, but I figured my wife, Carrie, can't be the only person who heard this item on WAMU this morning. She called to tell me there was a fire at the Mandarin Oriental, which houses one of the city's finest [...]