It’s a short work week, and we at Young & Hungry Central have just the thing you need: beer and dining recommendations for the Fourth. We also have something for your reading pleasure:

The top blog posts of the week.

1. Obama Ate Here: The Working Map (with apologies and gratitude to BrightestYoungThings)
2. What Did Your $10 Ticket Get You at the Safeway Barbecue Battle?
3. On July 4th Weekend, Buy American Beer
4. Breadline Busted on 19 Health Code Violations, Ten of Them Critical
5. Dairy Godmother’s Owner Doesn’t Want the Obama Bump That Ray’s Hell Burger Got

Photo by cristinabe via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution License

Yours truly is thrilled to report that, for the first time in weeks, the vintage TV beer commercials did not crack the Top 5 posts. I’ll drink to that news.

Instead, readers this week were fascinated by a D.C. Department of Health inspector’s report on Breadline, which found 19 separate violations of the food code. Thousands of you wanted to read all the ugly details that caused the department to temporarily shut down Breadline. Fewer of you wanted to read the good news: the re-inspection report, which found not a single violation at Breadline. Ah, human nature.

And with that, we turn to the most-read items this week:

1. Breadline Busted on 19 Health Code Violations, Ten of Them Critical
2. My Top 5 Desert Island Beers. What Are Yours?
3. BGR: The Burger Joint Set to Open Third Store in Dupont Circle
4. Dining Guide Rejects: Corduroy, Comet, Urban, Tallula
5. Dairy Godmother’s Owner Doesn’t Want the Obama Bump That Ray’s Hell Burger Got
   

Ever since President Obama and his daughters visited the Dairy Godmother on Saturday, business at the Del Ray custard shop has increased by 20 percent, enough that owner Liz Davis has had to add extra staff to some shifts. Davis, however, thinks the worst is yet to come.

“My guess is that it’s this weekend when it’s going to hit,” says Davis, a Culinary Institute of America graduate and former pastry chef who opened Dairy Godmother eight years ago.

But here’s the thing: Davis doesn’t want to alter her business plan, or expand her brand, like Michael Landrum had to do following the president and vice president’s run to Ray’s Hell Burger in May. She’s content running her small independent shop at its current volume.

“I don’t really want it to change,” Davis told Y&H this afternoon. “I’m a cook, not a businesswoman…This is a shop to express myself.”

Davis may be in luck in one respect. The Obamas’ stop at the Dairy Godmother wasn’t an official visit, which meant that only a White House photographer and a single pool reporter were present for the trip to Del Ray. Contrast that to Obama and Joe Biden’s burger run to Ray’s, which was packed with members of the press and their cameras. Video of the Hell Burger drive by was working its way across the internets in a matter of hours, if not minutes. There’s not a single video, that mother of all online attention-grabbing devices, available of the Diary Godmother visit. At least not one I could find.

But Davis also didn’t try to suck up to the president and his daughters. She wanted the girls to have a “regular experience,” like every other child who stands impatiently in line at Dairy Godmother, waiting, waiting, waiting for the moment to finally order a sundae or custard with chocolate chips and marshmallow. Davis didn’t even play coy about the payment. She readily accepted the president’s cash.

“I really don’t think he needs my $7,” she deadpans.

Photo by cristinabe via Flickr, Creative Commons