On a related note: Has anyone tried California Tortilla's newish Korean BBQ taco special? Y&H was afraid to try to it recently, though this DCist commenter was pleasantly surprised: "I tried it yesterday and it was pretty tasty! I was wary of the idea, but in execution is was actually good!"

Y&H wasn't the only one with thoughts on the Steptoe & Johnson vs. Rogue States verdict. Take a look:

Above the Law: "Steptoe & Johnson is one of the few large law firms with a Twitter presence, but the firm has yet to tweet about how it chewed up and spat out Rogue States Burgers."

Comment on Above the Law's story: "I hope the location used by the burger joint is converted to a day care center with hundreds of screaming, shrieking kids who throw baseballs against Steptoe's walls from 7AM til 6PM."

The Examiner: "The ruling may be a knockout punch to one of the best in Washington, DC burger circles. USA Today recently named the top burger spot in each state and the District of Columbia — the winner from our nation’s capital was Rogue States. If SRT and Rogue States can’t agree on abatement strategy, there is the possibility of a new location to keep the nationally acclaimed burger afloat, but don’t get your hopes up. Under direct examination by one of Steptoe’s lawyers, Mendizabal indicated that he had signed a lease for a new Rogue States location at 1931 14th St. NW but later told Washingtonian Magazine that he was relying on revenue from the current location to pay for the opening of the 14th and U Street location."

Chowhound: "Steptoe's suit claimed that exhaust fumes from RS had caused nausea, headaches and general annoyance. (The irony of a law firm suing someone else for causing nausea, headaches and general annoyance apparently escaped them.)"

Comment on WSJ blog item: "Take note. Any time you have a court-ordered meeting of counsel at this law firm’s offices, seize the upper hand by discreetly, professionally, and silently breaking wind. It may break their will."

Comment 1 from DCist post: "Awful news — guess everyone will have to go to one of the 37 other gourmet burger joints within a 10-block radius of Dupont Circle."

Comment 2 from DCist post: "WHAT??? So does that mean I can sue my neighbors for constantly burning incense or making too much smelly cabbage?"

Comment 3 from DCist post: "Agreed. Fucking scumbags. Reminds me of this web development place I worked at in Manhattan. Occasionally we could hear a band practicing in the next building. Without ever even so much as picking up the phone or knocking on a door to work it out they filed suit. Unbelievable."

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

The mayoral election may be a referendum on D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee and her role in transforming the school district, but I'd like to conduct a mini-referendum on her taste in food. According to a DCist interview that I'm just catching up with, the chancellor singled out these restaurants as her favorites:

Well my new favorite restaurant is Ray's the Steaks, where Kevin [Johnson, Rhee's fiance] and I went, and now I've been a couple of times, because I had a phenomenal prime rib there. Me and the girls, our old standby is D.C. Coast, my girls love that place. We also like Zentan, because when Kevin comes to town he stays at the Donovan House, so it's just convenient to eat there. The girls also love House of Prayer, which is this restaurant that is in the bottom of a church, at the United House of Prayer. Oh my gosh, they have the best soul food in the District. It's at M and 7th, I want to say. They have the best food ever there. Kevin's favorite place to go on the weekends is the breakfast place at Eastern Market, so we go there a lot too.

Based on these picks alone, I'd have to say I approve of Rhee's taste in restaurants.

Sure, D.C. Coast is an obvious, K Street power spot and Zentan is another celebrity chef cash grab, but Ray's the Steaks is an inspired, counterintuitive choice. It was a steakhouse created specifically to counter the power puffery and pricey-ness of the downtown meat emporiums. And the United House of Prayer? Anyone who decides to lunch at the church's Saints Paradise Cafeteria, where "love is our main ingredient," clearly knows something about where people eat in this town. That scores plenty of points with me.

Where do you stand on Rhee's dining choices, Y&H Nation?

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

But starting on Monday, you'll find Scott Reitz right here on Young & Hungry, writing about home cooking and that increasingly crowded (and overlooked) topic of bar food. If you've read Scott, you know he's not shy about his opinions, which is why I love his writing. You can expect the same mix of insight and brutal honesty here on Y&H.

Scott describes himself as an "avid home cook," which I'm not sure completely does him justice. I'd call him an "obsessed home cook." His skills, both in the kitchen and at the computer, were invaluable in putting together the 2008-2009 issue of DC Chefs magazine.

When I asked him to write a little something about himself and his cooking life, he responded, in part, with this bit of third-person biography:

Though lasagna and home spun bar food are his crowd pleasers, he's not opposed to cooking with agar agar, using a blow torch to caramelize meats or wasting an entire afternoon on oxtail ragu and handmade pasta.  Over the past ten years he's cooked, eaten and lived all over the District and Northern Virginia and currently resides somewhere north of Dupont Circle.

As for his two beats for the Y&H blog, Scott has this to say:

• I don't want to focus on detailed recipes because I think most blogs...do a really bad job testing and putting together thoughtful recs. I'd instead like to focus on tips that readers could apply to any recipe they like.
• I think the [bar food] genre in general is under-served, and am perplexed that similar menu items are handled so differently by area establishments.

You'll find Scott's posts on Y&H on Mondays and Fridays, starting next week. Join me in welcoming him to the Y&H Nation.

The question of the day is whether or not Ray's Hell Burger, the prez's preferred patty, will be opening a D.C. location at CityVista. Prince of Petworth, as is our liege's habit, teases us with such a rumor.

But DCist, you know, actually did some reporting and asked owner Michael Landrum if he's planning an expansion. He waffles on the subject. "While Landrum did not outright deny the possibility of a City Vista Ray's location, he told DCist that he regularly fields offers from a number of developers," wrote Jamie R. Liu.

Personally, I'd call Landrum for further clarification, but I don't have the time right now for a 45-minute conversation. More to come on this subject, no doubt.

The mood over this season's Top Chef is turning dark. The critics are claiming the cheftestants (still can't stomach that word) are inferior to previous seasons. Hell, they can't even make a pie.

The media have their say:

• Joe Yonan and Bonnie Benwick over at WaPo, ahem, knead-le the chefs over their pies: "If you don't know how to make a basic pie crust, I think it's pretty sad," Yonan says. "They weren't even pies, most of them."
• Carol Blymire at the Washingtonian thought the producers teased us about the judges' favorite pies: "[T]hey love Kelly’s tart/pie and Stephen’s curried-apple pie. Johnny gets to reveal the winner, and I’m thinking either Kelly or Stephen, but instead he says, 'Kenny!' What? How can you win when you’re not featured in the Pies We Loved montage" (Also: Blymire gets the Y&H Bronze Medal for bravery for sneaking "dickwad" into the Washingtonian.)

• Eater national mocks Jean Georges pastry chef Johnny Iuzzini for channeling The Fonz: "Enough, Johnny. We get it. Even though you are a dessert chef and have a slight lisp, you call yourself "Johnny" and dress like a greaser. You're tough! No one is arguing! You probably gave yourself a tattoo in prison with a Bic and a lighter that says "Petit Four" across your knuckles! (One of his hands has six fingers.) Let's all just relax. I promise I won't try and steal your wallet."
• Serious Eats got fed up with all the complainin' about the pie challenge: "This week's quickfire didn't go so well for the chefs. You'd think Padma asked them to disarm a bomb with all the bitching and moaning they were doing: "Wahhh, I've never made a pie before! Wahhh, I don't cook desserts!" Suck it up, guys. The show is called Top Chef, not Top Incompetent Whiny Bitch."
• Gawker minces no words: "I suppose baking a pie is difficult for a chef. Pastry arts and culinary arts taught as two separate degrees at most culinary colleges, but man, these chefs suck balls!"
• Entertainment Weekly mocks a few of the contestants' approach to pie: "It took me seven hours to cook my first from-scratch blueberry pie last Thanksgiving (go ahead, ridicule), but in TC land, they had just two. And in those two hours, Ed ripped on Alex’s talent (Oh Ed, you know what that means for you, right?), Tracey dubbed her pie “top secret” because she actually didn’t know what she was making, and Angelo, out of convenience for his pie-less résumé, tricked his mind into thinking this was a curry challenge. That makes sense."
• DCist could see trouble coming from a mile away:  "It was pretty easy to spot some of the cheftestants who would not be in contention for immunity early on in the Quickfire. First, Alex was working on some sort of almond crust that looked like it had the consistency of Play-Doh that had its cap left off overnight. Also, he threw some sort of filling together with eggs and tapioca and goat cheese — I'm sorry, were you supposed to be making pies for Johnny Iuzzini to taste or pies that would ruin the afternoon of nursing home residents? Tapioca pie? With goat cheese? Pass."

The Post covered the basics, which also includes the closing of New York, Chicago, and Las Vegas. One ESPN Zone loyalist writing on DCist did not recommend that fellow fans find solace by rushing to the ESPN Club, an unrelated restaurant, in Lake Buena Vista, Florida.

"And for being a Disney-owned theme restaurant, the ESPN Zone in Disney World is WAY worse than DC's," Lilimoon wrote. "Weird."

Nearly four years ago, WCP senior writer Jason Cherkis explained the woeful state of the sit-down restaurant in Ward 8. He summed it up in one concise sentence: "Ward 8’s culinary culture right now is the carryout."  Consider this excerpt:

People don’t power-lunch in Ward 8. For the most part, people who eat out communicate over Styrofoam trays at bus stops, on stoops, in cars—inevitably lukewarm, fried, and hurried. Some may sit and have breakfast at Cole’s Cafe or lunch at Player’s, but the community’s bigwigs don’t count those as sit-down restaurants. When they think of sit-downs, they’re thinking of chains that have long stacked the suburbs. “I count sit-down as Outback, Applebee’s,” says James Bunn of the Ward 8 Business Council. “I want to go to someplace where I really enjoy—Red Lobster, Applebee’s. My cultural restaurants.”

Big Chair Coffee N' Grill won't change the dining culture in Anacostia all by itself, but the shop's opening yesterday was a cause for celebration for many in Ward 8. Housing Complex's Ruth Samuelson was there on opening day and filed a report. Here's a nice moment from her item:

Anthony Muhammad, ANC Chair for 8A, sat toward the end of the bar eating a veggie burger and fries. For over a year, his constituents have been asking about Big Chair: “When is it going to open? What kind of coffee are you going to have? Is it going to be better than Starbucks?” he relays.

I asked the obligatory “What does it all mean?” question: What does this opening signify about growth east of the river?

“It signifies that people don’t have to go across the bridge for a cup of coffee,” said Muhammad.

Surely, a point no one can argue.

I asked Samuelson if she tried Big Chair's coffee and she said it was "so-so." There seems to be a good reason for that, though. According to DCist, the shop is getting by with mid-grade java until it can establish an Ethiopian connection. Writes DCist's Kriston Capps:

It is difficult to judge the coffee, since Big Chair is only serving Java brand coffee for the time being; they have not yet received the beans that they plan to import from Ethiopia and roast on site. D explained that it was difficult to import coffee from Ethiopia nowadays because so many farmers have switched from growing coffee to growing khat, a chewable leaf that is a stimulant. (Councilmember Barry asked, "Make you high?")

Photo by Ruth Samuelson

But Liu's story describes both beers (complete with text creatively adapted from the press release) as though they were just released — and further confuses readers (and commenters) by pointing them to stores where they can buy them. Note to readers: Life and Limb bottles are extinct. Kegs are all but gone too. The last known keg in D.C. will be tapped at Scion on Monday Sunday.

Confusion settled. Now let's get out of here; it's half past beer o'clock by my watch.

Guess which trend got dissed by local food writers?

Yes, it's started already: The lists. The roundups. The endless regurgitation of the year's best and worst in dining trends/meals/restaurants/chefs/bathroom door handles. We love 'em, and we hate 'em.

BrightestYoungThings gets out of the gate early with its D.C. Foodie Writer 2009 Wrap Up, which includes bloggers such as Capital Spice, Endless Simmer, DCist, and DC Gastronome. BYT's Alex Nicholson also asked a few of us dead-tree media types to contribute, including Young & Hungry.

You can get the full blast of our gastronomic gas-baggery over at BYT. Oh, and by the way, Young & Hungry will contribute more such gas-baggery at the end of the year, when I roll out my list of Best New Restaurants of 2009.