Organizers of the annual Capital Food Fight have announced the contestants in this year's charity cook-off competition. And the gustatory gladiators are:  Jeff Black of BlackSalt, Addie’s and Pearl Dive Oyster Palace; Todd Gray of Equinox, WaterShed, and Muse at the Corcoran; Haidar Karoum from Estadio and Proof and Brian McBride from Blue Duck Tavern. An impressive lineup [...]

Todd Gray is out $100. The acclaimed chef at Equinox took top honors as D.C.'s "Chef of the Year" last night at the 2011 Rammy awards gala at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Northwest D.C., an honor which apparently comes at a price. During his acceptance speech, Gray confessed to betting against himself and [...]

Lukewarm eggs in a steely buffet tray. Little boxes of breakfast cereals. Cartons of supermarket yogurt. Bagels and a toaster. This is a Todd Gray restaurant? The stylish logos on the staff uniforms say yes. But a quick survey of the morning spread suggests diners looking for an early-morning version of Gray’s popular Equinox restaurant [...]

Last week, Todd Gray and Ellen Kassoff Gray gave me a hard-hat tour of the sprawling construction site that will eventually become Todd Gray's Watershed at Constitution Square in the rapidly gentrifying NoMa neighborhood. To be honest, there wasn't much to look, other than some wall frames and a wide concrete staircase that will soon [...]

Is it just me, or does it feel like the entire dining community has piled on Roberto Donna now that Arlington County has busted him as a tax cheat? Just the karmic payback for a poorly conducted business life, you say? Perhaps. But it’s probably good for our own karma to remember that Donna’s outstanding [...]

Equinox went on an unexpected hiatus in December, when a kitchen fire crippled the downtown restaurant for the better part of six months. Todd and Ellen Gray’s place reopened less than three weeks ago, which typically wouldn’t be time enough for any high-end eatery to find its rhythm, let alone re-establish its once-lofty credentials. But [...]

More than five months after a kitchen fire shut down Equinox, and after weeks and weeks of battling insurers, owners Todd Gray and Ellen Kassoff Gray are finally re-opening their fully renovated downtown restaurant. The sound you hear is a long sigh of relief. "We're just getting open and doing, like, a dozen dishes and [...]

It's been more than five months since Todd Gray and Ellen Kassoff Gray, the couple behind the mid-Atlantic minded Equinox, served a meal at their downtown restaurant. A kitchen fire in December placed the pair on the sidelines, where they've kept themselves busy with private dinners and worrying over the details of Equinox's renovation. Their [...]

The president and first lady have already paid their respects to some of the deans of D.C. cooking — whether Michel Richard at Citronelle or Todd Gray at Equinox — but on Friday, Barack and Michelle Obama shared a date night at the house of the rising star chef: Komi under Johnny Monis. Some quick [...]

Y&H caught up with Ellen Kassoff Gray this afternoon as she was driving to pick up her son at school. She said that Equinox, the downtown restaurant she co-owns with her husband and chef Todd Gray, just received its building permit today after weeks of waiting. "That building has been sitting idle since Dec. 17," [...]