Photo by Harmanx

By his own estimate, Don Rockwell eats approximately 700 restaurant meals a year, spending nearly $30,000 of his modest computer consultant’s salary at high and low-end establishments alike. Rockwell reviews many of those meals in minute detail on his eponymous food board, which he founded in 2005 and which has become a prime local destination for chefs, sommeliers, restaurateurs, and diners, many of whom engage with DonRockwell.com on a weekly or daily basis.

Between his prodigious eating habits and his online gastronomic gathering place, Rockwell has accumulated a lot of knowledge about the local dining scene—and the people and organizations that comprise it. He knows, for example, that many of the folks who have waited on him and cooked for him lack health insurance. He knows the frustrations of restaurant owners who must battle the District’s bureaucracy to even open for business. And he especially knows about their frustrations with the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington, the trade group established to promote and protect the hospitality industry’s interests.

One of those exasperated restaurateurs is Michael Landrum, the man behind Ray’s the Steaks, Ray’s the Classics, and Ray’s Hell Burger. His regular comments on Rockwell’s boards include this Oct. 28 salvo, fired the day after RAMW split with its parent organization, the National Restaurant Association: “They are a self-serving, parasitical organization where often-times the parasite has grown larger than its hosts. They are openly hostile to employee’s rights,” Landrum wrote. “One thing to be clear, they do not, do not, represent or work on behalf of independent restaurants, restaurant workers, farmers or chefs.”

In an interview, Landrum levels a few other charges. “RAMW is an organization that uses its substantial financial clout to enrich itself,” he tells me. What’s more, he adds, the organization’s “political agenda is hostile to what most people would consider the interests of the restaurant community as a whole.”

By that, Landrum means that RAMW’s lobbying hasn’t always represented the best interests of either restaurant workers or restaurant eaters. Fighting against a higher minimum wage, for instance, may please owners, but it undercuts the line cooks, bussers, and others employees who rely on those meager salaries. Likewise, RAMW’s efforts to exempt bartenders and wait staff from the District’s Accrued Sick and Safe Leave Act of 2008 took away basic rights from hundreds of workers. And RAMW efforts directed at battling food trucks, smoking bans, and menu labels have also tended to favor traditional brick-and-mortar owners over everyone from street vendors to diners who’d prefer clean restaurant air.

Rockwell doesn’t have answers for all of these issues, or even most of them, but does have a vision for the future of the local hospitality industry. He has tentatively started an organization, the Association of Independent Restaurants, which will attempt to harness the collective power of the area’s independent restaurants to assist both management and workers. Rockwell wants to offer discount group health insurance for line cooks, wait staff, bar backs, and everyone else who needs it. He wants to put quality ingredients in the hands of smaller restaurants by pooling their purchases and negotiating lower prices. He wants to help employees get work visas, and he wants to help restaurateurs negotiate the cumbersome process of establishing an eatery in the District and elsewhere.

Rockwell is still a long way from accomplishing these goals. At present, he doesn’t have an office, employees, a budget, or even a solid business plan. He just has a domain name (air-dc.com) and a desire. “I see a need that needs to be filled, and I want to fill it,” Rockwell says over lunch at Circle Bistro last week. “I view [AIR] as more a complementary thing than a takeover attempt” of RAMW.

What Rockwell does have, however, is the support from some influential people in the industry, like Landrum, chef Eric Ziebold of CityZen, and Cathal Armstrong at Restaurant Eve.

He also has his own frustrations with the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington to motivate him. Like the annual RAMMY awards, where it remains a mystery as to how or why a restaurant earns a win or gets nominated. Or the association’s bi-annual Restaurant Week, in which participating RAMW members offer three-course lunch and dinner menus for around $20 and $35 respectively. Rockwell, for one, thinks this is not a deal for anyone, unless they’re dining at one of the area’s few fine-dining palaces.

“I think the dining public is being absolutely duped by this,” he says. He’d like his organization to work with restaurants to offer discount menus year-around, perhaps at off hours or on slow week days.

Restaurant Week is sore spot for some restaurateurs, too. Not only do owners have to pay a fee to participate in Restaurant Week (typically $500) and offer meal discounts, but ever since RAMW started steering people to OpenTable to book reservations, restaurateurs must pay a $1 fee for each person who goes through the online service. The money adds up quickly, biting into whatever profit may be available during the week. Bob Kinkead, the Beard Award-winning chef and owner of Kinkead’s in Foggy Bottom, says his payments to OpenTable will usually double or triple to nearly $3,000 a month during the promotion, which often runs longer than a week.

Kinkead, like other restaurateurs I spoke with, has mixed feelings about RAMW. He’s a past board member who understands what RAMW does well and what it doesn’t. He believes the association does a good job of preventing governments from raiding the pocketbooks of local restaurateurs when budgets fall short. At the same time, Kinkead thinks RAMW didn’t fight hard enough to stop the city from raising parking meter fees and extending their hours into the evening, thereby hammering downtown eateries.

The interesting thing about Kinkead is that he’s no sideline critic. In the late 1990s, he and some fellow restaurateurs created the Council of Independent Restaurants of America, a nationwide organization designed to battle the major chains. At one point, CIRA had chapters in 17 cities, including the District, where its membership peaked at about 50 establishments.

CIRA’s ambitions were similar to those of Don Rockwell and his budding association. CIRA tried to establish health care coverage for the employees of its 100-plus restaurant members (it proved almost impossible to find a policy to cover workers in the various states, Kinkead says); it tried to create a central ordering system for restaurants so members could take advantage of group purchasing rates (some cities already had companies performing this function, Kinkead says; chefs in other cities sometimes couldn’t agree on what ingredients to purchase); and it even tried its hand at expediting to help owners negotiate the Byzantine bureaucracy necessary to get restaurants open (lawyers already have this market well covered).

In the end, Kinkead says, the local chapter of CIRA was undone by the kind of things that bring down most such organizations: a lack of funds and a chronic inability to reach consensus. CIRA remains alive in other areas, Kinkead says, mostly smaller towns where members are willing to put aside their own needs for the greater good of the chapter. The veteran restaurateur believes one factor will determine whether Rockwell succeeds with AIR: “If he’s extremely well funded, there’s not a reason why it shouldn’t work,” Kinkead says. “If not, don’t bother, buddy.”

But another industry insider expresses a separate worry about Rockwell’s budding venture: Should AIR get traction, assemble a healthy number of dues-paying members, and start offering insurance and group purchasing, it could step on the toes of some powerful interests. The hotel and restaurant workers union, not to mention the companies that already offer group buying, would not sit idly and watch AIR take over their markets. “In the beginning,” says the source, “I don’t think anybody’s going to pay very much attention because [AIR] is so small.” But should AIR grow, Rockwell needs to be prepared for battle.

At the same time, the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington will not be standing still, either. The group no doubt has heard about the situation in New York City, where a number of high-profile restaurateurs including Stephen Hanson and Keith McNally recently started the NYC Hospitality Coalition to serve as a complement to the local chapter of the New York State Restaurant Association. The question here, of course, is this: How long will it take before this “complementary” organization becomes an actual competitor, fighting for the limited number of dues-paying members and donors.

Lynne Breaux, a former restaurateur herself, is the president of the non-profit RAMW. As the leader of the association with more than 650 members in the District and Northern Virginia, Breaux oversees an organization that took in $1.26 million during fiscal 2009. Far from being a group that cares only for owners and management, Breaux says, RAMW also looks out for workers. The association has a lawyer available for members to help them secure work visas for employees. Earlier in its history, Breaux notes, RAMW also offered group health insurance for restaurant workers and is looking into the proposition again. “It’s down the road,” she says. (A RAMW board member who spoke on the condition of anonymity confirmed that the association had a “substantial conversation” last week about a group health plan for workers.)

But Breaux is clearly aware that RAMW has its detractors, whether Landrum and his belief that RAMW lives to enrich itself (Breaux, incidentally, earned about $161,000 last year as president) or restaurateurs who are frustrated by the economics of Restaurant Week (Breaux says the group is talking to OpenTable about lowering its rates). “Maybe you can’t please everybody all the time,” she says.

That may be a lesson Don Rockwell will learn when the Association of Independent Restaurants finally gets off the ground. Or will it get off the ground? Or will local restaurateurs and their employees be forced to live with the imperfect work of the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington? Michael Landrum has an opinion on this.

“I think there’s nothing that Don can’t accomplish once he sets his mind to it,” Landrum says.

Eatery tips? Food pursuits? Send suggestions to hungry@washingtoncitypaper.com. Or call (202) 650-6925.

Photos by Darrow Montgomery

Last week, Rockwell officially started asking for money for his knowledge of the local restaurant scene. He launched DCDining.com, a no-frills site that sells customized dining packages for people willing to pay, for example, $18.95 for "The Perfect Meal." Customers fill out an online form, and Rockwell reviews the specific request before scouting out the right location; he will also make the reservation for the client.

In announcing his new service, Rockwell sent out this release in which he noted:

As you read this letter, you should no longer consider me an “amateur” in the restaurant business; I am going to take my great passion – and perhaps my greatest area of expertise – and make it my career.

DCDining.com will have its soft opening next week, and will be the first of its type in the United States, if not the world – a concierge service where I will lead tourists, visitors, businesses, and anyone passionate about dining to the right restaurant. Publicity, hype, and marketing? They’ll have no effect on my decision making, and if I have any say in the matter, those superficial lures are going to have less and less importance as time goes by.

So why the new direction for Rockwell? As with a lot of things in life, it boils down to money, timing, and a need for more balance in life. For years now, Rockwell has had essentially two jobs: He's been working as a computer consultant for the Environmental Protection Agency since 1986. In his off hours, he's also been monitoring and managing his self-named board, which has grown from, as he noted in the announcement, "a tiny, close-knit band of marauding food pirates to a large, diverse community, with statistics measured in the thousands and millions."

Something had to give.  He needed to find a way to monetize the site, shut it down, or come up with another solution.

"There's nothing in it financially for me at all," Rockwell, 49, acknowledged about his foodie board. "What am I going to do when I'm 60? What am I going to do when I'm 70?"

DCDining was his answer. Rockwell has decided, for the time-being, to drop his EPA consulting gig and focus his energies almost exclusively on DonRockwell.com, which will remain unchanged and mostly advertising-free, as well as DCDining.com. He says he has enough money saved to sustain him for awhile until he can generate more income from his new project.

"I had to start somewhere, or I wouldn't have started at all," Rockwell wrote to me via e-mail. "I'm the kind of person who comes up with an idea, then just sticks my head down and plows forward. It's probably my biggest strength, and it's also probably my biggest weakness. One thing I know is that, in my mind, this is going to benefit both restaurants and diners, and that is my goal."

If Rockwell claims he won't be swayed by publicity, hype, or marketing, then what about chefs? His site features quotes from a number of them, including Eric Ziebold at CityZen, Frank Ruta from Palena, James Alefantis from Buck's Fishing and Camping, Edan MacQuaid from Pizzeria Orso, R.J. Cooper from the forthcoming Rogue 24, and a number of others.

Won't Rockwell feel compelled to send customers to the restaurants whose chefs have helped promote his new venture?

"The people I solicited quotes from are the people whose work I believe in," said Rockwell during a phone interview, noting perhaps one or two exceptions.

But what if one of these chefs started slipping, would you still direct your clients to their restaurants?

"No," Rockwell said, "I would stop sending people there."

Rockwell said he counts only four industry people among his friends, people with whom he socializes outside the context of their restaurants. Those folks are Ziebold, sommelier Mark Slater at Ray's the Steaks, Kavita Singh from New Heights, and Koji Terano from Sushi-Ko. Rockwell says he's always up front with people about these relationships, right down to listing them on his site. (Registration required.)

DCDining is only in its soft-launch phase and the requests are just trickling in. Ultimately, Rockwell said, he doesn't believe the brunt of his customers will be D.C. residents, who will continue to do what they always do: check reviews on the Washington Post, Washingtonian, Yelp, and, yes, DonRockwell.com. Instead, he hopes to tap into the hotel and convention networks, with the idea of providing tourists with information on where and what to eat.

If Rockwell seems to have perspective about who will use DCDining.com, he also has perspective about its name. DonRockwell.com takes the founder's name, but is focused on the larger dining community and its many opinions. DCDining, on the other hand, "doesn't have my name on it," Rockwell said, "and it's all about me."

I caught CityZen chef Eric Ziebold just as he was catching a plane back to D.C. He said he had about two minutes to talk. He told me that Cook is still making pastries at the restaurant inside the Mandarin Oriental. The open position is actually to replace the departing assistant pastry chef.

But there's a caveat to that, Ziebold admitted.

The chef has been talking to Cook about her future plans, and he sort of/kind of expects her to move on after working at CityZen for more than three years now. Ziebold says he's basically expecting to groom his new assistant pastry chef, whoever that may be, for the top job.

I asked Ziebold if this had anything to do with Cook possibly landing a spot on the forthcoming Top Chef: Just Desserts, which will pit pastry chef against pastry chef. He said no. He hasn't even heard if Cook has made the cut for the reality program, though he knows she auditioned for it.

But he does know this: Cook's next move will not be something lateral, to another restaurant. "Her goal is her own restaurant and to do her own thing," Ziebold said.

"Which she should," he added about Cook, who earned a Beard nomination last month for Outstanding Pastry Chef. "In my opinion, I think she's a fabulous baker."

By the way, Ziebold asked if I knew of any good pastry chefs, which would seem to imply that he doesn't have anyone immediately in mind for the new job.

The D.C. Dish Hall of Fame leaderboard remains virtually unchanged after a week of voting, save for the flip-flop of the ninth and tenth place dishes. After a strong surge last week, Horace & Dickie's  fried whiting moves up a notch into ninth place.

But I have to say, I think the list is still missing some great dishes. Plates like Frank Ruta's roast chicken and Michel Richard's lobster burger are nowhere to be seen, meaning they will not, at present, be part of the inaugural class of the D.C. Dish Hall of Fame. A shame that would be, to paraphase a certain elderly sage.

A comment we received this morning, I think, sums up the feelings of a number of voters, who seem to view this contest as an exercise in classism, not a genuine search for D.C.'s finest plates:

like most things in DC, the options show extreme class stratification. I'd love to know the percentage of DC residents who've enjoyed the CityZen Parker House Rolls or Komi's spit roasted goat.

I understand that more people can afford to eat at Ben's Chili Bowl over CityZen. But I don't think you should hold that against a great side like Eric Ziebold's Parker House rolls. It deserves a place among the city's best as much as the chili half-smoke. Well, almost as much.

So, c'mon, let's try to put our prole resentments aside and vote for the best, regardless of price.  You can vote here.

The leaderboard:

1. Half-smoke with chili at Ben's Chili Bowl, 298 votes
2. Hamburger at Five Guys, 142
3. Peruvian chicken at El Pollo Rico, 115
4. Falafel at Amsterdam Falafelshop, 107
5. Margherita pizza at 2Amys, 100
6. Burger from Ray's Hell Burger, 89
7. Salty oat cookie at Teaism, 85
8. Palak chaat at Rasika, 80
9. Fried whiting at Horace & Dickie's, 76
10. Pho at Pho 75, 75

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

The Sou'Wester pork jowl BLT sounded too mouthwatering to pass up, even if we were way past tomato season, but at $7 per sandwich, I had to ask our waiter how large the lunch-time portion was. He indicated that the sammie was small, perhaps the size of my hand, and that depending on my appetite, I might need a side or two to supplement it. I appreciated his frankness.

Turns out that size wasn't a problem. Flavor was. Texture was. Presentation was. If you had sat that sandwich on a table, without informing me of its place of origin, I would have thought it came from Potbelly or Cosi or maybe even a government cafeteria, not a Mandarin Oriental restaurant under the watchful eye of Eric Ziebold. (Well, I guess the fatty, gelatinous jowl meat immediately places the sandwich under the trendy nose-to-tail banner, and therefore renders it gourmet, but trust me, the meat alone couldn't save this sucker.)

The bread was hard and crackly despite no apparent turn on the griddle or in a pan (was this oven baked?). The ingredients, including a sad single round of tomato on one half of the sandwich, were thrown together between the hardened bread slices with little concern for balance or appearance. The sandwich's flavor was mostly provided by the double wallop of fatty pork and fatty mayonnaise. It had all the subtlety of Marion Barry.

I had hoped the side dish of pickled vegetables would help cut the fat parade, so I popped a pink floret of cauliflower into my mouth. I almost spit it out. Wanting to check my palate, I asked my tablemate to sample the pickled veggie. She took a bite of the cauliflower and immediately made a face. We agreed on one thing: Ziebold and chef de cuisine Rachael Harriman need to jettison the caraway seeds in the pickling liquid. The anise overtones just don't work.

Our entire lunch wasn't a bust, however. My friend's fried chicken ($13) boasted a crispy, well-seasoned coating, which was moist and flavorful despite its long dunk in the fryer oil. My friend kept poking her finger into the leg meat to show me the puddle of grease on it. It didn't bother me as much as it did her.

The best part of the meal, by far, was the appetizer of crab fritters ($12), which was actually closer in spirit to Frank Ruta's famous fry plate at Palena Cafe. The dish was loaded with delicate, browned nuggets of moist crab meat as well as toothsome rounds of lightly fried onion bulbs and sunny circles of lemon slices, all ready for dipping in the accompanying green goddess dressing.

Unfortunately, by the time I pretended to eat my pork jowl BLT, and its sad side of pickled veggies, the memory of that appetizer had faded far away. All I was left with was one unavoidable thought: This was not the kind of food I was hoping for after attending the Sou'Wester opening in September.

Y&H is thrilled to report that Select 55 has been dethroned — by another beer, Guinness, which celebrated a birthday yesterday.

Let's raise a glass to Select 55's long run and to the new king of the Y&H blog.

This week's most-read posts:

1. Raise a Toast to Guinness' 250th Anniversary
2. Budweiser Launches Select 55, Light Beer Arms Race Gets Absurd
3. Joe Englert Offers a REAL Tribute to the Dean of D.C. Liquor Lawyers
4. Two Things Y&H Didn't Expect to See at Sou'Wester's Opening Party: Frank Ruta and Dancing
5. Stand in Judgment of Georgetown Chefs!
   

Let's see what the media had to say on these and other urgent foodie matters:

• Eater has the pics and Obama Foodorama has the insider deets on Michelle Obama's lunch at Gramercy.
• The AP has the story on Spike Mendelsohn's healthy new "Michelle Melt," which categorically did not include any assist from assistant White House chef Sam Kass.
• Michael Birchenall breaks the news that Yannick Cam will soon be back on the dining scene.
• Thrillist has the details on the opening date of Mark Furstenberg's G Street Food.
• The Washingtonian has learned who will take over the Olives space.
• Yours truly had the news on Taylor Gourmet II's pending opening.
• Y&H also covered the opening of Eric Ziebold's latest, Sou'Wester.

Ruta emerged from Palena's kitchen, pictured with Maddy Beckwith

So how unique was last night's opening reception for Sou'Wester? So unique that Frank Ruta showed up. In all the years Y&H has been covering the dining scene in D.C., I've never seen the semi-reclusive Palena chef and owner at an industry event. I barely recognized him out of his whites.

"This is only the second time I've been to one of these," Ruta told Y&H.

"Only the second ever?" I asked Ruta, knowing his years on the scene.

"No, this is the second time this year," he responded.

Ruta's presence wasn't the only unusual thing about this dual-themed party, which celebrated both the fifth anniversary of CityZen and the launch of Sou'Wester, the latest project from Eric Ziebold, chef of the City Paper's reigning Best Restaurant. There was a tattooed DJ spinning rap and funk tunes in the CityZen dining room, one of the most formal spaces in town, where food stations had been set up to pass out samples of Sou'Wester's menu. That's right, people were dancing in the CityZen dining room (including Y&H, but it's best not to think about that). The cognitive dissonance was palpable.

Avert your eyes, restaurant industry folks are getting down

Not that Y&H enjoys playing the role of Reliable Source, but the list of restaurant players was pretty impressive. Aside from Ruta, other attendees included Vidalia chef R.J. Cooper, Cork chef Ron Tanaka, Rasika chef Vikram Sunderam, Clyde's Group chef John Guattery, baker and G Street Food's  Mark Furstenberg, Inox sommelier John Wabeck, The Source's GM Adam Crocini, Bourbon Steak GM Mark Politzer, FreshFarm Market's Maddy Beckwith, Bistro Bis and Vidalia owner Jeffrey Buben, Bourbon Steak chef David Varley,  and Cork owners Diane Gross and Khalid Pitts.

The media/blogger types were out in force, too. Aside from Y&H, other attendees included Nycci Nellis, David Hagedorn, Jennifer Barger, Monica Bhide, Erin Hartigan, Michael Birchenall, Melissa McCart, Don Rockwell, and Carol Blymire.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I know I'm still having trouble adjusting to the new name for the Southern-inspired restaurant in the former Cafe MoZu space. If you'll recall, the operation was originally dubbed South by Southwest, which Y&H ridiculed and which Ziebold defended. Because of a legal threat by certain festival organizers in Austin, the Mandarin Oriental switched to the current Sou'Wester, which rolls off the tongue like...rock candy stuck in the back of your throat.

I have much higher hopes for the restaurant itself, which is under the direction of CityZen sous chef Rachael Harriman, who will serve as chef de cuisine at Sou'Wester. Her menu will include blackened bluefish, chicken and dumplings, rabbit sausage with cheese grits, and a unique take on pork and beans.

Scratch that.

During a phone conversation yesterday, Ziebold said that South by Southwest, which replaces Cafe MoZU at the Mandarin Oriental, wouldn't open until September. The problem, Ziebold said, is that the original designer envisioned a "bold, bright" space. Unfortunately, that wasn't Ziebold's vision.

"We were looking to make a statement by not making a statement. You know what I mean?" Ziebold told Y&H. "I'm a less-is-more kind of person...It wasn't going in that direction."

But it took the SXSW team six weeks to pull the plug on the first designer, Ziebold said. The new designer, based in Los Angeles, is working out far better, helping put together a space that doesn't feel so designed, the chef added.

Still, the new designers have run into delays, too, whether learning that the curtain fabric they originally wanted was no longer in production or trying to design custom-made china for South by Southwest. The china maker is apparently based in Colombia, Ziebold said. "So the process of getting samples is not exactly efficient," he deadpans.

Photo courtesy of the Mandarin Oriental