Back and Forth: For those keeping score in the battle between Gillian Clark and her landlord over the now-closed General Store near Silver Spring? Tim Carman tracked down Spiro Gioldasis, who said there "was a simple reason for his tax woes: Clark and General Store co-owner Robin Smith owed him back rent dating to April 2010." [WaPo]

A Dive Bar in Condo Land: As Clarendon's redevelopment continues to push into the N. 10th Street corridor, could these be the last days of Jay's Saloon and Grille? [ARLNow]

Historic Nugget: Macaroni and Cheese "is actually English. Well, kind of. It’s apparently been popular in England for the last hundred years or so, but its American heritage wins out because Thomas Jefferson reportedly enjoyed it at the White House in 1802. There you go, Yanks, getting everything good before we do." [Washingtonian]

Lingo: At the new Hill Country BBQ in Penn Quarter, there's new vocabulary to speed service along. "Tommy!" "Dolly!" "Texas black-eyed caviar!" [The Feast]

Photo by Flickr user kalleboo using an Attribution 2.0 Generic Creative Commons license

This afternoon, word trickled out about the sudden closure of The General Store. The following message was posted to The General Store's Facebook page:

It's with heavy hearts we're announcing that The General Store is closed. For the entire 4+ years we've been involved with this building we have been bullied by the landlords. The landlord has not paid his back taxes and the county is taking back the building. We want to take this opportunity to thank all of you for being more than just customers. We consider all of you friends.

Young & Hungry reached out to Clark for more details, and she sent us the following statement:

In 2006 we fell in love with this little blue building in Forest Glen. We knew we were working with landlords that were themselves in the business, so we were confident that they understood what could happen in this little place with us as the management team. Still, they offered to have their chef at Mrs. K’s teach me how to make fried chicken.

Looking at the mess it was inside did not deter us and we were determined to make a restaurant out of it. We were about two years into the renovation—the whole floor needed to be ripped up, although he dug out the basement (without permits) the landlord poured it two inches too short, PEPCO determined the power to be insufficient, and we later learned there was not enough parking to make it a restaurant anyway. Through all of this the landlord sued us. We spent tens of thousands in legal fees, and hundreds of thousands to avoid bankruptcy and finish this project. We knew that it would be great once it opened.

And it was—three times on the Food Network and over a million in sales in 26 short months with less than 40 seats. The landlord with two restaurants of his own nearby, could barely pay his bills and could not keep up with the payments to the lenders or his property taxes. The notice from the county about the back taxes was stapled to our door one morning. And shortly after that, the process server came to insist that we come in to landlord/tenant court to face charges that we were behind in our rent.

Considering our difficulty opening, and debt load associated with it; we made arrangements to pay a weekly rent that has been in effect for over a year. We were paying as agreed (the landlord even giving us a thumbs up to a creditor just weeks ago). He suddenly declared us in default and he wanted us to pay him an unfounded and ridiculous amount of money and he wanted it now. We fear he’s just not able to pay the debt and tax bills associated with the place and suing us and gaining possession of the property will make a much neater end for him. Nonetheless, he presented false documents in court and perjured himself to get the judge to see his side.

I am attaching before and after pictures so you can see what it is we did to this place and if he is able to run this restaurant after he takes possession of it (if you can’t make a restaurant of your own successful why not steal one) it will be because of our hard work and vision.

We are grateful and proud of having the opportunity to be The General Store and to serve this community as best as we were able. We took this eyesore of a building and made it something great.

So many others drove by it and crossed it off of their list (other chefs, architects, business people). We were undaunted and stubborn. At times we came close to giving up and sometimes I think maybe we should have turned away. But I’m proud of what we did here. We were plumb out of money but there was a knife to our backs to finish and open—attorneys, landlord, judges were folding their arms and tapping their feet. We tiled the floors, we painted, we got that walk-in together—8 feet tall walk in cooler in a 7 foot 11 inch high space. But it has been too much bullying from the landlord and we are just too old to keep fighting. I’m sure you noticed that Robin and I are IT. We are here 16 hours a day. We’ll get some rest now and concentrate on our other projects.

I hope the New General Store or whatever takes its place when the landlord gets someone else to lease the space, I hope it thrives for the sake of this community that has always been so generous and supportive.

Young & Hungry tried to contact the landlord in question, Spiro Gioldasis, without success. Montgomery County records show a lien on Gioldasis' property at 6 Post Office Road.

Photo of Gillian Clark at her former restaurant, Colorado Kitchen, by Darrow Montgomery

Some nuggets from Carman's profile:

"...Clark and her four older siblings were not allowed to call anyone 'stupid' or tell them to 'shut up.' 'My mother didn't raise me to be rude, and she'd be horrified at the notion that I was anything but gracious to somebody,' she tells me."

Says Ann Cashion of Cashion's Eat Place: "She doesn't feel any need to sort of disguise how she feels if somebody is being ridiculous. That is sort of how she deals with everybody in the world. ... She's always dishing it out."

"In April 2003, she wrote a long note to The Post's Tom Sietsema defending her rule for no-dish substitutions or customizations at Colorado Kitchen. 'Personally, I prefer the way Herbert von Karajan conducts Beethoven's Third Symphony,' she wrote. 'But I would never ask Zubin Mehta to finish the Adagio with the hesitant 3/8 that Herb finishes with.'

[WaPo]

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

In case you missed it last month, as Y&H did, chef Gillian Clark made an appearance on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, during which the General Store owner spilled the secrets to several of her best dishes, as if helpless against the spiky haired, bro-centric charms of Guy Fieri. She even gave the dude a demo on how to make her famous fried chicken, for which she received, in return, lots of air time and a vague sense that the host was trying to one-up her with his culinary knowledge.

The videos are finally available. Check 'em out.

Part two is after the jump. Clark reveals how she makes her mammoth Wagyu corn dogs.

It's been nearly two years since Y&H first reported about Gillian Clark's Petworth project, the Georgia Avenue Meeting House, and since that time the chef's other planned eatery, Avenue Oven in Takoma Park, has gone the way of the Adventists.

Given the lack of news about the Georgia Avenue Meeting House, I'd begun to fear that it, too, may have suffered a premature death. Not so, Clark told me today.

"The ball is rolling," Clark says, "but very slowly."

She and her business partner, Robin Smith, lost almost a year to arranging the financing. Apparently the partners' funding source kept dragging out the process until one day, via e-mail, Clark and Smith learned that the source had dried up.

Clark says they now have the money, which will start rolling in once D.C. issues a building permit. Assuming she gets her permits in a timely manner, Clark thinks construction will not take long and fully expects a March 2011 opening date.

The restaurant will serve genuine soul food, Clark tells me with no small amount of irony. Everyone thinks the General Store, her American-oriented eatery in Silver Spring, already serves soul food, but now she finally will. Look for turtle soup, catfish, and frog legs, among other specialties, on Clark's menu.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

6 Post Office Road, Silver Spring (301) 562-8787

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

The waitress at Hershey's in Gaithersburg informs me that the restaurant's famous fried chicken is not Maryland-style, no matter what the joint's address may be.

"Does that mean you deep fry your chicken?" I ask innocently.

"I can't even tell you that," she responds, quick as a whip.

The top-secret nature of Hershey's fried chicken doesn't exactly fit with the laid-back country vibe of this late 19th-century house that has served over the years as a general store, post office, and restaurant/watering hole. This is a place for neighborhood gossip over house wine and Keno, not for shadowy secrets protected like classified CIA documents. Hershey's seems more like a place where the chef would write out the recipe for you if asked.

Twenty-five minutes later, when my made-to-order four-piece dinner finally arrives, I understand all the secrecy. This is top-flight fried chicken, the coating crisp without relying on bread crumbs, panko, or corn flakes. The meat is exquisitely moist, even in the thickest section of the breast; this may be the result of brining but it's definitely the sign of a fry cook who knows how to keep a steady and proper oil temperature.

Then there are the salt levels, which some might consider high enough to require a side order of blood pressure medication. I consider it proof that Hershey's kitchen still clings to an earlier era of good taste, not to our current one, which has sacrificed flavor for health, on the questionable assumption that "bad" food alone may shorten our lives.

The saltiness, the crispiness, the moistness, the utter deliciousness. This is chicken that deserves mention with the best around, whether Gillian Clark's at the General Store or Adrienne Carter's at the Hitching Post.

When I express my deep satisfaction to the waitress, she seems to instantly warm up to our table. She even shares a small, presumably treasonous secret: The chicken coating mix comes from Chicago, of all places, made by a company that prepares it exclusively for the restaurant.

Apocryphal? I don't care. Any chicken this good needs an equally good story of origin.

I could have done without my first bite of Gillian Clark's soft-shell crab sandwich at the General Store. As soon as I bit through the crustacean's semi-soft outer body, I was splattered with a jet-stream of yellow-green matter, likely a combination of eggs and tomalley. My new shirt now looked like a painter's smock.

My second bite wasn't much better. I felt as if I was ripping into an old leather bag. I couldn't understand what was happening. Everything else about the sandwich was delicious: the surprisingly sweet lemon aioli, the soft buttery Gold Crust bun, the salty, beautifully fried onion straws. But the star of the dish — a genuine Maryland blue crab, Clark told me — had gone rogue, betraying all of the other ingredients in the sammie.

In all the times I have eaten soft-shells, I have never had such a tough time biting into one. This sucker, though, was a damn hard softie. A few Google searches later, I think I learned why.

According to the award-winning book, Fish Forever by Paul Johnson, fishmonger to the star chefs, all softies are not created equal:

"Because of the extremely fragile nature of a soft-shell crab, it takes only a little rough jostling in transit to kill some of them, so the greatest care is taken to make sure soft-shell crabs arrive at the marketplace alive. They are carefully arranged in straw-lined flats that are packed in shock-resistant boxes marked 'Fragile.' They are then quickly flown or trucked to market.

"But be aware that some shippers will leave their crabs in the water for a little while after they have shed, which allows the shells to partially harden. These hardened 'soft-shell crabs' are stronger and more likely to arrive at their destination alive — but they will be disappointing at the table, tough and chewy."

In other words, my leathery crab likely had little to do with Clark, and everything to do with the fishmonger who sold her those crustaceans.

Two older posts continue to fascinate the readership of Young & Hungry. One is tragic. The other practically comedic. After that, the Top 5 posts of the week shape up this way:

1. Gillian Clark's General Store Now Available for Sit-Down Service
2. Saigon Bistro: A Best of D.C. Contender or Just a Pretender?
3. Scene 1 from the Eatonville Chef Contest: Fried Chicken
4. Alert Las Vegas: Washingtonian Debuts Burger Brackets in Time for March Madness
5. Urban to Offer Meats Fresh from the Smoker on Saturday

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

But what about the Store's downstairs partner, the Post Office Tavern?

The small subterranean operation, which will seat no more than 18 people, is expected to serve late-night pub food such as individual pizzas and wagyu hot dogs (though that could change, since Clark is still building out the menu). So when does Clark expect to open the Tavern?

During a phone interview this afternoon, she says she thinks it'll open next week. Then she turns to Smith, whom Clark suggests has a more conservative take on the opening date. In the background, I can hear Smith yell, "Two months!"

Clark laughs uproariously. "Let's say five weeks," she says as a compromise. "Maybe less, but we'll see."