How busy was it at Busboys & Poets on 14th Street NW during inaugural weekend? Well, according to owner Andy Shallal, it was so busy that three employees quit, including a manager. "They just cracked and left...I had one employee just say, ‘I can't do this'" and walk out, says Shallal during a phone conversation [...]
I have just one word for you: celebrities. Y'all love 'em. They dominated the top two spots this week on the Young & Hungry blog. Jessica Alba, Tom Hanks, and Others Seen Dining at D.C. Restaurants Denzel, Dustin, and Tyra: You Know You Want to Know Where They Ate Can't Get into Your Favorite Restaurant [...]
Whether on foot or in the car, traveling was a pain in the ass during Inauguration Weekend. John Fulchino, co-owner of Johnny's Half Shell, knew it would be, which is why he and five other managers didn't leave the Capitol Hill restaurant for several days. From Saturday through Tuesday night, Fulchino and company made work [...]
I'm not sure how I've become the City Paper's gossip columnist, but given that I've already waded into the shallow end of the reporting pool with this post and that post, I should learn to accept it. If you're not bored with it yet—and given what Google Analytics shows me, you're not—here's the latest sampling [...]
Try as they might to prevent it, downtown restaurants, even fine ones like The Source by Wolfgang Puck or Central Michel Richard, will lose customers on Inauguration Night. Some folks won't show up because they got a better, last-minute offer, like a ball invite. Others simply won't arrive because they've decided the benefits of the [...]
Following up on last week's celebrity tip-off sheet, Young & Hungry has been working the phones to find out where the rich and famous have been dining this Inauguration Weekend. Here's what we've heard: Yo-Yo Ma dined at 701 on Saturday night. The Biden Family, minus the big daddy himself, enjoyed breakfast at the Oval [...]
Barack Obama's surprise visit to Ben's Chili Bowl on Saturday has generated so much attention—on newspapers, blogs, TV, and YouTube—that the National Hot Dog & Sausage Council has decided to add its own cheese to the overblown event. In a press release issued yesterday, the Council noted:
The Washington Business Journal is reporting that this winter's D.C. Restaurant Week promotion will be pushed back to February, in deference to the Barack Obama's inauguration on Jan. 20. The move makes sense to me: The D.C. dining market will be flooded with hundreds of thousands of tourists in mid-January, the traditional period for this [...]
As the inauguration approaches, and threatens to turn our town into one giant parking lot, we'll start scouring the town (well, the Web, too) to unearth the most interesting eats out there to celebrate Barack Obama's first day in office. This handy little compendium of ideas comes courtesy of ZagatBuzz, D.C. edition. Among other tidbits, [...]
Mark Bucher does not need a publicist to tell him whether he can tell a joke in public, which is one reason why, aside from his namesake sandwich, I like the founder and co-owner of BGR: The Burger Joint in Bethesda. Earlier this week, I went trolling for comments from chefs/mixologists/bartenders about Sens. Dianne Feinstein [...]
