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 today. “We had one person decide to go join the circus.” Shallal can’t stop laughing at that memory.

“But weren’t they already working at a circus?,” I wondered to Shallal.

“Yeah,” Shallal says about the employee who had designs on circus life well before the three-ring inauguration. But during the crush, the employee said, “Since I’m already there, I might as well as go do it,” Shallal adds.

Read More “B&P Employee Quits to Join the Circus During Inaugural Weekend” »

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.

1. Jessica Alba, Tom Hanks, and Others Seen Dining at D.C. Restaurants
2. Denzel, Dustin, and Tyra: You Know You Want to Know Where They Ate
3. Can’t Get into Your Favorite Restaurant on Inauguration Night? Just Wait
4. Inauguration Drinks: Party Like It’s 1829
5. Johnny’s Half Shell Figured Out How to Deal with Inaugural Traffic: Never Go Home

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 their home. When the hungry masses finally left each night—by Fulchino’s best estimate, Johnny’s served up more than 2,100 meals during the four-day period—the managers simply pulled out their air mattresses and “French Foreign Legion” cots and went to sleep. The rest of the staff crashed at the homes of other workers who lived nearby. Chef Ann Cashion, who lives in Mount Pleasant, opted to take the Metro home.

Read More “Johnny’s Half Shell Figured Out How to Deal with Inaugural Traffic: Never Go Home” »

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 of celebrity dining:

• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dined at Michel Richard Citronelle on Saturday night.
• Violinist Itzhak Perlman and actor Christopher Lloyd chowed down at Central Michel Richard on Monday night.
• Tonight Show bandleader Kevin Eubanks supped at Central on Tuesday.
• Bruce Springsteen (you know him, right?) put aside his working-man persona long enough to pull up a seat at the Blue Duck Tavern on Sunday. NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams chose the Duck on Sunday, too.
• Denzel Washington and Joey Simmons from Run-D.M.C. were spotted at the lounge at the Park Hyatt Washington on Monday.
• Dustin Hoffman wolfed down a three-egg omelet and some cheeseburger sliders at Clyde’s of Georgetown on Monday.
• Not to start any rumors, but both actor Ray Romano and R&B diva Alicia Keys were seen at Sonoma on Monday—although, alas, separately.
• And finally, Tyra Banks slinked into Zola for a bite on Inauguration Day.

Image by Flickr user Andrea Sartorati

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 meal don’t outweigh the hassles of traveling downtown (even after many of the streets open back up after 7 p.m.).

Just ask Ashok Bajaj, the veteran D.C. restaurateur who owns a number of operations downtown, including 701, the Oval Room, the Bombay Club, and Rasika. Bajaj has been through five previous inaugurations, and every time, he says about 10 percent of his reservations don’t show up. That compares to about two percent of his reservations on an average weekend.

The problem for restaurateurs like Bajaj is that it’s hard to fill those no-shows on Inauguration Night, because everyone already has plans or they decided long ago they weren’t going to deal with the BS. Bajaj says he can fill those empty seats only about 30 percent of the time.

Read More “Can’t Get into Your Favorite Restaurant on Inauguration Night? Just Wait.” »

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 Room on Sunday. Actor Richard Schiff (Toby on The West Wing) also dined at this private meal arranged for the future vice president’s family.
• The Blue Duck Tavern was Celebrity Central over the weekend. The West End restaurant played host to Tom Hanks and wife, Rita Wilson, as well as Seinfeld co-creator Larry David, actor Ben Affleck, and country superstar couple, Faith Hill and Tim McGraw.
• Jessica Alba chowed down at the Bombay Club on Saturday.
• Wolfgang Puck shared a table on Sunday night with Sharon Stone and Forest Whitaker at—where else?—The Source by Wolfgang Puck. According to The Source’s publicist, the trio dined on asam vegetables, warm Maine lobster-daikon roll, steak au poivre, grilled lamb chops, and the pan-roasted rockfish with red Thai curry shrimp.
• The night before, The Source also hosted Redskins cornerback Shawn Springs.
  

Image by Flickr user dipalbhagde

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:

Read More “National Hot Dog Council Puts a Little Mustard on Obama’s Visit to Ben’s” »

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 mid-winter dining discount. Restaurateurs would be complete tools to sell their plates on the cheap this year.

Which brings me to Alexandria’s “Inaugural Restaurant Week,” which debuts right in the middle of the biggest presidential inauguration in decades. The NoVa version of Restaurant Week runs from Jan. 17-25 and like its D.C. cousin, the promotion allows patrons to order a three-course, prix-fixe dinner for $35 (or, in a few cases, a dinner for two for $35).

The question, of course, is why? Why would Alexandria restaurants offer steep discounts when they already have a captive audience?

Read More “D.C. Restaurant Week Pushed Back to February” »

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, ZagatBuzz notes:

Read More “Inauguration Eats: What Restaurants Are Doing to Celebrate Obama” »

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 and Robert F. Bennett’s attempts to mess with our four-day bender around Obama’s inauguration.

Bucher was the only one to respond, perhaps because he had a “top notch research team” looking into the matter. Here’s what they (he?) found out about the senators from California (Feinstein) and Bennett (Utah).

Read More “How to Influence Meddlesome Senators Over Our Extended Inauguration Drinking” »