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.

You can't blame the employees for cracking. Busboys & Poets stayed open 24 hours a day during the inauguration and became something of a pilgrimage site for every lefty who wanted to be part of Barack Obama history: You ate at B&P, you genuflected at the Mall, you went home. Oh, and you bought a book at Busboys.

Shallal says the bookstore within the restaurant sold $8,400 worth of merchandise in a 24-hour period between Sunday, Jan. 18, and Monday, Jan. 19. The other days were not bad, either, the owner says. On an average, non-inauguration day, the bookstore pulls down maybe $1,000 a day, Shallal says.

Then there were the diners: From 11 a.m. Saturday until the Tuesday night after the inauguration, the restaurant was almost always full, with a significant line to get it. Sometimes, there was a line at 5 a.m. On a typical weekend, Busboys probably serves 1,500 people a day, the owner says. During the four-day inauguration weekend, it served closer to 5,000 people a day.

And they served all those people with only a few extra employees brought on for an added, late-night shift, Shallal says. "One employee worked 30 hours straight," he says. The owner himself worked 16- to 17-hour days, always taking the much-dreaded overnight shift.  It didn't help that media sources around the country continued to hype Busboys & Poets; the pieces, including Anthony Bourdain's No Reservation show on D.C., only contributed to the crash of humanity waiting to get inside.

"That was bad timing," Shallal says about Bourdain's segment on B&P. "We'd rather have it hit at another time, like in the summer when the recession really hits."

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

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.

So why didn't Fulchino, who lives in Adams Morgan, decide to go home, too? Mostly to squeeze a little extra sleep in, he says. Since he was working until 2:30 or 3:30 a.m. every night during that period—and had to be back at work by 5 or 6 a.m. for the breakfast shift, "there was no reason for me to leave," Fulchino says.

Well, maybe there was a reason after all: The heating system was programmed to shut down automatically at midnight every night. Fulchino and his managers couldn't feel the lack of heat while there were still warm bodies in the restaurant, but once they hit the hay, they suddenly realized it was freezing inside the Half Shell. Couldn't you have just turned it back on, John?

"I could have, but I was too tired to get out of the cot," Fulchino says.

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

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.

Bajaj, like many other restaurateurs for the inauguration, is doing something he usually doesn't: Asking for credit cards to hold a reservation. Bajaj also informed his diners that he will charge them $50 a head if they don't show up. It will cut down on some no-shows, but not all of them.

Over at Michael Richard Citronelle, they didn't originally take credit card numbers to secure an inaugural reservation. But they started once the folks who first booked tables, nearly two months ago, began to act all squirrelly. Citronelle spokeswoman Mel Davis says the restaurant had to rebook about 50 percent of its inaugural reservations due to cancellations.

But once they started asking for credit cards and informed diners about Citronelle's cancellation policy—the restaurant reserves the right to charge your card $105 per person if you don't cancel 72 hours in advance—the reservation problems cleared right up. Davis says Citronelle had barely any no shows this weekend.

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

In a press release issued yesterday, the Council noted:

President-Elect Barack Obama's visit to the DC landmark Ben's Chili Bowl for a half-smoke
yesterday reflects his excellent and all-American taste in cuisine.

According to National Hot Dog & Sausage Council President Janet M. Riley, "His stop yesterday shows that while the most sophisticated chefs in America may be vying for his palate, American hot dogs and sausages were the 'wieners' this weekend in Washington."

Sheesh, talk about trying to make something digestible from scraps. But the Council didn't stop there. It had to flaunt its regional bias in how to top a hot dog, right there at the bottom of the release:

Given Obama's Chicago home, the Council is optimistic that he will adhere to one of the Councils' — and the Windy City's — cardinal etiquette rules: no ketchup on hot dog after the age of 18. Under Council rules, First Children Malia and Sasha are exempt from the ketchup restriction — at least for a few more years.

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?

I think the answer lies in the 25-plus restaurants that have signed up for the promotion. Most are mid-level eateries that couldn't attract a dog's attention without placing meat outside the front door. But the promotion also includes one very good restaurant, Farrah Olivia, that's simply too far off the beaten track to benefit from the high-volume of waddling foot traffic that will hit Old Town later this month.

Still, I have to wonder: Didn't these restaurateurs get the memo? It's gonna be real hard for a lot of folks in Virginia to cross the bridge into D.C. on inauguration day. They're gonna need to eat somewhere, and they can't all dine at Restaurant Eve.

This handy little compendium of ideas comes courtesy of ZagatBuzz, D.C. edition. Among other
tidbits, ZagatBuzz notes:

At Fyve in the Ritz-Carlton Pentagon City, DC will get a taste of Hawaii (poke, macadamia-crusted mahi-mahi) in à la carte offerings or as a $48 prix fixe from January 13th–20th; PS 7's is focusing on Illinois regional cuisine (who knew there was one?) in a four-course $65 prix fixe; and, finally, Asia Nine is rolling sushi with politics in mind, i.e., a lean, green Obama roll (filled with vegetables) and a Lame Duck roll (roasted duck, cucumber and soy nuggets).

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).

It took some sleuth undercover work, but we discovered that Californians drink wine. Yup, they even grow the grapes there, and even the French say it's pretty good. However, in the data collected by us in our extremely unscientific survey, [we learned that] wine sales hit ZERO after midnight in local bars. So it's plainly simple, add wine spritzers to the late-night menus and it seems with some lobbying Ms. Feinstein should come around.

Oh yeah, her state reportedly will be out of money by March. Maybe if they let their own bars stay open a bit later and collect some more sales tax on our friends Mr. Absolut, Mr. Bombay Sapphire and Mr. Cuervo, her state would be out of the woods.

Oh, the state drink for California? PRUNE JUICE. Enough said.

As for Utah, they've banned certain 'fruity' alcoholic drinks. God forbid, and yes indeed, the Utah Department of Alcohol has...wait for it....three employees! I made this statistic up, but it sounds so good. I actually think polygamists should come to D.C. with all of their wives and party it up on inauguration eve. That's a concept: Them coming to the home of the FBI, not the other way around!

Image by Flickr user vobios.