Blagden Alley Tease: Over in Shaw, chef R.J. Cooper partially removed his shirt in an alleyway "in a demonstration of badassery" in advance of the opening of what promises to be his culinary center-stage spectacle at Rogue 24. [The Feast]

In-Depth Vegetable News: "When buying asparagus, girth is key." Baby asparagus, you see, is just a marketing gimmick scheme. [TBD]

Pop-Up BBQ Lunch: For fans of barbecue, check out the Friday sidewalk special at Westend Bistro. A $14 picnic basket lunch "includes a choice of meat, slaw, a fluffy biscuit..., dessert and tea or lemonade." [Metrocurean]

New Identity: Presto chango! A new tapas bar will emerge in Ballston after renovations conclude at Upper Crust Café. [Eat More Drink More via ARLNow]

Tremors in the Tysons Dining World! In some Fairfax County fine-dining news, Jon Mathieson, formerly of Inox and 2941 will be headed to Michel Richard's Michel at the Ritz-Carlton in Tysons Corner. Says Todd Kliman: "The mission is to make Michel more like Central and less like Citronelle." [Washingtonian]

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

"We're very excited," says co-owner Meshelle Armstrong about the company's new hire. "Hopefully he can move into one of the new places."

One of the new places could mean either Virtue Feed & Grain, Good Food's venture into gastro-pub territory, or Society Fair, the still-in-development gourmet "one-stop shop" with a heavy emphasis on wine. Armstrong thinks Wabeck's knowledge of the grape would make him a prime candidate for the latter operation, which is still negotiating a lease for a space on S. Washington St. in Old Town.

But Wabeck could also help Meshelle and Cathal Armstrong launch their own wine label, if the owners decide to move forward with that plan. They've been flirting with the notion of working with a Virginia winery to produce a house label for Restaurant Eve.

In the meantime, Wabeck will get a crash course in all things Armstrong. He'll start work on Tuesday, and he'll be learning all aspects of the Eat Good Food operations. He'll be waiting tables. He'll be studying kitchen procedures and practices. He'll even be spending time with Todd Thrasher over at PX. The goal is to turn him into a management dynamo for one of the new places.

If, however, you catch Wabeck spending a little too much time at The Majestic, it will be understandable. His girlfriend, Melissa Horst, is the beverage director at the "casually swank" restaurant on King Street.

R.J. Cooper's "24" tasting menu abruptly ended this month at Vidalia.

Putting together this year's Young & Hungry Dining Guide was an exercise in managing the chaos of the local dining scene. Several places that had all but secured a spot on my list of the 50 most fascinating restaurants — Inox, Teatro Goldoni, and Vidalia — suddenly found themselves on the outs. In Inox's case, it was unavoidable; the fine-dining operation closed after putting up a good fight in this poor excuse of an economy.

In Vidalia's case, R.J. Cooper's abrupt departure threw the kitchen into flux, lowering expectations enough to force me to give the downtown restaurant the boot. I say that even though Jeffrey "Mr. Obsessive" Buben continues to oversee Vidalia, no doubt applying the whip whenever his feverishly high standards are not maintained. But you cannot immediately replace one chef's vision, particularly Cooper's refined one, with another's and expect instant results.

The same holds true for Teatro Goldoni, whose owners gave chef Enzo Fargione his walking papers for doing nothing less than making that dated, commedia dell'arte restaurant relevant again. With Fargione out of the way, Goldoni installed a more casual, rustic Italian menu, which instantly put the K Street institution in the same league as about 1,000 other places.

After bumping these three destinations off the list, I ultimately selected only 10 fine-dining restaurants for this year's guide, which still represents 20 percent of my picks. The rest of the 40 slots have been taken up with casual or neighborhood or even fast-casual operations, which  makes sense. These kinds of eateries continue to multiply like bacteria on raw chicken.

One of the traps of putting together such a guide is to fall under the spell of the new. All the hype that surrounds freshly launched restaurants can distract a critic from the more mature restaurants that still deserve attention. I tried to be aware of that as I compiled this guide.  Seventeen restaurants from last year's list held their spots this time around. Of the 33 other spots, 15 are occupied by restaurants that have opened since the 2009 guide, which means 30 percent of the list features new eateries.

That's an uncomfortably high number for me. So I've decided to list the five veteran restaurants that just missed the cut.

• Corduroy: Chef Tom Power is a master at manipulating seasonal ingredients for maximum flavor.
• Blue Duck Tavern: The hotel restaurant still has one of the best brunches in the city.
• El Pollo Rico: The legion of Super Pollo fans is wrong. Those dry, lackluster birds don't begin to compare to EPR's.
• Poste Moderne Brasserie: Chef Rob Weland has turned his outdoor patio into a backyard farm for his kitchen — not to mention a backyard barbecue with his Poste Roasts.
• Joe's Noodle House: Still my favorite spot for authentic Szechuan cooking.

François Haeringer tested his last sauce on Tuesday.

What a terrible week for fans of the local restaurant scene. First Inox closes, then Roberto Donna admits to embezzling tax money from Arlington County, and finally the great chef François Haeringer passes away at age 91, working right to the end.

You were clicking like mad on all these sad reports. Here were your Top 5 from last week:

1. Roberto Donna Pleads Guilty to Felony Embezzlement in Arlington County
2. Sietsema Tweet: Inox Closed Last Night (*)
3. The Winner of Y&H's RAMMY Awards Contest: In Search of the Perfect Dumpling
4. Chef François Haeringer Dies at Age 91
5. SAVOR Mania: The Master List

* A certain light-drinking Budweiser beer was, once again, a popular item among readers, but we’ve stopped counting it.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Last week, chef Jon Mathieson, GM Jonathan Krinn, and sommelier John Wabeck decided to pull the plug on Inox, their experiment in upscale dining in Tysons Corner. Mathieson took a few minutes yesterday to talk about the venture — why it went under, why it was a hard sell in Tysons, and what his future holds. Below is an edited transcript.

Y&H: I’m sorry to hear about the demise of Inox. It’s a loss on the scene. I know it’s not easy on you or the staff to deal with a business that suddenly just goes away...

JM: It’s been a little difficult. I don’t think it’s totally set in yet, because we’ve been doing this a long time to prepare to get this place going. We were starting to hit our stride. It was a sort of shock to everybody.

Y&H: I can imagine. How is the staff taking it?

JM: I’ve had a really good rapport with the staff here. A lot of the cooks and the prep people have been with me for three or four years now. At 2941, I trained a lot of them over there. When they decided to do the venture here, I searched them out and I tried to get them on. So we’ve been together a long time. They’re coming in to see if we need anything or any help. It’s really nice.

Y&H: When did you actually break the news to the staff?

JM: We told the majority of the staff on Saturday morning. I didn’t think it was fair to go ahead and tell them after they put in a hard night’s work. Sit them down and say, ‘Tonight’s the last night.’ So we brought them in the next day. I think some of them had ideas, and of course Tom [Sietsema] had posted his Tweet about the restaurant. So I think they had their ideas, and there were rumblings, because, as you know, back in February, there was some rumblings. So were just fighting through things. We were going through a whole process, just making sure that we were building strong roots. Like I said before, this is a strong community. The Northern Virginia area has really supported us and taken a liking to us. A lot of people came to our defense... They’re a little bit sad. But this isn’t a non-profit. This is a restaurant that set out to make money and do the right thing. When it didn’t seem like it was going to go in that direction, I think it was in everybody’s best interest just to stop.

Y&H: I know it’s still really soon and you probably haven’t had a whole lot of time to sit back and just think about it. But as much as you have, have you thought about what you might do differently, if you had started it up today as opposed to two years ago?

JM: I think you need to figure out what the sweet spot is for the size of the restaurant...I don’t think anybody could have predicted when we opened this restaurant that, two weeks after we opened, we would be in the lowest point in the economic crisis of the United States in history. We were digging out from that. We tried to build a nice 11,000-square-foot restaurant that we thought could handle multi-tiers of dining, from private dining to bar dining to restaurant dining. I think the format works. I just think that if you’re not going to be able to pull the private dining business, which is one of the major business units, to the level that you expect, it makes it really difficult. I think what happens right now, if I was going to do it over again, it would be very hard to forget because you don’t know where the economy is going to go and who is going to spend money and when they’re going to spend money. Would I change the format of the food and the approach? No, I think right now we hit our sweet spot. I think we became a value-driven restaurant. I think our tasting menu was one of the cheaper tasting menus in the area, but we were giving high-quality ingredients. I think our price points were where they probably should have been or should be if we were going to move forward in the future to do something. The food is the food. I would have loved to have been able to do more private dining, because that was driving our business format. The 40- or 50-person pharmaceutical dinner turned into 15 or 20. That’s the big loss. I think we hustle a lot more in sort of finding out what companies were looking to spend and if they were going to actually go out and spend. I think right now the whole new thing is research.

Y&H: I’ve talked to some people who are also in the fine-dining world. I’m trying to get a grasp on what the market has been like in the last couple of years. The consensus seems to be that, for a number of restaurants, the market is still really strong. But they seem to say that the fine dining market has shrunk from, generally speaking, 10 percent to like 2 percent or less. So it’s harder to reach those people. It makes me wonder if you can do a fine dining restaurant in this area or maybe you need the perfect location to do it right now?

JM: I think location is going to be the key. I think you’re going to have to have all the pieces fit into the puzzle. You’re going to have to have a good deal. You’re going to have to have a large enough space. I think a lot of the reasons why fine dining restaurants are in hotels are because [hotels] can afford to give up that space for the amenity. I think it’s going to come down to who’s going to want somebody of this caliber or style of restaurant in their building or townhouse or general area to support. A restaurant like this is a draw to the area. It’s for the community. We serviced a lot of the local McLean and Great Falls and Bethesda people, and there’s not a lot in this area, besides 2941, that’s doing what we do.

Y&H: In retrospect, do you think you might have gone for a different location?

JM: Would I have gone for a different location?

Y&H: In other words, that location played a role in the restaurant’s inability to sustain itself?

JM: You know what, I think with all the construction going on for the Metro and things like that, I don’t think that benefited us in any way, shape, or form. I think one of the things that is more attractive to people, if you want to draw the D.C. crowd, is you need to be near a Metro. Metro gives the ability for people not to have to drive to come see you.

Y&H: What do you think the future of fine dining is, generally speaking?

JM: Fine dining is never going to go away. There’s always going to be a spot for it. I think what’s going to happen is there’s going to be the grand luxe places that are over the top. And then there’s going to be that next little tier where guys are trying to cook really great food but maybe they’re not going to have the…top-flight china. They’re going to have to do it a little bit different. It’s not going to have all the pomp and circumstance of some of the, I guess, corporate or hotel-style places. I think it’s going to change a little bit.

Y&H: When you say not the pomp and circumstance, like maybe fewer employees or less expensive china or tablecloths?

JM: Right, you might not go with the crystal decanters. You want not go with the silver flatware. You might go with the stainless steel. You might have to go with the Steelite china vs. the Rosenthal or something along that line. I think the start-up is going to be a lot different. I think you’re going to have to grow into the grand luxe type of restaurant.

Y&H: This must have been very hard on you and Jonathan Krinn and John Wabeck. You guys, as far as I understand, have been putting this together for years, planning it, thinking about it. How have you guys dealt with it so far?

JM: It’s a difficult situation. I don’t think we’ve really sat down and talked about it. I mean, when John Wabeck and I discussed him coming on with us, he wanted to develop himself as a sommelier and continue in pursuit of his goal of becoming a master [sommelier]. I’ve known John for 10 years and we’ve been good friends for a long time and I wanted to give him that opportunity. I think he feels like he has business that’s not taken care of right now. He has some things he really needs to finish up and do. He was hoping that it could be at Inox, but he understands that things happen. I think Jonathan was starting to find himself out in the front of the house and enjoying it. He’s always been that great reader, that great presence in the dining room, whether it was at 2941 or here. For me, I think it’s a little bittersweet because I just got re-reviewed and we got the three stars. I was starting to put my stamp on the food in the area. I’ve been very fortunate that, locally, I have a great following, but now I was going to pick up a little following from the D.C. market, which was really nice. I guess a lot of good things were being said because we got re-reviewed in such a short period of time. I think we were starting to go in the right direction.

Y&H: How long after you opened did you see that the numbers weren’t working in your favor?

JM: The business plan was set up to take care of those things early on. What was really difficult in the whole situation was we had put together a plan to bring everybody on board and put Inox on the map for a long period of time. So we were talking to various parties about doing that. We were going in the right direction, and then one of the parties decided it wasn’t for them. And that’s when we decided it wasn’t going to work.

Y&H: In other words, investors pulled out?

JM: No, no, no. The investors actually were very loyal and very supportive of the whole project all along. The investors were one of the great parts of this restaurant, the support that we received from our investors, the advice. Because a lot of them were very big in business in the area. It was great, and their loyalty was unbelievable. It just comes down to having three parties working or four parties working together to make the total situation work. When we were looking to sort of, I don’t want to say restructure, but when we were re-evaluating what we were doing, when we sat down with all the parties to see where we could go on this, everybody was very optimistic and very for making it happen. Then last week, it was just one of those things. Someone just said it’s not going to work for them.

Y&H: Was it the owner of the space? The Lerner group?

JM: It’s too soon for me to talk about it. There’s a lot of stuff still in the works. It wouldn’t be…helpful to anybody to just sort of say if it was this, that or the other. It was just four parties and one of the parties decided it wasn’t for them.

Y&H: Obviously, you can choose how much you want to tell me, but one of the things that someone had told me back in February was that the owner was already shopping the space around. I guess the thinking was they wanted someone who could pay the rent on the regular basis. I don’t know if any of that is true...Had you received any wind that they were dissatisfied back in February?

JM: We’ve had a good rapport with the Lerner group the whole time we’ve been doing this, and we still have a good rapport with them now. I would think that if they wanted to talk about anything, it’s something that you might want to ask them. I’m not sure how someone could shop a space around. I don’t know how that all works with a tenant there. That would be something that you’d have to talk to the Lerner group about. They have their thoughts. I’m not sure.

Y&H: You had mentioned earlier that you were coming into your own as a chef. Did you sort of refine your ideas from your opening-day menus into what you were doing at the end?

JM: What I decided to do is to have more fun with it, is to start cooking more for myself. I was getting input from the guests and talking to them and seeing what they were interested in eating. If someone said, ‘Hey, we’re really looking for that nice steak that I could eat over at The Palm but I’d rather come here and eat it here,’ so I put a steak on the menu. Somebody said, ‘Hey, I’d really like to see…different styles of fish.’ I just listened to my clientele. I talked to them as much as possible. I decided I was going to cook the way I’ve always cooked and sort of throw caution to the wind and just do it and enjoy doing it. I sort of got back to what I really did and enjoy doing.

Y&H: How would you say that differed from what you came out of the gate with? What were you trying to do with your opening-day menus?

JM: Earlier on, I think we were trying to be a little conservative, and it seemed a little forced. I think we wanted to bring a quality product to the fold. Early on, even though you have staff with you, in a new restaurant you need to sort of get your feet wet. I think by the time we were into six months of the restaurant, we were really starting to feel and understand what we could do. It was a lot easier for me to sort of drop some of the construction and finalizing, all the knickknacks in the restaurant. After the first couple of months, I could really focus on what I wanted to do with the food.

Y&H: When Jonathan Krinn went into the dining room, I’d be curious on what the decision-making was to go from two in the kitchen to one in the dining room and one in the kitchen…

JM: Jonathan, like I said, has always been an amazing person in the front of the house. Whether he had a chef’s coat on or suit on, he’s been very good with the guests. He’s built great rapport with the guests…Going into the whole project that was the direction we wanted to go in. It was just that I hadn’t sort of staked my claim as a chef in the area, though I had been doing the cooking in many restaurants, many upscale restaurants for a long period of time. I had a couple of kids. I started at 2941 just wanting to sort of be on the back burner and cook food and work in the kitchen and train staff and do things along that way, while Jonathan did his PR tour, and it worked out fine…It was actually very selfish on my part. I was cooking and doing what I love to do and running a kitchen and working with the guys. And he was able to do what he wanted to do and be out talking to the guests and things like that. It also helped us meet people to get Inox started. When the opportunity came about to do the restaurant, our PR person told us, ‘Oh, you need to go with the two-chef concept,’ and we’re like, ‘Yeah, but it’s really not going to be that way.’ ‘But Jonathan is the more known in Northern Virginia and why would you not use that?’ And we’re like, ‘OK.’ We listened. We knew eventually the transition was going to happen, that Jonathan was going to probably go out front, because he really enjoys it and it was something he really wanted to do. He was an owner, and we felt that it was important one of the owners be out front, touching as many guests as possible and getting them to come down to the kitchen…and meeting more friends.

Y&H: So what’s in your future right now? Do you have some immediate plans? Are you going to kick back for awhile and assess what just happened? Do you need to go back to the kitchen immediately?

JM: I’m never going to leave the kitchen, that’s for sure. What am I going to do? I’m going to look around and see what’s out there. Whether it’s starting a new venture or seeing what the deals are out there, to be honest with you. I’m not in a hurry right now. It’s more that I want the opportunity to do what I do foodwise. There’s definitely particulars. I want to have a strong wine program to go along with it.

Y&H: Will you keep the team together? The dream team as it were?

JM: I think that’ll be all up to each situation…I’m not sure, you know. There’s a lot of personalities and there’s a lot of talent here. We’ll see. Ultimately, if someone came and said, ‘Hey, you guys want to do something again? We’d support you in it.’ Yeah, we would, but I think we have to be realistic to what’s going on in the economy right now and figure it out from that stand point. What’s going to be the best situation? Because I know all three of us right now don’t want to be in this situation that we’re currently in again.

Y&H: Are you thinking the concept that the three of you, by nature, would put together may not be perfect for the current economic environment?

JM: I’m not necessarily sure the direction is to go bistro/brasserie or is it to go what I think are niches and going upscale? I would never say fine-dining because I have certain beliefs on who’s doing fine dining and I’m not necessarily sure we had achieved that level yet. We were working towards it. I think we were definitely an upscale restaurant, giving upscale service and food and beverage across the board. It’s something that I really enjoy, and I think there’s definitely a niche in this area. I just think you need to be in an area that’s going to be able to help support that dream. Tysons is what it is right now. It’s steakhouses and chain restaurants. To break that mentality, I think we were doing it slowly but surely. It takes time, like anything else.

Y&H: If you had your druthers where would you want to do a fine-dining restaurant?

JM: I love it in this area. I love the Northern Virginia-D.C. area. So if I could do something, it would definitely be here.

Y&H: Any particular neighborhood?

JM: Vienna, McLean, Great Falls area is where I live. I’d love to do it in the communities that I frequent and that I live in. My kids go to daycare here. This is my home, so I’d love to have something in my home area. But I also believe that D.C. is a rock’s throw away. I totally support the D.C. restaurant/food scene. I think it’s a great food scene. If there was an opportunity to do something there, I’d more than welcome that, too.

The Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington hosts the annual RAMMY Awards on Sunday at the Marriott Wardman Park, and the question foremost on Y&H's mind is this: How will Inox's recent closing affect the ceremony, if at all?

If you haven't heard, the celebrated, triple-chef-threat Inox closed this weekend. Chef Jon Mathieson shared the bad news with WaPo's Tom Sietsema late on Friday night.

Inox, as I'm sure many of you know, is nominated in the New Restaurant of the Year category, along with Bibiana, Birch & Barley, Bourbon Steak, and Eventide. Mathieson himself is also nominated in the Rising Culinary Star of the Year category, along with chefs Mike Isabella from Zaytinya, Shannon Overmiller from The Majestic, Liam LaCivita from Liberty Tavern, and Nicholas Stefanelli from Bibiana.

"This is the first time that this has happened in recent memory," e-mailed Lynne Breaux, president of RAMW. She was referring to nominees who are no longer in business.

I had so many questions running around my head, I didn't know where to begin. Would Inox and Mathieson still compete in their categories? Would the RAMMYs officially acknowledge the restaurant's demise on stage? Would the winners in those two categories (assuming Inox and Mathieson can compete and assuming they don't win) feel like these were hollow victories now that Inox and Mathieson are not currently on the scene? (I was imagining how, say, Robert Downey Jr. would have felt had he won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 2009 over the late Heath Ledger.)

Well, Breaux clarified my thinking with two quick acknowledgments:  Inox and Mathieson can indeed still win the awards in their respective categories, and the voting is already tabulated.

Inox, in other words, may be the first restaurant to win an award after it has already closed. And Mathieson may be the first chef to win the Rising Culinary Star award and not be currently employed.  How much would that suck?

Restaurateur Ashok Bajaj, owner of the nominated Bibiana, acknowledged the difficulty of the situation. But he adds: "I think every restaurant that is nominated is a good restaurant...We're all superior in our own ways. Whoever wins would be good."

Photo courtesy of Inox

Sad news: "Tonight is our last night." That's chef Jon Mathieson, telling me that Inox is closing.

This, I hope, vindicates Todd Kliman, who first broke the news Thursday night via Twitter and who took some online bashing because of it. But I also trust that no one is gloating over this scoop. The restaurant community lost a terrific player last night.

My last meal there was a memorable one, particularly after we challenged sommelier John Wabeck to pick a bottle, other than a pinot, to pair with our Alaskan black cod and La Belle Farms duck breast and leg confit. Wabeck pulled a Spanish La Rioja Alta Gran Reserva 904 out of his hat. Its balance of acidity and ripe fruit and just a touch spicy barnyard was absolutely spot-on perfect.

I will miss Inox. The place was headed for a spot on my 50 favorite restaurants list, due out on June 18.

So will the RAMMY Awards, where Inox was up for Best New Restaurant. The winner in that category will earn a hollow victory this year.

Inox in Tysons will be closing tomorrow, according to a trusted source.

Kliman floated a similar rumor back in February, which Inox chef/owner Jon Mathieson quickly shot down. It didn't stop the rumor mill from continuing to churn, however. Y&H received his share of e-mails on the subject, one of whom outright claimed that I was duped and Inox would be closing.

I don't know the full story, but I do know this: I called over there today and the woman who answered the phone said, the rumor "is completely false." Inox would be open today and tomorrow. It will, however, be closed on Memorial Day. The woman also noted that Tom Sietsema's recent re-evaluation has been good for business at Inox.

I have a call in to Mathieson again. More as I know it.

After all, I remember talking to a person inside Citronelle who said rumors of its closure in Georgetown had impacted business.

Chef Jon Mathieson quickly returned my call and noted, "Yeah, we're closed today and tomorrow." But he said, weather permitting, Inox will be back open and operating on Monday. (In fact, the chef wasn't completely giving up on Saturday night; he said Inox managers and owners would make a final decision after the storm had passed.)

Given Kliman's apparent confidence level in reporting the rumor via Twitter, I gently pressed Mathieson, asking if there were any financial problems that might prevent the restaurant from moving forward into the future.

The chef's response: "Not that I know of."

• @tomsietsema: Every critic's nightmare: Chef leaves before review runs. In other words, Frank Morales is gone from Jackie's (& I have no column for 2/28).

That was fast.

• @toddkliman: News Flash: Inox is closing, according to a trusted source of mine. Monterrey Bay Fish Grotto, too. Tough times in Tysons–?

Guess Y&H's influence is less than he thought.