Allow me to offer a disclaimer before I start: You can trust my picks for the District's best shopping districts as much as you can trust Bernie Madoff's financial advice. Through years of selective focus, I can walk through any neighborhood and ignore all manner of shoe shops, clothing stores, and perfumeries, my mind singularly focused on the latest eatery to open its doors.

As such, you'll have to cut me some friggin' slack if I missed one of your favorite shopping meccas. This ain't my area of expertise. So, with that in mind, here are the best neighborhoods to mix shopping and eating on Black Friday, the day that I personally plan to stay at home, far from the marauding hordes armed with their razor-sharp plastic cards.

• Dupont Circle: I've heard you can buy good shit around here. I know you can eat well, although that hasn't always been the case. I think some recent additions have significantly improved the dining in Dupont, particularly in the fast-casual area, which will probably capture most of the shoppers on Black Friday. You can't go wrong (well, you can, but not usually) at BGR: The Burger Joint, Panas Gourmet, Sweetgreen, Nando's Peri-Peri, and even Pizzeria Paradiso (if the place is on its game that day.) For more upscale options, you have the exquisite Obelisk and the newcomer Eola.
• Georgetown: With a few exceptions — Citronelle, La Chaumiere, and Leopold's Kafe + Konditorei — I've long considered Georgetown a wasteland of food options, a tourist destination where many eateries are content to slide by on mediocre fare. The neighborhood has improved of late. I like the big juicy patties at Thunder Burger & Bar (and the craft beer selection). I admire the Neapolitan pies at Il Canale, and I know I can always get some decent sweets at Georgetown Cupcake and Baked & Wired. And if all else fails, I can just slip into my favorite little bistro in the area.
• U Street Corridor/14th Street Strip/Logan Circle: OK, granted, this is really several neighborhoods clumped together, but what the hell. It's the holidays. I'm feeling generous. The dining options in this area have exploded. The hard part is not finding a decent place to eat, but deciding which one to pick. There's Masa 14, Teak Wood, Bar Pilar, Oohhs & Aahhs, Cork Wine Bar, Great Wall-Szechuan House, Little Ethiopia, JJ's Cheesesteaks, and, of course, the mother of all beer emporiums, Birch & Barley/ChurchKey. I know where I'll be shopping this holiday season.
• Capitol Hill/Barracks Row: I've heard this is a good shopping area, but I have my doubts. I do know that you can get quality bites in the neighborhood. You, of course, have Spike Mendelsohn's fast-food two-fer, Good Stuff Eatery and We, the Pizza. Come to think of it, casual dining (some more refined than others, obviously) rules in this neighborhood. You have Matchbox, Ted's Bulletin, DC-3, Zest Bistro, Montmartre, Ba Bay, Market Lunch, Taqueria Nacional, and Tunnicliff's Tavern. If you want to take a few steps up the gastronomic ladder, you can always hit a pair of restaurants run by two of the District's most notable chefs: Johnny's Half Shell under Ann Cashion and Bistro Bis under Jeffrey Buben.

Good luck with your shopping on Friday, and please, someone, let me know when it's over.

The Ba Bay Team: Khoa Nguyen, Sara Siegel, Nick Sharpe, and Denise Nguyen.

You've likely heard about the new Vietnamese restaurant taking over the former Locanda space on Capitol Hill. But maybe you haven't heard this: The forthcoming Ba Bay will feature Nick Sharpe in the kitchen.

For those who need a fast refresher, Sharpe used to be executive chef at Sonoma Restaurant and Wine Bar, which is, last time I dined there at least, not particularly Vietnamese. So what gives?

You could say Sharpe has connections.

He and Ba Bay principal owner, Khoa Nguyen, have a history together. About four years ago, they both worked under then chef R.J. Cooper at Vidalia, Sharpe in the kitchen and Nguyen at the front of the house. The two chefs (Nguyen has a degree from the Culinary Institute of America) stayed in touch as Sharpe jumped from Maestro in Tysons Corner to Fiamma in New York City to Mio in D.C. before finally landing at Sonoma in 2009.

Nguyen and his cousin, managing partner Denise Nguyen, understood that Sharpe, given his experiences in Cooper and Fabio Trabocchi's kitchens, would bring an element of refinement to the Vietnamese street dishes they planned to serve."It's just elevating what's already great," says Denise Nguyen during a recent phone call.

In order to start elevating, however, Sharpe first had to learn Vietnamese cuisine.  To do so, the cousins took Sharpe to a family member's home in Williamsburg, where he learned the background and the proper methods to make a number of Vietnamese dishes, from pho to caramelized clay pot chicken.

"In that regard," says Denise Nguyen, "it's a big creative push for him."

Sharpe is not alone in that regard, either. Khoa and Denise Nguyen have also hired Sara Siegel as sous chef and pastry chef. She has the chops for both jobs. She has not only worked the line at Mario Batali's Babbo in Greenwich Village but also pastry at — well, who would have guessed this? — Vidalia.

"It's sort of funny," says Denise Nguyen. "We have this Vidalia backbone here."

Hmm, this casual operation, with dishes ranging from $6 to $22, suddenly sounds like one of the most promising new restaurants in D.C. Look for it to open in November at 633 Pennsylvania Ave. SE.

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.

Good morning, Y&H Nation. We're running behind today in more ways than one. Y&H is still neck-deep in this year's Young & Hungry Dining Guide, so the blog may be a little thin over the next couple of days. Work with us here, folks.

In the meantime, here are the most-popular items from last week:

1. Drinking the World Cup: Biergarten Haus Opens Friday (*)
2. Chef R.J. Cooper Leaves Vidalia
3. Roberto Donna Pleads Guilty to Felony Embezzlement in Arlington County
4. Fire Station 1 Restaurant and Brewing Co. Could Open on Friday
5. DC Finally Getting a German Beer Garden? The Lagerheads Share Their Outdoor Picks in the Meantime.

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

UPDATED: 5:13 p.m. 8/9/2010

R.J. Cooper, the chef who won a James Beard award in 2007 while helming the Vidalia kitchen, has abruptly left the downtown restaurant. Cooper confirmed his departure this afternoon but declined to provide further details.

Cooper did say that he would try to resurrect his celebrated "24" tasting menu elsewhere while he prepares to open his own restaurant, Pigtails, a reference to his twin daughters and his love of pork products. He's close to signing a deal on a neighborhood location away from downtown.

The Detroit native has been at Vidalia since 2004, after working at New Heights and Toka Cafe. In a 2006 interview with StarChefs.com, Cooper said that he considered Vidalia and Bistro Bis owner Jeffrey Buben a mentor.

"Jeffrey Buben taught me about running a business, corporate structure, and keeping systems in place — things that make you successful," Cooper said.

Buben could not immediately be reached for comment.

R.J. Cooper's foie gras parfait, part of his "24" menu at Vidalia

Twice R.J. Cooper found himself at Bryan Voltaggio's Table 21 at Volt, and twice the Vidalia chef found himself impressed. "Bryan crushed me a couple of times," says Cooper, his choice of words providing a brief glimpse into his old college jock persona. Cooper sounds like a ballplayer who just watched some lefty no-hit his team.

But like any competitive athlete — or chef — Cooper viewed Voltaggio's meals as sources of inspiration, not desperation. "I owe them payback," Cooper tells me by way of explanation. "Let's do three more [courses than Voltaggio's 21] and see how it goes!"

And just like that, Cooper consulted with Vidalia owner Jeffrey Buben and launched his "24" tasting table.

Don't get the wrong impression about this downtown dining experience, though. Cooper swears it's not some mad rush to see which chef can put out the most courses or display the most imagination. (Which, after all, will almost always pale in comparison to the 30-plus-course minibar experience.)

"We''re not doing it out of ego," says the Beard Award-winning Cooper, who plates and finishes each dish in full view of his tasting-table diners. "It wasn't out of saying, 'I want to do more just because I want to do more'...It kind of fits into the theme of the menu [and] it's kind of a great working and thinking process between myself and the kitchen staff."

I recently had a chance to sit down at Cooper's six-seat table in the Vidalia bar (which can be expanded to seat eight) and take in these 24 courses. Actually, it was only 23. In the heat of service, Cooper forgot one. "I counted really badly that day," the chef says, joking about his 41-year-old eyes. "I owe you a course. That sucks."

I'd be hard-pressed to say that Cooper "owes" me one. I didn't walk away from his table feeling in need of anything, except perhaps a flatbed truck to haul my bloated ass home. This was a 23-course feast that covered the waterfront, from high-end to low-end, including caviar, lobster, Wagyu beef, sturgeon, foie gras, blood sausage, pork rinds, bresaola, bacon, and eel. Thank God they were all small, jewel-box like portions. Well, except for the pork rinds, which Cooper and team scattered all over the table for us to devour.

Cooper and I spent three separate interviews dissecting each of the 23 courses on his tasting menu, which includes wine and cocktail pairings by sommelier Ed Jenks. I'll publish a more detailed breakdown of the "24" menu later on the Young & Hungry blog, but for now, let me point out two important elements of the meal.

The first is its progression, which does not follow the standard order of light-to-heavy plates and white-to-red wines. You might start your evening with a flute of Schramsberg champagne and then move to a cocktail, followed by a Gamay and a shift back to Grüner Veltliner. The small plates have a similar sort of seemingly random progression: courses of house-made ricotta and "peas and carrots" may follow sous-vide Wagyu beef or a quenelle of bacon-infused ice cream may be inserted into the middle of the menu, right after a plate of sous-vide lamb tenderloin from Elysian Fields.

"If you go with the progression of white wine, white wine, reds...your palate gets really overwhelmed," Cooper says. "We kind of want to tease the palate along the way...not totally blow your palate away."

The second element to note about "24" is Cooper's clever and technically complicated riffs on familiar dishes — or even not-so-familiar dishes. It might be his first course of sterling caviar served on a ribbon of egg-and-cream "pappardelle" with a dollop of caper-lemon emulsion and a crunchy strip of house-made brioche, which is Cooper's take on the classic opener of caviar served with chopped hardboiled eggs, capers, and toast points. Or it might be his version of "carpetbagger's steak," in which Cooper takes a cap of dry-aged rib-eye and injects it with an oyster-leeks-and-champagne ragu.

"It’s a lot of work to do food like this," Cooper says. "I want to take [diners] to a different universe of cooking, a different theater of cooking. It’s like going to a b-rated movie compared to Star Wars.”

Unlike Star Wars, however, the "24" experience changes with each meal. The only thing that Cooper will carryover, he says, is the opening course of caviar and pappardelle; everything else will be different, whether it's a small change to an existing course or a new course altogether. The price, though, is fixed at $150 per person, which includes alcohol pairings. To make a reservation, call Vidalia at (202) 659-1990.

The "24" experience reminded me, of course, of some of my favorite tasting menus over the years, whether Johnny Monis' degustation at Komi or Enzo Fargione's old chef's table at Teatro Goldoni, which is now just a memory.

So Y&H Nation, what's your favorite tasting menu or chef's table in the city? E-mail me and let me know.

The rest of the non-profits around the metro area — you know, the ones that don't have their hand in Haitian earthquake relief — must feel like the location scout for Avatar. Really damn underappreciated.

But in this economy, many non-profits are getting hit with a double whammy: The need for their services has increased, while their donations have stagnated, if not dropped. That's in part why José Andrés, Joan Nathan, and Alice Waters have teamed up to host this weekend's Sunday  Night Suppers and Sunday Night Sips. (Tickets are available here.)

These intimate, celebrity-chef fundraisers are actually a reprise from last year's Art. Food. Hope. dinners, which were tied to the inauguration. A year ago, the meals raised more than $100,000 for D.C. Central Kitchen and Martha's Table.

D.C.-based cookbook author Nathan explains this year's expanded focus to Y&H:

Alice [Waters] was looking for a way to bring the issues of sustainability, hunger, and nutrition to the fore during the Inauguration. She asked me which local non profits would benefit from this. And we decided to have these dinners at people's homes to benefit Martha's Table and DC Central Kitchen. They were such a success that we decided to repeat them this year with an increased emphasis on hunger. We also added Sunday Sips, a cocktail party so that younger people who are interested in these issues could contribute ($125) and also meet many like minded individuals while eating and great food and wine.

It's a good thing that the organizers added the Sunday Night Sips. Because even at $500 a head, the Sunday Night Dinners are almost sold out. As of this morning, there were only 10 seats left.

It's easy to understand why the dinners are popular: Just check out the list of participating chefs below. Now imagine one (or more) of them cooking for you at someone's home in D.C. Lots of people would shell out good money for that, even if it weren't tied to charity.

The Sips event is a little less pricey at $125 per person, and its focus is on youth. Here's a description of the event and its participants:

"Sunday Night Sips.” There you can sample canapes created by a number of rising chefs: Will Artley of Evening Star Cafe, Heather Chittum of Hook, Mike Colletti of We The Pizza, Brian Lacayo and Spike Mendelsohn of Good Stuff Eatery, Allison Sosna from D.C. Central Kitchen, and Esquire magazine’s “Chef of the Year” Barton Seaver of Blue Ridge. Graduates of DC Central Kitchen’s job training program will be doing the serving, along with other volunteers. And there’s a screening of a Lori Silverbush film, Hungry in America. 

You can order your tickets to Sunday Night Sips here.

The list of participating chefs for the Sunday Night Suppers:

• Julian Medina (Toloache) and Kaz Okochi (Kaz Sushi Bistro)
• Alice Waters (Chez Panisse) and Jean Pierre
• Elisabeth Bourgeois (Le Mas Tourteron in Gorde, France ) and Robert Weland (Poste)
• Todd Gray (Equinox) and Cesare Lanfranconi (Spezie)
• Michel Richard (Citronelle and Central)
• Gabriel Kreuther (The Modern in New York)
• Nicholas Stefanelli (Bibiana)
• John Cochran and Sidra Forman (formerly of Rupperts) with Joan Nathan (cookbook author) and Bill Yosses (pastry chef from the White House)
• Charles Phan (The Slanted Door) and Lien Lo
• Michel Nischan and Nora Pouillon (Restaurant Nora)
• Brian McBride (Blue Duck Tavern) and Ariane Daguin (D'Artagnan)
• Katsuya Fukushima (THINKfoodGROUP)
• Cathal Armstrong (Restaurant Eve)
• Jeffrey Buben (Bistro Bis) and R.J. Cooper (Vidalia).

Tonight officially kicks off winter D.C. Restaurant Week, which means that if you haven't already secured your reservations to the city's finest, priciest dining rooms, you're pretty much screwed.  Because, let's be honest, if you're not hitting the most expensive restaurants, you're not getting much bang for your buck during RW.

Once you start figuring in drinks, upcharges, gratuities, and that dessert course that you'd never order under normal circumstances, you don't always walk away from Restaurant Week, thinking, "My God! What a deal!" You think: "My God, what just hit me? Didn't I come in here looking to spend $35?"

With the idea that many of the best reservations have been snagged already, Y&H offers you the Ten Best Deals still out there for Restaurant Week. (Incidentally, I have focused on dinners only, since lunch tends to be a better deal all around; each of these ten recommendations had seats available by Monday afternoon.)

This list is after the jump.

• 701: This year's RW menu is a little more streamlined than last winter's version, but chef Adam Longworth has put together a quality list of appetizers and entrees, including plates of pork loin and salmon. Only Thursday evening is booked, a hostess tells me.
• Dino: Dean Gold does one of the best Restaurant Week programs in town. His whole menu is available, including the terrific duck beggar's purse, with only two upcharges on the entire thing. Even better: Wines over $50 a bottle are 33 percent off the entire month of January, which is how long Gold's RW runs as well. Reservations are still available, but you may have to accept a late seating on Thursday. Friday, or Saturday.
• Ristorante Tosca: You may have to elbow your way through a roomful of lobbyists (and who wouldn't like to elbow a lobbyist?), but chef Massimo Fabbri is putting his best food forward for RW, with only two upcharges. Reservations are available, though only late and early seatings on Friday and Saturday. Tosca is closed on Sunday.
  
• Johnny's Half Shell: Beard Award-winning chef Ann Cashion has fashioned a solid RW menu that features a few of the Shell's classic dishes, including the Maryland crabcake (only one per order) and New Orleans file gumbo.  Reservations are available all week.
• PS 7's: Some of Peter Smith's best plates are specials that seemingly appear out of nowhere — I'm thinking of his recent merguez sausage with buttery sourdough croutons — but this RW menu offers a chance to taste the chef's winter experiments with gastriques. Most of the prime seatings, between 7 and 8 p.m., are taken, but early and late tables are available.
• Kaz Sushi Bistro: It's unusual for a sushi house to stand out during RW, but I think chef Kaz Okochi has put together a winning four-course menu comprised of appetizers, sushi (upcharges for the pricey fish, of course), hand rolls, and desserts. Lots of good seats are still available.
• Firefly: Even though the braised delights of the "mini" pot roast come with a $6 upcharge, many of chef Danny Bortnick's other RW offerings carry no supplemental fees. Don't miss his salt-roasted baby beets, which put a new twist on the traditional winter dish. You may have to accept late or early seatings on Friday or Saturday, but the rest of the week is wide open.
• New Heights: You could argue that this isn't much of a deal, given that you can already get three courses for $38 any ol' day, but chef Logan Cox has expanded the options for RW, with only one upcharge. I think it's time I gave Cox another chance, don't you?  Seating is wide open here, even for the weekend.
• Farmers & Fishers (aka Agraria): Last year's face-lift at this Washington Harbor restaurant ushered in a more casual concept. So it only makes sense that for RW, Farmers & Fishers would expand the promotion to four courses for $35, which actually makes it a deal. Saturday looks like a tough get, but the rest of the dates are open.
• Vidalia: Jeffrey Buben's place generated some controversy last year during RW, but this year, the downtown institution is coming out strong, with one of the most well-composed menus for the week. There's a reason this place is almost booked. Only late seatings left on most days. Get 'em while you can!

Here's hoping your Restaurant Week experience is better than you (and definitely I) expect it to be. Please send me your RW experiences via e-mail when you're finished. I'll collect the best of them and put them on the Young & Hungry blog.

Ruta emerged from Palena's kitchen, pictured with Maddy Beckwith

So how unique was last night's opening reception for Sou'Wester? So unique that Frank Ruta showed up. In all the years Y&H has been covering the dining scene in D.C., I've never seen the semi-reclusive Palena chef and owner at an industry event. I barely recognized him out of his whites.

"This is only the second time I've been to one of these," Ruta told Y&H.

"Only the second ever?" I asked Ruta, knowing his years on the scene.

"No, this is the second time this year," he responded.

Ruta's presence wasn't the only unusual thing about this dual-themed party, which celebrated both the fifth anniversary of CityZen and the launch of Sou'Wester, the latest project from Eric Ziebold, chef of the City Paper's reigning Best Restaurant. There was a tattooed DJ spinning rap and funk tunes in the CityZen dining room, one of the most formal spaces in town, where food stations had been set up to pass out samples of Sou'Wester's menu. That's right, people were dancing in the CityZen dining room (including Y&H, but it's best not to think about that). The cognitive dissonance was palpable.

Avert your eyes, restaurant industry folks are getting down

Not that Y&H enjoys playing the role of Reliable Source, but the list of restaurant players was pretty impressive. Aside from Ruta, other attendees included Vidalia chef R.J. Cooper, Cork chef Ron Tanaka, Rasika chef Vikram Sunderam, Clyde's Group chef John Guattery, baker and G Street Food's  Mark Furstenberg, Inox sommelier John Wabeck, The Source's GM Adam Crocini, Bourbon Steak GM Mark Politzer, FreshFarm Market's Maddy Beckwith, Bistro Bis and Vidalia owner Jeffrey Buben, Bourbon Steak chef David Varley,  and Cork owners Diane Gross and Khalid Pitts.

The media/blogger types were out in force, too. Aside from Y&H, other attendees included Nycci Nellis, David Hagedorn, Jennifer Barger, Monica Bhide, Erin Hartigan, Michael Birchenall, Melissa McCart, Don Rockwell, and Carol Blymire.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I know I'm still having trouble adjusting to the new name for the Southern-inspired restaurant in the former Cafe MoZu space. If you'll recall, the operation was originally dubbed South by Southwest, which Y&H ridiculed and which Ziebold defended. Because of a legal threat by certain festival organizers in Austin, the Mandarin Oriental switched to the current Sou'Wester, which rolls off the tongue like...rock candy stuck in the back of your throat.

I have much higher hopes for the restaurant itself, which is under the direction of CityZen sous chef Rachael Harriman, who will serve as chef de cuisine at Sou'Wester. Her menu will include blackened bluefish, chicken and dumplings, rabbit sausage with cheese grits, and a unique take on pork and beans.

At the end of our discussion on Vidalia's Restaurant Week menu, owner Jeffrey Buben told Y&H about an experiment he conducted during last summer's promotion, which offers some evidence that the bi-annual RW event isn't as beneficial to restaurants as Open Table would like us to believe.

Open Table conducted a survey in 2007, which revealed that 92 percent of diners said they would return to the restaurant they just tried for the first time during RW. Now that stat, all by itself, doesn't tell you much because it's based only on an oral commitment. But Lynne Breaux, president of the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington, tells Y&H that 61 percent of diners actually return to the restaurant they try for the first time during RW. That's according to the same 2007 survey, Breaux says, which presumably is based only on Open Table users.

Still, that's some impressive return on a restaurant's RW investment. Except maybe the return isn't that great. Buben told me an anecdote about last summer's Restaurant Week, in which Vidalia staffers handed out 2,000 gift certificates that entitled diners to take 50 percent off a bottle of wine when they returned to the downtown institution.

"There were no strings attached," Buben says. The diners could have simply come into the bar at Vidalia, ordered a bottle at half price, and happily downed it without being forced to purchase anything else.

So how many coupons came back to Vidalia?

Forty, Buben says.

When I related this anecdote to Breaux, she had a reasonable response. "Part of that could be D.C.'s ADD," she says. "They could be losing [the gift certificates]. You know how people can be."