400 North Capitol St. NW (202) 737-0400

José Andrés

The money won't amount to much more than "a few hundred to a few thousand" dollars, depending on the restaurant, the celebrity chef tells Y&H. "The way we do it is we go and we write a check that sometimes is more than the money you raised," Andrés adds.

But the three-day event from June 10-12 is more than just a fundraiser, Andrés says. As conceived by Jimmy Galle, owner of the respected Gulfish that supplies celebrity chefs with seafood, Dine Out for the Gulf Coast is also a chance to talk about the importance of protecting our food supplies.

"I think he's (creating) a moment to engage in conversation with our waiters, with our cooks, with the guests who come to the restaurants," Andres says about Galle. "At the end of the day, it's food, and hopefully restaurants and chefs and food writers and all of us, we are the people who have to be the high priests of protecting all that food and keeping everyone aware that, if we don't have this food, we are nothing."

As he often does, Andrés is looking at the broader picture. The environmental crisis in the Gulf didn't just materialize in April when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, unleashing untold thousands of barrels of oil into the water.

"Obviously, with something like this, now we can blame one person that handles this in a bad way, one company, but in the end, the problem is not one company. The problem is humanity itself," says Andrés who occasionally buys products from the Gulf, whether oysters or shrimp or even stone crabs from Florida.

"This is a terrible accident that only brings a lot of awareness," the chef adds. "But I think the big thing here — the big thing here — is only to [remind] ourselves, 'Let's be careful in the way we are living, because if we keep living like this, nothing is going to be sustainable.' Maybe we will not see the end, but if we are not careful, in one, two, three, four, five generations, the food chain may be very different than the food chain we are used to today."

Andrés' restaurants are not the only local ones participating in Dine Out for the Gulf Coast. Over at Johnny's Half Shell on Capitol Hill, Ann Cashion and John Fulchino, two long-time proponents of Gulf Coast cooking and culture, are also taking part in the event.

If you can't eat out during the three-day period, you can also make a donation, either on the Dine Out site or via other agencies and groups helping out victims of the spill.

It's been more than two years since Ann Cashion and John Fulchino sold Cashion's Eat Place to long-time sous chef John Manolatos, who promised to uphold the standards of the beloved Adams Morgan eatery. Manolatos and his partners even said as much on their Web site.

Restaurant Rater dcdiner, however, isn't buying it. Take a look at this brutal assessment:

The reviews here are very old, when Cashion's was in fact a wonderful restaurant that I visited frequently. Things have gone downhill dramatically.

In fact, the departure of Ann Cashion has had disasterous consequences. I had a Sunday brunch there on 01/10/2010. The food was pedestrian at best – tasteless scrambled eggs and boring potatoes. We could have eaten at any number of nearby (cheaper) diners and had much better food at less cost. On top of that the waitress, without the slightest hint of concern, announced there was no bread because of "delivery problems". Sorry, at a place like that you expect some wonderful muffins or rolls at brunch, not a surly waitress announcing "tough luck".

DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY – my once favorite restaurant is long gone, and the current management, made aware of these issues, made it clear they're not interested. ANN CASHION – WHY ARE YOU ALLOWING YOUR NAME TO STILL BE USED BY THIS POOR EXCUSE FOR "FINE DINING"?

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Photo courtesy of Cashion's

Or Johnny's Half Shell! Allow me to explain why.

The wife and I had just got to the Strathmore Music Center. We were running late as we scampered to find our seats for last night's Lyle Lovett concert. Carrie assumed the task of securing our seats. I headed to the restroom.

When Carrie got to our seats, she found that they were occupied. Now these were no ordinary seats. These were my birthday-present seats, located smack-dab in the middle of the first row of the Grand Tier. (The photo above gives you an idea of the view from these seats.) There was only one seat available, and Carrie took it, hoping to work out the problem. The occupants of the other seats started teasing Carrie:

Where is your husband going to sit? they wondered. ("On my lap," Carrie told them.) What's your husband's name? ("Tim," she said.) Well, maybe we don't want Tim to sit with us; we like you better. ("No, you'll like Tim, too," Carrie added.)

They were having a jolly friggin' time without me.

When I finally emerged from the restroom, the usher was still trying to sort out the seating snafu. The occupants rightfully had tickets to those seats, too, the usher told me. I was about to get annoyed by this double-booking when the usher finally figured out the problem: The seat squatters were supposed to be in the level above us. He promptly filed them out of our seats.

That's when I really got a good look at who had stole our seats:

John Fulchino from Johnny's Half Shell and Arianne and Scott Bennett from the Amsterdam Falafelshop.

As they sheepishly walked past me, I looked Arianne Bennett in the eye and said, "You know, this is so going to be a blog item tomorrow." When I ran into them after the show, I added that they could expect awful reviews from this point out.

I was joking. I think.