“The most in-demand concept that I have ever seen is Eataly. I’ve never seen developers clamor for anything like Eataly....They want this to be a place where you can come in and kind of get lost in it."—Retail broker Michael R. Zacharia, gushing to the Washington Post about the demand for bringing Mario Batali's 60,000-square-foot [...]
Proof chef Haidar Karoum's lamb with spinach and coconut curry bested Watershed toque Todd Gray's potato latke with diced apple and ... well, something involving lamb. Honestly, it was pretty darn loud at last night's Capital Food Fight. I couldn't hear what Gray did with the lamb—and I was standing at the foot of the [...]
Bryan Voltaggio's plans for a 10,000-square-foot Italian food market in Frederick, modeled after Mario Batali's Eataly in New York, could have some unexpected competition—Eataly in D.C. The Huffington Post reports that Batali and partner Joe Bastianich are planning to open a Washington-area spin-off of their 40,000-square-foot Flatiron-area food-and-beverage emporium by the end of 2012. Contacted [...]
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 [...]
As the classic-rock soundtrack throbbed and we dissected our dishes at Babbo, some terrific and some downright mediocre, I kept thinking one thing over and over: D.C.’s Tosca is every bit as good, if not better, than Mario Batali’s famous operation in Greenwich Village. This may not be an altogether fair comparison. Babbo aims for [...]
I'm sorry to pick on Rachael Ray. It's beyond shooting fish in a barrel. It's carpet-bombing fish in a home aquarium (though I have to admit that I admired Ray's self-awareness and unwillingness to take the bait after Martha Stewart bashed the TV cook last year). Nonetheless, would I be surprised one day to find [...]
If you haven't yet had a chance, like Y&H, to watch the Iron Chef America episode in which the not-so-secret ingredient is the White House vegetable garden, you might want to stop reading now. Otherwise, you'll never forgive me for what I'm about to do: reveal the winner in the star-studded cook-off that pitted Mario "Orange Crush" [...]
Frittatas were on the menu Sunday afternoon at Y&H's house. It sounded like a good idea, both simple and satisfying. I started with a recipe I pulled from Mario Batali's Molto Italiano, which, thank God, somebody else has already added to the internets. I figured I could easily find all the ingredients at the local [...]
Comerford and Flay get fresh (veggies) in the White House garden. Jeesh, speaking of predictions, Y&H should have guessed this would happen as soon as the White House broke ground on its kitchen garden in March: Iron Chef America has trotted out three of its, ahem, heaviest hitters to cook a meal from ingredients plucked [...]
Saturday was a vacation for me. I ate at home. Carrie and I made dinner for friends. She made a tomato tartare, based on the recipe from Michel Richard's cookbook, Happy in the Kitchen, and I made osso buco with risotto alla Milanese, based on recipes by Mario Batali and Mark Bittman. The tomato tartare, [...]
