Squid ink and saffron pasta with lobster and cherry tomato confit at Elisir

Really, it's OK to slurp your noodles at Toki Underground [NBC Washington]

The new management at beleaguered Shaw's Tavern is feeling optimistic about its chances. Maybe someday soon, the place will actually be allowed to serve drinks. [Eater DC]

The couple behind Le Caprice DC in Columbia Heights aims to “make people stop saying you can’t get a good baguette in this town.” [Washingtonian]

St. Arnold's new location in Cleveland Park is opening soonish. [Prince of Petworth]

Birch & Barley/ChurchKey boss Michael Babin is a stickler for soft lighting, among other things, at all his restaurants. [Flavor]

Hunting for duck fat? Here's where to look. [Metrocurean]

Julia Child's kitchen exhibit at the Smithsonian is closing. [Post]

A love letter to Taylor Gourmet. [Borderstan]

By comparison, the original Rustico on Slaters Lane practically feels like Hank Dietle's Tavern. The Alexandria spot serves about 300 bottles, 30 drafts, and two beers on cask. In fact, with the opening of the Ballston location, the original Rustico slides down to No. 3 on the Beer Mecca list, behind this newbie and another one of Neighborhood Restaurant Group's properties, the much-gushed over Birch & Barley/ChurchKey.

The new Rustico will be led by the same team that has guided (and in some cases, righted) the ship at the original. Greg Engert, who must be replicating himself, will oversee the beer program and train the staff on the nuances of 400-plus beers, while chef Steve Mannino will be in charge of the menus and kitchen operations at both places. Mannino has even expanded the offerings at the new spot, adding something he calls Mama Mannino’s ricotta doughnuts, which I must have right goddamn now.

Like in Alexandria, the Rustico in Ballston is paired with a Buzz Bakery, which sort of serves as the restaurant's dessert source. Unfortunately, the new Buzz is not open yet. A spokeswoman for NRG didn't have a time frame for its opening.

Now, if you're thinking this whole Rustico/Buzz expansion plan sounds like a good idea and should continue apace, you're not alone. NRG co-owner Michael Babin is already pondering the notion of spreading the Rustico love to other neighborhoods.

In the meantime, check out these previews of the new Rustico filed from the blogosphere:

• A first look from WeLoveDC
• A first look from ARLnow
• An early review of the food from EatMore DrinkMore

Rustico, 4075 Wilson Blvd, Arlington, (571) 384-1820

This may be the most painfully cute sugar cookie ever. I say "painfully" because the beehive-shaped treat is available at, ahem, Buzz Bakery in Alexandria, where pastry chef Josh Short created it several years ago for a  fundraiser. Now it's permanently on the menu at Buzz.

I have to admit, over the years, I have enjoyed many other Buzz creations over this one. Despite a nice sweet lemon hit in the frosting, the cookie was crumbly and arid, a dryness that was only emphasized by the winding pavement of black sugar crystals. I'll leave this one for the kids to suck on.

Whether you like the beehive cookie or not, I suspect it'll be available one day soon when Buzz expands into Ballston, as part of the Neighborhood Restaurant Group's plan to recreate the original Buzz-Rustico dynamic duo in Arlington.  An NRG spokeswoman said Rustico will open first, followed later by Buzz. She had no timeline for the openings, though ARLnow says Rustico should open in September or October.

So why always pair the two concepts?

NRG co-owner Michael Babin "thinks that they work well together," the spokeswoman said. Babin told ARLnow, "What’s neat about the Buzz atmosphere is that it’s not the typical bar atmosphere, and if you want that you can go to Rustico."

We here at WCP HQ finally unleashed our annual Best of D.C. issue yesterday, and I guess I should say this out loud so that it's official: 2010 is the year of ChurchKey, the Neighborhood Restaurant Group beer emporium near Logan Circle.

The watering hole dominated the Food & Drink section this year, winning two categories outright and even inspiring one writer to find the Best Alternative to ChurchKey when the 14th Street joint is three-deep at the bar and you can't even see the beer taps, let alone get a pull from one. ChurchKey's owner, Michael Babin, also earned the nod for Best Restaurateur, in large part for his role in granting beer equal rights in the wine-biased world of chef-driven restaurants.

Orr Shtuhl wrote this about ChurchKey in awarding the place Best Beer Bar/Best Beer Menu:

Honorifics alone cannot express the importance of ChurchKey for D.C. and for (I’m only partly exaggerating here) the United States of America, which right now is collectively discovering good beer, as if 300 million people realized overnight that there was juice beyond Sunny D, burgers beyond Big Macs.

With its ever-changing lineup of five casks and 50 taps, shelves of beer that stretch to the heavens, and a customer capacity that threatens to summon fire marshals, ChurchKey’s import is its spectacle. Its bible-length menu hushes conversation. The bar is a cathedral to beer.

I think this passage gets to the heart of the issue: Beer was never supposed to play the role of buffoon, as defined by Budweiser or Miller or Coors and their endless attempts to equate suds to couch potato-ism, football, and impossibly under-dressed women catfighting over whether one brand tastes great or is less filling. Beer has an authority and an air of sophistication all its own, as countries like Belgium and Germany and England have known for years.

ChurchKey has just tapped into it.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Kyle Bailey

On the other end of the line was Michael Babin, co-owner of Neighborhood Restaurant Group, who was phoning to see if Bailey might be interested in one of the most intriguing culinary positions in the District: executive chef of the forthcoming gastropub, Birch & Barley/ChurchKey near Logan Circle.

The call couldn't have come at a better time for Bailey.

Less than two weeks earlier, Bailey had parted ways with the respected, romantic, candle-lit Allen & Delancey in Manhattan, where he was hired, just eight months earlier, to lead the restaurant's kitchen. He had decided to walk away from his first-ever executive chef job when A&D's owners apparently wanted to effect more cost-cutting measures than Bailey could swallow.

"I can't do what I don't want to do," Bailey told Y&H this afternoon. A chef needs motivation to devote 16-hour work days to a job, he added, and Bailey knew that, with the pending budget cuts, he wouldn't be able to summon up the necessary desire. So he left Allen & Delancey, despite making quick fans out of bloggers like Gothamist.

You could argue that it was a poor time for Bailey to take a stand on principles, given the recession that has hit NYC restaurants and chefs particularly hard. It didn't help, either, that Bailey was getting married in Hawaii soon. Yet even with the social and economic pressures, Bailey said he didn't just leap blindly at the Birch & Barley opportunity. He wanted to visit the space on 14th Street NW and learn more about the restaurant's beer-forward approach to food and drink.

So just days before he was scheduled to leave for Hawaii for his wedding, Bailey drove down to D.C. to conduct a tasting for Babin and a few Neighborhood Restaurant Group employees. He didn't have time to find all the ingredients he needed, so Bailey relied on what he could secure at a New Jersey grocery store on the way down to the District. The multi-course tasting didn't get any easier when Bailey started cooking at the kitchen at Evening Star Cafe. The power went out, which forced everyone to relocate to Tallula, another NRG property.

Despite the hassles, Bailey impressed his would-be employer. "It was really, really great," Babin recalled this afternoon.

You could say that Bailey was Babin's kind of chef almost from the start of NRG's search, which was prompted after the surprising departure of Frank Morales last month.

Babin had compiled a list of qualities for the perfect Birch & Barley chef. He wanted a young person who had worked in a demanding kitchen or two. He wanted someone who had worked in a restaurant with a serious beverage program. He wanted someone committed to local/seasonal ingredients. He wanted someone passionate about beer and about Birch & Barley's suds-forward concept. He even wanted someone who had worked at Blue Hill at Stone Barns, a menu-less restaurant and educational center just outside NYC that sources 80 percent of its ingredients from the surrounding area.

He found all of those qualities in Kyle Bailey. "He really was the prefect candidate," Babin said. "I hope that it is borne out."

How perfect is the 29-year-old Bailey for Birch & Barley? The Culinary Institute of America graduate worked for nearly four years at Cru, which boasts one of best wine programs in the country. It also boasts Shea Gallante, a well-decorated chef whose obsessive, detail-oriented approach had a strong impact on Bailey. But Bailey also spent a year working at Blue Hill at Stone Barns, where the interplay between food and drink is just as important as it is at Cru.

Then there's Bailey's time at the spirits-friendly Allen & Delancey, where he was hired to bring discipline to a kitchen that had started to drift following the departure of original chef, Neil Ferguson, a former Gordon Ramsay lieutenant.  Bailey once worked 100 days straight at A&D, regularly working the line. "People need to be led," Bailey told Y&H. "When there's no leader...it gets crazy."

So what about beer? Is Bailey a devotee to the suds?

Without question, the chef said. He's even an avid home brewer, and better yet, he's almost giddy at the thought of developing a beer-oriented cuisine at Birch & Barley. "I'm excited by any chance to cook with beer," he noted, "and not poach fish with Coors Light, but really cooking with beer."

Bailey officially starts as Birch & Barley's chef on Sept. 1. The gastropub is expected to open sometime later the same month.

Birch & Barley/ChurchKey, the long-delayed project from the ever-expanding Neighborhood Restaurant Group empire, should open in September, even though NRG still hasn't hired a chef for the gastropub in the former Dakota Cowgirl space on 14th Street NW.

So says Michael Babin, co-owner of NRG.

"I say that with all the necessary anxiety and stress," Babin adds, with a laugh. "I don't see anything that will stop us from opening in September."

And that includes, Babin says, the hiring of an executive chef after Frank Morales' surprising departure earlier this month.

Babin says that NRG is casting "the net as wide as possible" for candidates, meaning that the company would be willing to look outside the D.C. market to fill the position. Babin expects to make the hire soon and have the opening day menu ready by, say, late September.

"The people I'm looking at I have a lot of confidence in," Babin says.

The twin-concept project — the Birch & Barley gastropub on the main floor and the ChurchKey bar on the second floor — was originally scheduled to open in April 2008. But the building was in terrible condition, far worse than expected, Babin says. NRG was forced to replace the outdated electrical and plumbing systems and even bolster the structural integrity of the building, in part to support a rooftop deck, which will not be ready by opening day, Babin notes.

But part of the delay was also based on a design decision, Babin adds. The group has built a special mezzanine space on the second floor, which will serve as a showcase for the many bottles and kegs that Birch & Barley is expected to serve and tap into.

I gotta admit, that sounds like something worth waiting for.

For reasons that don't bear close scrutiny, I found myself last week wandering the streets around Logan Circle on an unseasonably warm afternoon. Like others in the 'hood that day, I pressed my face against the window of the old Dakota Cowgirl space, hoping to see how far construction crews were on the forthcoming Birch & Barley/ChurchKey gastropub on 14th Street NW.

Not far, as it turned out. From my limited viewpoint, all I could see was drywall, trash, and exposed walls. One of the most highly anticipated watering holes in recent memory seemed nowhere near opening, despite the fact that it's almost a year after the first announced launch date. So when, exactly, will the Neighborhood Restaurant Group (Rustico, Vermilion, EatBar, etc) open its first D.C. property, which is promising 50 draft lines, 500 bottles, and two different menus crafted by chef Frank Morales?

The Post has reported three different birthdays—starting with a projected launch in April 2008, followed by an October 2008 lift-off, and culminating with an early March arrival. As you can imagine, Michael Babin, co-owner of NRG, is not that interested in teasing a parched public with more launch dates, but he was good enough to take a moment this afternoon with Young & Hungry to explain why there have been so many delays.

There are two main issues, Babin says. One is the building itself, which is not in the kind of shape that NRG had hoped. Almost everything has needed an upgrade—the electric, the plumbing, the HVAC system, you name it. Compounding the troubles has been NRG's decision to build a rooftop deck, which has added a whole new layer of bureaucratic wranglings and historical reviews.

Well, I hate to ask, but would you care to venture another opening date, Mr. Babin? Even a general time frame? Summer? Fall? Winter? Next year?

Babin believes he can have the place open by summer, though he quickly warns that you never know what could happen. Crews could knock down a wall and find a whole new problem, which could cause further delays.

But Babin feels your pain; he's frustrated by the progress, too.

"We're more eager than anybody to get this thing open," he says.

Tyldesley says that NRG's Michael Babin and Shallal had talked about the project, but that's about it. "We've got a lot on our plate right now," Tyldesley says about NRG, which is still working to open its double (beer)-barreled joint, Birch & Barley and ChurchKey, in the old Dakota Cowgirl and Ramrod spaces on 14th Street NW. "I don't anticipate that we'll become involved at this late stage."

Shallal, best known for his mini-Busboys & Poets chain, expects to open Eatonville, a homage to Zora Neale Hurston, early next year.