Logo courtesy of Eatonville

Photo by Chris Shott

Improvements Pho the Future: Pho 14 in Columbia Heights will be expanding its space on Park Road NW and its menu. [PoP]

Those Aren't Bay Leaves: The owner of Diredawa Cafe on Georgia Avenue, already tied to the taxicab bribery scandal from two years ago, is also accused of dealing khat, the leafy drug popular in East Africa and parts of the Middle East. [City Desk]

Hostess Hazards: El Centro, D.F., is now open on 14th Street NW near the Black Cat. But watch your step when you waltz in! "There's a tricky bottle neck by the hostess stand – servers are bringing out trays of food right where the servers are leading guests to tables. I watched servers trying to get past guests and thought 'this is a disaster waiting to happen.' If you go, please watch out for the servers until you are safely seated!" [DonRocks]

Pop Tarts Keep Popping Up: Buzz Bakery of Alexandria is opening up a new location in Ballston, and "will add treats like breakfast pop tarts, made-to-order waffles, individual serving quiches, homemade ice cream, sorbets, popsicles and 'take-and-bake' products." [ARLNow]

Photo by Flickr user Mr. T in D.C. using an Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic Creative Commons license

• Lower Prices: Kass lauded an agreement with mega-retailer Wal-Mart, which has committed to lowering the prices of fruit and vegetables and also lowering the price of wheat bread to cost about the same as white bread. "There's no reason whole wheat bread should cost more," says Kass.
• Improved labeling.  Beverage cans and other packaged goods are offering more descriptive labeling of their ingredients, although Kass admits that officials still need to "explore what is the best labeling out there" for getting consumers to choose healthier foods.
• Pediatrician Participation: Doctors are participating in the campaign by writing formal prescriptions to children for eating fruits, vegetables and getting physical activity. Doctors are also measuring children's body fat index at wellness visits. "Whoever is serious in getting involved has a space at the table," says Kass.

Photo courtesy of the Executive Office of the President of the United States

While Wolfgang Puck's The Source at the Newseum has had no shortage of boldface-name diners, there's nothing like a presidential visit to cement a D.C. restaurant's celebrity status. Back in January, President Obama and Michelle Obama dined there for the first lady's 47th birthday. Now, in honor of Presidents' Day, the restaurant is offering a special menu recreating the meal the president and first lady had at the restaurant.

If you choose to go that route, the price per person in $85, excluding tax and gratuity. What's for dinner?

First Course
Spicy Tuna Tartare, Sesame-Miso Cones, Shaved Bonito, Tobiko

Second Course
Dim Sum Platter: “Tiny Dumplings,” Scallop & Shrimp Sui Mai, Organic Chicken & Wild Field Mushroom Dumplings, Crystal Garlic Chive Dumplings

Third Course
Whole Wok-Fired Lobster, Chinese Garlic Sauce
Prime Filet, Smoked Onion Chili Sauce

Fourth Course
15-Layer Carrot Cake, Cream Cheese, Candied Walnuts, Ginger Ice Cream
Chocolate Tasting

Now, if you truly want to re-enact the meal, the first lady "flashed a brief bit of skin between black knee-high boots and a dark sleeveless dress," according to the Reliable Source. The president went sans tie.

Official White House photo by Pete Souza

The fine folks from that Taiwanese animation firm have dropped another amusing video. This time, watch first lady Michelle Obama battle Ronald McDonald of McDonald's, Burger King's The King, and Col. Sanders from KFC with fruits and vegetables. Young & Hungry never knew bananas could be used like ninja throwing stars. [via Eater Nat'l]

Thank, in part, that garden first lady Michelle Obama planted out back. Writes the Times:

Gone is the chicken-fried steak with gravy, a must during the George W. Bush years. There’s still smoked salmon and roast beef and gulf shrimp, but there are also roasted vegetables served with two seemingly indulgent dips. The sharpness of the slightly spicy hummus dip and the garlic in the yogurt ranch dressing serve as foils for the sweetness that roasting brings out in the vegetables.

Cue the outrage from chicken-fried steak lovers! The food wars continue...

Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson

Well, that wasn't a promising start.

After all the celebrity stalkings and quick-fire guessing games during the show's filming, Top Chef D.C. premiered last night and laid a large goose egg on the White House lawn.

Sure, the decision to conduct the first quick-fire challenge atop the Newseum was a clever change of venue, a "kitchen" that offered vistas of D.C. (as if the producers offered us many), but the challenge itself was as boring as, well, peeling potatoes. Which is what the cheftestants were asked to do. That and brunoise onions and break down chickens. Good skills to know as a chef, no doubt, but watching cooks dice onions packs all the excitement of watching someone write a blog item.

And what was up with that elimination round broken into four groups in which the quick-fire winners picked their competitors, the worse chef the better? It was more convoluted than Senate procedural rules, which, come to think of it, may have been the point.

The four worst dishes in the challenge were likely going to be the four worst dishes, regardless if they came from a pool of 17 contestants or four groupings of chefs allegedly competing against one another within their own group. (The idea was that the worst chef in each group would stand repentantly before the disapproving judges and find out which one deserves a one-way ticket home.)  I guess, technically, one group could have produced two really crappy dishes, and one of those chefs who produced the crappy dish would have skated.

Follow all that? If so, please explain it to me. Because here's what I don't understand: Why force the "cheftestants" to compete against only a handful of competitors? Isn't the whole point that they compete against everyone on the show? The only excuse for this restricted format is TV drama, so we can watch chefs pick teams as if they were on the schoolyard playground, getting to humiliate their fellow cooks by selecting those who were deemed inferior.

During the elimination round, the judges asked the chefs to create a dish that reflected their hometowns or regions. It made for a nice window into each chef's background, but what did it have to do with D.C.? Other than, perhaps, the fact that the District is full of transplants from all over the country. I wonder if the producers even thought that deeply about the challenge.

Next week's episode will be slightly more D.C.-oriented, but only if you define D.C. by the federal government. It will ask the chefs, in the spirit of Michelle Obama's anti-childhood obesity initiative, to prepare a healthy school meal for only $2.68 per student, which as Obama Foodorama notes, "is the reimbursement rate schools receive for each child who is eligible for free lunch under the federal program."

The school lunch episode has already drawn the ire of Slow Cook, Ed Bruske, who takes issue with the math skills of Top Chef producers.

This is shaping up to be a long Top Chef season.

Photo courtesy of Top Chef

Will D.C. come across as a cartoon parody of itself? Will the cheftestants be forced to make their own chili for the District's famous half-smoke? How often will the producers draft José Andrés to add some genuine "talk to the tomatoes" eccentricity to the show?  Will the Obamas make an appearance to show off the White House garden? Was the White House garden even planted when the show was filming?

We'll start to get some answers to these questions, and more, tonight when season seven of Top Chef premieres at 9 p.m. on Bravo. What I've read so far about the upcoming challenges doesn't give me a ton of hope. Cooking at the CIA? Since when are spooks known for their discriminating tastes?

OK, OK, I know. I"m pre-judging, so allow me to get back to basics, such as where to watch the show. Y&H will likely be camped out at home, so he can scream at the TV in private, but the Washingtonian is hosting a watch party at (where else?) former cheftestant Spike Mendelsohn's burger joint on the Hill, Good Stuff Eatery.

The Going Out Gurus has compiled a more comprehensive list of places to watch the show.

If you know of any other bars or restaurants or lounges hosting watch parties, let us know in the comments. Otherwise, here are a few cheat sheets for tonight's program:

1. The official Bravo biographies of the cheftestants;
2. Washingtonian's more extensive biographies of the competitors;
3. Y&H's look at the local contestants;
4. And finally, WaPo's words of caution after viewing the season debut: "[I]t feels as though 'Top Chef' has burned off a lot of its original allure."

District Taco was forced to find a new location to sell its hand-held snacks.

Her fan base has spoken: They clearly don't want former Gibson bartender Tiffany Short to leave town! They've expressed their support for the talented mixologist by making our farewell story the most-popular item from last week. It even beat out a certain head of state.

Is it enough, however, to get Short to reconsider her Texas plans? One can always hope, right?

The Top 5 from last week:

1. Tiffany Short Leaves the Gibson, Heads Back Home to Austin (*)
2. The Obamas Boost Their Approval Ratings With a Trip to Komi
3. Food News You Can Use: Getting Baja Fresh
4. Betty White's Muffin Skit on SNL
5. Rebel Heroes May Already Be the Best Food Truck on the Streets

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