Minibar, ranked No. 1 on City Paper's list of "D.C.'s 44 Most Powerful Restaurants" (because "booking a reservation is harder than rescheduling a flight during a hurricane"), resumes service beginning Thursday, Sept. 1. Chef José Andrés' six-seat avant-garde "restaurant within a restaurant" has been on hiatus since July as the eatery that once housed it, [...]

The Feast reports that Paul Yeck, head chef at Jaleo in Bethesda, will replace the recently departed Richard Brandenburg as head chef at José Andrés' hugely hyped pop-up restaurant America Eats Tavern. (Read Young & Hungry's review of the temporary restaurant here.) According to the report, Yeck,  a three-year veteran of Andrés' Think Food Group, [...]

Bon Appetit has published its list of the "11 toughest restaurant reservations in the U.S.A." Landing in the fifth spot: José Andrés' tiny avant-garde tasting-menu restaurant Minibar. No surprise there. We ranked the place No. 1 on our list of D.C.'s 44 Most Powerful Restaurants in part because "booking a reservation is harder than rescheduling [...]

I was a bit surprised when Bonji Beard answered my call on the first try. I sort of expected a busy signal, or some prolonged ringing at least. For the past three and a half years, Beard manned the phones at Minibar. And, as gatekeeper of the toughest reservation in town, she held all the [...]

Does anyone at Think Food Group have a clear idea of what the future will hold for Minibar (closed until July 12), Cafe Atlantico (closed indefinitely) and America Eats Tavern (temporarily open)? Not exactly. After getting conflicting reports from chef José Andrés and his business partner, Rob Wilder, as well as other TFG charges, Y&H [...]

Dishes We Dug: Maine-style lobster roll (pictured) at Luke's Lobster; baked beans with burnt ends at Hill Country; chapulines (sautéed grasshoppers) at Oyamel; fried zeppoles with rum crème anglaise at Policy. Dishes We Didn't: Slow cooked beef brisket on a potato roll at The Diner–dry enough to qualify as jerky. Venues Notably Missing From City [...]

Monday's announcement that James Beard Award-winning chef José Andrés is shuttering his longstanding nuevo latino restaurant Café Atlántico to make way for a temporary American cooking-themed exhibit hits a little too close to home for this columnist. While the restaurant's once high profile has diminished significantly in recent years beside its heralded, hard-to-book-a-reservation tasting-menu counterpart, [...]

At a deliciously catered breakfast at the National Archives Monday morning, chef José Andrés announced he's opening a six-month pop-up restaurant in conjunction with a government exhibit, titled What's Cooking, Uncle Sam? The Government's Effect on the American Diet. "To open an American restaurant is a dream," said the native of Spain and owner of various restaurants showcasing Mexican, Mediterranean, Spanish and Chinese cuisines. [...]

Short ribs and baby octopus may dominate many menus in the city, but that doesn't mean local chefs can't find love in an acorn squash. In our ongoing series, Chefs Veg Out, we'll prove D.C.’s chefs can play with more than just meat. Name: Byron Brown Title: Executive Chef and Producer Restaurant: Sensorium, "A 12-course meal interwoven with [...]

Two cable TV comedians are coming to town to stage a rally on the National Mall, and the political establishment isn’t sure whether to laugh, cry, or declare its own irrelevancy in the presence of fake pundits who have the drawing power of Sarah Palin at an NRA swimsuit contest. Y&H doesn’t have the bona [...]