One by one, we’re running through the 50 restaurants that made the cut on this year’s Young & Hungry Dining Guide. If you have visited the day’s featured restaurant, let us know what you think. If you’re planning to visit for the first time, tell us about your meal when you return.

It takes bravado—and lots of bull-headed determination—to run a wine-centered bistro in Montgomery County. Grapeseed chef/owner Jeff Heineman has both. He works the whacked-out county-controlled liquor system as well as a mere mortal can, building and maintaining a wine list that’s deep, approachable, and, at its frequent best, altogether satisfying. Heineman custom-builds the dishes on his menu to pair with specific wines, like his recent portobello-mushroom take on chilaquiles, that classic Mexican breakfast dish, which he suggests you sample with a cool, fruity glass of French rosé, for an Old World/Third World partnership that snootier toques would never touch. That’s the thing about Heineman; his vision of New American cuisine often has a wide lens. It could be that chilaquiles, or it could be his goat cheese-stuffed piquillo peppers, which are more roasty and tart than spicy. Now, I just wish Heineman would bring back his chef-driven take on chicken and waffles (in bourbon sauce!), which makes a mockery of the other insipid versions around town.

 Grapeseed, 4865 Cordell Ave., Bethesda, (301) 986-9592

For nearly a month, the General Store, chef Gillian Clark’s home-spun Silver Spring restaurant with the killer fried chicken, has been operating as a take-out joint only. Montgomery County apparently wanted Clark and her partner, Robin Smith, to have more dedicated parking spaces before issuing them a certificate of occupancy.

Read More “Gillian Clark’s General Store Now Available for Sit-Down Service” »

The wife and I stopped by the General Store late on Sunday night, around 9, hoping against hope that chef/owner Gillian Clark might still have some fried chicken and collards available for take out. She didn’t. She had sold the last of her birds about three hours earlier, so we had to satisfy our General Store itch with some face time with Clark’s partner, Robin Smith, who told us the story behind the bear diorama and the slogan, “Grab a Root ‘n’ Growl.” (See picture.)

As a child growing up in California, Smith knew it was dinner time whenever her mom used to holler, “Grab a root and growl!” Smith, somewhat sheepishly, admits she never gave the phrase much thought until one day, in her teens, she suddenly realized that it had ursine connections. Up until then she always considered the phrase merely a call to chow.

Read More “The General Store Opens With a Growl” »