Let’s just call it Birch & Barley week, shall we? The new Neighborhood Restaurant Group establishment dominated Y&H this week, along with other beer-related posts.

Check it out:

1. Birch & Barley Opens Today. What’s Inside?
2. Budweiser Launches Select 55, Light Beer Arms Race Gets Absurd
3. DC Finally Getting a German Beer Garden? The Lagerheads Share their Outdoor Picks in the Meantime
4. Birch & Barley Opening Tomorrow?
5. Birch & Barley Slated for Summer Opening. Maybe.
   

Believe it or not, there has been other news in the world this week, aside from the opening of Birch & Barley/ChurchKey, the long-awaited Neighborhood Restaurant Group project on 14th Street NW. You wouldn’t know it, though, from all the local food coverage, which has devoted a ton of server space to detailing every nook and cranny and keg at the joint.

Let’s go to the highlights:

• WaPo’s Fritz Hahn has what’s on tap.
• Metrocurean has the glamour shots.
• The Beerspotter breaks down the cask list.

Read More “We Are All Just Pawns in Birch & Barley’s World” »

UPDATE: NRG spokesperson Amber Pfau says that Birch & Barley/ChurchKey will open tomorrow, “barring natural disasters.” For an inside look, see Metrocurean’s preview on the place.

The DC-Beer listserv has been humming today on a rumor that Birch & Barley/ChurchKey, the long-awaited twin-concept, beer-soaked bar and restaurant (which is not a gastropub!), will finally open tomorrow. Neighborhood Restaurant Group has been conducting mock services already, but one member of the listserv writes:

My wife got a press release/e-mail in her e-mail from a local business networking group which states that Birch & Barley opens tomorrow.

Beerspotter Orr Shtuhl says the rumors are true, but I’m trying to get confirmation on this from NRG. More as I know it.

Beer and controversy, controversy and beer. They are the backbone of the Young & Hungry blog. Here’s what you’ve been reading this  week:

1. Budweiser Launches Select 55, Light Beer Arms Race Gets Absurd
2. WTF: Makoto Is Once Again the Top-Rated Restaurant in the Annual Zagat Guide
3. Not So Fast: There’s No Deal for a Ray’s Hell Burger in Adams Morgan
4. Birch & Barley Hires NYC Chef to Replace Frank Morales
5. Woes Continue for Cap City Diner’s Owners
   

Kyle Bailey was shopping for wedding rings with his fiancee at a Jersey City mall last month when he got a call on his cell. He didn’t recognize the number, but he decided to take the call anyway.

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.

Read More “Birch & Barley Hires NYC Chef to Replace Frank Morales” »

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.

Read More “Birch & Barley Should Tap Its First Keg in September” »

Former Rustico chef Frank Morales told Tom Sietsema on Friday that he left the Alexandria gastropub because he had done everything he could at the Neighborhood Restaurant Group property. What Morales apparently didn’t tell the Post, though, is that he still has much more to accomplish in the area of beer-related food.

“Rustico gave me a…style and a way to cook, and I’m going to continue that,” Morales told Y&H this afternoon.

Read More “Frank Morales Has Left Rustico Behind, But Not Beer-Friendly Food” »

While Y&H was peeking into civil court records and poking around a chef contest, others were actually hunting down news about restaurants that are opening and closing. Here’s a quick run-down of what we’ve missed — or what I’ve missed:

• Tom Sietsema reports that the guys behind the mini-Matchbox chain are planning a small, personal comfort food restaurant on Capitol Hill.
• Sietsema also has the scoop on the Neighborhood Restaurant Group’s latest offering, a chop house in Old Town.
• Metrocurean breaks the news about Cork Wine Bar opening a new market on 14th Street NW, not far from the popular restaurant.
• A poster on DonRockwell.com notes that the Gaithersburg branch of El Tapatio has closed down.

I didn’t get to Tallula in time to see Nathan Anda do some butchering. But the former Tallula chef, who’s heading up the Neighborhood Restaurant Group’s cured-meat initiative, Red Apron, had plenty to show me.

Read More “Something Not Terribly Vegetarian” »

Frank Morales III, executive chef at Rustico, is addressing a group of ninth graders from the Minnie Howard campus of T.C. Williams who are considering restaurant careers. “When you get in the restaurant business, it’s really cool,” he says. “You get to choose where you’ll work 80 hours a week.”

Morales is a natural ham and a natural teacher. He begins the kids’ tour of Rustico the same place he began mine 20 minutes earlier—Rustico’s back lot, where he gets in deliveries. He tells them about his passion for quality ingredients. He mentions seafood. Some of them look a little ill all of a sudden.

Turns out William Artley had just demonstrated for them how you cut up a 30 pound halibut. Some of them may never eat fish again.

Read More “For Children Who Are Considering Restaurant Careers” »