This weekend, Tiffany Barbalato, director of communications for Zagat, e-mailed to address some of the questions raised in two Y&H posts from last week, the first wondering about Makoto's quick ascendancy to (and permanent place among) D.C.'s top restaurants and the other detailing Zagat's oddly duplicate guides on even years. Barbalato was responding for Olga [...]

Following my post yesterday on Zagat voters' undying love for Makoto, colleague Michael Birchenall, editor and publisher of Foodservice Monthly, did some serious sleuthing through his back issues of the annual restaurant guide, dating back to 1993.  Here's what he found: Makoto, which opened in the early 1990s, made a meteoric appearance among D.C.'s best [...]

I obviously have nothing against Makoto, the meditative Japanese bento box of a restaurant in the Palisades, which specializes in kaiseki cuisine. I mean, I included the place among my 50 favorite restaurants in the D.C. area. What does bother me about Makoto, however, is its stranglehold on the top spot in the annual D.C./Baltimore [...]