If you read our posts you know we have a soft spot in our livers for a handful of things, and Dogfish Head Brewery founder Sam Calagione and collaboration beers are two of them. Now that Dogfish Head and Sierra Nevada are producing what will be each brewery’s the latter’s first collaborative effort, Life & Limb (and companion beer Limb & Life), we seem to have hit the blog jackpot.

The supportive atmosphere and camaraderie among American craft brewers is often commented on,  so it should be no surprise that brewery founders  Sam Calagione and Ken Grossman decided to make a beer together over a couple of cold ones at last year’s Craft Brewer’s Conference in Boston. In early September, just months after Grossman initiated the idea, the two met to brew at Sierra Nevada’s pristine facilities in Chico, California.

The beers were designed to show the personalities of each brewery and the men behind them. We think they have done just that. According to the Life & Limb website:

Read More “Dogfish Head & Sierra Nevada’s Collaboration Ale, Life & Limb, Coming Soon” »

The seriously creamy buffalo mozz at Pizze

Restaurants constantly evolve, which is why I try to revisit as many as possible in between checking out the new ones that come along. I particularly try to revisit the places that I have previously panned, like the trio of pizzerias below.

To be fair here, I didn’t really pan any of them —  save, perhaps, RedRocks in Columbia Heights. I think it would be more accurate to say that I expressed reservations about Pizze in Woodley Park and Pizzeria Paradiso near Dupont Circle.

So let me start with the best of the re-evals:

Read More “Y&H Takes a Second Slice at a Few Local Pizzerias” »

This blog has gone to Hell, and readers are taking Select 55 with it. For Christ’s sake, people, can we get over this Budweiser post, which tops the list for the third straight week?

The most-read items for the week:

1. Budweiser Launches Select 55, Light Beer Arms Race Gets Absurd
2. Not So Fast: There’s No Deal for a Ray’s Hell Burger in Adams Morgan
3. No Hell Burger for Adams Morgan, but a Ray’s the Steaks for NE
4. Did Vidalia Use “Inferior” Ingredients During Restaurant Week?
5. Drool List: Pizzeria Paradiso at Dupont Circle
   

My Advil-providing coworkers know I enjoy Birreria Paradiso as much as the next fellow, but Georgetown’s paucity of public transportation means I only go there half as often as I’d like. Now that Paradiso’s Dupont location has expanded (and moved closer to the Circle), I have nothing to bitch about.

The new digs have 12 taps and a cask, and 180 bottles, according to bar manager Greg Jasgur. And although the bar itself physically looks like Birreria’s (a nice touch), Jasgur said the draft list will mostly feature different beers than Georgetown. Guess I’ll still be making the long haul to Fancyville.

I went this opening weekend and sampled many a fine beer, from Allagash’s new saison to that “Mad Bitch” beer those WaPo geniuses used in their unfunny routine. Pictures and the drool list after the jump.
Read More “Drool List: Pizzeria Paradiso at Dupont Circle” »

The Lagerheads tend to avoid Georgetown, but we do get down there on occasion and about 95% of the time it is to visit Birreria Paradiso, the basement bar of Pizzeria Paradiso on the west end of M Street. Birreria has long been one of our favorite places to drink beer in DC, and we owe much of our beer education to its revolving list of impressive taps and ever-growing arsenal of bottled beer.

We’ve been going there since Thor Cheston (now beer czar at Brasserie Beck) was running the show and have been delighted to see how current manager Greg Jasgur’s capable hands have expanded the beer program to include monthly beer events and a more extensive, organized, and descriptive menu–with one cask, 16 taps, and around 180 beers available in bottles and not a single American macro-brew or other “well you gotta stock it” beer to blemish the impeccable list.

Paradise, right? Well…almost. We gush about this place constantly, but don’t actually go as often as we used to. The Tuesday/ Wednesday half-price draft happy hour is wildly popular, as it should be. But the bar can only seat around forty people, and outside of happy hours there is often competition for those seats with overflow from the restaurant upstairs, so it can be really hard to get a table–especially for more than four people. The non-happy hour days of the week are a little bit better, with Monday being the best bet for a stress-free experience.

Read More “A True Beer Paradise (Almost)” »

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.

With their selection of serious wood-fired pizzas, the crusts both charred and slightly sweet with honey, owner Jose Velasquez and wife, Reyna Isabella Acosta, have done more than introduce Neapolitan-style pizza to an underserved Petworth neighborhood. They’ve also helped to break the stranglehold that Mexican cuisine has on Salvadoran restaurateurs. Well, sort of. The menu at Moroni & Brothers does feature a number of Mexican and Tex-Mex staples, but its focus is squarely on the wood-oven pizzas, which Velasquez learned to make under Ruth Gresser’s tutelage at Pizzeria Paradiso, and the Salvadoran dishes from the owners’ home country. This kitchen fusion can lead to some rare cultural fusion in the dining room, too, where Anglo foodies and Hispanic regulars mix together at this Georgia Avenue storefront, the Spanish-language music blaring from the jukebox at ear-splitting volumes. But it can also lead to a heady dining experience, whether you opt for the fiery Diavola pie with sausage and jalapeños or the fattier pleasures of Moroni’s pork-and-cheese pupusa.

Addendum: Y&H looks into the question of why Salvadoran and Mexican cuisines are forever entwined at area restaurants.

Moroni & Brothers, 4811 Georgia Ave. NW, (202) 829-2090

Photo courtesy of Moroni & Brothers

It’s nice to see the new, streamlined ABC News using its resources wisely. The news-gatherers recently put together an online slide show dedicated to lousy celebrity tippers. It carries the not-clever-enough headline: “Check please? Tip, maybe.”

It clicked through all 12 celebs. I feel gross.

Read More “Bad Celebrity Tippers: We Love to Hate ‘Em” »

Washington Business Journal is reporting that Pizzeria Paradiso owner/chef Ruth Gresser is having “conversations with the developers of DC USA about potentially opening up an outpost of her restaurant at the big-box center across from the Metro station” in Columbia Heights.

The gentrified-within-an-inch of its life neighborhood is already home to two fine pie joints, RedRocks and Pete’s Apizza, but Gresser tells the Journal that she’s still bullish on the ‘hood. “I feel like it’s a different neighborhood from Dupont Circle, and with all the commercial and residential growth happening there, it seems like there could be an uptick of people who would be interested in us,” she tells the paper.

Read More “Pizzeria Paradiso to Open Third Location in Columbia Heights?” »

The Reluctant Gourmet has a good, friendly interview with Ruth Gresser, in which the owner and chef behind Pizzeria Paradiso talks about her background, her decision to open a pizza joint, and whether cooking school is necessary for a chef.

Here are three things I learned about Gresser:

Read More “Paradiso’s Ruth Gresser on Cooking Schools and Other Subjects” »