It’s official. People have gone batshit for Select 55. Or at least batshit for our post on the beer. It tops the list once again this week.

I think I’ll go drown my sorrows in a real beer.

1. Budweiser Launches Select 55, Light Beer Arms Race Gets Absurd
2. Looking for a Little Practice, Bibiana Jumps the Gun and Opens for Service Today
3. Oh, the Noise, Noise, Noise, Noise in Restaurants
4. ‘Two Left Feet’ for One Big Steak
5. Did Vidalia Use “Inferior” Ingredients During Restaurant Week?

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

You can’t throw a meatball — no, sorry, a gnocco slathered in goat ragu — without hitting some downtown Italian restaurant these days. I wrote about the crowded field in a recent Y&H column, but since that piece, Bibiana has opened and more Italian places are planned for neighborhoods just around the perimeter of downtown, including a Penn Quarter outlet of the NYC red sauce house, Carmine’s, and a Cap Hill location of the Italian export, Acqua al 2.

What’s going on here?

It’s a good question, and it’s one that host David Furst put to me during this week’s edition of Metro Connection.  You can hear Furst and I delve into the subject today at 1 p.m. (and 5 a.m. on Saturday) on WAMU. That’s 88.5 FM on whatever the hell device people use nowadays to listen to the radio.

I don’t know what frequency that is for Rep. Joe Wilson. He’ll just have to turn the foil-wrapped strainer on his head until the signal comes in loud and clear.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Wow, Y&H really touched a nerve yesterday with his bitch about noise at local restaurants. Either we’re a town of old farts, or interior designers and owners have seriously overestimated how much “buzz” diners want in their restaurants.

Here’s a sampling of the commentary that has hit my inbox in the past 24 hours.

From Brooke, a 27-year-old female:

Read More “Readers Are Ranting Over Restaurant Noise, Too!” »

Zaytinya: You practically get a metal concert with your mezze.

Y&H still remembers, more than  a year ago, when the dining critic at Brand X wrote a Sunday magazine cover story about noise in restaurants and even instituted a special feature measuring decibel levels at every restaurant he reviews. What a waste of time, I thought, writing about something that’s so subjective. One diner’s noise, after all, is another diner’s buzz and excitement. (OK, critiquing food is totally subjective, too, but go with me here.) Only old folks and babies, I figured, care about noise in restaurants.

Well, I’m officially a geezer now.

Read More “Oh, the Noise, Noise, Noise, Noise in Restaurants” »

Bibiana Osteria and Enoteca, the latest entrant in the area’s escalating Italian Restaurant Wars, will indeed serve pizza, just like a number of other combatants in this wide-scale skirmish, including Potenza, Ristorante Posto, and Kora. But owner Ashok Bajaj doesn’t want pies to define his new place at 1100 New York Ave. NW, which will have its soft opening on Monday, Sept. 7.

Y&H spoke with Bajaj yesterday, and he told me that chef Nicholas Stefanelli’s offerings will be purely regional Italian, none of this Italian-American silliness that creeps into some menus around town. The pastas, the owner added, would be made in-house, with prices ranging from around $14 to $20. Pizza will also be available, he said, but only at lunch and only at the lounge during dinner service.

So why downplay the pie?

Read More “Owner: Bibiana Osteria Will NOT be a Pizza Joint” »

Despite a name that makes you think of eyeballs, meat, and contact lenses — always an appetizing trio, yes? — MeatCrafters was a promising partnership between one of the best charcuterie makers and one of the most successful distributors in the D.C. area.

The partnership is no more.

Y&H contacted Jamie Stachowski yesterday evening who confirmed that he and Mitch Berliner have parted company — at least as partners in the charcuterie business. Stachowski’s name has already been scrubbed from the MeatCrafters‘ Web site, but he will still have a role in the company. Berliner is still selling and distributing some of Stachowski’s sausages.

“I’m trying to pursue a full line of charcuterie, and he is focusing on the [farmers] markets,” Stachowski tells Y&H. “Who knows? We might come together again at some point.”

Read More “Jamie Stachowski Parts with MeatCrafters” »

When Galileo was forced to leave town in 2006, downtown D.C. was left with only a handful of decent Italian restaurants, including Tosca and the woefully underrated Spezie. But in recent months, the dearth has turned into a near glut. (Relax, you word mavens; I understand that “near glut” has all the contradictory overtones of “near miss.”)

Just look at the newbies on the market: Ristorante Posto, Siroc (whose arugula salad with lemon-and-black-pepper vinaigrette makes my list of best salads of the young year), and even the resurgent Teatro Goldoni under chef Enzo Fargione, who has made the K Street institution seem suddenly new again.  And that list doesn’t even include two other Italian restaurants yet to hit the area: Ashok Bajaj’s forthcoming property (his seventh) in mid-town and Stir Food Group’s Potenza, a 10,000 square-foot operation set to open later this month in the Woodward building at 1430 H St. NW.

Read More “Italian Eateries Are Getting Quite Famoso in Downtown D.C.” »

That was the question I put to the celebrated meat man when he called up out of the blue this afternoon, asking me what he should call his forthcoming charcuterie line. (For the record, I told him he should just name the stuff after himself, no matter how difficult “Stachowski” is to pronounce for people who spend all their damn time silently working a computer; the Eastern European surname would lend the meats instant credibility, at least for those who haven’t already sampled Jamie Stachowski’s sausage, pates, and cured products.)

Read More “So Where the Hell Can You Find Jamie Stachowski Charcuterie in This Town?” »