If you’ve watched the video of President Obama touting his small-business credit initiatives — and damn you, C-SPAN, for not offering an embed function — you had to wonder how the hell Pete’s Apizza ever rose to the Oval Office’s attention.

“These steps will make a difference for more small businesses like Pete’s [pause] Apizza in Washington, D.C.,” the president says in his speech. “I recommend it. Everybody go out there.”

The way co-owner Joel Mehr explains it, Pete’s was the beneficiary of a bank tour. It seems that Mehr’s bank, City First Bank of D.C., gave folks with the Treasury Department a tour of some small businesses that received loans from the U Street institution.  One was Pete’s. (Mehr noted that City First was the only bank that didn’t need twice in collateral what the loan was worth.)

Mehr says he got a call last night from someone with Treasury, who started asking all kinds of questions about Pete’s, trying to confirm information about the Columbia Heights pizzeria. The co-owner says he even spent about 10 minutes trying to explain why the name is pronounced “A-beets,” not “a-pizza.”

“So after a lot of who-what who-ha,” Mehr says, “I find out that the president may be mentioning us” in a speech about small business loans the next day.

Read More “So How Did Pete’s Apizza Make It Onto the President’s Radar?” »

All three of Ben Ali’s sons plan to speak at the memorial service set for Friday at the Lincoln Theatre, right next door to the greasy spoon he made famous.  Mayor Adrian Fenty may speak, too, but as of this afternoon, no other people, famous or otherwise, are scheduled to honor the founder of Ben’s Chili Bowl, who died last week at age 82.

And that’s just fine with Nizam Ali, the youngest of Ben Ali’s sons, who says his father wouldn’t have wanted any fuss. The “Celebration of Life,” scheduled for noon Friday at the theater, “is going to be like a family thing that we’re going to open to the public,” Nizam Ali tells Y&H this afternoon.

The memorial is free and open to the public. All you have to do is show up at the theater and grab one of the 1,225 seats available — well, minus however many seats the Ali clan needs, which, Nizam Ali thinks, might run as high as 200.

Read More “Have a Special Memory of Ben’s? Share It at Ben Ali’s Memorial.” »

Steve Mannino has taken over the kitchen at Rustico

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.

To illustrate a larger point, I want to let you in on a small, behind-the-scenes spat between me and Frank Morales, the chef at Rustico. For a while now, Morales has been pissed at me for an online review I posted in January, around the time of Obama’s inauguration, which dissed the chef’s sincere-but-sloppy effort to produce a Chicago-style deep-dish pizza. Now, I don’t take it personally that Morales holds a grudge—at least not much. Mostly what I glean from the situation is that Morales takes extreme pride in his regular work—and hated being called out for a specialty pie that’s difficult to create under the best of circumstances, let alone under the heat of a quickie special-event menu. His anger is understandable, and frankly, Morales’ passion is what makes Rustico such a delight to frequent on those days when there’s no culinary pressure to suck up to a new president. Since taking over the job, Morales has run with Rustico’s beer-forward concept, creating smart, chef-driven versions of the fatty pub fare that pairs so well with suds. He and beer director Greg Engert have, in a very short time, created the model by which all gastropubs should be judged.

Addenda: Frank Morales has since left Rustico and has been replaced by former Olives chef Steve Mannino.

Rustico, 827 Slaters Lane, Alexandria, (703) 224-5051

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

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 each passing month, you can just feel maverick meat man Michael Landrum inching closer to mainstream respectability. First, it was his decision to move Ray’s the Steaks to a spacious spot in the Navy League building, more than doubling his previous capacity. Then it was his bold move to lure sommelier Mark Slater away from Citronelle. Finally, it was Landrum’s quasi-brown-nose behavior when Barack Obama and Joe Biden visited Ray’s Hell Burgers earlier this year. Of course, as Landrum would be the first to point out, none of these things actually define him or speak to his operating philosophies. Truth is, Landrum continues to subvert the expense-account mindset of most steakhouses at his Arlington flagship, where you can slice into a well-aged, charred-to-your-liking steak at a fraction of the price of those downtown meat emporiums.

Ray’s the Steaks, 2300 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, (703) 841-7297

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Temperance Fountain at 7th & Pennsylvania

Ever so often I’m forced to confront the reality that hanging out with some of my fellow craft bartenders is like being at a Lambda Lambda Lambda frat party. (Imagine Fred “the Ogre” Palowakski shouting: “Nerds!”) Our topics of discussion range from fermentation yeasts to ice density and on our nights off, which are few, we get together in tasting groups and geek out over obscure Belgian Beers, small batched gins and “Aquavit” from the West Coast.

This is far from the romantic ideal of a bartender partying late, getting the girl and tossing piles of cash in the air as he lies down to bed at sunrise. Yet that’s not really a bad thing in a city where the president, no matter how much beer he downs or cocaine he admits to snorting (not that anyone remembers him doing it), receives more than a few comparisons to Steve Urkel. So embrace it, I do.

But the modern cocktail nerd requires certain trappings. And how to fit in? You already know about the Rickey, you may have purchased a fedora, vintage vest and bar spoon and practiced craft bartending signature moves such as the hard shake. Now let’s take it the next step. In the next couple of days I’m going to point you in the direction of becoming a genuine cocktail nerd.
Read More “So You Want to be a Cocktail Nerd? Pt. I” »

If Spike Mendelsohn had ever wondered whether his recent run-in with the law had put him in dutch with Michelle Obama, a documented fan of his burgers, then the First Lady answered it today when she revisited Good Stuff Eatery on Capitol Hill.

Obama Foodorama, Eddie Gehman Kohan’s indefatigable blog, reported that the First Lady made a return appearance to Good Stuff today, along with daughters Sasha and Malia and some White House staffers. It was Michelle Obama’s first public tasting of Good Stuff burgers since news broke in late May that Mendelsohn, along with business partner/roommate Mike Colletti, had been evicted from a Capitol Hill property for failure to pay more than $8,000 in rent and penalties.

The First Lady had previously hit up Good Stuff in early May, shortly before the eviction.

But perhaps Mendelsohn’s moves to make restitution were enough for the First Lady? Or maybe Michelle Obama feels some loyalty to Good Stuff because, as Obama Foodorama reported, Mendelsohn has been keeping the President stuffed with a steady supply of burgers?

Noted Ob Fo:

Read More “Spike Mendelsohn Is Still on the First Lady’s A-List Despite His Recent Legal Woes” »

Most folks saw the Beer Summit as a chance to talk race relations in America. The readers of Y&H saw it as a chance to bash the participants for their lousy taste in brew.

Orr Shtuhl’s post on the suds summit was the runaway hit of the week, but his follow-up on Obama’s disastrous taste in light quaffs just barely missed the cut, which makes me think Y&H readers have some deep-seated desire to push the president around.

The rest of the week’s hits:

1. Obama’s Beer Meeting: Let the Lobbying Begin!
2. Strip Club Food: Not as Nasty as You’d Think
3. Chinatown Coffee Co. Opened for Business Today
4. Follow That Cheese: Whole Foods Burrata Not Made in House After All
5. Michelle Obama and Company Dined at The Majestic on Thursday

Photo by √oxéfx via Flickr Creative Commons Attribution License

Answer: President Obama drinking Bud Light.

(I told you I wouldn’t let this die.) I don’t know if I should have seen it coming, but this light-beer position is even less excusable than, I don’t know, torture. Light beer — especially the mass-produced variety— is less flavorful and less potent than “regular” beer. From both an alcoholic and ingredient standpoint, it is literally watered down. And don’t even dream of playing the “drinkability” card; it’s not as if regular Bud is some buxom elixir that is delicious but too rich for refreshment. If it can be funneled, it has drinkability.

The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union adds another cloud to the picnic, lobbying for the beers to be swapped for lemonade. Fine, WCTU, I’d take a virgin Tom Collins over a fizzy light beer. But this quote in the same article, from local crazy Rocky Twyman (founder of Pray at the Pump, a group that prayed for lower gas prices), is, shall we say, harder to take:

Read More “What’s Worse Than Obama Drinking Budweiser?” »

Every time President Obama eats a burger, Mr. Y&H (aka Tim Carman) has a goddamn field day. But now that Obama is set to crack beers with Officer James Crowley and Harvard prof Henry Louis Gates, Jr. to discuss Gates’ false arrest at his Cambridge home, it’s time for the liquid half of Young & Hungry to go nuts. And I’m going to milk this baby for all it’s worth.

First, CNN reports (with the urgent UPDATE in all caps) that Obama will have a Budweiser, which is what he had at the MLB All-Star Game. Crowley will reportedly quaff a Blue Moon, and Gates’s choice is still undetermined, though he has a preference for Red Stripe and Beck’s. Surprising? No, but so, so disappointing.

Read More “Obama’s Beer Meeting: Let the Lobbying Begin!” »

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.

Three different vehicles have taken up residence at the back end of a massive parking lot that serves the Safeway grocery store at 514 Rhode Island Ave. NE. One is a converted 1995 school bus now outfitted with deep-fryers, prep tables, and coolers. The second is a square white panel truck that hauls around a giant generator, and the final is a beat-up red Chevy 1500 pickup with an equally well-used Southern Pride smoker propped up on cinder blocks in the bed.

This sprawling mobile barbecue empire belongs to Fate Pittman, a 73-year-old pitmaster who has been smoking pork, beef, and chicken for more than 30 years. Except no one calls Pittman by his family name. Everyone knows him by the handle painted onto his vehicles: Mr. P.

Read More “Young & Hungry Dining Guide by the Day: Mr. P’s Ribs and Fish” »