The scene inside the Reagan Building

Blue Ridge’s Barton Seaver was gunning for the title for the third straight year at the 2009 Capital Food Fight, held last night inside the Reagan Building. His competition included not only last year’s finalist, Peter Smith from PS 7’s, but also two Top Chef contestants (Mike Isabella from Zaytinya and Bryan Voltaggio from Volt) and one out-of-town ringer, celebrity chef Michael Mina of Bourbon Steak.

Seaver performed honorably but ultimately lost to Mina the Carpetbagger. But, hey, it’s not about competition, right? It’s a fundraiser for D.C. Central Kitchen, the non-profit with the master plan to attack homelessness and poverty.

Below the fold are more pictures from the event, courtesy of Reflections Photography. Used with permission.

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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.

A professional, if not a genius, is someone who can who adapt to public criticism while still maintaining a sense of personal integrity. Chef Peter Smith is such a person. When diners found his opening day menu at PS 7’s too baffling to parse—a sort of build-your-own tasting menu, back when people still had money and thought they wanted to blow it on 10 courses—Smith quickly retreated and developed more approachable ways to showcase his talents. His latest menu, unveiled in late May, is without a doubt his best attempt yet to expand the dining experience without overwhelming anyone. The menu sports a section called “For the Table” that features sharable plates, from his signature petite hot dogs to his delicious flatbreads topped with duck confit and other juicy morsels. But the menu also disposes with the traditional appetizer course in favor of a two-pronged section of “Cool” and “Hot” bites, including scallop ceviche, “oxtail tots,” and foie-gras-studded braised short ribs in pastry. The beauty of this approach, of course, is that some of these bites are so enticing that you want to…well, build your own mini-tasting menu.

PS 7’s, 777 I St. NW, (202) 742-8550

Suddenly, it seems that our region is awash with artisanal charcuterie makers. We’ve already told you about the stuff at Restaurant Eve, the cured meat plate at PS 7’s, and the hand-crafted meats that Jamie Stachowski is peddling practically everywhere, even from the back of his 1988 Trooper. (Oh, by the way, Stachowski finally settled on a name for his product line, MeatCrafters, which sounds like a shop at the mall where they stuff your sausage in an hour. So to speak.)

Two more players have recently entered the cured meat market.

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Who are you kidding? You think you’re going to get a reservation at Citronelle or CityZen on Tuesday evening at this late hour in the inauguration madness? You’ve got a better chance of crashing Obama’s inaugural speech wearing fatigues and a crazy glint in your eye.

So don’t fool yourselves that some of the city’s finest restaurants—the very ones hyped by everyone for the past week—will have a spot for you and your guests. They won’t. But you can still eat well. Below are three places, each well-regarded by critics and diners alike, that still have spots available for Tuesday night. (Or they did yesterday when I checked—sorry, I’ve been out of commission for 24 hours.)

• PS 7’s has a number of seats available, which is great, because you’ll have a chance to taste one of the most creative chefs working in town. Peter Smith has put together a special, multi-course tasting menu for the inauguration; it will include mini-Chicago hot dogs (much like the mini-dogs he already serves but with the standard Windy City condiments), Chicago thin-style pizza with spicy diablo sauce, Illinois pan-seared trout, and a slow-roasted pork loin with a sauce of ginger and crack seeds. Crack seed, for those who don’t know (including me before I talked to Smith), is the name given to a variety of preserved fruits popular in Hawaii; Smith ate the snacks as a kid in Hawaii, where his Army father was stationed. 
• Vidalia was booked up for Inauguration Day, but things quickly changed when a bunch of diners got their hands on ball tickets, says chef R.J. Cooper. “We had a lot of large parties that have canceled within the last three days because they were celebrities or politicians that were invited to balls,” he says. The only problem with trying to book a reservation at Vidalia is that you won’t be able to reach the restaurant by car; the streets around the place will be closed, Cooper says. You’ll need to take the Metro or the bus. It should be worth the hassle. Cooper has constructed a build-your-own inaugural tasting menu from a wide number of Vidalia dishes, including smoked Carolina mountain trout, a sweet onion crepe, Rhode Island skate wing, Wagyu short ribs, and rabbit saddle. But he’s also put together a killer bar menu, available all day, that features chicken fried steak, a charcuterie board, a deep-dish “Obama Mama Pizza,” and Cooper’s very first ground-beef hamburger (on onion focaccia bread) at Vidalia. “It’s food you like to eat when you’re tipsy,” he says.
• Ardeo, unlike the other restaurants in Ashok Bajaj’s group such as the Oval Room or 701, has tables available on inauguration night. That has more to do with Ardeo’s location in Cleveland Park, far away from the downtown crush, than with the quality of the cooking. Alex McWilliams was hired as chef last year, and from what I’ve tasted, he’s well worth putting on your list for a visit. I’m tempted, in fact, to call McWilliams’ wild striped bass with sunchoke puree and oil-cured olives the dish of the winter. Bajaj says that McWilliams will have a few surprises on the menu for Inauguration Day diners.

Photo by Charles Steck

As the inauguration approaches, and threatens to turn our town into one giant parking lot, we’ll start scouring the town (well, the Web, too) to unearth the most interesting eats out there to celebrate Barack Obama’s first day in office.

This handy little compendium of ideas comes courtesy of ZagatBuzz, D.C. edition. Among other
tidbits, ZagatBuzz notes:

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