In today’s Washington Business Journal, Jonathan O’Connell reports that Ray’s Hell Burger, the Oval Office’s first choice for ground beef patties, will open a branch in Adams Morgan this fall. This news was enough to ruin Y&H’s morning since I had spoken with owner Michael Landrum several weeks earlier about this very issue, and he denied any such plans.

So I got Landrum on the horn today to do some ’splainin’. Bottom line: He has no deal in place to open a Hell Burger in the former Ghana Cafe space at 2465 18th St. NW.

Read More “Not So Fast: There’s No Deal for a Ray’s Hell Burger in Adams Morgan” »

So Michelle Obama and the First Family’s defacto White House chef, Sam Kass, dined at Oyamel last week, and you know what? The local media didn’t Tweet their fingers to a pulp to report every last chip slathered with salsa that crossed the First Lady’s lips.

Eddie Gehman Kohan, the indefatigable blogger who covers all things Obama and food at (what else?) Obama Foodorama, thinks she knows why:

Read More “Have We Stopped Caring About the Obamas’ Restaurant Visits Already?” »

…Melissa Castro at the Washington Business Journal has dug up a juicy, mouth-watering, medium-rare bit of news (requires subscription to read full text) on Z-Burger, whose founder has been caught Tweeting about his chain under the names of Elevation Burger and Ray’s Hell Burger, two of Z’s major competitors.

I guess if you don’t have organic beef, steakhouse cuts, or some other selling point (“The president ate here!”), you can always turn to disinformation campaigns on Twitter. Reports Castro:

We all know what President Barack Obama’s burger runs did for the competitive burger market in Washington. But the burger wars actually started before that, when the founder of Z-Burger was caught Tweeting about his chain using fake online personas of two of his rivals, Elevation Burger and Ray’s Hell Burger.

Masquerading under the Elevation Burger persona on social networking site Twitter, the Z-Burger founder allegedly Tweeted: “I’m going to eat at Z-Burger for lunch today.” The public messages were discovered by an Elevation Burger vendor.

Read More “Z-Burger Founder Tweets Under Competitors’ Names; BGR to Compete in Burger Summit” »

It’s a short work week, and we at Young & Hungry Central have just the thing you need: beer and dining recommendations for the Fourth. We also have something for your reading pleasure:

The top blog posts of the week.

1. Obama Ate Here: The Working Map (with apologies and gratitude to BrightestYoungThings)
2. What Did Your $10 Ticket Get You at the Safeway Barbecue Battle?
3. On July 4th Weekend, Buy American Beer
4. Breadline Busted on 19 Health Code Violations, Ten of Them Critical
5. Dairy Godmother’s Owner Doesn’t Want the Obama Bump That Ray’s Hell Burger Got

Photo by cristinabe via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution License

Alex Nicholson over at BrightestYoungThings got bored and decided to put together a Google map on where the Obama family has eaten since they moved into the White House. As Nicholson writes, “If you tell your boss you are making an ‘Obama Ate Here’ Google Map, and she says it’s a good idea, it’s okay to do it at work.”

Read More “Obama Ate Here: The Working Map” »

Yours truly is thrilled to report that, for the first time in weeks, the vintage TV beer commercials did not crack the Top 5 posts. I’ll drink to that news.

Instead, readers this week were fascinated by a D.C. Department of Health inspector’s report on Breadline, which found 19 separate violations of the food code. Thousands of you wanted to read all the ugly details that caused the department to temporarily shut down Breadline. Fewer of you wanted to read the good news: the re-inspection report, which found not a single violation at Breadline. Ah, human nature.

And with that, we turn to the most-read items this week:

1. Breadline Busted on 19 Health Code Violations, Ten of Them Critical
2. My Top 5 Desert Island Beers. What Are Yours?
3. BGR: The Burger Joint Set to Open Third Store in Dupont Circle
4. Dining Guide Rejects: Corduroy, Comet, Urban, Tallula
5. Dairy Godmother’s Owner Doesn’t Want the Obama Bump That Ray’s Hell Burger Got
   

One by one, over the next several weeks, we’ll run 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 how your meal was when you return.

When you get tired of waiting in line for a Ray’s Hell Burger, head over to BGR: The Burger Joint in Bethesda. You can bite into what is the most consistent burger blend among the new generation of fast-casual patty peddlers. No matter what burger you desire, you can be sure you’re getting a taste of four different cuts of prime, dry-aged beef. Some of the other burger joint operators probably don’t even know what dry-aged beef is.

Addendum: BGR founder Mark Bucher told Y&H this week that he will be expanding to Dupont Circle this fall.

Ever since President Obama and his daughters visited the Dairy Godmother on Saturday, business at the Del Ray custard shop has increased by 20 percent, enough that owner Liz Davis has had to add extra staff to some shifts. Davis, however, thinks the worst is yet to come.

“My guess is that it’s this weekend when it’s going to hit,” says Davis, a Culinary Institute of America graduate and former pastry chef who opened Dairy Godmother eight years ago.

But here’s the thing: Davis doesn’t want to alter her business plan, or expand her brand, like Michael Landrum had to do following the president and vice president’s run to Ray’s Hell Burger in May. She’s content running her small independent shop at its current volume.

Read More “Dairy Godmother’s Owner Doesn’t Want the Obama Bump That Ray’s Hell Burger Got” »

I know that others have previously mentioned Travel + Leisure’s list of the 50 best new restaurants in America, but I finally got a chance to review the magazine’s related slideshow. I dutifully clicked on one slide after another after another, trying to discover which cities outperformed D.C. for these 50 coveted spots. Our metro area earned exactly one nod, for Founding Farmers.

Here’s the city-by-city breakdown of the other 49 spots:

• Chicago: Four restaurants
• New York City: Nine
• San Francisco: Eight
• Houston: Four
• Seattle: Seven

Read More “A Break Down of Travel + Leisure’s 50 Best New U.S. Restaurants” »

Allow me to tell you about some of the restaurants that didn’t make this year’s Young & Hungry guide to the 50 Best Restaurants in D.C. Michel Richard Citronelle, for one. Komi didn’t, either, no matter how many times some New Yorker wants to tell me what a genius Johnny Monis is. I sent other sacred cows to slaughter, too: Palena, Restaurant Eve, Minibar at Café Atlantico, CityZen, 2Amys, Inn at Little Washington,  and Central didn’t make my final cut. You want more? Buh-bye, CityZen and Ray’s Hell Burger.

Trust me, I’m not trying to be difficult. I’m just trying to be realistic. Do you really need me—or anyone else for that matter—to tell you to eat at these places? I might as well tell you to wear clothes when you go outside.

Photograph of Palena’s Frank Ruta by Darrow Montgomery