I knew this day would eventually come. The beer geeks have taken over the Y&H blog! With their unholy alliance of timely information and sheer ambition, they and their kind (those stupid vintage beer commercials!) have captured the top three spots this week.

Here, without further ado, are the most read posts for the week:

1. Vintage TV Beer Commercials
2. D.C.'s a Great Beer City, Chapter 1
3. Upcoming D.C. Beer Events
4. Landrum Releases 'The Catch' to Bring On More Burgers
5. Food News You Can Use: Playing Catch-Up Edition

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Much to Y&H's surprise and delight, more of you clicked on the item about Mark Furstenberg's forthcoming street food restaurant than on Obama's much overhyped (guilty as charged!) visit to Ray's Hell Burgers. Congratulations on being so damn cool. The top posts of the week:

1. Furstenberg's Street Food Restaurant Will Stretch Far Beyond Bread-Based Snacks
2. President and VP Waited in Line at Ray's Just Like Everyone Else
3. Spike Mendelsohn Set to Open Pizzeria in D.C.
4. Everyone's Squeezing the Juice Out of Obama's Visit to Ray's Hell Burgers
5. Obama and Biden Order One "Hell" of a Burger

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

If you haven't heard already — and I really hope that you've been spared — Hannity, Ingraham, and other right-wing pit bulls have been attacking Obama for ordering his Ray's Hell Burger with spicy mustard, which they see as elitist or French or something so drastic that it'll mean the downfall of God and country. (MediaMatters has a decent breakdown of the right's nervous breakdown over spicy mustard.)

But, really, why stop there? Why not go after Obama and all those other tree-hugging liberals who like to eat their hamburgers on fermented bread, which was created around 1,000 B.C. in ancient Egypt? I mean, c'mon Hannity, don't you remember what those ancient Egyptians believed in? Math! Science! They probably didn't believe in Jesus either. Oh, wait, Jesus wasn't born yet. But still, they didn't believe in Jesus! No one should ever, ever eat their hamburger on a bun!

OK, I know y'all must feel like you've had it up to HERE with the Obama burger madness, but allow Y&H to add a final footnote to this presidential prole moment at Ray's Hell Burgers. Michael Landrum, over at donrockwell.com, swears that this interchange occurred between him and the prez:

Actual true moment, and the most beautiful moment in my life—something that will never make it into the press—when the President sat down to eat, this was what was playing: click Harvest for the World. Can you believe that shit?

Me to the President: "I don't know what's on your I-Pod, but check out our soundtrack. Here we play the Isleys"

President to me: "Right on."

No lie.

See Landrum's other Rockwell note after that jump.

Wrote Landrum:

Now, those of you who don't know me might not believe me, but what I set out to do do ten years ago when I first set out to have a business, I had one thing, and one thing only, in mind.

To see my plan come to fruition, and to have a national stage to do so, blows my mind in a way that is incomprehensible even to me.

Now that I have a direct ear to the White House and have finally established a foundation for my plan, I can now reveal just exactly what I have been about for the past ten years: To achieve a Presidential Pardon for Gil Scott-Heron.*

Once this is done, I can rest.

* Note: This was Landrum's original link for Scott-Heron, but Y&H switched it for more background on the artist.

Michael Landrum has never been one to suck up to the rich and powerful, so to hear the owner of Ray's Hell Burgers suddenly turn deferential to President Obama took Y&H by surprise. (Michael, I'll have the cell phone on all night, so you can call and bitch about this intro.)

Getting info from the chronically talkative toque is usually easy. But when Obama and Biden visit Ray's Hell Burgers? Waterboarding wouldn't have parted Landrum's lips.

Did the president's staff call ahead to make arrangements or was this a surprise visit? "The less I say about how the president got here, the better," Landrum says. What did Obama order? "He had a cheeseburger," the owner allows. What kind of cheese? "Any details beyond that are his private business," Landrum adds.

[Nevermind that this video spills all the details of Obama and Biden's orders. The president got a cheddar cheeseburger, medium-well, with spicy mustard, lettuce, and tomato. The VP ordered a medium-well burger with Swiss cheese, jalapenos, and ketchup. Biden also got a root beer. Y&H wonders if medium-well is a required precaution for all members of the executive branch. How else to explain such poor treatment of the working-class sandwich?)

Landrum did allow that Obama demanded no preferential treatment. The President preferred to wait in line with the rest of the Hell Burger faithful. "I wish all my customers were like that," Landrum jokes.

The owner says he didn't take Obama's order, nor did he cook Obama's burger. Landrum thought the honors should go to his staff, not some owner looking to take over their tasks just to interact with the most powerful man in the world. "I already get too much glory for what I do," he says.

Landrum spoke briefly to Obama and Biden to see how they liked their burgers (only one guess as to their response) and to express his faith in the president's economic initiatives. "Thanks to him," Landrum says, "I'm confident in creating new jobs and restaurants." The latter includes Landrum's forthcoming Ray's the Steaks at East River (formerly known as Ray's the Heat) located in Ward 7, a part of the District starving for sit-down restaurants.

And with that, Landrum says, Obama and Biden finished their meals and left. They were at the burger joint no more than 30 minutes, just long enough to give Landrum the final punchline you'd expect from the iconoclastic meat man. "I don't care if he is the president," Landrum jokes. "It's the rule. You eat and leave, baby."

Seriously, do any of you expect to be surprised by the winner of that category? Far more interesting to me is the Best New Restaurant pick. Despite the crappy economy, our market saw a wealth of new eateries open in the past year. Below the jump is a list of the restaurants under consideration for the honor. Which one do you think deserves top billing?

1. VOLT
2. Art & Soul
3. Adour
4. General Store
5. BRABO by Robert Wiedmaier
   
6. Inox
7. Bourbon Steak
8. CommonWealth
   
9. Sea Pearl
10. 1905
11. SEI Restaurant
12. Siroc
13. Ristorante Posto
14. Eventide
15. Taylor Gourmet
16. PassionFish
17. Yaku
18. Founding Farmers
19. Surfside
20. Ray's Hell Burgers
21. Good Stuff Eatery
22. Thirsty Bernie Sports Bar & Grill
    
23. Et Voila!
24. Pete's Apizza
25. La Sandia
    

The recent spate of new burger joints in the D.C. market has inspired the Washingtonian to debut a March Madness-like contest, Burger Brackets, which pits ground-beef sandwich vs. ground beef sandwich until an ultimate winner is crowned. Wanna bet that Ray's Hell Burger takes top honors?

Regardless of its predictability, Burger Brackets is a great idea. I wish I would have thought of it. Few things rile readers up like a debate over hamburgers. Politics? War? Abortion? Opening presents Christmas Eve or Christmas morn? They all take a backseat to hamburgers. Eaters seem to cling to their favorites like a child to his mom's apron strings. I have my faves, too, of course, but I mostly subscribe to the motto of Urban Burger's David Calkins: "Burgers are like pizza and sex: Even bad experiences are pretty damn good."

The first 16 contestants can be found here in Bracket One. The second bracket will be introduced later, after the first one has run its course. Obviously there are some good burgers yet to make an appearance, like those made at Quarry House, Big Buns, EatBar, Urban, and even The Cheesecake Factory. The first matchup pairs Central vs. Westend Bistro, which will knock out a celebrity chef right from the get-go. Another first-round matchup will have Ray's Hell Burger facing off against Frank Ruta's famous cheeseburger at the Palena Cafe.

I don't know, but it seems like these battles should have been fought later in the contest. I'd hate to see any one of these burgers knocked out in the first round.

Image by Flickr user chichacha

Thanks to a Huffington Post mention, Mike DeBonis' item last week about Adrian Fenty and Michelle Obama lunching at Georgia Brown's took the top honors this week. After DeBonis' upset win, the Top 5 settled down into the usual Young & Hungry mix of posts, which apparently aren't good enough for Huffington.

1. Can You Blame the Economy for the Cameron Perks Tragedy?
2. Urban Bar-B-Que's Brisket Rises to the Top of the Class
3. Komi: Best Restaurant in D.C. or 'Overrated'?
4. El Pollo Rico: Is It a Magnet Because It's Good or Hyped?
5. NPR's Morning Edition Surprise: Ray's Hell Burgers Will Survive the Economy!

If I may, allow me to boil down Yuki Noguchi's Morning Edition report today on how local restaurants are surviving this vicious economy: creating affordable prix-fixe menus, doing more with lesser ingredients, and, well, being Micheal Landrum.

For the life of me, I can't understand why NPR would choose to focus on only two restaurants, Ray's Hell Burgers and 1789 Restaurant. The former is owned and operated by Landrum, who, by sheer act of will, philosophy, and maybe lunacy, sells a 10-ounce steakhouse burger for $6.95, a feat that no one restaurateur in town can match. The latter is owned by the Clyde's Restaurant Group, which has far deeper pockets than your average neighborhood eatery looking to escape this economic quicksand.

First of all, the economy is not hitting casual, counter-service restaurants as hard as the upscale ones, so why focus on Ray's Hell Burgers to begin with? The hamburger, after all, is considered recession-proof. And if you want to understand how fine-dining places will ride out this storm, talk to owners of single restaurants, where their livelihood depends on survival. Talk to Tom Power at Corduroy. Talk to Bob Kinkead at Kinkead's (yes, he owns another place, but it's in Boston). Talk to Kaz Okochi at Kaz Sushi Bistro. You get the point.

I'm not saying anything about the stability of these restaurants, but I bet all three owners spend more than a few nights worrying over the economy—and what they will do to survive.

Photo by Charles Steck