The owners of Oya, the Penn Quarter restaurant with the red-velvet rope mentality, opened up sister restaurant SEI at the beginning of the year, and by most early reports, the modern sushi spot was a winner. Many months after those professional raves, Restaurant Rater audreys isn't quite so impressed. Listen in:

Long before the current crop of Italian newcomers started flooding our streets with pasta, there was Cafe Paradiso on Connecticut Avenue in Woodley Park. The neighborhood haunt has been around since 1989, back when some of the new chefs on the scene were still having their moms cut their spaghetti for them. "Tavi" is a [...]

Rater jmiams likes Nava Thai OK, but really digs Ruan Thai. It really isn't fair that one community has so many good Thai restaurants. But as Restaurant Rater jmiams points, there are at least three Thai options in Wheaton, all of them worthy of your dining dollar. But this particular Rater has a thing for [...]

Meaza Zemedu, the restaurateur behind the well-regarded Meaza. My next Young & Hungry column focuses on a new, formal Ethiopian service, which attempts to give diners a sense of the religious tenets that underline an Ethiopian Orthodox home meal. It's a unique experience, and it has definitely put me in the mood for more injera-based [...]

Sometimes a Restaurant Rater comes along who exudes authority.  Veteran Rater mcclive is such a person, particularly when it comes to Asian cuisines. When mcclive speaks, you should listen. Check out his take on Bob's Noodle 66 in Rockville:

How can you go to 2Amys and resist this pie? Meliakristin explains. Go to 2Amys for something other than pizza? That seems an act bordering on sacrilege, at least to this critic who still thinks Peter Pastan is turning out the best pies in town. But Restaurant Rater meliakristin's mind turns to other delicacies when [...]

All right, most of you already think you can do my job better than me. So prove it, smart guy (or gal). Enter the Y&H contest to become a judge at the Taste of Georgetown, scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 10, in (all together now) Georgetown. How do you enter?

Diners who frequent the same restaurant again and again have a perspective that neither critics nor the marginally attached have: the depth of experience to figure out what the chef and kitchen do best, week after week after week. Restaurant rater TMPM75 is apparently a regular at the Royal Mile Pub and knows exactly where [...]

The District is home to many fine Jamaican and Caribbean eateries, which too often get overlooked in favor of other ethnic eats, like Vietnamese and Ethiopian.  Negril is a modest D.C.-area chain with three outlets. It was founded by Earl Chinn, a Jamaican native who, according to Negril's Web site, "sought to bring a taste [...]

For those who have pawed through Y&H's 2009 Dining Guide, you know that I'm a serious fan of Present, a Vietnamese restaurant unlike any other in the area. Y&H, of course, is just one of a number of media sources beating the drum for Present. But what do eaters who don't get paid to chew [...]