Last week, I raised the indelicate question of whether Nando's Peri-Peri had totally wimped out its concept for the suburban stroller and babyspit crowd in Silver Spring. Yesterday, I got an official response from one Burton Heiss, managing director for the Nando's Restaurant Group based in D.C. Heiss decided to kill me with kindness:

Based on my mouth-watering experiences at the Nando's Peri-Peri in Chinatown — and I mean that literally, since the African pepper-laced peri-peri sauce caused pools of saliva to form at the base of my tongue — I went easy on myself at the new Nando's in Silver Spring. I ordered a quarter chicken "medium," which [...]

Jackie Greenbaum, the restaurateur known for her eponymous industrial DayGlo eatery in Silver Spring, has signed a lease to open a casual Mexican restaurant in Columbia Heights. The tiny, 800-square-foot operation will be located at 3313 11th St., in a former liquor store, and will not only sell regional Mexican foods but also snacks inspired [...]

Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard the stories about General Store customers feeling as welcome as guns in the Wizards locker room. The truth is, I’ve stood there at the counter myself and felt the storm clouds roll in, as chef Gillian Clark and business partner Robin Smith performed their jobs with a tight-lipped austerity, as if [...]

Fire Station 1's Cuban sandwich: almost good The early public reviews of Fire Station 1 Restaurant and Brewing Co. were disturbing enough to sound at least three alarms. By the time I walked into the new eatery carved out of Silver Spring's historic fire station, my confidence in the place was flatter than a deflated [...]

Good morning, Y&H Nation. We're running behind today in more ways than one. Y&H is still neck-deep in this year's Young & Hungry Dining Guide, so the blog may be a little thin over the next couple of days. Work with us here, folks. In the meantime, here are the most-popular items from last week: [...]

The mozzarella in corrozza at Sergio's I realize that this may come across as self-serving — as in, gosh, you should trust Y&H over those folks on various community sites — but after I read these reviews on Yelp about Sergio’s Ristorante Italiano, my interest in and suspicions about the place swelled to equal proportions. [...]

While one Silver Spring restaurant gets ready to celebrate its launch, another takes a fall. After four years in business, Taste of Jerusalem recently closed.

UPDATED 5:25 P.M. Tuesday, May 18 The project has been in the works since early 2007, when the Washington Post first announced plans to turn the historic Fire Station No. 1 in Silver Spring into a brewpub co-owned by the town's own craft brewer, Hook & Ladder. Three years later, Fire Station 1 Restaurant and [...]

This weekend while walking the streets of Chinatown, I ran into Tom Brown standing outside the Passenger. He was trying to absorb the last few rays of  sunshine before taking his turn behind the bar. We got to talking, and he mentioned the latest madness among bar drinkers: those who ask for a shot of [...]