Voting is just a couple of weeks old for the inaugural class of the D.C. Dish Hall of Fame, but already a pattern has emerged: Fast foods are dominating the competition.

That’s hardly surprising, of course. On a daily basis, you know that people order about 500 more half smokes at Ben’s Chili Bowl than, say, order Frank Ruta’s roast chicken at Palena Cafe. But just because the odds are stacked against your favorite dish, that’s no excuse to sit back and let the fast foods run away with this.

Start pressing your friends to vote for your favorite dish. The voting doesn’t end until Dec. 11, when we will induct the top 5 into Washington City Paper’s inaugural D.C. Dish Hall of Fame.

Take a look at the current leaders:

Read More “Fast Foods Take the Lead in D.C. Dish Hall of Fame Voting” »

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.

Before he was installed as chef at Teatro Goldoni, that once-fading K Street institution, Enzo Fargione was perhaps best known as a Roberto Donna acolyte. Isn’t it funny how things have changed? These days, chef Donna, once lord over a vast empire, has no working restaurant to his name, while Fargione leads a kitchen that’s cooking up the most inventive Italian dishes I’ve tasted around these parts since Fabio Trabocchi left McLean for the hollow promise of New York City.

Addendum: Read Young & Hungry’s full review of Teatro Goldoni.

 Teatro Goldoni, 1909 K St. NW, (202) 955-9494

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

When Michael Kosmides and Jose Garcia took control of Teatro Goldoni on K Street NW, the owners did something that few thought possible: They made the old power-alley, commedia dell’Arte haunt an actual player again on the restaurant scene. They did so by hiring former Roberto Donna acolyte, Enzo Fargione, who’s not only developed his own style of cooking in recent years, but has also quickly established himself as one of the top chefs in the District.

Kosmides and Garcia hope to strike gold again when they open another place, still unnamed, just a couple of blocks from Teatro Goldoni. According to a well-placed source who requested anonymity, the partners signed a lease on a space near 19th and I streets for a planned Mediterranean-style restaurant. The concept hasn’t been finalized yet, but it could include tapas and Neapolitan-style pizzas.

Read More “Teatro Goldoni Owners Plan to Open Mediterranean-Style Restaurant” »

When Galileo was forced to leave town in 2006, downtown D.C. was left with only a handful of decent Italian restaurants, including Tosca and the woefully underrated Spezie. But in recent months, the dearth has turned into a near glut. (Relax, you word mavens; I understand that “near glut” has all the contradictory overtones of “near miss.”)

Just look at the newbies on the market: Ristorante Posto, Siroc (whose arugula salad with lemon-and-black-pepper vinaigrette makes my list of best salads of the young year), and even the resurgent Teatro Goldoni under chef Enzo Fargione, who has made the K Street institution seem suddenly new again.  And that list doesn’t even include two other Italian restaurants yet to hit the area: Ashok Bajaj’s forthcoming property (his seventh) in mid-town and Stir Food Group’s Potenza, a 10,000 square-foot operation set to open later this month in the Woodward building at 1430 H St. NW.

Read More “Italian Eateries Are Getting Quite Famoso in Downtown D.C.” »

Rustico Executive Chef Frank Morales has turned to Chicago’s hearty (if not heart-stopping at more than 400 calories per slice) deep-dish pizza traditions for inspiration. He’s created a small line of deep-dish pies, including one with housemade Chicago-style sausage. (Never mind that Obama’s favorite pie comes from Italian Fiesta Pizzeria in Hyde Park, which serves a decidedly thin-crust round.)

Building his own deep-dish pies was not exactly a labor of love for Morales, who prefers the thin, Neapolitan-style pizzas that emphasize dough over toppings. Chicago-style is “sort of the opposite,” he says. “It’s a pizza that’s overly topped.” Nonetheless, the chef invested countless hours in researching Chicago deep-dish—only to realize that he couldn’t really afford to make the real, real thing. True deep-dish pizza can be more than two inches thick and require 45 minutes or more of cooking time; diners just won’t wait that long for pizza at the Alexandria gastropub.

“It takes about 11 minutes to drink a beer in a noisy place and 14 to drink one in a quieter place,” says Morales. “So it would be several rounds” before they got their pie.

Read More “Inauguration Eats: Pizza, Chicago and Otherwise” »

I’m no Reliable Source, and the City Paper  is not exactly known for its celebrity gossip. But these are trying times, and the Young & Hungry blog could use the hits that will no doubt come his way once he types “Halle Berry” into the meta-tag field.

• Berry is supposed to be dining Monday night at Teatro Goldoni, as part of a private party at the K Street institution, now under the creative command of chef Enzo Fargione. According to Fargione, the party will also include the likes of Spike Lee, Ron Howard, and Susan Sarandon. But you autograph seekers should just cool your jets. All the celebs will be safely ensconced in private rooms, and there will be security at the front door. You could nurse a few drinks at the bar, and sample a few plates from Fargione’s dynamite bar menu, in hopes that you might still be there when the famous folks walk out the door. But that’s as close as you’re gonna get.
• NewsHour host Jim Lehrer and Joel L. Klein, chancellor of New York City’s public schools, will be dining at Ardeo on Inauguration Day, presumably separately. They’ll have a chance to sample the cooking of Alex McWilliams, a promising chef who took over the kitchen late last year.
• Washington Post Chairman Donald Graham is planning to eat at the Oval Room on the big day. Lucky him. Tony Conte, I think, is the most underrated chef in town.

Oh, and just to mess with the Google search engines: Halle Berry, Halle Berry, Halle Berry.

Image by Flickr user tostie14

Global economic crisis? What global economic crisis? Over the weekend, an auction house sold an Italian white truffle, weighing 2.37 pounds, for $200,000. According to the Associated Press, the “prized tuber went for the second year running to Hong Kong-born casino mogul Stanley Ho after an auction held simultaneously in Rome, London, Abu Dhabi and Macau, auction organizers said.”

The AP also reports that Ho last year bought “a 3.3-pounder– one of the biggest truffles unearthed in half a century — for a record $330,000.”

So aside from garnering a ridiculous amount of media attention, what else can Ho do with his massive tuber? I mean, can you actually use that much truffle in a kitchen before the thing goes bad? I decided to put the question to Enzo Fargione, the talented toque at Teatro Goldoni and one of Esquire magazine’s chefs to watch in 2008.

Read More “Two-Pound Truffle Sells for $200,000″ »