"It's really only us as Americans that focus on huge pieces of meat," Mike Costa, executive chef at Zaytinya, tells me when I ask him about the Mediterranean restaurant's new vegetable dishes. He admits, of course, that in places, people also kiss the toes of lamb roasting on an all-day spinning spit. "But if you [...]

With just one week to go until the debut of his much anticipated new Penn Quarter restaurant, Graffiato, Mike Isabella was feeling a little nervous about the pizza. "Because when we get busy, and you have 120 seats, people are going to order pizza," he says. Like many Italian-American chefs, Isabella considers pie-making an art. [...]

The news is true. Mike Isabella, head chef at Zaytinya and a former Top Chef contestant, is leaving the José Andrés operation to open his own place. He will remain at the Penn Quarter restaurant until August 7 when he'll start preparing for his own eatery. "José has given me so much opportunity," Isabella told [...]

Much like the "news" that IndeBleu has closed and that chef Michael Hartzer is apparently looking for work, this bit of information arrives with mold encrusted on its edges: Reston native Richie Brandenberg, former chef at Urbana in the Hotel Palomar, has found a comfortable gig inside José Andrés' ever-sprawling THINKfoodGROUP empire. Apparently comfortable. I [...]

This morning, yours truly spent an hour-plus on Warren Rojas' hot seat over at Northern Virginia magazine. Truth be told, the mag's readers went pretty easy on me (far easier than the putzes on City Desk who seem to think I'm a traitor for pointing out the obvious). The most pointed (and funniest) question I got had to [...]

Yaku to swim with the (raw) fishes We interrupt Y&H's Home Cooking Day to pass along this news: Yaku, the Latin Concept restaurant dedicated to chifa cuisine and other Peruvian specialties, will close in January and reopen as a rock 'n' roll/sushi establishment. Mauricio Fraga-Rosenfeld, founder of the Latin Concepts group of fashionable restaurant/lounges, tells [...]

Michael Voltaggio's surprising departure from the Bazaar by José Andrés — at least surprising to me — left a rather large hole to fill, given that the Top Chef contestant helped the Beverly Hills restaurant earn four stars from the Los Angeles Times. So who did Andrés and THINKfoodGROUP tap to fill those oversize shoes [...]

This is depressing. The No. 1 item for the week was last week's celebrity-sighting post from the inauguration, which I'll dismiss faster than Lindsay Lohan from her latest rehab session. So starting with the No. 2 most popular post, here's this week's Top 5: The Obamas Hire Their Own Personal Chef, After All Urban Bar-B-Que [...]

The career of chef JohnPaul Damato has come full circle. The man who used to oversee all three Jaleos left his position in Jose Andres' empire in January 2007 to become the executive chef at Mio. Damato didn't stay long; he left the budding Thomas Circle restaurant in June 2007, just a month after it [...]

Judging by all the haters out there (BTW, my wife's got you in her sights, bettyjoan!), the highlight of Anthony Bourdain's recent No Reservations episode on D.C. was his visit to Jose Andres' minibar inside Cafe Atlantico. And why not? Andres plays the role of mad genius well, and the minibar is his laboratory. THINKfoodGROUP, [...]