Tonight: Chef Todd Gray and wife-partner Ellen Gray of Equinox and Watershed host the 11th annual Sugar & Champagne charity event at Muse inside the Corcoran Gallery of Art, featuring all sorts of goodies from about 50 area restaurants. If you don't already have tickets, you're out of luck. The swanky soiree (priced at $90 [...]
To say that the fate of new Georgetown eatery Unum hinged entirely on the outcome of U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer's 2010 election campaign is probably overstating things. But, sort of, anyway. At the time, chef Phillip Blane and wife Laura Schiller were shopping for restaurant spaces. Blane, a former sous chef at Todd Gray's Equinox, [...]
Tonight, the newly rebranded 2100 Prime (ex-Jockey Club) caters a splashy—and I mean, splashy!—opening reception for the Capital Wine Festival at the Fairfax Hotel. Sip on samples from two Virginia wineries, Leesburg's Tarara Vineyards and Middleburg's Boxwood Vineyards, and some 45 others. Admission is $65 per person, with buffet fare included. Across town, Belga Cafe [...]
Tonight, Todd Gray hosts his annual winter solstice dinner at Equinox, this time featuring the culinary stylings of new executive chef Karen Nicolas. On the menu: soft-poached duck egg, pan-roasted turbot, and juniper-brined venison.( More details here.) Elsewhere this weekend, the annual holiday "Snow Day" bar crawl kicks off in Dupont on Saturday (no actual [...]
Proof chef Haidar Karoum's lamb with spinach and coconut curry bested Watershed toque Todd Gray's potato latke with diced apple and ... well, something involving lamb. Honestly, it was pretty darn loud at last night's Capital Food Fight. I couldn't hear what Gray did with the lamb—and I was standing at the foot of the [...]
Attracting a huge lunch crowd is generally a good thing for a restaurant. On Thursday afternoon, however, Haidar Karoum and his crew of cooks at Proof (City Paper's pick for D.C.'s Best Restaurant 2011) were probably wishing things were a bit slower. Karoum and company had been planning to do a practice run in preparation [...]
Quick hits on the meatless beat. Step Away From Your Desk: Now there are two more reasons to step away from the internet at lunch: Both Urbana and Fiola announced new lunch specials this week. Urbana's $14.95 "lunch box" brings a side salad, choice of pizza or sandwich, chips and a house-made chocolate chip cookie, [...]
"With Equinox and [chef/owner] Todd [Gray], he has so many regulars and high-profile government people that have been coming here since he opened 12 years ago and sometimes they just want you to cook for them. They don't want what's on the menu. There's a lot of catering to that here which, you know, I [...]
Recruiters from the renown Culinary Institute of America, aka "CIA," are coming to town later this month with a pretty persuasive pitch: job growth in the food service industry is expected to outpace the national economy. Not a difficult feat, I suppose. The point: maybe it's time to consider slipping into some chef whites. Reps [...]
Organizers of the annual Capital Food Fight have announced the contestants in this year's charity cook-off competition. And the gustatory gladiators are: Jeff Black of BlackSalt, Addie’s and Pearl Dive Oyster Palace; Todd Gray of Equinox, WaterShed, and Muse at the Corcoran; Haidar Karoum from Estadio and Proof and Brian McBride from Blue Duck Tavern. An impressive lineup [...]
