As if you needed any more proof that we’re mired in a recession, just check out the top posts from this week: They’re focused on good, old-fashioned drinkin’. Here’s to better times, y’all…

In the meantime, the most-read posts from the week:

1. Women of Craft Beer: A Quick List (*)
2. Paste Names Best 25 American Breweries
3. The Passenger Set to Open Tomorrow
4. D.C. Dish Hall of Fame Leaderboard: Same As It Ever Was
5. Yaku to Close and Turn into a Rock ‘n’ Roll/Sushi Concept

* A certain light-drinking Budweiser beer was, once again, the most-read item, but we’ve stopped counting it.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Take some of D.C.’s best-known cocktail and wine bartenders and you get…a good neighborhood beer bar, obviously.

Well, not quite; I have selective vision that turns pretty much all bars into beer bars. But The Passenger, which opens tonight at 5 p.m., is nay Cork nor Gibson, the wine and cocktail pedestals that the Brown brothers are known for. It’s a relaxed bar with a neighborhood drinking-room feel and some tasty beers, wines, and even cocktails if you ask nice.

The space at 1021 7th St. NW, which was formerly the bar space at the Warehouse and home to Punch Club, still has all its best parts: unfinished walls, old wood floor, and sweet wrought-iron tables. (Disclosure: I organized/bartended a non-beer event there once.) (Disclosure pt. 2: I really, really like this space.) The bar top is bigger and more comfortable, and what was once dead space in the back is being rebuilt to mimic a dining car.

Read More “First Look at The Passenger” »

If there’s anything that grips Y&H readers, it’s tragedy, and it doesn’t get much more tragic than the homicide of Nori Amaya, the co-owner of Coppi’s Organic on U Street. People were obviously desperate for information on the strangulation. Even our negligible little item was widely visited.

Here’s how the week shook out:

1. Nori Amaya’s Friends and Fans Express Their Grief on Her Facebook Page
2. A Certain Goddamn Budweiser Beer That People Can’t Stop Reading About
   
3. Birch & Barley Opens Today. What’s Inside? (This item is quickly entering Select 55 territory.)
   
4. Tom and Derek Brown to Channel Spirits and Iggy Pop at the Passenger
   
5. D’Acqua Shutters, Ping Pong Dim Sum Set to Open Next Month
   

Tom and Derek Brown have pour, mixed, and stirred drinks at some of the best spots in the District: Komi, Citronelle, Palena, the Gibson, Corduroy, and Cork. But when the brothers decided to open their own joint, The Passenger, they didn’t want anything as formal as their former places of employment.

“I wanted a place where I could drink wine and play Motörhead,” says Derek Brown, the younger of the two siblings who grew up in Olney. “I’ve grown in my tastes. I haven’t grown in my want for a laid-back environment.”

True to their word, the brothers Brown are building a watering hole high on quirkiness — and low on pretension. It begins with the very building in which the Passenger is housed: the former bar/cafe space at the Warehouse at 1021 7th St. NW.  The space, co-owned by Paul Ruppert (who’s also a partner in the Passenger), dates back to 1890 and once was home to Ruppert Hardware, a fixture in D.C. for nearly 100 years.

Read More “Tom and Derek Brown to Channel Spirits and Iggy Pop at the Passenger” »

I must admit that by Revenge of the Nerds II my interest in the franchise was already waning. Revenge of the Nerds III was pushing its luck, and has anyone ever seen Revenge of the Nerds IV? I didn’t think so. Therefore, today’s installment will be my last post on cocktail nerdery. If you haven’t read the other two posts, they discuss the essentials of being a cocktail nerd, some of the lingo and finding information on blogs and message boards.

One of the truly defining characteristics of being a cocktail nerd is making your own ingredients–syrups, tinctures, cordials and–the granddaddy of them all–bitters. Bitters are essential to the cocktail, which, incidentally, was first defined in 1806 in a Hudson, New York newspaper called the Balance & Columbian Repository as containing spirits, water, sugar and bitters.

Bitters are herbs, spices and botanicals that have been macerated in alcohol or water to extract their essence. These ingredients generally gain a bitter component through long periods of maceration but also commonly contain bittering agents such as gentian root. Add to that a flavoring agent and sugar, and you have the makings of bitters. Use them in small doses to gain the desired effect, almost like adding a pinch of salt to food.

Read More “So You Want to be a Cocktail Nerd? Pt. III” »

Hey, isn’t this supposed to be summer, when all we do is kick back and soak up the sun, along with those tart seasonal cocktails?  The local dining scene has not exactly taken a vacation this July. Here are just a few of the stories Young & Hungry has been following in the past week or so:

• Rustico has already found a replacement for Frank Morales, who split with the Alexandria gastropub less than two weeks ago. Neighborhood Restaurant Group also noted that it’s planning to open a second Rustico in Arlington. [via Tom Sietsema and Going Out Gurus]
• Destination DC and the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington have announced the participants for this summer’s Restaurant Week, which runs from Aug. 24-30.
• Brothers Tom and Derek Brown, those siblings with shaken cocktail syndrome, are planning to open a dueling drinking destination this fall, perhaps somewhere north of Chinatown. [via Metrocurean]

Read More “Food News You Can Use: No Summertime Doldrums Here” »