You have to salute Mike and Elizabeth Bober over at Capital Spice. They know how to take one for the team.

The husband-and-wife food bloggers have compiled a Google map featuring the places that made the Washington Post, Washingtonian, and the Washington City Paper’s annual best restaurants lists. Just as helpful, they’ve also included the highest-rated eateries from the 2009 Zagat guide and have plans to add the 50 restaurants on Northern Virginia’s list once it becomes available online.

In a post today on their blog, the couple explained why they invested so much of their free time in providing this public service:

Read More “Capital Spice Maps Out the Critics’ Favorites in the Metro Area” »

In some ways, I don’t even know why I’m pimping this year’s Best Food Writing collection, which is due out today. If you’re a die-hard local gastronome, you’ve probably read 10 percent of the book without even purchasing it.

How so?

Five of the 50 essays included are from D.C. area writers, including Joe Yonan, Monica Bhide, Jane Black, Todd Kliman, and yours truly. Not to make too much of this showing from local scribes, but let’s do a quick comparison of how the D.C. market fares against those cities with long-established food cultures, like Chicago, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. (Forget New York City; we don’t stand a chance.)

Here’s the break down of Best Food Writing 2009 contributors from each city (based on a quick scan of the 50 essays; errors may occur, as they say):

Read More “Best Food Writing 2009 Due in Bookstores Today” »

Believe it or not, there has been other news in the world this week, aside from the opening of Birch & Barley/ChurchKey, the long-awaited Neighborhood Restaurant Group project on 14th Street NW. You wouldn’t know it, though, from all the local food coverage, which has devoted a ton of server space to detailing every nook and cranny and keg at the joint.

Let’s go to the highlights:

• WaPo’s Fritz Hahn has what’s on tap.
• Metrocurean has the glamour shots.
• The Beerspotter breaks down the cask list.

Read More “We Are All Just Pawns in Birch & Barley’s World” »

This is embarrassing — for Y&H and for many other sources that have consistently equated the dishes served at Makoto to the more formal kaiseki dining found in Japan.

I spoke with Michiko Lecuyer, a manager at Makoto, who assured me that the tiny Palisades restaurant does not specialize in kaiseki. Rather, Lecuyer says after consulting with the kitchen, Makoto prefers to be known as an omakase house, where the chefs prepare a free-form, multi-course menu based on their own tastes and the whims of the season.

I pressed Lecuyer on this because so many food outlets refer to Makoto as a kaiseki or kaiseki-style house. Y&H has committed this sin. So has the Washingtonian (even in passing). Ditto for Capital Spice, Chowhound, Food & Wine, Fearless Critic, and no doubt countless other writers who have temporarily escaped my attention.

Read More “Once and For All, Makoto Does Not Specialize in Kaiseki Cuisine” »

Y&H has already tooted his own horn like Miles Davis after several lines of toot. But Holly Hughes, editor of the annual Best Food Writing anthologies, e-mailed Y&H yesterday to let me know who else in the D.C. area made the cut in this year’s collection. It’s an impressive showing.

The honorees (the list could expand, given that Hughes may not know all the D.C. writers by name):

Read More “D.C. Well-Represented in This Year’s Best Food Writing Collection” »

I obviously have nothing against Makoto, the meditative Japanese bento box of a restaurant in the Palisades, which specializes in kaiseki cuisine. I mean, I included the place among my 50 favorite restaurants in the D.C. area.

What does bother me about Makoto, however, is its stranglehold on the top spot in the annual D.C./Baltimore Zagat survey.

The 2010 guide just hit the streets, and once again Makoto tops the list. It scored 29 out of a possible 30 points in the food category, tying for No. 1 with Patrick O’Connell’s Inn at Little Washington. I’m not sure how many years in a row now Makoto has claimed the crown, but I know the restaurant also tied for first last year with—yep, you guessed it—the Inn at Little Washington. Makoto also won in 2006.

The obvious question here is this: How can this tiny restaurant continually claim the top spot with D.C.-area Zagat raters and yet never crack the top tier of the local critics’ lists? Makoto is No. 36 among the Washingtonian’s Top 100 Restaurants for 2009 and didn’t even make the cut on Tom Sietsema’s most recent Dining Guide.

We may never know the reasons for Makoto’s dominance, but last year when the 2009 Zagat guide was released, I wrote a column for the Onion’s A.V. Club in which I speculated on possible explanations for Makoto’s winning streak:

Read More “WTF: Makoto Is Once Again the Top-Rated Restaurant in the Annual Zagat Guide” »

Two older posts continue to fascinate the readership of Young & Hungry. One is tragic. The other practically comedic. After that, the Top 5 posts of the week shape up this way:

1. Gillian Clark’s General Store Now Available for Sit-Down Service
2. Saigon Bistro: A Best of D.C. Contender or Just a Pretender?
3. Scene 1 from the Eatonville Chef Contest: Fried Chicken
4. Alert Las Vegas: Washingtonian Debuts Burger Brackets in Time for March Madness
5. Urban to Offer Meats Fresh from the Smoker on Saturday

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

The recent spate of new burger joints in the D.C. market has inspired the Washingtonian to debut a March Madness-like contest, Burger Brackets, which pits ground-beef sandwich vs. ground beef sandwich until an ultimate winner is crowned. Wanna bet that Ray’s Hell Burger takes top honors?

Regardless of its predictability, Burger Brackets is a great idea. I wish I would have thought of it. Few things rile readers up like a debate over hamburgers. Politics? War? Abortion? Opening presents Christmas Eve or Christmas morn? They all take a backseat to hamburgers. Eaters seem to cling to their favorites like a child to his mom’s apron strings. I have my faves, too, of course, but I mostly subscribe to the motto of Urban Burger’s David Calkins: “Burgers are like pizza and sex: Even bad experiences are pretty damn good.”

Read More “Alert Las Vegas: Washingtonian Debuts Burger Brackets in Time for March Madness” »

Heading into tomorrow night’s Top Chef finale, D.C.-based caterer Carla Hall tells ZagatBuzz that she has no interest in opening her own restaurant. That would put her in the minority of Top Chef finalists, winners or not. Ilan Hall, Sam Talbot, Harold Dieterle, Hung Huynh, and Stephanie Izard, among others, have all either opened or are planning to open their own restaurants.

Not Hall. She tells Olga Boikess:

Read More “If Carla Hall Becomes the Next ‘Top Chef,’ She Doesn’t Want Her Own Restaurant” »

For those of you who are waiting breathlessly for the Washingtonian to reveal its top restaurant of the year, please allow me to spoil it for you: It’s Komi. (Okay, it’s not really a spoiler; most of you knew this already.) Frankly, I think it’s a smart choice—at least from the standpoint of food. Johnny Monis treats ingredients the way Republicans treat the homeless: He stays out of their way, to allow each ingredient to speak for itself. As for Komi’s dining room…well, it has all the personality of a Presbyterian meeting room. A dimly lit one.

Today, the Prince of Petworth, without so much as acknowledging the Washingtonian’s pick, asked his readers what they thought of Komi. The responses have been mostly fawning, though there are a few haters, which the internets seems to breed like lice. For example, someone who bravely calls himself/herself “anoneemoo” says Komi is “totally overrated, overpriced, over hyped. try pallena or cityzen or ten others.”

Read More “Komi: Best Restaurant in D.C. or ‘Overrated’?” »