Before it became base camp for an army of celebrity chefs, the District’s restaurant scene was ruled by steakhouses—big, gaudy ones where the size of your porterhouse determined your status. These were steakhouses for politicos, lobbyists, fundraisers, and influence peddlers, folks eating large on someone else’s nickel. With stints at Morton’s and the Capital Grille, [...]
Note: It looks like I would have won that bet after all. Isabella announced his departure from Zaytinya earlier this summer. When Mike Isabella appeared on Top Chef last season, I was ready to wager vast sums of money (well, as vast as they get in the alt-paper biz) that the Zaytinya chef would pack [...]
Everybody has one: a restaurant that proves so disappointing on first visit that you avoid the place for months, if not years. Vermilion was that restaurant for me. In retrospect, though, I was only depriving myself. Chef Anthony Chittum’s most recent four-course tasting menu, if you discount the underwhelming deconstructed trifle for dessert, is a [...]
More than four years ago at their Rockville location, Urban Bar-B-Que owners David Calkins and Lee Howard were turning out barbecue with an overtaxed metal smoker approximately the size of a dorm-room refrigerator. It was as much a convection oven as a smoker, a contraption that required employees to fill (and refill and refill) a [...]
With the inexorable contraction of the fine-dining market—both in the number of restaurants and in the people willing to drain their bank accounts to eat in one—I’m heartened that 2941 continues to fight the good fight in Falls Church, in essence arguing that any metro area that wants to be taken seriously must maintain its [...]
As the classic-rock soundtrack throbbed and we dissected our dishes at Babbo, some terrific and some downright mediocre, I kept thinking one thing over and over: D.C.’s Tosca is every bit as good, if not better, than Mario Batali’s famous operation in Greenwich Village. This may not be an altogether fair comparison. Babbo aims for [...]
To those who claim that Thai Square has fallen from grace, or at least from its former lofty heights, I’d like to ask a serious question: Are you freakin’ kidding me? OK, I’ll grant you the pad thai has problems; the dish leans heavily on sweetness at the expense of its sour and spicy flavors. [...]
Little about Teddy’s Roti Shop makes you want to linger—or even place an order. The boxy space just north of Walter Reed Army Medical Center sports a random collection of banquet-room chairs and tables, some clean, some not. On a hot summer day, the air inside Teddy’s can feel still and heavy enough to presage [...]
Editor's note: A third Taylor Gourmet is scheduled to open this week in Bethesda. I have three words for you: Roast. Pork. Sandwiches. Not content to coast on the strength of his Italian hoagies and chicken-cutlet subs, Taylor Gourmet co-founder Casey Patten recently added a small line of sandwiches that draws on his Philadelphia hometown’s [...]
Scott Drewno at The Source You could say I generally admired Scott Drewno’s Asian-inspired cooking at The Source by Wolfgang Puck. But I didn’t fall hard for it until he introduced his izakaya menu at the downstairs lounge. The menu’s inspiration came not from Drewno’s diminutive Austrian boss (or not just from said Teutonic restaurant [...]
