Go West, Young Man

The kitchen's closing, and it's last call. In less than one week, I leave my native Washington, D.C. for the San Francisco Bay Area. For someone who loves food and drink, the move means fabulous produce (some, ideally, from the fruit trees in my future backyard), proximity to wine country, wonderful restaurants, and burritos, burritos, burritos!

But it also means leaving family, friends, and food memories here in the District. So before I skedaddle, I'm trying to visit my favorite spots with pals and parents alike. In the past week alone, I've eaten at the Mendocino Grille twice. I've scarfed down Persian mixed grill from Moby Dick House of Kabob. I've become, more or less, a regular at the Off the Record Bar in the basement of the Hay-Adams Hotel. And a few of my closest work colleagues plan to take me to Corduroy and Vidalia before I go.

There are flashier venues, but these places make me happy. Just as my tour of duty as DCist Food and Drink Editor has. I've written about people who have interested me and consequently learned more than I ever could have imagined about the simultaneously academic and hedonistic world of food and drink. I've enjoyed having the opportunity to edit some amazing writers, a few of whom have gone on to write professionally. And I've toiled alongside a staggeringly talented set of editors, whose dedication to this site is profound.

You're in very good hands with my co-editor and, as of today, my successor. I hope that he'll let me write one of those far-flung correspondent-type posts every now and again. If not, I suppose I could try out SFist. But even if this Food and Drink Editor Emeritus hits the food scene for those western kids, I'll always be a DCist.

Photo by flickr user Hometown Invasion Tour and used under a Creative Commons license.