Dish of the Week: Potato salad
Where: Your backyard, or small patch of grass
We're coming up on 4th of July, so we're in prime potato salad season. Whether you make your own or buy it, it's always delicious. If you make your own, the variations are endless, with different herbs, proteins, vegetables, mustards and vinegars that you can add. Perhaps go with a Japanese-style salad with small boiled shrimp and edamame. My most recent favorite is a slightly healthier version that takes some hints from tzatziki sauce.

1 large cucumber, diced into small cubes
4 large potatoes
1 5.3 oz. container of 0% Total Greek Yogurt
2-3 heaped tablespoons of mayonnaise
3 cloves of garlic, minced
approx. 3 stalks of dill, chopped

Cover cucumber with salt. Set aside for half an hour, until juice begins to be released from them. Rinse and drain the water. Squeeze the cucumber chunks (you can also squash them with a bowl) to get the remaining water out. The cucumbers should have a translucent look to them. This ensures that they will stay crisp and keep the salad from getting water-logged. Do your thing with the potatoes - chop and boil them in some salted water until a fork passes through a chunk easily. Allow the potatoes to cool and mix all together with cucumber, yogurt, mayo, garlic and dill. Chill. Salt and pepper to taste (best to do this after chilling, since potatoes absorb salt). Mess with proportions to figure out what combination you like the best. If you're feeling a little saucy, add some chopped capers or a squirt of lemon juice.

Here, there and every where
Simply put it's been a crazy food week. Surprisingly, the closing of Restaurant K and Colorado Kitchen were the least controversial of the events. Last week, we discussed the split between Chef Rob Bechtold and the Pure Hospitality Group. This week we wrote about the departure of Barton Seaver from Hook and Tacklebox. Fortunately, our DCist commenters are way more classy than those of Washingtonian's Best Bites, who were quick to fall into derisive name-calling and personal attacks. The whole controversy has everyone speculating if there's more going on than what the group's PR flacks are telling us.

Photo by furcafe

Small Bites
Make Mine Bhutanese
The Smithsonian Folklife Festival started this week. Of the food items they are serving, the Bhutanese options sound the most interesting. The booth is being catered by Indique Heights and features dishes like ema datsi (rice, cheese, onions, and slivers of jalapeno-like chiles) and nakey tshoem (chicken with fiddlehead ferns, cheese, chiles, onion, garlic, ginger, and special seasonings).

Less than 30 seconds or it's free
The DC-area is home to the world's fastest pizza maker. Silver Spring resident and Domino's employee Dan Tran made three pizzas in 46.4 seconds, in a process that included stretching the dough, application of sauce and toppings. Allegedly, the judges monitor for quality, but I don't know if that stops them from "tasting like a hot circle of garbage."

Floundering Five
Things aren't looking so great for Five nightclub. A suspension of the nightclub's liquor license until June 18 has been extended until further notice. Since the violent incident inside the club that precipitated the suspension, a number of events and DJ nights have been forced to move to other locales. We recommend double checking the location of any events before heading out. [via Going Out Gurus]

A closings kind of week
Buried under the news of Colorado Kitchen and Restaurant K's closings, we hear that two other fan favorites will be shuttering their doors after this weekend. Seemingly unable to recover from the loss of traffic due to the Eastern Market fire, Uncle Brutha's Hot Sauce Emporium will close this weekend. Fortunately, they will continue making their sauces and plan to spread their distribution in stores and online. [via Capital Spice]

Another under-the-radar spot in Arlington, The Royal Lee, will be serving its last beer Saturday night. A favorite and unique watering hole for locals, particularly for its karaoke night, the Royal Lee building has been open since the 1940s and under its current ownership for the past 35 years.