Folks in Columbia Heights salivating for a burger and cajun fries can finally step into a Five Guys today. Located at the corner of 14th and Irving streets, the shop was already bustling with a hungry lunch-time crowd. Now, anyone exiting the west Columbia Heights Metro -- surrounded on three sides with Potbelly's, Pete's Apizza and Five Guys -- will be hard-pressed to not grab something to eat In Arlington, Michael Landrum continues to......

Fine, fine news from the Associated Press. A Fatburger will soon be opening in Columbia, Md., with another slated for a location near Howard University after that. For those of you who have never had a Fatburger, allow me to educate you. Fatburger is a chain burger joint that's incredibly popular in the western half of the United States. I wouldn't exactly call it fast food, because they don't have drive-up windows and they don't......

Chatty Cathys Warren Rojas of Northern Virginia Magazine was on Rockwell this week shilling his new chat, Grill Warren. Do we not have enough food chats/chogs/Q&As in this town? I guess it's an alternative if you can't get your question answered by one of the three Ts, but this is getting a little out of hand. Or maybe DCist is behind the curve on this one, and we should be starting our own chat. But......

We missed this when it happened a couple of weeks ago, but is it really ever too late to point and laugh at New Yorkers? We didn't think so. So, people are probably aware that Five Guys franchises are proliferating across the Eastern U.S. like nuclear weapons in central Asia. The greasy, peanut-laden fingers of our locally born burger stand have spread as far as Delafield, Wisconsin; Nashville, Tennessee; and Miami, Florida. They've even broken......

Fried Chicken Frenzy Returns Fried chicken fanatics have something to get excited about. Both Colorado Kitchen and Ray's the Classics have restored their famous versions of the dish. Everyone lamented when Gillian Clark pulled her chicken from the menu a few years ago. But now, she is hosting burgers and fried chicken nights on December 11 and January 8 (the second Tuesday of the month). Apparently her chicken is so good that she told......

Pour Out a Forty for the Childe Harold The pilgrimage is at its end. After 40 years nestled on 20th street NW in Dupont Circle, the Childe Harold has closed its doors for good. A victim of increasing rents and lessors unwilling to negotiate, the Harold is one more example of how the face of Dupont Circle is ever-changing. The venerable institution held a lot of history, partly because of its ties to the music......

Written by DCist Contributor Eric Denman On U street NW between 13th and 14th, nestled between Polly's and a nail salon, Axis is settling into a rhythm and starting to be a very solid contender in an increasingly crowded strip. The wine list, which averages $12 $8 by the glass, is respectable, but the real reason to come here is for the tap list. Although it doesn't boast a huge variety of obscure seasonals, the......

More grist for the mill of discontent among some Adams Morgan residents over the state of 18th Street, right on the heels of D.C. Council action that could limit the number of tavern licenses in the neighborhood. The Washington Business Journal reports that an unholy trifecta of daiquiris, skin and chicken wings is moving in to the space formerly occupied by the controversial after hours spot, Santa Rosa. The new bar, to be named Splash,......

LAist is experimenting with blogging dates from J-Date, but finds the best men are found offline. Some date vicariously online and that is one reason why porn is big -- really freaking big -- so they ask if they should cover XXX since the heart of it lays in the city's San Fernando Valley. A writer grapples with her food porn photography obsession, another gets censored on Flickr, one gets scooped by the LA......

In honor of National Burger Heritage Awareness Month, our favorite Internet travel buddy Gridskipper opted to run a post lauding the awesomeness of Washington's hamburgers. We have no quarrel there; they are awesome, and we feel it completely appropriate to exalt their bovinity. Hmm. Bovinity. Where have we heard that word before? Bovinity, bovinity, bovinity, bovinity... But Gridskipper's list is certainly respectable — incorporating true burger all-stars like Colorado Kitchen and Tallula — even if......

D.C.'s 2007 Taste of the Nation to support "Share Our Strength" was held last night at the Washington Hilton Hotel to raise funds to combat childhood hunger in our region. The event featured over 70 restaurants, chefs, and distributors from the D.C. metro area who all came out to support the cause and glad hand with their fans. An estimate of a whopping 1200 people showed up for good food, drinks, company, and a noble......

It's always tough to wake up early and get these first posts of the day done and up on the site, but it's even tougher when confronted with a redesign of washingtonpost.com without warning. You start to wonder whether you might still be asleep, or if you're becoming old before your time, since nothing is where you expect it to be. But then you get a few good sips off of your first cup of......

And it's burgers! Redskins owner Daniel Snyder revealed today that he will purchase Johnny Rockets, the ubiquitous chain-diner. With District locations in Georgetown, Dupont Circle, and Union Station, most of us are probably aware of the grease-trap's existence even if we don't quite remember many of our experiences there -- the restaurant's hours tend to attract the late-night stumbly crowd. For those of us unfamiliar with the chain, Johnny Rockets tries its very hardest to......

A faithful reader writes in: Last year, the men's basketball team at GMU made the final four. This year, the team should see a lot more interest from alumni like me. Any idea if people tailgate before basketball games outside the Patriot Center? Pro and college football are usually the premier tailgate sports, but we don't see any reason why people can't brave the chilly weather and tailgate at college basketball games. Basketball arenas are......

Ask most people their favorite Indian bread and naan often takes the spotlight. I can't knock naan. The refined flour yields some of the same qualities that made Wonder Bread appealing when I was three. But sometimes I crave something with a little more flavor -- and a lot more cholesterol. Something that speaks to that same inner voice that drives me to consume things like late-night pizza and tasty burgers with reckless abandon. Parathas,......

After last year’s WaPo Best Bet winners turned out to include an un-hip number of national chain stores and discount outlets, the organizers made some changes to the categories. The changes were designed to draw out the local spots and independent retailers that locals cherish. Categories like “Neighborhood Spot” and “Vintage/Thrift Store” were positively begging for an increased hipster presence in the poll. The 2006 Bets are out, and while peppered with Washington-based establishments, many......

On a busy corner of Route 1, where Laurel, Md.'s quaint Main Street meets the beginning of a strip mall slide all the way down to College Park, we found one of the last Little Tavern restaurants still standing in the region. Harry F. Duncan founded the Little Tavern chain in 1927 in Louisville, Ky., but when he and his wife Doris moved to Washington in 1928, they established the first Little Tavern Shop at......

This week we reported that some police officers have been wrongfully enforcing the D.C. smoking ban in restaurants, found one of the area's best burgers in an unexpected place, recognized that maybe there may be too much junk food in local food banks and commended the Post for its four Pulitzer prizes. We checked out some local bands at the Black Cat, found unintentional hilarity over at WMATA's website, pondered express service on Metro......

This post was written by Seattlest editor Dan Gonsiorowski. "The Week in -ist" will run every week, typically on the weekend, but this weekend we forgot, and anyway most of you have the day off today. Earlier this week kissy couples were wading through roses and red tissue paper deeper than an east coast snow dump and singles shook a tiny, lonely fist (no ring!) at it all. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4,......

A few weeks ago, we were invited to sit down and talk with Café Milano executive chef Domenico Cornacchia. Armed with standard questions about culinary school, creative freedom, menu design, and career aspirations, we had hoped to learn what we could about the top man in the back of the house. None of those questions told us more about Domenico Cornacchia as the one we thought would get glossed over more quickly than the rest:......

By new DCist Food and Drink Contributor April Fulton Mmmm, Stoney Burgers. The mere mention of these large, luscious, beef patties served on a soft roll with American cheese, lettuce, tomato, mayo and extra pickles -- if you ask nicely -- is enough to make Homer Simpson drool. Stoney’s burgers, cheap beer, “super grilled cheese” and its unabashedly ugly dark-wood-panel décor have fueled many a lunch or long evening for government workers, seniors, janitors, hipsters,......

Episode IV: The Burger Comes Home… Ah, the simple sensory rewards of making a burger at home. Ground beef searing as it hits the hot grill. Smoke escaping from the vents in a closed lid. Smells of charred meat and toasted buns pleasantly assaulting your nose. The hungry anticipation and the ritualistic cooking process are completely absent when you order a burger -- even an outstanding burger -- at your local restaurant or bar. But......

Episode III: In a burger joint far far away….. Almost like Hebrew National hot dogs, Elevation Burger seems to have descended from above, promising the people of Falls Church a burger of a higher standard. Owner Hans Hess is as obsessed with beef and buns as should be expected from a man attempting to create the next great burger Mecca, but do his patties deliver salvation? Elevation Burger uses organic beef and cooks its fries......

Episode II: Bovinity Begins Tired of being disappointed when our burger cravings were highest, DCist set out to find the best burgers in the area. Harnessing the immense powers of the interwebs, we knew we could find true Bovinity. DCist asked, and our readers responded, and responded, and responded ( Five Guys, Clyde's, Fuddruckers and many other Washington Post Readers Choice favorites received multiple votes, and why should we expect our results to differ. Even......

Viridian Crosses Starting Line Engines thumping, and pumping in time. Everyone, including Daily Candy, Don Rockwell, aunts and uncles, etc. have been telling us that Viridian is opening this weekend. Looks like it's true, despite the dose of snark in last week's Feed. According to the owners, Rebecca Byrnes (formerly of The Reef) will be head chef at the 14th Street NW joint, and Kenan Forman will be in charge of the adult grape juice.......

It's a restaurant, bar, bookstore and performance space, brought to you by Andy Shallal, owner of Luna Grill and Diner and Mimi's American Bistro. It would seem that such an ambitious project would have to fall flat on its face, but in the month since its opening, Busboys and Poets is not only packed, it's likable. The space is at once comfortable and chic, with many non-generic touches like hand-appliquéd mirrors in the bathrooms and......

We were pleasantly surprised when we were invited to the "soft" opening of Town Hall, a new restaurant in Glover Park at 2218 Wisconsin Avenue. The location is seen to the left earlier this summer, before the remodeling. Back in May we had written about the difficulty of the owners to secure an extension of their liquor license. After some carefully lobbying of the neighborhood ANC by the restaurateurs - and an increasingly vocal lobby......

In the interest of introducing new D.C. residents to the finest in District drinking, and old residents to spots they may not have heard of, DCist introduces our latest feature, Coalition of the Swilling. Who knew someone would open a bar near the Potomac Ave. Metro station? Joe Englert, that's who. The man behind Capitol Lounge, new owner of the old Zack's space, and the first man to move in hard on H Street isn't......

Editor's Note: This preview of the Olney Theatre Center's Summer Shakespeare Festival comes to us from Missy Frederick, who has joined our staff to write about theater. DCist appreciates, heck, even admires the egalitarian nature of the annual Shakespeare Theatre Free For All's ticket giveaway madness that went down last month. The getting up early, the waiting in line for hours, then the returning to the amphitheater well in advance of curtain time only......

Everyone’s doing it. Why shouldn’t you? While DCist usually tries not to succumb to peer pressure, one cannot deny the endless utility of the mini-burger. Getting its start as late night diner fare and moving to sports bars everywhere to help fans keep down their beer, the mini burger is taking over. Tallula has taken the micro morsel one step further by adding truffle butter and caramelized onions in an attempt at gourmet bar fare.......