Dish of the Week: Butternut squash This week Gourmet's Ruth Reichl called butternut squash fall's finest vegetable. "Its sweet flavor and silky texture make butternut squash a star in many of our favorite fall recipes," she wrote. The only problem is that most of the time, it seems to find its way into overly sweet soup. Luckily our intrepid DCist food staff came through with some of their other favorite uses for butternut squash. Alyse......

So where does Anthony Bourdain – chef, writer, traveler - spend his night after bumping elbows with six of D.C.’s top chefs? Unsurprisingly, at Ben’s Chili bowl. Keeping true to his inclinations for “adventurous” eating, Anthony Bourdain visited famed Ben’s Chili Bowl Tuesday night after having MC’ed D.C.’s annual Capital Food Fight. “I loved it, it’s the kind of food I like,” responded Bourdain to a question during the Q&A session of his sold-out talk......

The Secret Ingredient: Flaxseed Iron Chef is combing through the restaurant ranks here in Washington once again, this timing tapping Agraria's chef, Ricky Moore, for America's culinary entertainment. Following in the footsteps of D.C. chefs José Andrés, Morou, and Roberto Donna, Moore will be strutting into the kitchen stadium in the near future in an attempt to assert Washington's dominance in the field of one-hour off-the-cuff television cooking. The Washingtonian has an exclusive interview with......

D.C. Battles It Out In The Kitchen One of Washington's best food events, the Capital Food Fight, is a little over a week away, and I expect there is wanton smack-talking between the competition's 10 food-fighters. Bebo's Roberto Donna, Mie n Yu's Tim Elliot, Kinkead's Bob Kinkead, last year's winner Ris Lacoste, Jamie Leeds of Hank's Oyster Bar, Taberna del Alabardero's Santi Zabaleta, John Wabeck of Firefly, IndeBleu's Vikram Garg, Anthony Chittum from Notti Bianche,......

Closed! Did anyone along Pennsylvania Avenue hear a door slamming loudly Wednesday night? If you did and are perplexed about it, let us fill you in. Signatures, the "lobbyist hangout" next to the Navy Memorial, closed its doors. And closed them abruptly, at that. It turns out that when you're being investigated by the Senate, the Department of Justice, and the Ft. Lauderdale Police for connections to a murder, people aren't clamoring to frequent the......

Best selling author of How to Cook Everything and the Minimalist cookbook series, Mark Bittman arrives in the District today to compete in D.C. Central Kitchen's Capital Food Fight and to promote his most recent book, The Best Recipes in the World: More Than 1001 International Dishes to Cook at Home at Best Cellars in Dupont Circle on Wednesday. Also the creator of the New York Times' column, "The Minimalist," Bittman is the author of......