Written by DCist Contributors Gayle S. Putrich and Mike Roscoe Awards season: long gone in Hollywood; just getting started for D.C.'s restaurants. If you don't believe us, just ask Cathal Armstrong of Restaurant Eve, Eamonn's, and the forthcoming Majestic. Armstrong has been named a contender for two awards in as many days: Best Mid-Atlantic Chef from the James Beard Foundation on Monday and now Chef of the Year by the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington....
A dark horse Chilean sauvignon blanc won the most votes at the 11th annual International Wines for Oysters Competition at the Old Ebbitt Grill Monday night, but what many will remember most is that they witnessed one man save another man’s life. The victim, Ronald Kessler of Potomac, a best-selling nonfiction author and chief Washington correspondent for the right-of-center NewsMax.com, fell to the floor from his barstool with no apparent warning while chatting with the...
In its first weekend, the Capital Fringe Festival turned downtown D.C. into a moveable feast of performance, as show after show made its Fringe debut. As we enter Day Five of the festival, it’s now time to go get a second helping—a show you want to see again or a show your friends have told you is a must-see. Even still, a handful of shows will get their start today. At DCist, we’d love to...
The Capital Fringe Festival gets started in earnest today, with offerings all over town. Highlights include sci-fi dating, middle school antics, Canadian exports, songs for the deaf, a day-long performance piece, and spoonbending. It could be a little overwhelming if DCist weren't here to guide you through it, no? So before we get into it, let us first introduce OUR AWESOME FRINGE FESTIVAL MAP, which details the locations of all Fringe venues, by date. Special thanks to DCist Tom for putting that together. You can go directly to all of DCist's coverage of Fringe here.
If DCist hears one more person talk about how great Breadline is, we'll scream. We'll scream a "here's where Cameron goes berserk" scream. Sure, the lunch spot on the 1700 block of Pennsylvania Avenue NW turns out what it should turn out: decent and sometimes exceptional bread. But the quality of what's inside those breads and what's served alongside them (and, some say, the bread itself) has diminished significantly -- especially since the French chain...
What’s going on with the Post’s Food Section? Between last week’s piece on the Warehouse District and this week’s articles on soft shell crab and RFD’s Brooklyn Brewery tasting, it appears the WaPo's Food section has improved from the days of Christmas cookie spreads and brunch for beginning entertainers. Still. Isn’t the section about to fold? And if so, when? Rumor mill tells us it’s within a matter of weeks -- and that the paper...
Well, it looks like the folks up at the James Beard foundation sobered up enough to call the office to have the intern hit the “publish” button late yesterday afternoon. The 2006 James Beard nominees are here! All 75,384 of them! Well almost. With 58 categories, the Foundation might be going a little overboard with its awards, but we digress. The D.C. area fares O.K. in terms of nominations this year, hopefully giving us...
NoVa Empire Expands
With the revival of classic cookbooks propelled by the releases of The Silver Spoon and Julie and Julia -- the blog-turned-book in which Julie Powell writes on cooking every recipe in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking -- it’s worth noting the death of chef and cookbook writer Edna Lewis, 89. Lewis didn't just compile recipes. Having authored The Taste of Country Cooking, she's largely credited with explaining and showcasing Southern cooking to...
In gentrifying neighborhoods from U Street to Upshur, top-notch D.C. chefs and restaurateurs are jockeying for prime positions. Along the U Street corridor, Al Tiramisu owner Luigi Diotaiuti has opened Al Crostino and Saied Azali followed suit with Viridian, Perrys' sibling venture. Nora Pouillon of the eponymous Nora and Asia Nora allegedly has her eye on 14th Street for a new place (U Nora, perhaps?) and James Beard nominee Ann Cashion of Cashion's Eat Place will open Taqueria De Flores on 11th Street in Columbia Heights in fall 2006.
"For whatever reason, we're the restaurant you all love to hate," remarks Chef Gillian Clark of her Brightwood restaurant, Colorado Kitchen. Some patrons have complained about slow service. Others are put off by the tone of the menu. "Are you starving?" it reads, "...you'd better have a salad and stop staring at the folks in the kitchen with that anxious look in your eye. You're making them nervous." PCists are skeptical of her more recent venture, DeSto -- as opposed to The Store -- and of a black chef's choice to embrace Aunt Jemima ("Her smiling face, while it makes some of us black folks cringe, is part of Americana. How could I leave her out? I have come to terms with Aunt Jemima and I've acknowledged my secret admiration of her.")
The 2005 RAMMYs aren't the only culinary awards on the horizon. The nominees for the 2005 James Beard Foundation awards were announced yesterday (.pdf). The awards are separated into three general segments, cookbooks, journalism, and restaurants and chefs. In the journalism segment, Todd Kliman of the City Paper (who most recently "reviewed" Perdu) was nominated for Best Newspaper Column for his weekly "Young and Hungry" feature. Tom Sietsema of the Post has been nominated for Best Newspaper Feature about Restaurants a number of times, but this is the first nomination for Kliman, who has been writing for the City Paper since late 2003.
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