If your idea of a good Thai meal involves fruity cocktail drinks served in cartoonish, neon-colored surroundings, then Nava Thai in Wheaton is not the restaurant for you. There are no punny names, no sushi bar, and no fried bananas here, just excellent, authentic Thai food. Yes, the ambiance leaves something to be desired (the walls are a nauseating shade of green), and the location is less than glamorous (practically hidden in the back of......

The closing of Colorado Kitchen is one of the more notable in local restaurant news. Chef Gillian Clark is well known in D.C. for her strong personality and her ability to persevere as one of the few female head chefs. Clark told Washingtonian's Todd Kliman that the closing was due to a space issue. Maybe it's all semantics, but that sounds like slightly different language on Rasmus, the auction site where the kitchen's equipment is......

There are several layers to D.C.'s jazz scene, and each boasts its own set of musicians and strengths. National acts generally play at the larger halls, such as the Kennedy Center, or Blues Alley, if they choose to play a club date. As far as the local scene, the older musicians tend to play the same rooms, or places where the crowd is generally older as well, such as Jazz Night in Southwest. The most......

Aside from donating to charity or saving for your child's college fund, the best use of $6.75 is the quarter-chicken platter with fries and salad at Skorpios Maggio's Family Restaurant (affectionately known as Skorpios) in Vienna.  Hot rotisserie chicken, dusted with a lemon peppery spice blend, served to you on a divided plate with thick cut steak fries and a simple lettuce salad covered generously in feta and dressed with oil and vinegar, and a......

Sure, Harriette Walters might have stolen upwards of $44 million from the District's coffers, but at least she wasn't stealing directly from low-income school children. According to a WTOP report this morning, District officials have arrested and charged a city official with submitting false expense reports totaling $11,385 for big bills at local restaurants and strip clubs. Emerson Crawley, a program manager at After School for All at Shaw Junior High School, allegedly spent the......

From DCist Contributor Oscar Bunoan It's often said that bad luck comes in threes. In Vietnam, for example, a photo of three people represents bad luck. However, Vietnam is a restless, 22-hour flight away and Greg Cahill (owner of the successful Whitlow’s on Wilson) and Jonathan Williams (Whitlow’s general manager) are not superstitious men who rest their beliefs in ancient folklore. No self-respecting restaurateur, especially these two locally respected entrepreneurs, would conceive their restaurant on......

Written by DCist Contributor Andrew Chriss Enjera Eritrean Restaurant opened in Crystal City in May 2007. On an early visit over the summer, the restaurant was not very inviting from the street level, which was disappointing due to the vast amount of outdoor seating space available. The menu was crudely assembled from what seemed like loose-leaf, and the signage for the restaurant did little to sell the restaurant besides intrigue passersby to ask, "What do......

This post from DCist Contributor Liz Lawson Mahogany Restaurant presents itself as a place representing the smooth side of the U Street revitalization; one that requires a certain attire for its patrons, like another that was the source of a bit of controversy when it emerged a few years ago. Recently reopened after renovations, Mahogany sits on the street-level floor of Bohemian Caverns, which hosts local jazz nearly every night of the week in a......

Disoriented and Seeing Stars WaPo reviewer Tom Sietsema has released his 2007 Washington Post Dining Guide online. You can catch it on newsstands this weekend. At the top, Cathal Armstrong's Restaurant Eve has broken through to the four-star category, and his revamped Majestic also made the list. Newcomers Central Michel Richard (3 stars), Proof (2.5), Farrah Olivia (2.5), and Hook (2.5) also made it onto the list. A surprising omission was Brasserie Beck, which Sietsema......

We've known for the last year that famous Georgetown eatery Nathan's wasn't long for its current location. Owner Carol Joynt has been pretty open about her plans to relocate by April 2009, when her lease runs out. Since then, speculation as to what kind of business will nab the prime spot on what's seen as the toney neighborhood's most important intersection has been a popular topic. This morning, an alert tipster pointed us to this......

DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week. Major Release: 3:10 to Yuma Mark your calendars. Labor Day is past, summer is over, and it's time for all the Oscar contenders to step into the ring. First out of the gate is 3:10 to Yuma, the second filmed version of an Elmore Leonard short story about a Civil War veteran (played here by Christian......

For anyone living in Washington who grew up in the West, the dearth of authentic Mexican food in this city is likely a constant complaint. D.C. is the home to several sizable ethnic groups, Salvadorans among them, and while we applaud the ready availability of authentic, and delicious, Salvadoran cuisine, the attempts by these same lovely folks to cook Mexican food is almost uniformly terrible. They use the wrong cheeses. They don't know how to......

Another D.C. Restaurant Week has come and gone. As much as we like to complain about over-crowded restaurants with “dumbed down” menus, there is still a part of us that finds it alluring, so we still take the opportunity to see what restaurants have to offer. Among the places we ventured out to, there were some hits and a few misses. One place that really hit the right notes with us was Viridian in Logan......

Yesterday we threw together a list of the people in the District we considered influential, taking after a similar annual list put together by GQ that compiles the movers and shakers on the federal side of the city. One of our nominees was Dorothy Brizill, a well-known civic activist and political gadfly who runs DC Watch, the closest thing we have to a citizens' inspector general. And as we expected, last night she offered us......

Written by DCist contributor Claire Compton Like the classic summer fling, Restaurant Week has officially left us, leaving us with a bittersweet mix of emotions. The lucky ones are gushing about that new restaurant they discovered and how they were wooed with an impossibly fantastic meal that didn't drain their wallet. Others weren't so lucky. They began the week with a wide-eyed idealism, believing this meal was going to be the one, only to be......

We DCists and our readers have tested a pretty wide selection of this summer's Restaurant Week participants, and we've come to a conclusion: Restaurant Week is at once awesome and disappointing. In sum, Washington's Restaurant Week is a two-faced Janus bastard. In order to have a good restaurant week experience, one must put in a little work. There are restaurants who do RW that are worth a visit, those that completely phone it in, and......

As far as I know, I am the only DCist Food and Drink staffer who does not have Restaurant Week reservations. It wasn't because I forgot or because I signed up too late to score a reservation to my preferred destinations. Unlike Adam, I am not a big fan of Restaurant Week, and it was a conscious decision to skip out on what might be considered prime time dining for a cheapskate like me. First......

As we've told you already, it's Restaurant Week here in Washington, which means those of us left in town can eat three course meals at some of the best restaurants around for $20.07 at lunch and $30.07 at dinner. As a Restaurant Week proponent, I view this unofficial dining holiday as a chance to try out places I've never been, and think restaurateurs should use the time as an opportunity to reach out to people......

Good morning, Washington. We hope you had a relaxing weekend, and weren't one of the people inconvenienced by the brief closing of a number of Metro stations on Sunday. The story goes that a contractor mistakenly spread commercial-grade rat poisoning in the middle of the day around several stations in D.C. and Maryland. When dozens of birds started dropping dead at the Greenbelt, Anacostia, Naylor Road and Branch Avenue stations on the Green line......

Last Chance for A.V. Sad, we know. Get it before it becomes a half-empty office building. Restaurant Week Starts August 6 There are a few good things about Washington in August. First, it's so damned hot and soupy that there are about 100 times fewer tourists. Second, Congress leaves town and tons of governmental types take vacation, so town slows down considerably, leaving rush hour slightly less enraging. Third, it's when the summer version of......

Veg D.C. Names Best Veggie Restaurant VegDC.com has tallied the votes for the area's best vegetarian restaurant, and the award goes to Java Green, the downtown eatery that serves a wide range of vegetarian and vegan cuisine (and really great coffee drinks) in the Farragut North area of downtown. Even an avowed meat-lover like me can find something to enjoy at the busy restaurant; the fake meats they use taste and feel nearly like the......

An unidentified man was shot around 2:40 a.m. last night inside Joe's Restaurant on 9th Street NW, right next to popular local bar and music venue DC9. The man later died at an area hospital. And of course, only hours after that, D.C. Council member Jim Graham is calling for the restaurant's permanent closure. This is becoming a familiar pattern. Graham says the restaurant is "notorious and dangerous," dating back to shooting and violence that......

RAMMY's All Around! Sunday was the Restaurant Area of Metropolitan Washington's 25th annual RAMMY awards, the local dining scene's big gala event. 1,500 people packed the Marriott in Woodley Park, listened to speeches, clapped for the winners, danced like teenage hooligans, and probably drank more booze than they wanted to/were happy about the next day. But, why else would so many people get together in one place? Oh, the awards? Yeah, I'll get to them.......

Welcome to this week's Feed, coming to you from Albuquerque, N.M.! This Feed will be a little more free flowing than usual. Why? I'm sitting on the patio, drinking a Fat Tire, enjoying the dry climate, and looking out on Sandia Peak. I just wanted to rub it in. 2007 RAMMYs To Feature Snakes That's what "Black Tie and Boas"—the theme of this year's RAMMY awards dinner—means, right? Tuxedos and Anacondas? Seems like a bad......

As Southwest's H2O night club enters its second week of a city-imposed shutdown after a weekend shooting left one man dead outside the club in late May, questions remain as to what happened and why the club remains shuttered. In a hearing before the D.C. Alcoholic Beverage Control Board last Thursday, city officials forcefully argued that the club remained a threat and revealed that Rashod Holmes, the gunman accused of killing Nelson Able outside the......

Written by DCist contributor Gayle Putrich We might get the shaft in Congress, but there is at least one place your vote counts, Washington: the 2007 Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington Awards; the Associations 25th (Happy Anniversary!). Of the myriad categories for the annual awards, affectionately known as the RAMMYs, three are determined by vox populi from a list of nominees. There's also a write-in free-for-all for the "People's Favorite," where you just type the......

Moments after I settled into my patio seat during my first visit to Jack’s Restaurant and Bar, which opened in January at 1527 17th Street, NW (the old Peppers/Le Pigalle Space) a cameraman from the local NBC station began to set up his wares on the sidewalk, just a few feet in front of me. Immediately I commiserated with Brad and Angelina. Can’t a man enjoy a heavily-poured whiskey in the evening sun without being......

It's been five months since D.C. took on a smoking ban in its bars, and all the grousing over not having a place to light up seems to have died down. But news coming from the Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington may change that. According to FreeRide, a survey by the restaurant lobby group -- which strongly opposed the smoking ban -- claims that 35 percent of bars and restaurants reported a loss of revenue after......

This post is by DCist Contributor Eddie Kim "A hotdog is a hotdog." Audacious–if not strange–words coming from Tony Tabdili, co-investor and gourmet hotdog slinger at M’Dawg Haute Dogs in Adams Morgan. Would you walk into the Westminster Dog Show and say a shitzu is the same as a pug? A chihuahua the same as a great dane? Certainly not. And just like the many breeds of dogs in the world, there are just as......

By now it is Chamber of Commerce cliché to write of "U Street’s revitalization." Most residents have read the historical postings along U Street NW and know, by way of slogan at least, that "before Harlem, there was U Street." At the height of Washington’s segregated past, a few decades after segregation was imposed by Congress against the will of a vocal many white and black District residents, U Street NW was the city’s celebrated......