The ownership of Mendocino Grille will be transferred from Eli Hengst and Jared Rager to Troy Bock, long term general manager and wine director of the restaurant, according to an announcement today. Barry Koslow will stay on as the executive chef. The reason behind the sale was to focus on their other restaurants/wine bars, Sonoma and Redwood. They also have leases signed for spaces on 14th Street and Glover Park where they will go head…

The kitchen’s closing, and it’s last call. In less than one week, I leave my native Washington, D.C. for the San Francisco Bay Area. For someone who loves food and drink, the move means fabulous produce (some, ideally, from the fruit trees in my future backyard), proximity to wine country, wonderful restaurants, and burritos, burritos, burritos! But it also means leaving family, friends, and food memories here in the District. So before I skedaddle, I’m…

Unless you’ve been living under the ground next to an aromatic truffle, you know that Restaurant Week is in full swing across the Washington area. If you have been living next to that truffle, Restaurant Week comes twice a year during traditionally quiet dining seasons and lures potential diners into restaurants with $20.06 three-course meals for lunch and $30.06 three-course meals for dinner. According to the word on the street, this Restaurant Week is a…

Our pal Amanda over at Metrocurean reports that West Coast import Cowgirl Creamery’s opening is imminent. And although we look forward to the cheese purveyor’s landing in the Penn Quarter, excellent cheese shops — such as Philadelphia’s DiBruno Bros., Greenwich Village’s Murray’s Cheese Shop, and local fromagerie Cheesetique — often present to us a paradox of choice. That is, faced with too many good options from which to choose, we run the risk of choosing…