Gin’s meteoric rise hasn’t supplanted other types of liquor in the way that vodka did to whiskey in the 1990s—this old spirit category has reinvented itself.

Image courtesy of Samer Farha Drink of the Week: Custom-made drinks The experience of sitting at a bar with a good bartender’s full attention is one of my favorite past times, especially because then you have the chance to order a custom cocktail. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been asking for a last taste of summer. I asked Derek Brown at The Gibson, who produced the Peach Monster, which is Compass Box Peat…

Dish of the Week: Curry laksa Where: Spices/Nooshi, Malaysia Kopitiam The first time I tasted curry laksa, it was prepared by a Singaporean friend, who I watched cleave piles of dark meat into an enormous stew pot before putting in a number of different spices. What came out was a questionable, murky soup with spicy red oil floating on top. But wow, was it delicious. Curry laksa is one of those beautiful fusion children of…

I was a bit uncertain as I walked down Calvert St. toward Open City. I was looking for New Heights, and what I saw was a slightly shabby awning on a narrow storefront. This, I thought, is nothing like Firefly. But I’d been tipped off. I was there to see a man named John Wabeck about some soft shell crabs. A few months ago, Wabeck left the kitchen at Firefly to escape conference calls and…

Thanks to all the readers who sent us their experiences from Restaurant Week. Your comments — and others culled from various local contacts — showed surprising uniformity. It seems that in D.C. there are restaurants that do Restaurant Week right, and some that don’t — with little space in between. A loud chorus of voices, both from e-mail and on DonRockwell’s forum, were pleased with the Restaurant Week offerings of Corduroy (memo to the staff…