This delicious wild onion is appearing on a variety of local menus and is only available for a few months out of the year.

D.C. got swept at last night’s James Beard Foundation Awards ceremony.

Photo by Eric Denman D.C. has always had a reputation as a drinking town. Maybe it’s because of all the lobbyists, lawyers, and politicians, but in the heyday of the cocktail, before Prohibition, residents of the District supposedly out-drank their counterparts in other areas of the country several times over. We even have our own cocktail that was named after a lobbyist. These days, many of the top restaurants in the city now have…

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…

This post was written by DCist contributor Andrew Schneider Dish of the Week Maryland fried chicken from just over the border The weather’s turned, spandex is out in force, and picnics are chic once more. Nothing says picnic to us like a bucket of fried chicken, but next time you get a craving for that batter-fried goodness, consider instead the deep south’s delicious and elusive cousin: Maryland Fried Chicken. Milk-soaked and pan-fried, it’s a lighter,…

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…

With the ink barely dry on the 2007 RAMMY nominations, we pored over the list of nominees searching for one that hadn’t already been reviewed to death or hadn’t already been visited by every serious eater in the city. Who wants to read one more critique of Restaurant Eve? Citronelle? They’re amazing, we get it, and as soon as we get that advance from Doubleday we’ll go check out those damned tasting menus. But there,…

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….

Editor’s Note: After a lengthy hiatus, DCist’s Eating In feature makes its triumphant return. Now written by married Culinary Institute of America graduates Amanda and Ben Page, each Eating In post will feature simple yet impressive recipes that anyone can make at home. We’ll focus recreating winning restaurant dishes and on putting together meals from local ingredients and interesting items that you can find around the area. You know, just as we explained when the…

By DCist contributor Spencer Ackerman It’s pretty appropriate for a cooking expo so near the Chesapeake Bay that the first olfactory experience greeting a visitor to the Metropolitan Cooking & Entertaining Show is a powerful blast of salty, baking fish. No one is going to mistake D.C.’s answer to the New York Fancy Food Expo — a 100-stall extravaganza of middlebrow-to-high-end cooking, oenophilia, celebrity chefs and cheap wares — for the food-porn original. But with…