Food & Wine announced its annual list of the country's ten best new chefs, and Virginia has two of them. The more local honoree is Clayton Miller, 38, who whips his own butter and bakes his own bread at Trummer's on Main in Clifton. The other Virginian is John Shields, 33, who runs Townhouse with his wife, Karen Urie, in Chilhowie, about six hours from Washington. Dana Cowin, editor of Food & Wine, said Miller and Shields "represent the new South." Past local recipients include Johnny Monis from Komi (2007), Eric Ziebold from CityZen (2005), and Frank Ruta from Palena (2001).
Mendocino Grille & Wine Bar in DC's Georgetown is now without an executive chef. Drew Trautman left the job, according to the Washington Post's Tom Sietsema, after a recent change in ownership. Trautman is looking for a space on Capitol Hill to open his own restaurant with Jawad Saadaoui, the general manager at Redwood in Bethesda.
A Prince of Petworth reader noticed some shocking news on the MidCity Business Association Web site: DCRA has ruled that it won't issue anymore building permits or certificates of occupancies for any eating establishments around 14th and U streets, Northwest. That means no more restaurants, coffeeshops, or carry outs, and any business owners with a project in the works will have to go before the Board of Zoning Appeals.
Michael Landrum, the meat impresario behind the Ray's restaurants (Ray's Hell-Burger, Ray's the Steaks, Ray's the Classics), is just days away from opening his newest venture: Ray's the Steaks at East River in DC's Ward 7. On Wednesday, he held a ribbon-cutting ceremony with Mayor Fenty, and Tim Carman of the Washington City Paper says the doors will open next week with Landrum's new corporate chef, Frank Morales, at the helm.
A couple months back, we got word that Katherine Kallinis and Sophie LaMontagne, the sisters behind Georgetown Cupcake, would be part of a TLC reality show. The New York-based food Web site Eater tells us it got a press release about the show, which means it's official. All of a sudden, Washington is the epicenter of reality TV.
The long-awaited Northside Social, a multipurpose coffeeshop/restaurant/wine bar from the owners of Liberty Tavern, finally opened this week in Clarendon. A preliminary all-day menu shows everything from a pork-belly-and-broccoli-rabe sandwich to snickerdoodle cookies. The same team has plans to open Lyon Hall, a European-style brasserie, in the coming weeks.
Closed for more than a year, the Safeway in DC's Georgetown is set to reopen next month, and the Washington Post got a look inside. Known to lots of young singles as "Social Safeway," the new version is the city's first LEED-certified supermarket, with energy-saving appliances, local building materials, and low-emissions paint. You've got less than a month to come up with a way to turn those facts into a successful pickup line—the store reopens May 6.
The anonymous Pizzablogger took a look at RedRocks and Pete's New Haven Style Apizza on the Serious Eats pizza blog, Slice. If you don't feel like settling into his/her Pride and Prejudice-length essay, here's the take-away message: The blogger questions some of the claims that RedRocks makes about its cooking process on its Web site ("the statement . . . is bordering on flat out bullcrap."). But he says, "the pies are pretty damned good." Pete's got a more mediocre review: " . . . we didn't feel Pete's is a destination pizza worth going out of the way for. However . . . there is a need for a solid, everyday slice of pizza, and Pete's fills in this need quite well." Which do you think is the better Columbia Heights pizzeria? Let us know in the comments.
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