Brian Miller and Lauren Winter are partners at Edit, one of the most provocative design firms you’ve probably never heard of, as it has no central office or a Web site. Despite its relative anonymity, the firm is behind some of the most visually interesting restaurants in Washington.

The lanky, blond Miller, 34, and the stylish Winter, 35, discussed their business over cocktails on a very bright afternoon in a very dark Gibson. Miller was sitting facing the door to watch the flow of incoming customers, while Lauren arrived later in a flowy, black dress, ordering a non-alcoholic drink on the fly.

The longtime friends from Savannah College of Art and Design started Edit three years ago when Winter lost her job at a design firm and Miller asked if she wanted to start a business. Both had worked in architectural jobs for several years and have ties to the local restaurant industry. They're friends with Eric Hilton, owner of Eighteenth Street Lounge, the Gibson, Marvin, Dickson Wine Bar, and American Ice Company.  Winter used to work at his Eighteenth Street Lounge in the ’90s and is now at U Street Music Hall on weekends. She's married to Proof and Estadio sommelier Sebastian Zutant, and they're expecting their first child within the month.

Hilda Staples, a force behind three of Washington's hottest restaurants. Photograph courtesy of Brad Barnwell.

Prior to his success on Top Chef, Bryan Voltaggio was a relatively anonymous force in the kitchen at Charlie Palmer Steak, the lobbyist den on Capitol Hill. Yet even back then, he recalls getting cold calls from a stranger who would ultimately change his life.

“I had this woman calling me on the kitchen phone asking to meet with me,” says Voltaggio of Hilda Staples, who’s now his business partner. “She was very persistent. I thought she was a little crazy.”

Three years later, Staples has not only helped Voltaggio open his dream restaurant, the highly touted Volt in Frederick, she’s now the financier and business mind behind Mike Isabella (the former Zaytinya chef and Top Chef contestant who’s prepping to open Graffiato in DC’s Chinatown) and R.J. Cooper (the former Vidalia chef who’s scheduled to open Rogue 24 in DC’s Shaw this spring).

Staples, who says she’s “somewhere between 35 and 41,” grew up in Alexandria and went to T.C. Williams High School. After working in corporate public relations for Constellation Energy and Ogilvy PR in DC, she followed her husband, Jonathan, to Frederick when he relocated his business there.

The tension between the three remaining contestants was palpable on last night’s Top Chef: All-Stars. Mike strutted around the chefs’ Atlantis suite, saying things like, “Hey Richard, Wolfgang called to ask how the goulash is coming,” causing us to worry that Richard may finally snap. For most of the hour, Richard appeared to be somewhere between puking and crying. Though he avoided doing either, he did continually remind us that he—and not Mike, damn it!—has won the most Top Chef challenges of any contestant in the show’s history. Someone needs to give that poor guy a drink. Or a Xanax.

On last night’s Top Chef: All Stars, there was a kitchen fire that derailed the Elimination Challenge and required real live firemen to put it out. And somehow, the episode was still one of the most boring of the season.

The five remaining chefs arrived in the Bahamas for the finals. For the Quickfire Challenge, they cooked against the chefs who won each of their seasons. Carla was clearly off her game early on. She undercooked the rice with her lamb dish and lost to returning chef Hosea.

The contestants were told they’d be cooking for Bahamian royalty for the Elimination Challenge. They got to work planning upscale fare to fit the occasion. Richard quipped that he had been preparing so hard for the finals he was willing to hunt down a goat if he had to. We wished he would, just to liven things up a little. Turned out the chefs would be cooking for the King of Junkanoo—a festival sort of like Mardi Gras—and not for actual royalty. Oh yeah, and they wouldn’t be working in a palace, but a small, divey restaurant with apparently faulty kitchen equipment. Basically, then, the challenge was to cook a meal in a regular restaurant for regular diners. Yawn.

Tiffany Derry was in town this week to discuss Gainful Employment. Photograph by Nick Wass.

Top Chef: D.C. and Top Chef: All Stars contestant Tiffany Derry was back in Washington this week, wearing the hat of a political lobbyist. Derry met with members of the Congressional Black Caucus and the National Restaurant Association to argue against the Gainful Employment rule, now pending at the Department of Education. The proposed regulation from the Obama administration is primarily designed to protect students at career colleges—such as culinary and technical schools—from taking on large amounts of debt that they can’t repay. It’s also supposed to protect the taxpayer from subsidizing generous student loans that may never be repaid because of the limited earning ability of the graduates.

Many for-profit educational institutions that are run by private companies have come under fire for promising to prepare students for careers that will enable them to pay off their loans quickly and go on to earn middle-class wages. There have been enough cases in which the situation is the opposite—students mired in debt while working at low-wage jobs—that the Department of Education is proposing to limit access to federal student aid for institutions that don’t show evidence of preparing students for “gainful employment” in their recognized field. (For more information on Gainful Employment, click here.)

While recognizing the need for regulation, Derry and others feel the rule is unfair because it could limit the amount of federal aid available to the people who need it most: minorities, low-income students, and older students with families who need loans and can’t afford the time or cost of attending independent, four-year colleges. In a blog post on the Hill’s Congress blog, Derry writes: “The rule erroneously points to debt-to-income ratios and repayment rates as measures to determine whether or not students who attend a program are eligible to receive financial assistance.”

While Gainful Employment is a blanket regulation, it could negatively affect the food industry because the majority of culinary schools, from the Cordon Bleu to L’Academie de Cuisine in Gaithersburg, are for-profit institutions. A student can get a technical degree at a state school, community college, or for-profit institution such as ITT Tech, but those looking for a distinguished culinary-arts degree would most likely attend the kind of trade school that the rule targets. We spoke with Derry about her thoughts on Gainful Employment and how it could affect the culinary field.

Last night’s Top Chef: All Stars featured a kitchen scandal and fried mayonnaise.
Paula Deen, queen of all things fatty, judged the Quickfire Challenge, which was—shocking!—to create a deep-fried dish. Paula listed some things she likes to deep fry, including “balls of butter.” Richard did her one better and crisped up balls of mayonnaise in duck fat. Paula loved the fried mayo but not as much as she adored Mike’s winning dish: fried “chicken oysters”—the piece of meat that connects a chicken’s thighs to its body—served in oyster shells. Richard accused Mike of stealing the idea from his notebook, which apparently included a sketch of the exact dish. Carla proclaimed Mike had broken “chef law.” Mike, showing no remorse, pocketed $5,000 for the win and thanked Richard for the idea.

Last night's episode of Top Chef: All Stars was just downright weird. The Quickfire Challenge featured the toughest of critics, a trio of Muppets, including Cookie Monster and Elmo. Maybe because a bunch of the contestants have kids? Could Sesame Street have paid to get itself on there? Can't you only get on Top Chef these days if you pay a boat load of money? The better question is how much Target paid to sponsor the Elimination Challenge—the chefs had to cook for 100 people at a super Target in the middle of the night, and they could use only what they found in the store, including peelers, knives, and fresh produce. Did you know Target has fresh produce? And meat! And fish! So there was that sponsorship, plus a massive $25,000 for the winner. It was as much a culinary challenge as a fitness test, as the chefs huffed and puffed their way around the store, pushing carts filled to the brim with tools, folding tables, and induction burners.