This August, Jamie Leeds of Hank’s Oyster Bar in Dupont Circle and Alexandria launches CommonWealth, a British-style tavern and restaurant, in DC’s Columbia Heights (1400 Irving St., NW). The restaurant began, like so many good ideas, with notes on a napkin. In her scribbles from more than a year ago, Leeds laid out the kind of place she wanted: a gastropub with meats and roasts and “no kitsch,” a menu of “real food” with local produce in a setting that feels “pubby.” She envisioned CommonWealth as a destination for the “weary traveler,” an “everyday” kind of place—“blue collar” and “communal,” with a center table and an “easy” mix of old and new. To a large degree, the new restaurant reflects its owner’s vision.

To learn more about the making of CommonWealth, check out our audio slideshow below. Leeds explains, through narration and her personal documents, how the idea of CommonWealth was built from scratch. 

Granville Moore's chef Teddy Folkman has good reason to boast about his Belgian-themed H Street, Northeast restaurant. On a recent episode of the Food Network's Throwdown With Bobby Flay, his moules fromage bleu bested the Iron Chef's coconut-poblano mussels. Check out our video interview—or the written transcript below—with Folkman to find out how it all went down. (And don't forget to check out his video recipe of the mussels that he beat Flay with.)

A few of our readers clamored for a written transcript of the 10-minute-long video interview that Spike Mendelsohn did with us yesterday. For those of you who prefer your news about Top Chef and Spike's new venture, Good Stuff Eatery, in the written word, check below!

Spike speeds past a burger and shake in his new Capitol Hill burger joint.

We caught up with fedora-obsessed former Top Chef contestant Spike Mendelsohn at his soon-to-open Capitol Hill burger joint, Good Stuff Eatery. After a toasted-marshmallow milkshake, he revealed (on video) which DC chef-buddy you'll see on the next Top Chef, his real feelings for judge Tom Colicchio, and in-the-works locations of more family restaurant ventures. Scroll down for our video interview with Spike—plus a video-tour of the interior of Good Stuff and photos of everything from his dad to the Five Napkin Burger.

23-year-old Nic Jammet is one of the three minds behind Georgetown's eco-friendly salad shop, Sweetgreen (3333 M St., NW; 202-337-9338). The Georgetown grad is a lifelong foodie—his parents owned the venerable French dining room Le Caravelle in Manhattan until it closed during his freshman year of college.

Before partnering with two friends to launch Sweetgreen his senior year, Jammet, a business major, spent summers interning in the restaurant industry. One summer, he worked for Joe Bastianich, son of Italian-cooking maven Lidia and owner, with Mario Batali, of several New York restaurants including Babbo and Del Posto. Bastianich is now an investor in Sweetgreen.

Jammet lives in Georgetown, just a few blocks away from the cozy 500-square-foot hut that houses Sweetgreen. He plans to move back to New York eventually, but for now, he’s busy expanding the business here in DC. The next Sweetgreen Jammet plans to open will be on the north side of Dupont, “right on the circle,” he says, though he won't disclose specifics until the lease is officially nailed down. He and his partners are aiming for a late-summer opening there, and are now scouting for a third downtown DC location "near Farragut Square or in Chinatown."

Over salads and cups of “Sweetflow”—Sweetgreen's signature sweet-tart frozen yogurt—Jammet chatted with us about his food favorites.

Food Network fanatics may recognize Claudio Sandri, who took over last month as executive chef at Roberto Donna’s Bebo Trattoria (2250 Crystal Dr., Arlington), from his TV debut on Iron Chef America, when he helped Donna stage an impressive comeback victory over Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto. But Sandri and Donna go back long before that, having attended the same culinary school in their hometown of Torino, Italy. Sandri moved from Italy to DC six years ago to work for Donna at his high-end Laboratorio del Galileo, went home for a quick stint in Italy, then came back to this area when his old friend needed capable hands to take over the kitchen at Bebo. Here, the chef chats about his favorite dessert made by his pastry chef wife, his meat-and-cheese-stocked fridge, the Iron Chef he admires most, and more.

Jennifer 8. Lee loves chicken feet and Chipotle. Photograph courtesy of Jennifer 8. Lee.

New York Times reporter Jennifer 8. Lee’s witty new book, The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food, unearths the origins of the fortune cookie, explores the invention of General Tso’s chicken, and recounts the kosher-duck scandal of 1989 at Rockville’s Moshe Dragon. During Lee’s stint in the Washington bureau of the Times, she was known for parties she held in her loft near the Washington Convention Center, featuring fried dumplings made from scratch and a slew of boldface names. Still reporting in addition to selling books, she took a few minutes to answer our either/or questions.

Chop’t or Chipotle?

Chipotle. I love that people think of burritos as a Mexican food when in fact—like beef with broccoli and spaghetti and meatballs—it is a dish that is largely indigenous to the United States.

Chinatown bus or Amtrak?

The Chinatown-bus network will take you to crevices of the map where Amtrak doesn’t go—anywhere you can find a Chinese restaurant: Kalamazoo, Michigan; Wausau, Wisconsin; Jackson, Tennessee.