Every Friday, we fill you in on what’s been happening in the local restaurant world.
On Monday night, Coppi’s Organic co-owner Nori Amaya was found dead in her apartment, according to NBCWashington.com. Police ruled that the 38-year-old, who owned the U Street restaurant with her brother, Carlos, was strangled.
D’Acqua, a seafood-centric restaurant in downtown DC, shut its doors for good on Friday after its landlord proposed a rent increase, reports the Washington Business Journal’s Missy Frederick. Chef Enzo Febbraro’s other two businesses, a mini D’Acqua in the Verizon Center and the recently opened Forno in Ashburn, aren’t affected by the closure. Febbraro is scouting locations to reopen D’Acqua.
Ping Pong Dim Sum, which has 16 storefronts in England, signed a deal in July for an outpost in DC’s Penn Quarter, its first US location. The company said Tuesday the opening is set for December.
Restaurant critic Todd Kliman’s mother, Itsy, has been a trusted companion on her son’s eating adventures for years. So we gave her a pen. What’s her take on all those lavish celebrity-chef spots, humble strip-mall dining rooms, and far-flung suburban restaurants? She tells it like it is from the non-critic’s side of the table.
To be among the lunch-breakers who routinely line up outside downtown DC’s Greek Deli in the hope of grabbing a cup of avgolemono soup is to experience a moment straight out of Seinfeld’s “Soup Nazi” episode. Owner Kosta Fostieris moves things along quickly—the soup has quite a following—but unlike the episode’s title character, he’s an affable fellow. So what makes the egg-and-lemon soup so good? We set up our cameras in his kitchen to find out.
Pastry chef and New Orleans native David Guas, who until recently was the face behind the desserts at the Passion Food Group restaurants (DC Coast, TenPenh, Acadiana, Ceiba, Passionfish), just released his first cookbook, DamGood Sweet. Many of the recipes come with passages about the traditions—both personal and historical—that are associated with them. (Guas remembers eating powdered-sugar-covered beignets at Café du Monde as a reward for good church behavior.) Currently, Guas is working on finding a location for Bayou Bakery, which will feature many of the pastries in his cookbook. In between scouting spaces, he sat down with us to chat about what he’s making on Thanksgiving and the recipe he craves the most.
Magical Elves, the production company behind Top Chef, held its first Washington casting call this morning at the Occidental Grille. The company is currently casting for the next season of the Bravo TV show as well as its pastry-focused spinoff, Top Chef: Just Desserts. With three local contestants on the current season of the show, we were expecting to see a mob of chefs lined up outside the restaurant as early as 9 this morning—casting ran from 10 to 2—but we found only a handful of hopefuls, mostly from outside the Washington area. We chatted with a few of the wannabe cheftestants.
Tangy with lemon and spicy with sausage, this easy pasta dish is a keeper. Photograph by Chris Leaman.
When Barry Koslow took over the kitchen at Tallula in April, he knew he wanted to have three fresh pasta dishes always on the menu. This bowl of cavatelli with garlicky sausage, bitter escarole, and piquant chili flakes is the only one that’s never changed. Koslow says the kitchen makes so much cavatelli—about ten pounds on the weekends—that he has to buy a new cavatelli machine every month.
If you can’t find cavatelli (short, rolled tubes of pasta), you can use garganelli (an angled penne) or orecchiette (which look like tiny bowls), all shapes that Koslow likes for their texture and the way they carry the sauce. Choose your sausage wisely, too. Look for veal or pork, and avoid anything that’s lean. For a dish this simple, Koslow says, “timing is everything, so make sure to have all the ingredients ready and close by.”
Tomorrow, look for a line of white coats outside the Occidental in downtown DC. The restaurant is one of seven national locations where Magical Elves, the production team behind Top Chef, is holding a casting call for the show’s next season. We want to know who you think should show up. Which Washington toques have the chops to join Carla Hall, the Voltaggio brothers, and Mike Isabella as cheftestants? And which pastry chefs would you want to root for on the forthcoming Top Chef spinoff, Just Desserts? Let us know in the comments!
Though Ann Limpert graduated from Connecticut College with a degree in art history and creative writing, she spent most of her time in New England debating the merits of warm, buttery lobster rolls vs. cold, mayo-y ones. She spent two years covering the internet for Entertainment Weekly magazine (highlights include interviewing the Beastie Boys and dancing to "Livin' la Vida Loca" with Penn Jillette), then left to hone her kitchen skills at the Institute of Culinary Education. She has worked as a cook at several New York restaurants, researched and edited cookbooks, and now writes about food and restaurants for the Washingtonian.
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Kate Nerenberg
Kate Nerenberg started as an editorial intern at The Washingtonian in January 2008 and became an assistant editor in September 2008. A native of West Hartford, Connecticut, she spent the first half of her writing life as a sports reporter, and was the editor of the athletics section for the newspaper and student-run magazine while at Middlebury College. A joint Spanish and Art History major, Kate graduated in 2005 and took off on a year-long journey around the world. After tasting everything from fried crickets to lavish Turkish breakfasts, she realized she wanted to devote herself to writing about food, a lifelong passion. She lives with three roommates just east of Logan Circle in a house that's often filled with the smell of sauteed garlic, warm banana bread, or fried bacon and eggs.
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Rina Rapuano
Rina Rapuano's English degree from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond put her on the path to becoming a managing editor of a weekly business magazine; a freelance copy editor; and assistant managing news editor—and later the lifestyles editor—at a weekly paper in Maryland. But she realized her true calling when her descriptions of meals to friends and colleagues always seemed to end with the same statement: “You're making me hungry.” Frankly, it was making Rina hungry, too. She chucked her day job in 2006 to become a full-time freelance writer focusing mainly on food, and now works as assistant food and wine editor at The Washingtonian.
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