Hottest Restaurant in Town

Six months after opening, David Chang’s Momofuku Ko is still the toughest reservation in town. The Virginia-native-turned-Manhattan-überchef offers a fixed-price, ten-course meal for $85 to a dozen anointed diners each night—blogs are devoted to getting a reservation at the Lower East Side restaurant. Chang likes his music loud (Guns n’ Roses) and his food inventive: silky Long Island–fluke sashimi with buttermilk miso; crisp deep-fried sous-vide short ribs; marvelous frozen shaved foie gras with pine-nut brittle.

Momofuku Ko, 163 First Ave.; 212-500-0831 for voice mail; momofuku.com for reservations.

The Maestro at Work

Fabio Trabocchi’s innovative Italian food was never quite at home in Maestro’s gilded dining room at the Ritz-Carlton, Tysons Corner. Last summer, the celebrated chef took off for SoHo’s Fiamma, where exposed brick and a sleek bar are a hipper backdrop for the likes of Wagyu beef—alternating bites of carpaccio-wrapped mozzarella with delicately mounded tartare—and rustic pastas such as the rich Le Marche lasagna. Fiamma is more casual than Trabocchi’s former digs, but New York pricing makes the tab about the same.

Fiamma, 206 Spring St.; 212-653-0100; brguestrestaurants.com. Three courses $85, five $105, seven $125.

• Juan Solano, former manager of Wheaton’s El Pollo Rico, was found guilty of hiring and housing illegal immigrants and conspiracy to commit money-laundering. It’s the latest in a string of setbacks for the popular Peruvian-style chicken joint: In 2006, the restaurant was temporarily closed when federal agents arrested Solano and three other family members, and last February, a two-alarm fire severely damaged the place. Solano will spend 15 months behind bars and has been ordered to pay the government $7.2 million. 

Whole Foods in DC’s Logan Circle (1440 P St., NW; 202-332-4300) is currently selling a bottle of Massaya Classic 2006, a blend of three reds—Cinsault, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Syrah. What’s significant about the wine other than the fact it hails from Lebanon?

Last winter, it was the wine that the four-star Komi (1509 17th St., NW; 202-332-9200) chose to pair with its fabulous katsikaki, a tour-de-force presentation of spit-roasted baby goat.

Few are brave enough or skilled enough to prepare a spit-roasted goat at home, but the wine—earthy and lightly spicy but also soft and supple—is a great match for big, hearty flavors: It dances adroitly with a plate of seared scallops and romesco, and it works great, too, with a tagine or roast chicken. It’s a terrific deal at $12.99 a bottle.

This appeared in the October, 2008 issue of The Washingtonian.  

Photograph courtesy of Bravo.

We love us some Top Chef. But season after season, it’s the same old story. There are cheftestants from New York, Chicago, and LA but never DC (and no, Spike doesn’t count—he moved here after the fact). This time, though, we’ll finally have a hometowner to root for: Carla Hall, owner of Alchemy Caterers, will duke it out in New York with 16 other candidates for the $100,000 prize and so-far dubious honor.

The 44-year-old Hall graduated from Howard University’s business school with an accounting degree, then ditched the corporate world to model in Europe. Ironically, it was then, she says, that she fell in love with food. Her cooking style “balances the heart and soul of the South and the refinement of her classic French training,” says BravoTV.
 

Harley-riding RJ Cooper is crazy for all things swine.

This week marks R.J. Cooper’s fourth anniversary as chef de cuisine at downtown DC’s Vidalia. Last year, he took home a James Beard Award for Best Chef Mid-Atlantic—the same prestigious honor that Vidalia owner Jeff Buben received back in 1999 when he was running the kitchen himself. Cooper still serves the restaurant’s signature shrimp and grits, but his creative menus have only a slight southern accent—think pâté studded with Virginia peanuts, frog’s legs with polenta and parsley butter, and a dish of braised pork cheeks wrapped in chicken skin that Cooper calls “andouillette.”


After culinary school in Illinois and cooking stints in Atlanta, New York, and Anchorage, the Detroit native moved to Washington almost a decade ago. He cooked at New Heights and Toka Café before joining the Vidalia team. Cooper’s favorite restaurant city? “DC, absolutely,” he says. “We have some of the youngest, most creative chefs in the country right now, and we’re being pummeled by international celebrity chefs. So we’re always pushing the envelope.”


Just a quick heads-up, foodie lovers. Washingtonian food critic Todd Kliman will be on the Kojo Nnamdi show today at noon to talk about ethnic food and restaurants throughout the Washington area. You can tune in to WAMU 88.5 FM from noon to 1 PM to hear Todd chatting—or listen live from your computer to the stream here.

Want more Todd? Make sure to follow him on his Twitter stream, where he occasionally sends live updates as he's out and about on the town.  You can also follow Washingtonian.com on our Twitter stream to get updates about food, nightlife, shopping and more.

Nothing has been announced yet, but a trusted source tells us that David Varley will head the kitchen at San Francisco chef Michael Mina’s outpost of Bourbon Steak, slated to open mid-December at the Four Seasons in Georgetown. A preliminary search on the guy reveals that his most recent stints were at DJT—Donald Trump’s eatery—Bradley Ogden, and Company American Bistro, all in Vegas. We don’t know if he’s worked on the line at any of the three Mina outposts in the casino city, and repeated phone calls to Varley and Mina's publicist were not returned.