Roberto Donna behind the new chef counter at Al Dente, where he’ll serve a Laboratorio-like meal for four guests. Photograph by Jeff Martin.
It was less than a year ago that Hakan Ilhan opened Al Dente and tapped veteran chef Roberto Donna to lead the kitchen, and already the duo are planning to expand. Donna tells us a new 180-seat restaurant—equipped with another 120 patio seats—is on track for a late summer or early fall opening at the corner of Fourth and I streets, Northwest. The name: Alba Osteria, an homage to truffle-centric Alba, Italy, where the team recently traveled.
Details are still being worked out, but the concept will be as casual as its Upper Northwest sister restaurant (don’t go looking for Galileo IV) and geared toward a young Penn Quarter-area crowd. Expect an expansive bar with plenty of beers and wines by the glass, plus a large salumi counter. There will be pastas and pizzas—a wood-burning Italian oven is already set in the space. The menu will be divided by dish types, as opposed to courses, so you might find a meatball section featuring three different varieties, and other trios of options in such categories as gnocchi, fresh fettuccine, stuffed pastas, veal, and chicken. A few dishes will come from Al Dente, but most of the offerings will be new.
Planning for a new restaurant isn’t the only thing keeping Donna busy these days. At Al Dente, he has started up a smaller version of his much-lauded and lamented Laboratorio del Galileo. He’s calling it “Roberto’s 4,” which refers to the four counter seats opposite the open kitchen where he cooks. The 12-plus courses include such Laboratorio revivals as pasta alla chitarra with sea urchin, diver scallop crudo with Ligurian olive oil, roasted squab breast with duck liver, and gnocchi with lobster sauce. It’s $85 per person, with an optional $45 wine pairing, and the meal is only available Tuesday through Thursday for one 7 PM seating (to make a reservation, e-mail robertos.four@gmail.com).
Check back in for more details as the project develops.
You may have stopped by Rabbit Grill in Clarendon this week looking for a dinner salad and a Red Velvet cupcake, only to find the doors locked. The reason: Restaurateur Aaron Gordon is in the midst of creating a concept inspired by Belgian and German beer gardens with a new partner and co-owner, chef Rahman “Rock” Harper. We found the Hell’s Kitchen victor grilling up bratwurst and spicy Italian sausages for what’ll become Fat Shorty’s*, slated to open the first week of April.
You can still find leafy greens at 3035 Clarendon Boulevard through 3 PM this Friday, when the fast-casual salad spot closes its doors permanently. Once they reopen, the only rabbits on the premises will be in sausage form. Harper plans for about 16 styles of sausage spanning the globe, from German brats and weisswurst to South American chorizo and fennel-flecked Italian. Even more far-flung will be exotic links such as crocodile andouille, chipotle buffalo, and jalapeño-spiked rattlesnake. Bringing things back home, many of the producers will be local, even for the international flavors. Richmond-based Sausage Craft may create everything from Italian-grandmother-style sausages flavored with white wine and pecorino cheese to a smoky version made with Virginia ham, while Binkert’s out of Baltimore specializes in Germanic meats. And of course, being a Washington operation, a half-smoke is in the works.
In addition to the sausages themselves, Harper will craft a variety of customizable toppings including chili, sautéed peppers and onions, and sauerkraut, as well as a variety of mustards (and mumbo sauce!), which you’ll find at the communal beer-hall-style tables. Several varieties of mussels and freshly-cut frites with dipping sauces will round out the menu, all meant to be washed down with German, Belgian, and local craft brews. Servers will drop by the 80-odd seats to refill drink orders and clear plates, but otherwise Gordon is keeping with the counter-order method popular with families and the lunch rush crowd. In warmer weather, a 20-seat outdoor patio will be the place to relax over cold Leffe Blondes and brats.
Even after Shorty’s is up and running, Harper plans to keep working as a job instructor at the nonprofit DC Central Kitchen, where he helps unemployed, at-risk men and women find careers in the culinary arts. His two projects will merge once the new restaurant opens; he plans to employ the hardest-working alumni of the program at Shorty’s.
“We’re used to sending our graduates out into the world, so it’ll be special for me to be so close to them,” says Harper. “It’s a little like having a room in your kid’s dorm.”
Check back in with us for updates on the opening and details as they become available.
* The name refers to a childhood nickname, similar to Gordon’s other new spot, Zeke’s DC Donutz. There’s no affiliation to any artist, living or dead—remember how that turned out last time?
Sakae Ishida with Daikaya chef Katsuya Fukushima and co-owner Daisuke Utagawa. Photograph courtesy of Utagawa.
Two days after its official opening on Valentine’s Day, the Penn Quarter ramen restaurant Daikaya received a visitor: a well-groomed man with round glasses and a neat row of bangs across his forehead. The man bent over a big bowl of soup, took a slurp from its broth, and smiled his broad smile. Later, he would remember thinking, “This is Japanese ramen.” Seeing him smile, Daikaya co-owner Daisuke Utagawa recalled a wave of emotion washing over him. “I had to run back into the kitchen,” he says.
“It was like your dad saying, ‘Good job,’” agreed chef Katsuya Fukushima, who is helming the kitchen at the ramen spot as well as the upstairs izakaya, which is set to open in the coming weeks. Fukushima came to the project from a fine-dining background—he worked for José Andrés at Cafe Atlantico and Minibar, and his résumé lists stints at Vidalia and Cashion’s Eat Place. Though he was born in Japan, he left the country as a young child and only really reconnected with his native land while traveling along with Utagawa and partners to prepare for Daikaya. Another part of his preparation: spending three weeks cooking alongside the man with the round glasses—ramen master Sakae Ishida, (or “Ishida-san,” as Fukushima calls him, “san” being a designation of respect in Japan). This stage took place inside the Nishiyama noodle factory in Sapporo, Hokkaido, the birthplace of miso ramen, a beloved soup style in Japan. Despite his white-tablecloth pedigree, Fukushima approached the process with humility. “This isn’t rocket science, but it’s real cooking, true cooking,” he said.
Daisuke Utagawa and Eighteenth Street Lounge co-owner Yama Jewayni—the partners debut the ramen portion of Daikaya on Valentine's Day. Photograph by Scott Suchman.
Daikaya—the long-awaited two-level project from Sushiko owner Daisuke Utagawa—will open its first-floor ramen restaurant on February 14. The crew under chef Katsuya Fukushima will start serving up noodle soup at 5 PM on Valentine’s Day, staying open until 11 PM. The restaurant will keep those hours for its first few weeks of existence, eventually expanding once things are running smoothly.
The restaurant—which neighbors Graffiato at 705 Sixth Street, Northwest, in Penn Quarter—will specialize in traditional ramen in the style of the Sapporo region of Japan. It is using noodles from a famous Sapporo factory, Nishiyama, and working with a ramen master from that company, too.
There is no opening date yet for the upstairs izakaya at Daikaya. Utagawa says the focus will be on the ramen shop for now. Further down the road, partners in the projects—18th Street Lounge cofounder Yama Jewayni is among them—will open Kiji Club, a bar inspired by the cocktail lounges of Japan. Kiji Club will occupy a small space at 600 F Street, Northwest.
We will have a lot more info on what to expect at the ramen spot shortly. In the meantime, here’s an article with some more details.
Chef Frederik de Pue in the unfinished Table. The new space opens just after the eatery's debut, and contains nearly quadruple the number of seats. Photograph by Erik Uecke.
Every chef has his or her own style: Certain ones open a restaurant every couple of years (see Jeff and Barbara Black), while others, like former Smith Commons toque Frederik de Pue, debut two nearly simultaneously. While word came a few weeks back that de Pue acquired the former Penn Quarter home of chef José Andrés’s Café Atlántico and MiniBar, the Belgian-born toque was hush-hush about the concept. Now a release from the chef’s publicist details what to expect from Azur, a seafood-centric spot set to open right after the debut of his Shaw project, Table. Here are four things we learned about the new project.
It’s a little more upscale: While Table was conceived as a casual, European-style neighborhood eatery, Azur draws on the chef’s experiences in fine dining kitchens in Europe, such as the Michelin-rated Sea Grill in Brussels. The European-leaning dishes include the likes of bouillabaisse, moules frites, and fish baked in a salt crust, and cull fin fare such as lobster, tiger prawns, and crab from sustainable seafood purveyors.
The team behind the upcoming Astro Doughnuts & Fried Chicken—the latest venture to join the ultra-ultra-comfort-food trend—has been tight-lipped about the shop's exact downtown location. Now a rep for the storefront tells us that a "coming soon" sign will soon be hung at 1308 G Street, Northwest, mere blocks from the White House and Metro Center station. Better yet: You can start placing delivery orders right now.
The storefront won't officially open until January 2013, but former Fiola pastry chef Jason Gehring is ready to fire up the fryers for delivery in a limited area between Ninth and 15th streets, Northwest, and E and H streets, Northwest. Those lucky downtown dwellers can pick from five standard flavors, which include glazed vanilla, crème brûlée, peanut butter and jelly, maple-bacon, and Brooklyn Blackout, made with devil's food cake and cookie crumbs. In addition to the staples, there'll also be five additional flavors that change daily, such as salted caramel with almonds, triple chocolate (chocolate dough stuffed with chocolate custard and swiped with chocolate glaze), and a special for all you Twinkie lovers/mourners out there: the Twink-nut, where golden vanilla cake gets a buttercream filling and vanilla glaze. Still, don't let the Hostess-inspired name fool you. Gehring and co-owners Elliot Spaisman and Jeff Halpern say they're sourcing ingredients from top-notch purveyors, some local, such as Virginia-based Benton's Bacon and luxury Valrhona chocolate.
Last time we saw chef Frederik de Pue, he was standing in the shell of what will be his first restaurant, Table (pronounced “tahb-luh” en français). Now the former Smith Commons and 42 Degrees Catering toque brings news that construction is moving along on the former garage in Shaw, and that the 32-seat eatery is set for an early November opening.
As originally planned, de Pue aims for a European-style dining experience in the neighborhood spot, with a lineup of seasonal fare that’ll change frequently. A release notes that the decor will also alternate with the times of year, including color shifts in the menus, aprons, and artwork. In warmer months you’ll be able to head up to a 28-seat rooftop deck or spread out to communal dining tables on the 16-seat sidewalk-level patio.
While dinner is on tap for fall, breakfast, lunch, and brunch are slated for a February 1 rollout, with offerings such as cheese and charcuterie boards, egg dishes, house-made pastries, and fresh-squeezed juices. The space formerly operated as a speakeasy (as in, a truly illegal bar), but you’ll find a list of about 20 wines by the glass, beer, and Champagne in lieu of cocktails.The Belgian toque has more on his hands than just a small neighborhood restaurant, as the City Paper brought word yesterday that de Pue has taken over the former Café Atlántico/America Eats and Minibar space from José Andrés. A representative confirms that the new concept may be open as soon as the end of the year, permitting allowed. Stay tuned for more details on both projects.
By Jessica Voelker
Twenty guests can cozy up in Quench's lounge area, where the full menu will be available. There are 50 more spots at the bar and dining area, and the outdoor patio seats 25. Photographs by Dakota Fine.
A lot of restaurants opening around Washington claim they'll have a "craft cocktail program," but what that means exactly--beyond the fact that you'll be paying $10 and up for your drinks--varies from venue to venue. Quench, a new cocktail bar and eatery opening in Rockville, is aiming high: Newbie restaurateur Michael Holstein hired barman Steve Oshana--last seen at Elisir--to run the beverage program, and has purchased a Kold-Draft ice machine, an expensive apparatus that produces large cubes that melt slowly. Bitters, infusions, and fancy cocktail accoutrements like pâté de fruit, applewood-smoked cherries, and a black tea reduction will all be made in house. Oshana says each of the 41 mixers on the list will be made to order (a lot of bars "prebatch" their drinks prior to service, then just pour them as they go), and he's insisting that the staff use jiggers to measure ingredients, creating consistent drinks every time. "We want to be at the same level as the Gibson or the Columbia Room," says Oshana. "We can't afford to get it wrong."
Via a series of tweets this Saturday, Washingtonian restaurant critic Todd Kliman revealed some exciting news: Mark Kuller, owner of Proof and perpetually packed tapas spot Estadio, has a new place in the works.
Here’s what Kuller told Kliman:
Located at 14th and S streets, Northwest, in the JBG building, the yet-to-be-named restaurant is inspired by Southeast Asian cuisine. Chef Haidar Karoum of Proof and Estadio “will bring modern techniques and execution to these traditional dishes,” Kuller said.
The menu at the 140-seat spot will be “an assortment of noodle dishes, soups, and grilled ‘sticks’”—skewers—of meats, seafood, and vegetables. There will be an open kitchen and a “curated cocktail bar . . . along the lines of Little Branch in NYC.” The latter will be helmed by Adam Bernbach, who is the bar manager at Kuller’s other two restaurants. An outdoor patio will accommodate 40 additional diners.
Washingtonian food critic Todd Kliman hosts one of the liveliest web exchanges in the city every Tuesday morning (today!) at 11, dishing out great tips and hot scoops while also answering readers’ burning culinary questions. Today he’ll begin a series of culinary book giveaways. Send him a mini restaurant review written in the style of your favorite author for a chance to win. Evaluate Elisir in the manner of Cormac McCarthy, or critique the Hamilton as if you were channeling Hemingway. Sum up Shake Shack as Shakespeare himself might, or describe Jaleo with the witty precision of Jane Austen. Whatever you like, really. Just make it good. Todd will announce his favorite review before the end of this week’s chat.
Happy writing.
