• Fans of the late Colorado Kitchen have long awaited the return of chef/owner Gillian Clark’s fried chicken. Good news: Clark is frying birds to order—and serving up a killer, breadcrumby mac and cheese—at her newly opened restaurant General Store (6 Post Office Rd., Silver Spring; 301-562-8787). For the time being though, it’s carryout only. Still, my chicken survived the 30-minute car ride home. Click here for the current menu.
• Cutbacks and layoffs are hitting even the highest-ranking restaurants in town. Tom Sietsema of the Washington Post reports that Citronelle has scaled back their hours (no more Sunday or Monday dinner) and is considering cutting ten staff members. Volt, Bryan Voltaggio’s Frederick dining room, is now closed Tuesday nights and has let a sous-chef go.
• Metrocurean brings less-depressing news with her Restaurant Pulse Check. She tried to get prime-time Saturday dinner reservations—with only two days’ notice—at several high-end restaurants. Blue Duck Tavern, Central Michel Richard, CityZen, the Source, and few others were, according to Opentable at least, totally booked.
• Bill Catron, the man behind the Britannica-thick beer list at Brasserie Beck, has left the Robert Wiedmaier restaurant. No word on where Catron is now, says Washington City Paper’s Tim Carman, but he’s been replaced by Thor Cheston, the former beer guy at Birreria Paradiso.
• Get your Roquefort while you can. On his way out of office, President Bush installed a 300 percent duty on the French cheese, making it prohibitively expensive and in all probability closing off the market (He did it to retaliate for a European Union ban on U.S. beef raised with hormones). Over at Cheesetique, owner Jill Erber is staging a Roquefort protest, and is selling the stuff at cost until it runs out.
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Ann Limpert joined Washingtonian in late 2003. She was previously an editorial assistant at Entertainment Weekly and a cook in New York restaurant kitchens, and she is a graduate of the Institute of Culinary Education. She lives in Petworth.
