• Last Saturday, Barack and Michelle Obama flew to New York to see the August Wilson play Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. Before the show, they stopped at Blue Hill, the West Village restaurant helmed by Dan Barber, an unofficial spokesman for the local-food movement (many of the ingredients used at his restaurant come from his upstate-New York farm). No word on what the First Couple ate—Barber’s keeping mum on that—although the New York Daily News reports that Barack sipped wine while Michelle had two martinis.
• Capitol Lounge, the Capitol Hill hangout known for its 25-cent-wing nights, announced this week that Granville Moore’s chef Teddy Folkman is coming on as executive chef. Folkman’s new menu includes his famous Bobby-Flay-beating blue-cheese mussels and frites, goat-cheese poppers, and a slew of pizzas. A finalist on The Next Food Network Star, Folkman is not the only pizzaiolo—or the only food TV personality—on the block: Spike Mendelsohn, the former Top Chef contestant who owns Good Stuff Eatery a few doors down, is planning on turning the adjacent Zack’s Taverna into a pizza joint.
• The Philadelphia Daily News’ Dan Gross reveals that Philly restaurateur Stephen Starr was in DC to scout spaces for a potential restaurant. Starr, who owns nearly 20 places in Philly, New York, Atlantic City, and Fort Lauderdale, says the concept for the restaurant here would be similar to Parc, his brasserie in Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square. You’re telling us that a big-name restaurateur can open in DC and it won’t be a steakhouse? Hallelujah!
• The Washington Post’s Tom Sietsema reports that chef Carole Greenwood has split with business partner James Alefantis and is no longer working at the pair’s two restaurants, Buck’s Fishing & Camping and Comet Ping Pong. While Alefantis cited “other interests” as Greenwood’s reason for leaving, she told Washington City Paper’s Young & Hungry blog that she has to “address urgent family matters.” Greenwood also said she’s looking at other spaces in DC to open a restaurant, even though Alefantis seems to think she’s looking in New York. He’s installed Laura Bonino, chef/co-owner of Georgetown’s Griffin Market, to take over the pizzas at Comet, but he’s still without a toque at Buck’s. In the meantime, he says, he’ll have a “summer camp” menu.
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