• Mendocino Grille is in financial straits: The American restaurant is $80,000 behind on its taxes and is closed indefinitely, reports the Georgetown Patch. Eli Hengst and Jared Rager—who together have ties to Sonoma, Blue Ridge, and Redwood—opened the restaurant in 2003. They sold it to Mendocino’s manager, Troy Bock, in 2009 and stayed on as guarantors of the lease. It’s unclear whether the restaurant will be able to reopen unless Bock can pay the full $80,000.
• Wednesday, at a meeting for the Dupont Circle neighborhood commission (ANC2B), Komi submitted an application (*PDF) for six more seats in its second-floor townhouse dining room and an additional 26 in the lower level that chef/owner Johnny Monis recently purchased. Monis also asked for a sidewalk cafe with no more than ten seats. Writer David Hagedorn noticed that ANC2B commissioner Kevin O’Connor wrote on Twitter that the board voted that there would be no exceptions made to the 17th Street liquor-license moratorium.
• In other neighborhood-and-liquor-license news, two proposed restaurants got the green light from a Barracks Row ANC: Nooshi—a pan-Asian spot with a location in downtown DC—and Moby Dick, the long-running chain of kebab houses.
• Constantine Stavropoulos is combining the business plans from two of his existing restaurants—Tryst and the Diner (he also owns Open City)—for a new venture in Columbia Heights at 11th and Monroe streets, Northwest. Prince of Petworth says that the 7,000-square-foot space will be open 24/7 and have a 30-seat bar, a coffeehouse vibe, and diner-like comfort food.
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