When I was invited to dine at Piola on 14th the other night, I felt a dash of déjà vu. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had been there before, yet in a different time and different environment. It wasn’t until I found out that Piola has Palermo and Barrio Norte outposts in Buenos Aires…
I have serious beef with bad mojitos. The animosity is rooted in a few too many Happy Hour specials of horrible house rum and lime mix, some bitter, waxy mint leaves force-muddled in. To this day, I remain highly skeptical when someone offers me one. It’s why when I was told that mojitos were the…
A very long while back I visited Bayou Bakery with a friend, on our way to the Arlington Wine Festival. He mentioned the place in passing as we drove past it, and it seemed so delightful that I asked him to stop so that we could pop in for a quick pre-wine brunch. He fed…
Washington D.C. is home to the second largest group of Ethiopians outside of Ethiopia. And like so many cultures proud of and loyal to their traditions, they have brought their cuisine with them. Ethiopian specialty shops and restaurants line the streets of Shaw, specifically 9th NW between U and T. Although this influx of Ethiopian…
This past Thursday I attended a press preview of Zaytinya’s third annual Grape Festival, a two-week long event running from September 22nd through October 5th. As an ode to the most popular fruit of the Mediterranean, the festival will feature a menu inspired by the grape, along with wine tastings and a grape-tastic specialty cocktail…
I was pretty excited when I heard about Mike Isabella’s new sandwich shop, G Sandwich, opening on 14th and W. I’ve had a good experience at Graffiato on my visits there for lunch and dinner. The wood oven pizzas are solid and everything on the menu shows a hint of creativity (I’m especially a fan of…
I’m writing this review sitting at a horrible little Mexican restaurant at BWI with a Blue Moon after having just moved out of my apartment of five months. As I consider the next steps of my life, thoughts of the neighborhood I am leaving cross my mind and I start to reconsider plans to move…
A great rooftop option for beating the crippling heat waves hitting D.C. this summer is Masa 14 in Logan Circle. A central staircase leads up from a spacious, chic, under-lit dining room to a long, elegant second floor bar. This opens to a roofdeck with a living wall of plants inclining upwards from the center,…
I started writing this article on April 11th, a few days after starting my work on the Smithsonian Folklife Festival out of the Capital Gallery building at L’Enfant Plaza. Food trucks surround the building between 10:00am and 2:00pm and around 11:30am of each day the topic of office chatter would inevitably turn to which trucks…
I was first exposed to Balkan-chic Ambar a few months ago in the context of a patio happy hour event and wasn’t too blown away by just about anything. I had heard of their rakia program and Balkan wine selection, and was left thoroughly disappointed by the happy hour cocktail menu, which consisted of a margarita (tequila), a mojito (rum)…
That Best Bite 