7.18.10
courtesy of Paige Weaver

I’ve been trying to come to terms with this all day. I’ve been sitting on this post for a few hours, but it seems right now to post it. Since we moved to Brookland, our weekend haunt has been the beautiful steel diner on Bladensburg road, the Capital City Diner. I first set foot in the diner about two years ago, as we were looking at houses, and I sat down for the most amazing patty melt and milkshake I’ve had in this fair city. Since then, it’s been our Saturday and Sunday morning breakfast location. Seeing Cheryl, Matt, Frank and Sylvia each weekend has become a highlight in my week. Sunday, the Diner will close, but not before throwing one last hurrah this weekend.

When I heard today, I drove over to the Diner to get the news from owner Matt Ashburn. I was greeted at the door by Cheryl, who immediately wrapped me in a bear hug. That’s pretty much when I lost it. Cap City has been a weekend home for us. We brought Matt and Cheryl homemade jam, farm peaches, and cranberry relish, and they kept us topped up on coffee and Diet Coke, including one memorable occasion when despite being out of soda, Cheryl ran up the street to get us some.

Capital City Diner has been an oasis for us, and one of my DC Talismans, a place that I go when I need to feel that something in this world is in perfect order. The letter up on their website cites rising costs and nearby competition from a national chain that rhymes with Lenny’s. The end of the Diner may well be attributable to Harry Thomas Jr., who worked hard to bring the chain restaurant to Trinidad after seeing the Diner thrive. While perhaps bringing more business to Bladensburg Road near Trinidad is good for the local economy, something Thomas wasn’t exactly known for, his last good act might have killed the thing I loved most in the District.

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(361/365)
courtesy of kimberlyfaye

If you’re not already building an Ark then maybe you need something to do with yourself the next few days. Well, we have some ideas to run past you.

Mosley: Birthday weekend!  And I plan on starting the festivities tonight: it’s the last night to see Girl With the Dragon Tattoo at the Lincoln Theatre.  I’ve never been in the theater and I’m interested in seeing the space more than the movie.  Saturday day I’m planning on leaving up in the air: maybe I’ll hit Chocolate City Brewery and DC Brau’s growler hours; or maybe I’ll spend the day walking around somewhere new to take pictures; or maybe something else I haven’t thought of yet.  I don’t know!  But Saturday night will be at the Hamilton for my birthday party; I rather like the space, and they have a beer and food menu to my liking, though I hope their service has improved since I was last in there.  Sunday, my actual birthday, the city is actually throwing me a parade.  Well, officially it has something to do with the “Lunar New Year,” whatever that is; but unofficially it’s a parade for me in Chinatown.  I go every year to take photos and it’s a ton of fun.

Sun Chiu Kee – Lamb Hot Pot
courtesy of Calgary Reviews

Alexia: Starting out my weekend rocking for a good cause at Comet Ping Pong’s “D.C. Hearts Jonathan Toubin Benefit Show & Dance Party” featuring Chain and the Gang and others. Saturday, weather permitting I’ll be running on the W & OD trail as part of my training for the Ukrops Monument Avenue 10k in Richmond in March. Saturday evening I’ll be checking out the Sichuan hot pot offerings at Mala Tang in Arlington with some friends for dinner. Sunday- hoping for a day of rest, but if anyone knows a good brunch place in Arlington, I’m taking suggestions.

Roller Girls
courtesy of Edward Hoover

Tom: Roller Derby! Woo! We’ve been invited to join the dc rollergirls for Saturday’s bout at the Armory and hope to attend. We’ll likely hit up dinner on Barracks Row ahead, so suggestions are welcome. Sunday I’ll be grabbing a Bikeshare ride to cover some ground, perhaps all the way up to Ballston!

Don: We’re going low-key this weekend, but our one confirmed plan is catching Two Gentlemen from Verona from STC on Sunday night. There’s been some great deals on tickets and some great buzz, including from our own usually-trustworthy Jenn.

courtesy of Fitsum Belay

Fedward:  I’m going to set up camp at the AFI Silver for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, My Week With Marilyn, and The Artist, and then celebrate the Social Chair’s return from her two weeks of overwork with a nice brunch at the Passenger on Sunday.

Rogue 24 by RJ Cooper
courtesy of NataliaMoreno

Jenn: Spike Gjerde of Baltimore’s Woodberry Kitchen is doing wonderfully elegant things with local ingredients at Rogue24 this week as part of the ongoing Rogue Sessions. Natalia and I were treated to a taste last night, and I highly recommend a visit this weekend. As an added bonus, the paired cocktails are pretty stellar – including the “orris julius” created by lead bartender Bryan Tetorakis featuring nasturtium and orris root, making for a very lovely floral concoction indeed. I’m starting to feel like the quirky warehouse is one of my favorite spots in DC…

DC Brau – The Public – 08-06-11
courtesy of mosley.brian

Natalia: It was quite the week for dragon feasting. From Toki Underground to Rogue 24, the Year of the Dragon has never tasted so good. And it is only going to continue into the weekend, with a massive parade on Sunday through Chinatown, I plan on stopping by Chinatown Coffee Co who will be offering a DC Brau Happy Hour and a warm escape. And maybe throw in some dumplings for good measure at Ping Pong.

courtesy of Chris Rief aka Spodie Odie

Brittany: This weekend is sort of a gradient that starts out classy but slides to sloppy and rock and roll by the end – which is pretty much my favorite. Friday night, I will be meeting a boy for a fancy dinner at a restaurant which has just brought on a new chef – though, to be fair, I have never actually been there before, so it will all be new to me. (Attire: Cute dress, tall heels – science be damned.) Saturday evening will be an interesting trick as I attend the Jeff Mangum show at the Lincoln Theatre and then, as the closing notes ring, dart around the corner to the Black Cat for the Sockets Records Showcase. (Attire: Wooly 90s emo sweater, big music blogger eyeglasses.) Sunday I have big plans for hanging out, grabbing a croissant from Seasonal Pantry, and then seeing my current favorite of my friends’ bands play hard and fast at Velvet Lounge. (Attire: Dark colors to avoid any blood spots when the singer hits himself with mic to end set, skirt, boots.)

Old Pension Building II [Explore]
courtesy of (Alex) It’s my whole damn raison d’etre!

Rebecca: On the bus ride to work this week, I saw a billboard for the National Building Museum’s current exhibit Unbuilt Washington, which reveals the Washington that could have been by presenting architectural and urban design projects that were proposed but, for widely varied reasons, never executed. This sounds A-MAZING. So that’s really the only activity on my weekend list besides sleeping, eating and doing laundry.

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Brad Lidge
courtesy of afagen

The Nationals missed out on Prince Fielder when the Tigers swooped in at the last minute to offer a 9 year $214 million dollar contract. That doesn’t mean the off-season is over and it certainly doesn’t mean Mike Rizzo is done trying to improve the Nats. Since the Nats failed to strengthen a weakness they have concentrated this off-season on strengthening their strength. The Nationals pitching staff last season allowed 3.99 runs a game which was seventh best in the NL, and had the sixth best ERA in the league at 3.58.

Breaking that down further the Nationals starters had an ERA of 3.80 and the relievers an ERA of 3.20. The National League average is an ERA of 3.94 for starters and 3.59 for relievers. As a whole the Nationals starters were 0.14 runs per nine innings better than league average and the relievers 0.39 runs per nine innings better. The entire Nationals pitching staff was above average in 2011, but the bullpen was the strength of the Nationals pitching staff.

The addition of Lidge is important as it adds depth to what already appeared to be a deep bullpen. If Lidge can remain healthy he adds yet another weapon to a Nationals bullpen that was already full of lethal pitchers. In trying to understand what this means for the depth of the Nationals bullpen it is fun to look at the best case and the worst case scenarios.

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Photo courtesy of Angie Salame

I write this while in a full blown food coma (#foodieproblems) with a delightful pain and taste bud/sensory overload, but more over,  faced with writer’s dilemma,  trying to find a way to describe the past four hours of absolute mastery that just went down at Rogue 24. Long -24 course and 8 drinks- story short, Spike Gjerde had me at hog jowl. Rogue 24 had me upon entrance. What the hell does that mean you ask. Well, in case you have been living under a rock, RJ Cooper’s illustrious Rogue 24 has been debuting Rogue Sessions,  a ten week pop-up celebrating some of the nation’s finest chefs as RJ Cooper recovers from heart surgery, with ticket sales benefiting Share Our Strength. It is all a wonderful affair of chef love, community giving, and culinary creativity.

Straight off the press, I was interested in seeing Chef Spike Gjerde go Rogue. His farm-to-table concept in Baltimore, Woodberry Kitchen, is one of my favorite restaurants around, but not the kind of place you find Rogue-esque molecular gastronomy. At Woodberry Kitchen, Chef Spike works closely with farmers and growers throughout the Chesapeake Bay and Mid-Atlantic regions to supply the restaurant with the freshest ingredients available, and brought that local fever to the Rogue Session. Throughout the meal, Chef Spike proved over and over that he could break barriers and remain true to seasonal and local flavors, delivering amazing dishes that were packed with a subtle elegance and charm you would have thought he was working in that space for years.

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Ris Lacoste’s Endive, Walnut & Blue Cheese Salad with Port Vinaigrette
courtesy of bonappetitfoodie

If you’re like me, you spend a lot of time wandering through the produce aisles staring at vegetables and wondering what in the world you should make with them. You’re overwhelmed by the options and the daunting threat of those veggies passing their prime in the bottom of your refrigerator’s crisper. Stress no more. Chef Ris Lacoste of Ris shared with me a recipe for an endive, walnut and blue cheese salad with port vinaigrette. I know, it’s winter and the thought of salad seems foreign. But this dish is hearty and a great way to get creative and bring some bright flavors into your kitchen while we wait for warmer weather. Click through to find the full recipe.
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Chef Ris Lacoste
courtesy of bonappetitfoodie

Growing up, Ris Lacoste thought she would be anything but a chef. She was a pre-med student for two years at the University of Rochester; then she had visions of becoming a UN translator when she got her degree in French at UC-Berkeley. But all the while, Ris was working in the food and restaurant industry in some capacity since she was a teenager. “It was going on my whole life, but I didn’t know it,” she says. When she was 12, she started working at a Polish market on weekends helping out by stocking shelves. By the time she was 16, she was a short-order cook and later an assistant manager at Friendly’s.

Then came France. In 1981, Ris moved to Paris to study French and got a part-time job at La Varenne Écôle de Cuisine as a receptionist and an editorial stagiaire. Her payment? Cooking classes in exchange for work. Slowly, she came to see that all the experiences along the way–talking to the milk man at the Polish market, learning about purveyors, interacting with customers–all of those things pointed her in the direction of becoming a chef. After receiving her grand diplome in French cooking, Ris moved back to the states and started working for Bob Kinkead, before making the move to 1789 in 1995, where she was the executive chef for 10 years.
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Porter
courtesy of jcm_DC

If you’ve ever wanted to run a marathon but worry about whether your beer gut will slow you down, Washington Wine Academy’s DC School of Beer has a perfect solution: the Beer Walk!

The beer walk took place last Saturday and Sunday – a week after the wine walk – in the underground maze of the Crystal City Shops. Both “Beer Walk” and “Wine Walk” are pretty self-explanatory.

After you sign in and show ID, you pick up your race number, t-shirt, glass, and drink tickets. With twenty tickets and generous pours, a $20-$35 ticket (depending on the day/time of the heat you sign up for) will get you feeling pretty good – especially if it’s only 2pm when you start, like it was for me.

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This week we are giving away a pair of tickets to see Augustana at the 9:30 Club on February 4. Tickets for this concert are available on Ticketfly or at the 9:30 Club box office.

For your chance to win these tickets simply leave a comment on this post using a valid email address by 5pm today. One entry per email address, please. Comments will be closed at 5pm and a winner will be randomly selected. The winner will be notified by email. The winner must respond to our email within two hours or they will forfeit their tickets and we will pick another winner.

Tickets will be available to the winner at the 9:30 Club Guest List window one hour before doors open on the night of the concert. The tickets must be claimed with a valid ID. The winner must be old enough to attend the specific concert or must have a parent’s permission to enter if they are under 18 years old.

If today does not turn out to be your lucky day, check back here each Wednesday for a chance to win tickets to other great concerts

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one way FAIL
courtesy of philliefan99

Boy, what a morning.

First up was Alex Ovechkin, who today opted out of the All-Star Game, citing a lack of passion brought on by a 3-game suspension for an off-his-feet hit on the Penguins Zbynek Michalek during Sunday’s game. I can understand his frustration with the league for a 3-game suspension when Michalek was cleared of a similar hit in the exact same game. It can be hard to be a professional hockey player. That is also why he’s paid $9.5M on average per season. As Don Draper says, “That’s what the money is for!” I suppose that he’ll instead be chilling in his new house in McLean, valued at $4.2M.

In acting the petulant teenager, Ovechkin hurts the fans and the league, when he’s really just angry that his team can’t seem to feed him the puck up close to the net. Look, Ovi, I know you’re having a rough go of it right now, but the answer here is to buckle down and do more not do less, especially in the face of criticism. There’s a lot of concern out there for the team’s work ethic, and that there’s no combined leadership on the ice. By opting out and saying that you’re just not feeling it, well, I have to wonder – have you felt it at all this season? I know you’re hitting like crazy, and your game against Pittsburgh this week saw you with 3 points, but I’m not seeing the leader that I was hoping for.

The Capitals, in standing by their star, are at least giving him an “honorable” out, and given the lack of discipline for Michalek, that seems to be at least justified in part. In doing so, aren’t the Capitals doing more to hurt the hockey capital’s enthusiasm for the sport as a whole? I had thought that this was an organization dedicated toward hockey as a whole, but this latest set of actions seem to belie that isn’t the case always.

And now on to the firing of Flip Saunders, first reported by Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports.  The Wizards have started the year at a lovely 2-15, including a 20-point loss in Philly last night, a game in which they trailed by 30 at the half, which is something I was pretty sure was only possible when a JV team plays the varsity at DeMatha. Sadly, it’s not likely that the elevation of assistant Randy Wittman to the head coach, even temporarily, is going to change the slide of the Wizards – not that they can slide much further down the charts.

I can’t remember a more terrible day for Monumental Sports in the new era, and though it feels like piling on, the state of DC sports is fairly deplorable, given the Redskins’ back to back 6-10 seasons, the Wizards seemingly-perpetual last place position, and the Capitals struggles amid an abundance of talented players. How terrible is it that a .500 season from the Nationals seems to be the brightest spot in the DC Sports world right now?

So yes, Uncle Ted, this is a day for wicked pixels, but it’s hard to dodge these as just being the words of some pajama-clad bloggers when it’s the whole of the sports media with their head in their hands wondering what could possibly be going on.

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photo by Sandy Kim

Cass McCombs turned Baltimore’s Ottobar into a spacey dreamworld during his set Saturday night. In the midst of his US winter tour,  he played with a full backing band, including keys, bass, guitar, pedal-steel guitar and drums. Opening was Frank Fairfield, along for the duration of the tour, and Walker and Jay. 

First to the stage was the Baltimore based trio Walker and Jay. Gathered close around one microphone, with only acoustic instruments, they looked and sounded like they could have walked right out of the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?. There was an upright bass, providing the backbone and rhythm for the set, a fiddle, and the lead singer switched between playing banjo and what looked like some kind of steel guitar. Their old-timey country/bluegrass/blues was both lovely and rousing, and set an intimate mood for the evening.  Read the rest of this entry »

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