Yearly Archives: 2011

Food and Drink, We Love Drinks
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Drinks Special: Irish Whiskey


‘Redbreast’
courtesy of ‘philipmatarese’

I come from a line of whiskey drinkers. Well, that’s really only about half true. The other line drinks whisky. But perhaps I should explain. Irish whiskey gets the ‘e’ (as does most American whiskey), while Scotch whisky goes without (and shares that spelling with Canadian whisky). Even the paper of record updated its style on the subject. By surname, my father’s family is more Irish than anything else. On the other hand, my mother’s family can be traced to Scotland. Both family histories, for what it’s worth, pass through Kentucky, itself no slouch when it comes to distilling. To the best of my knowledge there weren’t actually any distillers (or moonshiners) in the family, but I digress.

I do enjoy a wee dram now and again, but I like to do so on the merits of the spirit, not just for the benefit of getting blind. As such I tend to avoid bars on the major drinking holidays. Since I believe that one should respect the spirit, and I also believe that Irish whiskey deserves that respect, here’s a primer on some of the Irish whiskey you can find in the DC area in advance of St. Patrick’s Day celebrations. If I’ve left out your favorite, please feel free to set me straight in the comments. It’s been too long since I’ve had Clontarf for me to have an opinion on its merits.

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Special Events, The Daily Feed
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Environmental Film Fest Starts with Party Tonight

Photo courtesy of
‘Bizarro Tulips’
courtesy of ‘theqspeaks’

Tonight marks the launch party for the 2011 Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital; soon the lights will go down for 150 films from 40 countries that illustrate the connection between energy and the environment.

The festival runs from March 15-27 in various locations around the city, and it includes talks by 55 filmmakers and 94 special guests. Tonight’s kickoff starts at 6:30 in the Warner Building Atrium and features art, dance, and music.

Which of this year’s films are of local interest?
Continue reading →

Food and Drink, The Daily Feed
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This Week in Food

Photo courtesy of
‘Ray’s Hell-Burger’
courtesy of ‘KentonNgo’
It’s been quite a busy week in food!

The food truck/cupcake/small business/personal quest (?) wars continue…and get quite strange indeed. Read Sprinklegate turns food truck war in The Washington Examiner.

Are you always arguing with friends about which burger joint in DC is actually the best? Well, Food & Wine picks two DC restaurants for us as part of its “Best Burgers in DC” slideshow. Their picks: Ray’s Hell Burger in Arlington (shocking) and Palena Café.

Agora is adding a new fixed price, three-course lunch menu at $14.99 per person Monday through Friday from 11 AM until 3 PM. You can pick Turkish and Greek inspired dishes like grilled ground lamb and beef kebab with sumac onions & Baklava, along with a choice of non-alcoholic beverage. 

If you really follow chef moves, Top Chef Finalist Carla Hall joins DC Central Kitchen’s Board of Directors. DCCK is also looking to start a Truck Farm. Curious? Find out more here. 

Executive Chef Brian McBride has tapped Eric Fleischer as the New Chef de Cuisine of the Award-Winning Blue Duck Tavern. Most recently, Fleischer worked as chef de cuisine at Zola in Penn Quarter.

Speaking of PQ, accoring to Penn Quarter Insider, Hill Country BBQ opens on Saturday (or maybe the 17th?). So check it out one of those days or go to U Street’s newest sports bar, Touchdown. TBD reports that Touchdown opened its doors Tuesday in the former space of Momo’s Sports Bar. The bar shows-off old photographs of the Washington Senators from the 1924 World Series.

Happy eating!

We Love Weekends
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We Love Weekends, March 12-13

Photo courtesy of
’22/365′
courtesy of ‘ekelly80’

Tiff: With Tom out of town I’m rolling single-style and already my weekend is overflowing into this week. Tonight there’s the DC Web Women <RELOAD> Happy Hour at Science Club (you see what they did there). Tomorrow, there’s DJ lil’e’s Lady Gaga vs. Madonna vs. Kylie dance party at the 9:30 Club. It’s sold out, but at e’s last sold-out 9:30 gig, they re-opened the box office as people started to trickle out later in the night, so there’s still hope. Saturday is all about me time: haircut, movies, food Tom doesn’t like… expect to see me wandering around Gallery Place, is what I’m saying. Sunday I’m going all domesticated and baking some shortbread for a friend’s tea party (the kind with actual tea, not the political kind) before putting on my finery (or what passes for it) and nibbling finger sandwiches.

Patrick Palafox: This weekend I’m thinking about heading down to Takoma Park and checking out The Electric Mayhem Comedy Hour that’s happening over at the Electric Maid at 268 Carrol St. NW. this Friday. This will be their third show and all they ask is for a $5 donation. That’s a bit steep for a comedy show, but I think I will drop down the cash, because I’m rich. Continue reading →

The Daily Feed
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Dizzy Miss Lizzy presents Finn McCool

Laura Keena, John Robert Keena (Finn McCool) & Maria Egler Mike Kozemchak & Steve McWilliams in background)
Photos by Kip Pierson Photography

Dizzy Miss Lizzy’s Roadside Review doesn’t call Finn McCool a rock opera but I’m prepared to do so. I suspect they’ll cut me some slack since I’ll also say it’s a fun production that’s a bargain at $20 a seat and well worth your time.

This isn’t a new show – Dizzy Miss Lizzy’s Roadside Review (can I call y’all DMRR? Thanks) first put on this show in last year’s Fringe. A modern interpretation of the Irish legend of Fionn mac Cumhaill, Finn McCool imagines what you’d get if all the players in a classic hero’s journey tale were musical performers and putting on a show from beyond the grave. It works well, as do most of the modifications DMRR made, and it’s a testament to the skill of the playwright and the performers that it’s never confusing when the performance shifts from being an after-the-fact retelling and a portrayal of events supposedly occurring in the present.

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Food and Drink, The Daily Feed
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Carnaval at Café Atlántico


‘Cotton Candy Mojito’
courtesy of ‘needlessspaces’

On Tuesday I was an invited guest at Café Atlántico for the restaurant’s special Carnaval Celebration Menu. I arrived early and found myself at the bar talking to one of the bartenders about the restaurant’s cocktails, and this seemed to set the tone for the night (surprised?). I could happily have sat at the bar all night, sipping excellent cocktails and talking to the bartenders about various spirits (want to out yourself as a cocktail nerd? Ask them about that bottle of Falernum and how it compares to the one you have at home, not to mention the house-made stuff at PX).

This being a dinner and all, the Social Chair and I were eventually escorted to a table with Lisa Shapiro of Dining in DC and Rachel Tepper of The Feast, along with their guests. We ordered another round of drinks and made our selections from the special menu.   Continue reading →

The Daily Feed
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Comedy in DC: You, Me, Them, Everybody

Brandon Wetherbee

I thought that you all might be interested in listening to Brandon Wetherbee’s latest You, Me, Them, Everybody show, because I was the comic for the evening. Which means I am interested in you listening to it…

It was the first show that I did outside of open mics and it was super fun. I also learned about DC Bocce. It’s a game that you play with balls. What games don’t have balls? Let’s see, there is the hockey puck and the shuttle cock, (heh, shuttle). Anyway, the main musical guest was the lead singer for typefighter. Overall it is just a fun moment captured in sound. I appreciate Brandon taking a chance on me and hope that you enjoy!

The Daily Feed
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Ticket Giveaway: Round-trip Tickets to Brooklyn – This Weekend

Photo courtesy of
‘Knowitexpress’
courtesy of ‘erin m’

It is Thursday morning and maybe you are starting to consider your plans for this weekend. How about ditching them all and hopping on the bus to New York?

For our lovely readers, the DC to Brooklyn bus service The Knowitexpress has offered five round-trip tickets between our fair city and our big sister to the north (specifically, to that city’s loveliest borough).

As many of you know by now, we are losing one of our own We Love DC authors, Erin McCann, to Brooklyn this very week. You may have heard her frantically asking people for Brooklyn’s answer to Peregine for weeks now. So, to ease her transition and win these tickets, post a comment below by 5:00pm today with an SAT style analogy of [Awesome Thing in DC] : DC :: [Counterpart] : New York.

Example – “Peregrine Espresso : DC :: Cafe Grumpy Greenpoint : Brooklyn” The five comments Erin and I deem most amusing and/or useful will win.

Your comment must have a valid email address, one entry per email address, please. Comments will be closed at 5pm and the five winners will be selected. The winner will be notified by email. The winner must respond to our email by midnight or they will forfeit their tickets and we will pick another winner.

Entertainment, The Features, We Love Arts
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We Love Arts: At Home at the Zoo

James McMenamin as Jerry and Jeff Allin as Peter in the Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater production of At Home at the Zoo March 4 – April 24, 2011. Photo by Scott Suchman.

Forty-five years separate the two acts of At Home at the Zoo, though in terms of the play’s action it’s probably only an hour. The second act is The Zoo Story. Written in 1958, it’s the play that assured Edward Albee’s genius. The first act is Homelife, written in 2004 as an exploration of what happened earlier in the older play.

I wish he’d left it alone.

The chief joy of seeing At Home at the Zoo, presented at Arena Stage as part of the Edward Albee Festival, is that second act. Featuring a lightning rod performance by James McMenamin as the mysterious Jerry, it’s a speedy and dangerous duel between action and reaction as he plays off the controlled listening of Jeff Allin’s erudite Peter. The entire stage comes alive with this act, a true evocation of why Albee is still revered today as one of our greatest playwrights.

But you have to get through the first act. I recommend caffeine. If you can make it through without your eyelids drooping too much, your energy will be revived by the tension of a riveting second act. Don’t give up. It’s worth it. Continue reading →

capitals hockey, The Daily Feed
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Caps Blank Oilers, 5-0

Photo courtesy of
Holtby Save on Shorthanded Cogliano Breakaway
courtesy of ‘clydeorama’
The Capitals’ season-long retooling project took a strong step forward last night as an offensive explosion propelled the Caps to a 5-0 win and a shutout for rookie goalie Braden Holtby against the Edmonton Oilers at Verizon Center. The Caps rediscovered the wonders of the power play scoring two goals on the man advantage in the second period. Alex Ovechkin lead the fireworks with two goals and an assist, as Eric Fehr returned from an injury to add two more lamp-lighters.

The retooling effort that got underway in earnest in mid-November has aimed to play a style more suited to success in the post-season. This has included playing “responsible” hockey with a focus on defensive assignments and middle zone traps. After two years of ever-increasing offense firepower under coach Bruce Boudreau, the change has felt more like shock therapy. Continue reading →

Food and Drink, The Daily Feed
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2011 Tequila & Mezcal Festival at Oyamel

Photo courtesy of
‘Oyamel 3’
courtesy of ‘maxedaperture’

Oyamel will be hosting their annual Tequila & Mezcal Festival from March 14th to 27th, 2011. The restaurant holds this annual event to showcase the popular spirits of Mexico and highlight their staff’s creativity in blending them with other traditional and modern flavors of the region.

On Monday night, members of the media were invited to sample from the special cocktail and food menus that will be featured during the festival and mingle with chef José Andrés of the ThinkFoodGroup which owns Oyamel and spot chef and White House senior food policy advisor Sam Kass.

On the warm-colored walls were projections of photographs of Oaxaca taken by Oyamel’s executive chef Joe Raffa on a recent food-research trip. Raffa was so taken with some of the produce he sampled that he has even convinced a local farmer here from whom he buys tomatoes to grow a special varietal for Oyamel to put on the menu this summer and this commitment to sustainable, local agriculture shows throughout the restaurant’s offerings.
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Sports Fix
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The chain gang: Where did the Caps’ offense go?

Photo courtesy of
‘IMG_3758.jpg’
courtesy of ‘bridgetds’

A year ago, the Capitals were the high-flying, big scoring red machine that cut through the Eastern Conference regular season like scissors making a paper snowflake. They led the league in scoring with 313 goals and were buoyed by the best top line in the game in Alex Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom and Alexander Semin.

This year has not been so kind.

The difference is striking, on the ice and by the numbers. Washington’s struggles on the ice have been well chronicles and denizens of the Verizon Center hope they have been remedied with the additions of another puck moving defenseman (Dennis Wideman) and a bona fide second line center (Jason Arnott) brought to D.C. at the trade deadline.

Let’s take a look at the numbers.

Last year the Caps scored 3.82 goals per game, more than half a goal higher than second place Vancouver at 3.27. The top line of Ovie, Backstrom and Semin tallied 3.93 points (goals and assists) per game. The top eight scorers on the team averaged 7.86 points per game. An amazing seven Caps scored more than 50 points with six of them above 20 goals.

Where has the production gone?

And why?
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The Daily Feed
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It’s Bryce Harper’s World and the 3/9 Sports Ticker

Photo courtesy of
‘The Nats drafted Bryce Harper’
courtesy of ‘afagen’

Lead Item: I’ve mocked it at least once during the last few weeks of the Sports Ticker, but it’s now gotten to the point where I don’t want to ignore the Bryce Harper-Spring Training stories. Come on, a Google News search from the last month gave me nearly 1,400 results on the Nationals prospect. And now they’re just getting fun:

Harper’s most impressive hit came during his second at-bat in the eighth inning. The team had already scored six runs in the inning. With Harper at the plate, one fan in the stands yelled, “Overrated, overrated.” On the next pitch from reliever Jorge De Leon, Harper doubled near the right-field line, scoring Matt Stairs and Alex Cora.

Harper acknowledged that he heard the heckling from the fan.

Yes, I made fun of news services for writing about the 8th-inning at bats for young rookies and draft picks. That was when he was going 0-for-1 and just the subject of early March baseball fluff pieces. This is now turning into a fun news story to watch, at least for the spring. I know that there isn’t exactly high hopes for the Nationals this season, especially with Strasmas not coming this year, so the Will-they-promote-Bryce-Harper storyline is bound to get annoying. That’s a reason to really enjoy these stories right now, because as long as it’s coming out of the Grapefruit League, it’s welcome and optimistic.

The rest of the ticker after the jump.

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Sports Fix, The Daily Feed
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UDC Basketball: $17,000 per win for head coach Jeff Ruland

Photo courtesy of
‘Part of UDC’
courtesy of ‘spiggycat’

The UDC Firebirds finished their basketball season last month with a 11-17 final record, well out of contention for the D-II March Madness tournament, not that they were allowed to go even if they’d steamrolled the season.  In 2008, the NCAA suspended the school’s athletics programs from championship eligibility until 2013, citing the “single most egregious lack of institutional control ever seen by the committee.” They refer, of course, to UDC’s total inability to keep records about its student athletes, and allowing 248 student athletes to practice and compete while in violation of its rules.

Recently, as UDC University President Sessoms has come under scrutiny for records surrounding his travel for the institution, so too have other officials at the school.  Head Basketball Coach Jeff Ruland, a former NBA player with the Bullets, has had his $187,000 salary revealed. That makes Ruland one of the most well-paid coaches in Division II, earning more than triple the Division II average from 2005.

Ruland’s tenure with UDC has gone slightly better than his 2006-7 season with Iona College, in which his team won just 2 games, and when you think that he can’t host recruits, and has a diminished number of scholarships, 11-17 might well be a triumph, but do we need to pay a basketball coach $187,000?

There’s no question that Ruland has a hard job.  Recruiting students is difficult when your school is in rough straits both with the NCAA, its board, and its own student body.  But is $187k the right pay for a rebuilding basketball program in D-II?

Talkin' Transit
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Talkin’ Transit: Performance Fares

Photo courtesy of
”
courtesy of ‘Chris Rief aka Spodie Odie’

Most of us work in jobs where our performance matters. Every year, your boss sits you down and tells you what you did right or wrong, and if you’re good, the rights outnumber the wrongs and you get a raise. For some, the raise doesn’t come, and for others, you get fired. Companies like to pay based on performance because it motivates people.

If you go to a nice restaurant, and you order your meal, and as they’re bringing everyone else’s food out, they explain to you that they screwed up your order. Maybe they dropped it on the floor, maybe they realized they sold the last rabbit too late for your order, or maybe the waiter forgot to enter it. No matter, really. They usually apologize and, more often than not, they will take the hit and not charge you for your meal. Better restaurants go a little further and offer you a discount on your next visit, or a free dessert.

Both situations have one thing in common: the income is related to the performance. You get paid more if you do well. You have to lose money in order to correct a mistake. I think Metro could learn a thing or two in the realm of customer service and performance.
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News, The Daily Feed
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Kaya Henderson named Chancellor of DCPS

KayaHenderson
Photo courtesy of DCPS

This morning it was announced that DCPS’ Interim Chancellor would lose her interim status and retain the chancellory of DCPS in the new Gray administration. Rumors have been swirling for the last few days that Henderson would stay on, with yesterday’s audience at the Metropolitan Club being the first to hear it from the Mayor.

Henderson has been acting at Chancellor since October when it was announced that Michelle Rhee was departing in the wake of the September primary loss by her patron, then-Mayor Adrian Fenty. There are some questions as to the results of the reforms started by Chancellor Rhee, with some standardized tests not showing the same gains as the initial results.

Henderson was responsible for enacting a number of Rhee’s priorities while serving as Deputy Chancellor, including negotiating the contract with WTU last year. In a statement released via email, Henderson said, “I am very excited that Mayor Gray has offered me the opportunity to be Chancellor of DC Public Schools. I have devoted the past 13 years to working to improve educational opportunities for students in this city. I am honored and humbled to be afforded the opportunity to continue this work in the role of Chancellor.”

We had a chance to interview Chancellor Henderson in October, and the long-time DC resident is clearly dedicated to her craft, and I wish her well in her new position.

Entertainment, Interviews, Music, We Love Music
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Q&A with Andy McCluskey of Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark

omd1
all photos courtesy of The Musebox.

When it turned out that I would be unavailable to conduct this interview myself, the first person who came to my mind as the perfect pinch hitter for the gig was Mickey McCarter. By day, Mickey is a professional journalist, covering homeland security and military affairs for Homeland Security Today and Fox News. On nights and weekends, he is one of DC’s foremost experts on the New Wave and synthpop genres.

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, founded by UK songwriters Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys, led a synthpop revolution from the ‘80s through today in the United Kingdom, consistently charting in the UK top 30 with each of their 11 studio albums, including their very latest History of Modern. McCluskey alone kept the band’s name alive throughout the ‘90s until he and Paul Humphreys reunited for a successful return-to-form last year.

Now the band returns to the United States for the first time in more than 20 years, playing the 9:30 Club on Thursday, March 10. We Love DC caught up with synthpop virtuoso McCluskey recently to talk about Pretty in Pink, the new generation of synthpop musicians, and the sound of the future.

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Entertainment, Fun & Games, Music, We Love Music
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The Winning Ticket: Loretta Lynn

As a way to say thanks to our loyal readers, We Love DC will be giving away a pair of tickets to a 9:30 Club concert to one lucky reader each week. Check back here every Wednesday morning at 9am to find out what tickets we’re giving away and leave a comment for your chance to be the lucky winner!

“She was born a coal miner’s daughter, but she has become a Country Music legend, Ms. Loretta Lynn!” That introduction I borrowed from Johnny Cash just about says it all doesn’t it? Win these tickets and join Loretta Lynn as she celebrates her 50th year as an entertainer with a special show at 9:30 Club on Thursday, March 17th.

For your chance to win these tickets simply leave a comment on this post using a valid email address between 9am and 4pm today. One entry per email address, please. If today doesn’t turn out to be your lucky day, check back here each Wednesday for a chance to win tickets to other great concerts. Tickets for this concert are available on Ticketfly.

For the rules of this giveaway…
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