Category Archives: The Daily Feed

The Daily Feed
By

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.

capitals hockey, The Daily Feed
By

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
By

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.
Continue reading →

The Daily Feed
By

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.

Continue reading →

Sports Fix, The Daily Feed
By

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?

News, The Daily Feed
By

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.

Food and Drink, The Daily Feed
By

Free Lunch Day at Roti on Thursday

roti

Picture Courtesy Roti

What’s better than a free meal? A free meal for a good cause.

If you live/work in NoMa, or if you’re lucky enough to take lunch away from your “work neighborhood,” you should head out to Roti Mediterranean Grill this Thursday. The newly opened Roti will sponsor a Free Lunch Day from 11am to 1:30pm, where all customers will receive a free sandwich, salad or Mediterranean plate, and be able to make a voluntary donation to DC Cental Kitchen.

This year marks DC Central Kitchen’s 22nd year fighting hunger.  DCCK works to provide low-income individuals and families with nutritious food, assist local farmers, help chronically unemployed men and women and reach out to people living on the streets.

Seems like Roti is quite the do-gooder. The restaurant’s first DC location also partnered up with DCCK for Free Lunch Day just last year. Thumbs up. Oh, and look for Roti to keep expanding in DC. So head out, eat, give and enjoy!

Roti Mediterranean Grill is located at 1275 First Street NE. The closest metro station is New York Avenue (Red Line). For more information call 202-618-6969.

The Daily Feed
By

Hot Ticket: Rotting Christ/Melechesh/Hate/Lecherous Nocturne/Abigail Williams @ Jaxx, 3/9/11

Northern Virginia’s Heavy Metal bunker, Jaxx plays host the Black Metal concert of the year on Wednesday night with an international line-up that is as exotic as it is extreme. It isn’t very often that you get titans of the genre from Greece, Israel, and Poland in a room together, but somehow that is what Jaxx has managed to pull off. If that isn’t enough to lure you to the dark side, they’ve tossed in a trio of great American bands to sweeten the deal with the devil.

Hate hail from Warsaw, Poland and have been one of Eastern Europe’s most extreme groups for over a decade. Melechesh, (“fire king” in Hebrew) are a band literal on the run. Outlawed for blasphemey in their hometown of Jerusalem, Melechesh have been developing their own sub-genre of “Mesopotamian metal” in exile in Amsterdam for years. Rotting Christ are the band that brought black metal to Greece and they have been assaulting the senses with their Ancient Greek-refrencing, extreme metal for over twenty years. All three of these bands play with brutal intensity and speed, dark as night theatrics, and old world mythologies that shred the veil of civility to expose the hypocrisies of modern society.

Along for the ride on this black metal rollercoaster, is Ziggurat, Abigail Williams, and Lecherous Nocturne; three up and coming U.S. black metal bands that will have their work cut out for them opening for three of Europe’s heaviest hitters.

Rotting Christ
w/ Melechesh, Hate, Lecherous Nocturne, Abigail Williams, Ziggurat
@Jaxx
3/9/11 – 6pm
$25

Food and Drink, The Daily Feed
By

Save the Date for Lamb Jam

Photo courtesy of
‘Lamb at Bibiana’
courtesy of ‘bonappetitfoodie’

It seems these days meat is in the air, everywhere you look around. Cochon 555, charcutepalooza, and now the first annual Lamb Jam are just three of the meat-praising and braising events that come to mind.

Between 16 and 20 restaurants and chefs will serve lamb-centric dishes, and Lamb Jam will feature a chef competition between chefs for “Best in Show,” “People’s Choice,” and “Best Leg, Loin, Shank and Shoulder.” Some of the participating chefs include Ed Witt of 701, Victor Albisu of BLT Steak, Nick Stefanelli of Bibiana and more. For real lamb enthusiasts, there will also be hands-on butchering demos.

Lamb Jam will be at the Ritz Carlton on Sunday, May 22nd from 2-5 PM. Right now you can purchase three tickets for the price of two through the end of March. Tickets are $50 each and can be purchased here.

The Daily Feed
By

The Accidental Commissioner: Be careful what you wish for

Photo courtesy of
‘346/365 Be careful what you wish for’
courtesy of ‘Mykl Roventine’

The Post’s Chris Jenkins has the story today of Nicole Pugh, 8E01, as the Accidental Commissioner, who received the Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner office when she was the lone person in her SMD to write in a vote.  So next time you see that ballot line for an ANC Commissioner, and you don’t see any candidates, you can write yourself in, but doing so might have the natural consequence of getting you elected.

Read the profile and get to know Ms. Pugh. I suspect she will not be a one-term ANC.

News, The Daily Feed, WTF?!
By

Petition Challenges Bear Fruit for Biddle

Photo courtesy of
‘Signature’
courtesy of ‘tbridge’

Councilman Sekou Biddle (D-At Large) has succeeded in the first part of his challenge to at least one of his challengers’ ballot petitions, and has preliminarily knocked Jacque Patterson off the ballot for the upcoming April election.  Today’s preconference hearings were an “opportunity for the candidate and the challenger to review the staff findings on each challenge and decide whether they want to proceed with a formal request for a public hearing,” according to DCBOEE’s Alysoun McLaughlin.

Preliminary results from DCBOEE showed today that Mara submitted 3,182 valid signatures, Weaver submitted 2,948 and Patterson submitted 2,217.  Each campaign was also furnished with a list of signatures that could be found to be valid, provided DCBOEE receives a change of address form within 10 days of today.  Mara submitted 992 of those, Weaver 261 and Patterson 565. Mara needs none of those potentially valid signatures to qualify, while Weaver would need 52, and Patterson would need a miracle.

Continue reading →

Food and Drink, Special Events, The Daily Feed
By

Get Ready for ARTINI!

Erik Holzherr's Absolution cocktail from ARTINI 2010. Photo credit: T. Silva.

Though the actual gala event is a month away, the Corcoran Gallery of Art’s annual mix of cocktails and art kicks-off this week. Yes, it’s time to get ready for ARTINI 2011, which combines two of my absolute favorite things in one glamorous night – Saturday, April 2 – when twelve of the top mixologists in the city will showcase their talents by crafting cocktails inspired by works of art in the Corcoran collection. I’m extremely honored to be one of the judges on the Critics Choice panel that night. Actually, honored is an understatement – I’m ridiculously excited, and can’t wait to share my wrap-up with you afterwards.

But you don’t have to wait until then to enjoy some beautiful works of liquid art! The entire month of March is dedicated to sampling these drinks, with weekly Feature Nights starting this week. Every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday the participating restaurants and bars will showcase their entries with 20% of the proceeds supporting the Corcoran’s exhibitions.

Our crack team of WLDC lushes – Bill, Brittany and Fedward – will attempt to report on as many of these drinks as possible throughout the month. Look for them at our weekly Friday Happy Hour! And join along in the voting sponsored by the Washingtonian.

News, Sports Fix, The Daily Feed
By

Kastles relocate to Waterfront for 2011-12 Seasons

Photo courtesy of
‘Kastles Tennis’
courtesy of ‘tbridge’

For each of the last three years, the Washington Kastles (The District’s World Team Tennis franchise) has played on a bespoke temporary court at the corner of 11th and H Street NW across from the Grand Hyatt.  This season, with construction slated to begin at the city center site in April, the team has had to put together other plans.

The Kastles will play in a temporary stadium on the new site at 800 Water St SW on the Waterfront, between Zanzibar and Phillips, for the next two years.  The temporary stadium will closely resemble the temporary stadium built at 11th & H, but will remain up year-round and be programmed by the Kastles and their partner PN Hoffman.

Continue reading →

The Daily Feed
By

FREE FOOD ALERT: Lattes at Pound the Hill

Photo courtesy of
‘Pound the Hill’
courtesy of ‘Samer Farha’

In celebration of their new store opening on Capitol Hill, Pound Coffee will be giving away 1,000 Nutella Lattes as part of an opening-month promotion. For each of the first ten days they are open, patrons can claim one of 100 free Nutella Lattes by mentioning a daily promotion code that can be found on Facebook or Twitter.

Pound has developed a devoted following for their Nutella Latte – an espresso beverage prepared with a specially-crafted syrup they make from the popular Italian spread using a secret process. This syrup is mixed with espresso and milk to create a sweet beverage that tastes exactly like, well, Nutella.

Pound the Hill is located at 621 Pennsylvania Avenue, SE.

Food and Drink, The Daily Feed
By

Friday Happy Hour: Eve’s Pear

It’s time for Friday Happy Hour, highlighting a drink we’ve recently enjoyed, every Friday at 4pm! Please share your favorites as well.

Sunday afternoon, I found myself fairly aimlessly going about town with someone when I happened to look at Twitter on my phone. A terrible habit, I know, but a habit nonetheless. I saw an update from The Passenger with a photo of their special cocktails for the day – and I instantly had a mission for us to accomplish. I texted one of my favorite friends, a known lover of Sunday excursions to the Passenger, to see if he wanted to join us. He replied that he was already there. I should have guessed.
Continue reading →

The Daily Feed
By

Will the Redskins Play in 2011? Still To Be Determined

Photo courtesy of
‘chain lock’
courtesy of ‘philliefan99’

It’s been top of mind (or at least Sportscenter) since Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers hoisted the Lombardi Trophy in the first week of February, the impending sense of doom that a lockout between the NFL players union and the owners could prevent the 2011 NFL season. Will there be any football in Landover this September? Well, no news isn’t necessarily good news, so here’s an update.

The owners and players agreed to a 24-hour extension yesterday to allow further discussion on the collective bargaining agreement that was set to expire at midnight this morning. Since then, they have been hunkered down and the word is coming out of several sources that more deals are likely to be made to extend the negotiating or even get a new CBA in place. This afternoon, the sides agreed to extend for another week of discussion, moving the deadline for agreement to the 11th at 5 pm. Compromise may be coming, but what that will be – and when – is still unclear.

As a reminder, Redskins season ticket holders, prices were kept at the same level as last year because of the threat of a lockout. In the event a lockout still happens, they will be refunded. Otherwise, you can look forward to at least eight regular season games at FedEx this fall. We’ll do our best to keep you posted.