Image: Radishes
Dearest Gentle Reader, we were off for the Holidays, so no activity on the site to update. But there is a lot of news in the dining world, with lots of comings and goings in particular. So we invite you to check out our recap as you dry out from Saturday’s rain.
D.C. Dining News
Comings & Goings:
Indique calls it quits. The next generation in the families opened the small Rasa chain. They still own Bombay Bistro in Rockville.
Bammy’s to re-open with new ownership.
Barred in DC reports that Pesce is to re-open under the ownership of the old GM in the old Russia House space.
Also Baja Tap in Adams Morgan; Craft Beer Cellar on H Street are closing.
Two slightly under-the-radar great places get backing to expand to other cities. Makan is opening a location in Charleston S.C. Sushi Ogawa to Philadelphia (Subscription Rqd.).
The Emerging (Local) Economy:
The local story was about SNAP benefits. “D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser’s administration said late Wednesday that it will use excess city revenue to temporarily increase food assistance benefits for residents in need, reversing course amid pressure from city lawmakers and an imminent threat of a lawsuit.”
Alternative business models might just be the next big thing. Traditional investor-based models for raising money become investor vehicles to make cash at rates they expect. Restaurants (and bookstores, and craft breweries, and newspapers) are rarely built to rapidly expand like Starbucks or Chipotle. They are more like bonds than stocks (without the security of bonds). The current restaurant business model has been stressed and in many cases it broke (Another post from the U.K. notes, “Hospitality has always had significant churn and failure – it often attracted ill-equipped romantics to what is a fiendishly difficult sector – but it now feels like we’re losing good and experienced operators.”). Edward Lee is backing a non-profit restaurant that will both experiment with the business model, but be a laboratory for things to “business and employment practices, from fair wage modeling to environmental sustainability.” The restaurant will be called M. Frances (after M.F.K. Fisher) and be located near Union Market. “The intimate restaurant and cocktail bar aims to recruit top chefs — locally and nationally — to run a yearlong residency program for up-and-coming talents. The collective will create local, seasonal tasting menus throughout the year.”
Tommy Wells on the future of downtown: “With the amenities we have in place downtown, Washington can exceed many other cities’ goal of 15-minute living by fostering 10-minute living that everyone can enjoy. Planners can build on assets including numerous renowned theaters, museums, parks, and universities by concentrating redevelopment on small, geographically distinct neighborhoods. Within these areas, they can strategically introduce new grocery stores, commercial services, restaurants, and coffee shops, supported by higher density housing—including increased percentages of affordable units for both lower- and middle-income residents.”
Industry:
Eater does its annual questionnaire of local food writers of note about where they see the scene. They didn’t ask but the opening we are most excited for is the one we don’t see coming. The spot without the PR firm to tease it months in advance (for example, what happened at Perry’s this year was more exciting than anything in Union Market). Our biggest hope is to turn the corner and have enough stability in the market that an upstart little place could make a go of it. As for closings, we will not cite one as saddest, but we would note that often sadder than the closing is watching the long struggle to stay afloat. It is a reminder to support what you want to see survive. One corollary hope is that restaurant groups from outside the area realize they cannot throw up their silly concepts as if the D.C. dining community is a bunch of rubes that don’t deserve their best effort. The most infuriating trends is the slow death of writing about food as a serious topic in mainstream outlets. When AI figures out how to do the social media trend stories and someone starts The Athletic for recipes, there may not be staff writer positions left in the Food section (unless you count the mysterious “City Paper Staff”), and we will have to hope that the business, environment and metro reporters can cover. The most exciting trend is covering food as a serious topic elsewhere.
Washingtonian also did year-end lists of What’s In/What’s Out; Food Trends; 2023 Openings; and Best Dishes.
WAMU/DCist’s best things they ate list.
Clyde’s dropped its 3.75% surcharge and the related lawsuit was also dropped.
We missed this whole thing out in Tysons, which turned out to be as much about the media as the industry. A huge Tex-Mex spot is opening from Long Shot Hospitality (Salt Line, Dauphine’s among others). Lenore Adkins does the write-up for DCist. “Chef-partners Kyle Bailey and Gabe Erales, the winner of Top Chef season 18, helm the kitchen — Erales was the first Mexican American chef to win Bravo’s cooking competition reality show. The El Paso, Texas native lives in Austin where he runs two other restaurants; he’ll fly into the D.C. area once a month for Ometeo. When he isn’t there, executive chef Manuel Perez, an alum of Quadrant Bar & Lounge and José Andrés’ Oyamel Cocina Mexicana, will run the kitchen’s day-to-day operations.” Adkins, after doing the food overview, address the elephant in the room: “Erales takes on this new responsibility at Ometeo as he reckons with the past. After Erales’ Top Chef win in 2020, news reports surfaced that Comedor, the Austin restaurant where he was working as executive chef, fired him following misconduct allegations. Erales admitted in a now-deleted Instagram apology that he had a consensual relationship with an employee and later reduced her hours, leading to his termination after he finished filming the reality show, the Today Show reported.” Erales frames it as a redemption story: “In that unfortunate situation where I made a poor leadership decision and had a relationship with an employee, that was where I failed as a leader,” Erales said in a statement quoted by DCist. “And that was really the point of origin for all of my current growth and looking at where I can be a better leader, a better chef, in many aspects … not just in the business, but also as a husband, as a father.” The story says he took a 5-day course and got a certificate in HR. Adkins story is the most in-depth, but as Laura Hayes flagged others seemed to have been slow to ask the follow-up questions. Eater slipped in the middle of the story. Axios even more perfunctorily noted the incident and shifting to, “Erales has since apologized and opened two Austin restaurants, Yucatán-inspired Bacalar and walk-up window Tómalo Taqueria.” Washingtonian is the only one to note updating the story to discuss the issue. The interesting thing is that flying in once-a-month sounds more like consulting than supervising. The stories are vague on his official role, though he is described as a “partner,” but that is not further explained. Trusting Erales to have direct supervision after his history would be a much bigger step than having him consult on the menu. It is curious that Long Shot risked the potential PR backlash for such a limited role without making clear his role and whether he supervises employees. We could not find any mention of him on the website. The IG account calls him “Chef-Partner” or “Chef Gabe.” That said, whatever gamble they took they seemed to have skated through with minimal actual backlash. In fact, only Adkins actually forced both Erales and Long Shot to go on record about his history. The Post does not appear to have covered the story in any way, though they did cover the original Top Chef story.
Food & Culture:
The soup of Haiti. “Maritza Dietrich, an events manager for Hope for Haiti, says she wanted the event to create a space for the local Haitian community to come together and also to welcome people of different cultures – especially, those who’ve never had soup joumou before.”
The restaurant at the center of that strange dispute in The Plains has sold. Tim Carman with the follow-up: “But a surprising thing happened on the way to shuttering the Front Porch: Almost a year after Waybourn and his husband and co-founder, Craig Spaulding, put the restaurant on the market because of the conflict, a buyer came along and purchased it. The sale closed on Dec. 26, although the staff wasn’t told until Tuesday.”
Drink
Wine:
Catherine Todd on the Paso Robles wine with fancy lineage.
Other News
The Emerging Economy:
Jobs numbers came in strong for December. Leisure and hospitality contributed 40,000 to the total, the third largest sector. With growth, employment, supply chain, and inflation issues largely stabilized in a positive direction, there is a basis for hoping that we can indeed turn the corner. Of course wages and prices rarely go backwards, so we need to reset our baseline expectations. And real estate remains the big unresolved issue for the industry, but we are trying to be optimistic to start the new year.
Industry:
Speaking of alternative business models, the Times reports on the rise of London supper clubs. “Before the pandemic, London’s supper clubs had become a popular alternative to the restaurant scene, offering a more familial alternative for a night out. The events, usually held in the homes of amateur chefs, rode a wave of popularity in the 2000s, until lockdowns forced them to stop. Now, as communal eating has returned, the trend has evolved, with chefs old and new preparing meals. With a little sleuthing, visitors can eat Indian street food in a chef’s home, Malaysian cuisine at a local community center or Sri Lankan dishes at a neighborhood cafe.”
One of the last of the old guard French restaurants in New York is up for sale. And appears to be barely hanging on.
In Boston, another notable turnover. “The Boston chef Barbara Lynch, who more than 20 employees accused of multiple forms of workplace abuse in a New York Times report last year, announced Friday that most of her restaurants had closed at the end of 2023.” Lynch cited as reasons the post-pandemic economic landscape, financial mismanagement by her previous employees and her landlord.
Media:
The absurdist cooking newsletter. “Lee doesn’t make weekly trips to the greenmarket or garnish his food with microgreens or edible flowers. His absurdist recipes, most of which are designed to fail, feature common grocery items and processed foods, transmogrified into unthinkable preparations—think Froot Loops as a pizza topping or Doritos pulverized, then boiled into grits. Flavor is an afterthought, if not an outright inconvenience.”
Odds & Ends:
How about if the clue was Taco Bell condiment?
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That is it for this week. We will confess to being a bit rusty. We’ll be off next weekend for the holiday. Remember to support what you want to see survive, tip big, don’t whine, and stay warm. And if you are looking for a place to go in D.C., check out our site. Our dining guide has 300+ recommended restaurants, sortable by cuisine or neighborhood in either LIST or MAP format.
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