Breakfast at Blue Duck Tavern: A Washingtonian way to start the day
June 1, 2012
By Alex Barron
Restaurant Critic
Bon Appetit
To some, hotel restaurants carry a certain stigma; there is danger that the uninformed may lump together the sumptuous new breakfast menu at Blue Duck Tavern with the Free Continental Breakfast at Motel 6. The modern American bistro (with the sensibilities of an elegant country kitchen), may be housed within the West End Park Hyatt, but truly, it has long since shed the label of “just a hotel restaurant.” To those already [...]
RAMMYS Awards: Showcasing old favorite restaurants and new upstarts
Photos: Joanna Morena/DC Spotlight Newspaper
May 1, 2012
By Alex Barron
Restaurant Critic
Bon Appetit
According to the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington (RAMW), there are 1,841 restaurants in the greater DC area. For any one of them, June 24th is the Oscars, the Super Bowl and Super Tuesday all rolled into one.
That’s the scheduled date of the 2012 RAMMYS Awards: the annual prizes given out by the RAMW. This year’s theme is “Hats Off to Restaurants,” an appropriate choice, given the association’s tendency to reward those [...]
Assaggi: Authentic Italian Cooking Inside the Beltway
Photos: Joanna Moreno/DC Spotlight Newspaper
April 1, 2012
By Alex Barron
Restaurant Critic
Bon Appetit
A popular knock on Washington, DC has always been its dearth of solid, authentic Italian restaurants – which is no doubt related to its relative lack of actual Italians. Unlike neighboring cities to the north, DC has no “Little Italy,” and it is not uncommon to find that even its seeminglygenuine trattorias are run by owners and chefs from Asia, Central America or some other location far away from The [...]
Fuel Pizza: Building Community through Pizza
Photos: Demarcus Davis/DC Spotlight Newspaper
March 1, 2012
By Alex Barron
Restaurant Critic
Bon Appetit
Prior to the January opening of Fuel Pizza on K Street, restaurateur Jeremy Wladis spent quite a few years with his eye fixed firmly on Washington, D.C. as a prospective home for a new branch of his Charlotte, North Carolina-based pizza franchise. “We had been canvassing D.C. for seven years, trying to find the right spot,” Wladis recalls. “This is just the perfect market for us.” [...]
Station 4 Restaurant: A southwest trendsetter garnishing the DC waterfront
Photos: Demarcus Davis/DC Spotlight Newspaper
February 1, 2012
Alex Barron
Restaurant Critic
Bon Appetit
Aside from the occasional trip to the waterfront or the Department of Motor Vehicles, there aren’t many reasons for the average District resident to venture into the neighborhoods of southwest Washington, D.C. The temporary closing of ArenaStage, which lasted for nearly three years, made the area even less of a draw than usual. Recently, with the reopening of the theater — now the second largest performing arts center in DC, with [...]
The Bombay Club: Proof of Washington, D.C.’s evolving palette
January 1, 2012
By Alex Barron
Restaurant Critic
Bon Appetit
Photos: Joanna Moreno/DC Spotlight Newspaper
For anyone who still somehow doubts DC’s culinary metamorphosis from steak and potatoes to cosmopolitan smorgasbord, the Bombay Club, an Indianrestaurant elegant enough to attract the highest of high rollers, is Exhibit A. Located across the street from the White House, as well as the Oval Room, one of its sister restaurants (also owned by top restaurateur Ashok Bajaj), the Bombay Club prides itself on servingdistinctly un-Americanized Indian food.
This commitment [...]
701 Restaurant: A Serving of Class and Cuisine on the Naval Memorial Plaza
Photos: Meredith Rizzo/DC Spotlight Newspaper
June 1, 2011
Alex Barron
Restaurant Critic
Bon Appetit, Top Restaurants
Ashok Bajaj opened 701, Penn Quarter’s modern American restaurant, in 1990. Almost immediately, it was a hit among the flocks of sightseers, theater-goers and Hill employees, thanks in large part to its central location. Occupying prime real estate on the NavalMemorial plaza next to the National Archives and just across Pennsylvania Avenue from the sculpture garden, 701 has become something of a landmark in its own [...]
Eatonville: Soulful food as tasty as Hurston’s words are eloquent
January 1, 2011
Alex Barron
Restaurant Critic
Bon Appetit, Top Restaurants
As unlikely as a Zora Neale Hurston themed restaurant sounds, I have to approve of any restaurant that derives its inspiration from a great writer – especially a writer who fetishized food as much as Hurston did in her work. This is the author, who in her most famous novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, places her maturing protagonist underneath a pear tree, where she undergoes an awakening that has [...]
The Source: Wolfgang Puck, Drewno and unsurpassed cuisine
July 24, 2010
By Alex Barron
Restaurant Critic
Bon Appetit
The Finger Lakes region of Upstate New York is not an area of any particular culinary distinction or diversity. To Scott Drewno, award-winning chef at Wolfgang Puck’s The Source and a product of this region, the food scene back home is basically “steak and potatoes.” In collaborating with world renowned celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck to create the menu for The Source, which opened roughly three years ago in downtown DC, Drewno had to escape [...]