News By Topic
- Often life takes strange turns. Consider the case of Baltimore native, Richard Hetzler.
- After studying Farrah Olivia’s brown wall decorated with arty white saplings and the ceiling with its cascade of dangling discs, you may describe the overall effect as “lush” fanciful” or even “exotic.” After sampling one of executive chef/owner Morou Ouattara’s creations, you’d probably use the same adjectives, adding “elegant” and “wildly fanciful.” Obviously, Chef Ouattara’s Alexandria restaurant kitchen is his playground, where he can create, adapt and dream about food as art.
- Despite her Southern roots, Nashville native Karen Hayes, chef de cuisine at the Roof Terrace Restaurant in the Kennedy Center, does not cook overtly Southern foods. Instead, her dishes are lighter, and she draws her ideas and many of her ingredients from the global pantry. But going from a Southern cook-at-home girl to a chef heading a prestigious Washington kitchen has meant plenty of hard work honing her skills and developing an international palate.
- It’s 10 a.m. at the McLean Moby Dick House of Kabob and the work crew has already arrived. Several sweep the floors, others sanitize and wipe down the tables, and yet others are firing up the grill and getting the kitchen ready for the upcoming trade. Surely this scene is repeated at other Moby Dick restaurants, for this kabob empire serves about 1.5 million people each year.
- Despite the dress-up interior of Bangkok Joe’s restaurant and her own professional chef’s garb, Aulie Bunyarataphan — owner and executive chef of this and the contemporary Thai restaurant T.H.A.I. in Shirlington — looks very casual and just a little bit older than a teen. Yet she has packed in 20-plus years of cooking and restaurant management experience, and brims with so much energy and so many ideas that ordinary folk feel somewhat dazed.
- A 1992 graduate of Maryland’s L’Academie de Cuisine, native New Yorker Jeff Heineman is yet another local boy who makes good in the restaurant business. Well, actually, makes great. Owner and executive chef of his own Bethesda restaurant, Grapeseed American Bistro and Wine Bar, Heineman is low-key, casual and unassuming, despite his very outgoing personality that elicits at least a “hello” from the salesman dropping by on a recent Thursday morning.
- Thoughtful, serious and certainly passionate about cooking — particularly traditional Indian fare — Executive Chef Nilesh Singhvi of D.C.’s The Bombay Club restaurant is the right man for this kitchen. With 20 years of experience backing him, and most spent in the kitchens of the prestigious Taj Group of Hotels in India, Singhvi has learned the secrets of the Indian masters.
- Shunning the spotlight, soft-spoken executive chef Jessie Yan nonetheless deserves center stage: She was one of Washington’s earliest female chefs, and she brought the first Asian noodle house to the metro area. Who can forget the noodle-eating frenzy downtown when Yan’s Oodles Noodles opened on 20th St. NW in 1995.
- For generations, many Americans equated Italian cooking with spaghetti and meatballs. Maybe pizza, too. But no longer. And in large part, today’s Italian foodies in the Washington area have executive chef and restaurateur Roberto Donna to thank.
- Wacky and with a wonderful sense of the absurd as gastronomy, D.C. native and Executive Chef Greggory Hill of the offbeat David-Greggory Restau Lounge wins my vote as D.C.’s zaniest chef. His sense of fun encompasses menu selections such as his luncheon “3 Little Pigs” sandwich on black pepper biscuits and dessert “A S’more in Greek’s Clothing” plus his memorable but long-gone confection “Cow-over-the-Moonpie Goes Bananas.” And what about his own get-up: Saffron-colored chef’s coat with a jaunty pink neck scarf, loads of loop earrings and a gold pig pinned to his front?
- Probably each of us harbors the fantasy that life as a pastry chef and dessert creator is simply a sugary delight. What could be so hard about whipping up creamy concoctions or assembling a towering cake?
- What seemed like a typical guest/chef exchange one recent lunchtime became a verbal praise fest.
- Acknowledged as one of the city’s leading chefs, Pennsylvania native Jeffrey Buben of Vidalia and Bistro Bis fame comes to the kitchen every day as the recipient of numerous awards and laudatory praise: The Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington Chef of the Year in “Chef of the Year” in 1996 and the James Beard Foundation's Best Chef Mid-Atlantic 1999 plus countless “best ofs” for Vidalia from the local and national media.
