Eat Well DC hires new chef – Washington Business Journal –

Eat Well DC hires new chef | Washington Business Journal

Eat Well DC Restaurant Group has hired a new chef to oversee the company’s four D.C. restaurants. Branden Levine, who was formerly chef and owner of The Tavern Restaurant in Heathsville, Va., replaces Sal Del Rosario, who was with the company for 18 months.

This is interesting news. I’ve been to Merkado once, and to The Heights numerous times (How smug are we about being there opening night?). I have no idea what’s going to change with a new chef. The food there is good, although I liked what I had at Merkado better than most of what I’ve had at The Heights. There’s something about the food at The Heights that knocks it down a notch. It’s not that the food is bad, because it isn’t. It just feels like they could tweak some recipes just a little bit and be much better. So, we’ll see what happens.

Getting back into music

I finally tried out Pandora. If you don’t know, it’s kind of like customized internet radio. You tell them artists you like, and it plays them, plus other stuff it thinks you’ll like. I’m still tweaking the station – at the moment it’s playing nothing but Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson. Now, I like both of them, but I’m trying to find some new music, not just listen to stuff I already like. Crap, now it’s playing Ministry. I’m not sure what I’ve done wrong – it seems to think that I’m really angry now. Quick, what’s a happy band that doesn’t suck?

The dumbest thing I’ve read today

Like ‘O7’s No. 1, Ryan has a lot of questions to answer

Brilliant thought, Andrew. Really smart. I agree totally. Entering the combine, Rice was in the late-second-round realm, and I think he moved up some because he ran a 4.44 40-yard dash, which was about a tenth of a second faster than scouts thought he’d run. The criticism of him was that he wasn’t fast enough to run past corners, but I think he addressed that at the combine.

I don’t know why I read Peter King – I disagree with him on nearly everything. But I was reading this, and wow, am I glad I did. First, King goes on to say that Matt Ryan will be a good quarterback. I saw him play a few times, and I’ll tell you he’s a mediocre quarterback who played for an overrated BC team in a conference where nearly all the traditionally good teams had off years. I expect he’ll be a tolerable NFL quarterback if he gets on a team with a decent line. Anyway, what’s really ridiculous is how King thinks that Rutgers’ Ray Rice has silenced all critics by running the 40 a tenth of a second faster than everyone thought he would. Does he really think that an extra tenth of a second of speed is going to make that much difference? What’s the margin of error on the timekeeping at the combine? I didn’t see Rice play, although people have told me he’s absurd. Successful college running backs are not nearly as hit-or-miss as quarterbacks, and I expect Rice will do well in the NFL. Of course, that’s all ignoring the strategy that I’d take in the NFL draft, which is to trade away my first round (And maybe second round) pick unless I could get a game-changing player, pick up a dozen offensive and defensive linemen in the third round, and go from there.

Where are the nicknames of yesteryear?

Bartolo is Worth a Flyer

Final note: a look at Colon’s B-R.com page reveals that he is yet another modern day star without a nickname. How is this possible? The guy is an orca-fat Dominican fireballer who, by all accounts, has a pretty good sense of humor. If he was around in the 50s he would have been given a nickname so early in his career that we all would have forgotten that his name was Bartolo by now.

I think we’ve, sadly, gotten away from good sports figure nicknames. I mean, how many great nicknames can you think of off the top of your head? The best one I can think of is “The Truth”, Paul Pierce, and the only reason I know that is because the wife is a huge Celtics fan. Is it because sportswriters and sports announcers are hired for being loud and “funny” (Hello, Monday Night Football crew) instead of being good at making the fans feel like they are part of the game? As an aside, my post title is a reference to Catch-22, my favorite book. I’ve heard that phrase used before, and I always wondered if Heller created the expression, or if he was making a play on someone else’s words. Turns out he was. So, kudos to you, Francois Villon. Sorry to the wife for failing to include the squiggle under the ‘c’ in ‘Francois’. Okay, back to nicknames. Maybe I just don’t watch enough sports on TV. Or maybe it’s that sports are so national now that it’s hard to use a nickname because no one will understand it. If you’re a local announcer, you know you get a lot of the same fans, over and over, and they know the local team really well. So you can use a nickname and you won’t confuse too many people. But if you’re a football announcer who knows that the audience for this week’s 4PM game has only seen this team once in the past two years, if that, you probably can’t call their defensive tackle by his truly inspired nickname without stopping to explain who it is and where the nickname came from. No one wants that. All this to say that it’s probably ESPN’s fault.

And my next car will be . . .

Volkswagen to Introduce 70 mpg Diesel-Electric Hybrid Golf

Channel 4 writes: “The technology will be used in a number of Volkswagen Group models, including the Jetta saloon [sedan] – which sells in greater numbers in the US than the ‘Rabbit’ – and the Audi A3.”

Okay, I don’t care about the Jetta and the Rabbit, but a 70 MPG Audi A3 is really, really hot. I’ve loved the A3 ever since I first saw one, walking from the train station in London to the house where my sister-in-law and her family were living. We passed an Audi dealer, and every time we went by, there were a couple of A3s sitting out front (Sexy right-hand-drive models, of course). I was thrilled when they decided to bring them over to the States, and now am even more thrilled at the prospect of 70 MPG. Especially if we can get some nice biodiesel stations in the area (I know, fat chance, but I’m dreaming here). Now I just have to convince the wife that 1) We need a new car 2) We can afford an Audi and 3) We can’t afford NOT to get a biodiesel hybrid Audi. Any suggestions?

Some things good, some things bad

Well, I can’t figure out the stupid redirect. I’m trying to redirect the old links (http://www.blog.complainthub.com/?p=XXX where XXX is a number) to the new links (http://www.complainthub.com/?q=?p=XXX). I think there are too many .htaccess redirects going on, and I don’t really understand it all. Otherwise, things are good. The friend who said the old layout “made his eyes bleed” has already expressed his approval. Since he picked the colors, he’d better approve. Next on the list is a different project, but then I’ll get back to reimplementing “Your Complaints” so you can complain about stuff, too.