Tag Archives: todd gray

Todd Gray’s Watershed Changes Chefs, Freshens Menu

14 Jan
New Braised Pork Shank with Sweet Potato Hash at Watershed

New Braised Pork Shank with Sweet Potato Hash at Watershed

Todd Gray’s Watershed, the coastal cuisine restaurant located within the Hilton Garden Inn in NoMa, has undergone several changes over the past couple of months.  Less than a year after opening the restaurant in 2011, Todd Gray turned over operations of the restaurant to Culinaire, a food and hospitality management company (Gray operates several restaurants and wrote a cookbook).  According to David Wood, Senior Vice President with Culinaire, Gray still plays an active role with Watershed and spends time in the kitchen every month with the staff.  He recommends and changes certain dishes on the menu so that they maintain his “style and vision.”  Culinaire’s vision for Watershed is to have the restaurant represent “a road trip down the Eastern Seaboard” like Todd Gray initially envisioned.

Executive Chef Joseph Paire

Executive Chef Joseph Paire

Now, the restaurant has brought in new Executive Chef Joseph Paire who has conducted an overhaul of the menu that features several exciting new dishes (view menu here).  A D.C. native, Paire graduated from Johnson and Wales culinary school and has since worked in several kitchens around D.C. including Sonoma, Mussel Bar, Lincoln (opening Chef de Cuisine), and most recently Farmers Fishers Bakers in Georgetown.  He was excited to come over to Watershed because of the restaurant’s beautiful space and the growing NoMa neighborhood. Continue reading →

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Washingtonian’s 100 Best Restaurants 2012: Winners and Losers

26 Dec

The Washingtonian is out with its annual review of top 100 restaurants in Washington, arguably one of, if not the, most important dining reviews in the area.  The list is in the January print edition and will be online soon.  This year, the format of the review continues to change.  In the past the Washingtonian ranked restaurants 1-100; however, over the past few years, the magazine has listed fewer restaurants numerically and instead grouped the majority of restaurants in one alphabetical list.

This year’s list only ranks the top ten restaurants numerically.  The magazine then lists ten restaurants that are “on the rise,” ten that are new and exciting, ten that are “tried and true” establishments, and then the remaining restaurants alphabetically (in the “More Great Dining” category).  This format clearly hurts the restaurants that do not make it into any of the top categories and instead fall into the last category of the remaining restaurants in alphabetical order (some of which were in the top ten last year).  This new format may in fact disadvantage some of the best restaurants in D.C. as it implies that they are not as good as they used to be, even though they may simply have been victims of the new format.

Here’s our quick take on some of the winners and losers in this year’s list (we encourage you to read the entire list in either the magazine or online, it’s well worth the read):

Winners

Ashok Bajaj Named restauranteur of the year by Washingtonian, his restaurants did very well on this year’s list with Rasika placing in the top ten, Bibiana and Ardeo & Bardeo landing in the “on the rise” list, and Oval Room and 701 also appearing on the list.

Johnny Monis Chef Monis’s Komi again is named the top restaurant in D.C. and his Little Serow receives three stars and is on the new list of exciting restaurants.

Continue reading →

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