Food Day: I'm running late edition

Happy food day folks. I hope everyone is fully recovered from Super Fat Ticker Tape Tuesday. Here's a taste of what's going on in the world of food:

Happy New Year: Tomorrow marks the Chinese New Year, and for those of you who are celebrating, or who just want a solid meal, the Cleveland Plain Dealer has some great recipes for celebrating the beginning of the year of the rat.

For once I'm looking forward to April 15th: Look out RFD and Brickskeller, it looks like the folks at Neighborhood Restaurant Group are looking to take the crown of the best beer place in the city. With a target open date of April 15th, the WaPo reports that the bar/restaurant (which doesn't seem to have a name yet) will be two levels and have its menu designed by Rustico chef, Frank Morales and beer director, Greg Engert.

Aside from the, "500 labels, 100 styles and 50 draft beers" that will be offered, the menu, designed by Morales, will feature everything from pizza to tapas.

Add another one to the list: For a city already claiming so many talented chefs, it's always great to see it add another. Fresh from such restaurants as Aureole, Restaurant Daniel and the Plaza Hotel in New York City, Chef Bobby Varua will be the new Executive Chef at 701 in Penn Quarter.

Varua claims his cooking styles come from the belief that, "the art of cooking is to express more than to impress, and my background is very deep in flavor profiles including Asian, Italian, French, Japanese and even a little Brazilian."

I hope Varua decides to stay in DC for the years to come.

Change the Chop: Chopped salads are relatively new to the DC scene (at least from what I can tell). And as I had yet another great salad last night from Chop'd in Chinatown, I thought this article in the LA times was particularly interesting.

LA is the home of the chopped salad, and now they're looking past the traditional and into the next generation.

So what's next? How about beets, roasted butternut squash, fennel, and celery. Let's hope the new wave of chopped salads finds its way out east faster than the first did.