Hell’s Kitchen Drama, Loudoun NIMBYs, and Exciting New Restaurants

The Whole Foodie Festival is on at Whole Foods Market through October 3rd. Save on hundreds of culinary favorites, like delectable cheeses, crackers, charcuterie, olives and chocolates for that perfectly elevated snack board. Class up the party even more with short ribs, caviar and produce on sale. And save on a huge selection of wine, including those made with organically grown grapes. Starting at $6.99, check out the Whole Foodie Festival today. Terms apply must be $21 plus. Please drink responsibly. Today on CityCast DC, we are talking about a nimby fight in the suburbs, pitting mental health advocates against disability rights activists. Contributor Dan Reed is here to chat about that. Plus, Washingtonians Jessica Sidman joins us with a shocking report that she's done about race and dining in the city. Jess is also going to stick around and walk us through her list of fall restaurant openings that she is excited about. Today is Friday September 15th. I'm Michael Schafer. Here's what DC is talking about. Hey, Dan. How's it going? Good. Hey, Jess. Hey, how are you? I'm doing okay. So, Dan, Reed, you usually talk about, or we usually talk together about DC or like Silver Sprang where you live, but you've got a story that you are fascinated with. It's been in the news that takes place in Loudon County. What's the deal? Yeah. So, there's this big controversy going on in Loudon County for the past couple of years. And it's about a company that provides basically mental health therapy to young people in a residential setting. They wanted to buy some land in an area south of Leesburg called Gliedsville, which is a fun thing to say. And neighbors, particularly those who own big farms in the area, are finding it on the basis that they're worried it will disrupt their neighborhood. That the young adults staying here are going to run a muck in their community. And also that this is a, what they were describing is like a big corporate rehab company coming into their neighborhood. What actually is happening is, and what the controversy sort of like sits around, is this company, which is called Newport Healthcare, bought three houses on a piece of land. And the way that the county zoning laws work, you are not allowed to have so many people in one place. Like you can have a certain size of group home care facility. There are three houses on the property. And so Newport's argument is each house is a separate thing. And thus with only eight people in the house, it's like sits below the threshold that is like still allowable. It sounds like dry and like a weird technicality, but as an urban planner, these, these are the things in which planning law is based, right? Also next door is there's another sort of institutional facility. I mean, it's not officially that, but we explain that. Yeah, there's the next door to this site is a farm where young adults with developmental and intellectual facilities work on the land. And you know, part of the concern from this neighbor is that people from this group house facility would come over and I guess disrupt the farm activities or potentially like get into interactions with the people working on the farm. And things like the farm itself, people may have perceptions about what goes on there and who works there, right? So I think the owner of that farm is also saying that this isn't about authorizing people, right? Like it's not about stigmatizing people, but rather, you know, making sure that he can go about his activities without being disturbed. Since I assume most civilians are not first in like the details of whether it constitutes one entity or three, what's their real grip? Is it traffic? Is it safety? Is it both neither? There seems to be a safety argument like that allowing young people with mental health issues in this community will endanger other residents. They're worried about traffic from the property. They're worried about their property values being diminished. These aren't unusual arguments. You know, there's a term people like to use in planning road called Lulu's locally undesirable land uses. And a lot of the arguments that people are making here in Latin County are very similar as the ones that have gone on in DC this past summer over plans to buy a dorm at George Washington University and turn into housing for homeless families, right? Young people will run a muck. There will be crime. It'll hurt our property values. When ultimately this is about giving people a need a place to stay that is safe and secure and comfortable, which are things that most people would like from a place where they live. I don't know. Let me give you the counter argument. You liken it to people fighting against a facility for homeless people. People who are homeless have no crime, no affliction other than being too poor to afford a house. Maybe they often also have other things just as lots of other people often have other things going on. In the case of these facilities, there's been a determination that they need to segregate them off from their regular lives and be in a special facility. And I don't know why there's a lot of reasons why sometimes it's anti social behavior towards strangers. Sometimes it's like harm to self. Who knows? But I don't think, you know, if it's next door to you, like people are completely in the wrong of saying like, hey, this is a special use and I didn't sign up for it. No, I empathize with that. And as someone who lives next door to a food pantry, which does a lot of good for the community, but like can create external effects, right? Namely, trash, noise, people around. This is part of the challenge, right? Of being in community with other people is that things have to go somewhere. And part of the reason why this company is in loud and county is because they had previously tried to open in McLean on another wealthy but much closer in suburb and they were basically run out of town, right? So part of the rationale was if we're going to go out here to where there are farms, it'll be far enough that people won't be as worried about our presence and it turns out that wasn't the case. What do you think ought to happen? I mean, the thing is operating and I do tend to have empathy for the people who need services and I'd like to think that this is the kind of sort of spread of situation where the externalities of it might be a little bit less. I think at a certain point, it comes down to making sure that there's an agreement with neighbors and the county about how these things operate and that they're held accountable for it. Ultimately, I think that that's a solution, right? Like, if you're going to be allowed to operate here, you should do whatever you can to be a good neighbor. Wait, is there evidence that they're not? Residents claimed they saw a young person who was living at one of these residential facilities running away from it, like up the street and into another property. That seems to be the kind of thing that people will be pointing to as a concern, right? Because they don't know what people might do when they leave the property. So they saw a guy. They saw a guy running from one place to another. Running from one place to another. Is that a crime in Loudon County? No. So how much of this is just like, there's always stories in local media about these sort of, these suburbs that are dealing uncomfortably with suddenly becoming a place where many more people live. And therefore, there are people who require mental health services. There are people who require oil changes. There are people who require all kinds of things that didn't used to be there. And there is a system that is sort of unwieldy for deciding what goes where. And it is the kind of system that because it happens in public is often characterized by accusation and demonization and so on. Is there a better way of doing this? Or is this just sort of what we are consigned to deal with in our democracy? This is how American land use is set up, right? A lot of these decisions happen sight by sight. They happen in public. We have a system of zoning that says basically one use can only happen here. And one use can only happen here. So I think sort of throwing it out and starting all over, it's hard to necessarily change things like this or to avoid it, right? You know, one answer is to give people less public input, which naturally people are going to be concerned about, right? It's one thing, I think, to say that maybe there should be less, maybe less opportunities for the public to stop like an apartment building from being built. But when you get into more, I guess you could say more complicated activities of like might serve the public or might serve specific segments of the public or might have people coming and going in a way that's different than like a residential building or an office or something, it may demand a little bit more scrutiny. The Whole Foodie Festival is on at Whole Foods Market through October 3rd. Save on hundreds of culinary favorites like delectable cheeses, crackers, charcootery, olives and chocolates for that perfectly elevated snack board. Plus up the party even more with short ribs, caviar and produce on sale, and save on a huge selection of wine, including those mate with organically grown grapes. Starting at $6.99, check out the Whole Foodie Festival today. Terms apply must be $21 plus, please drink responsibly. So meanwhile in town, Jessica said, you are one of the great food writers for Washingtonian. And as I know, personally a really amazing reporter, you had a pretty hot story about segregation and race and the Gordon Ramsay restaurant at the Wharf. What, can you give us the quick and dirty apple? Absolutely. So anyone who hadn't heard, you know, celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay opened this splashy new restaurant at the Wharf Hills Kitchen back in January. It was a big deal. The mayor was at the ribbon cutting, etc. Nine months later, there's trouble. Eleven employees walk out on Labor Day with accusations of a hostile and racist work environment. And there are two big allegations here. The first was they say one of the managers was creating kind of this toxic environment and they say, you know, he'd make literally comments and could be retaliatory and that he would have these outbursts. They claim, you know, that he punched a wall and more recently through a ladder. And they didn't want to work with him anymore. So they walked out and said, we're not coming in until, you know, he's set home. In the middle of this, other allegations had previously surfaced, started boiling to the surface again, and namely that one of the lead hosts of the restaurant had been racially segregating diners. So if you've ever watched Gordon Ramsay show, there's a red team and a blue team and the dining room kind of plays off of that color split. There's a red side and there's a blue side. The blue side, according to staff, is considered the better side because it has the waterfront views. And so that's where they put the VIP diners. And according to six current and former employees that I spoke with, this host would essentially see mostly black diners on the red side with the lesser views, which she allegedly called the, quote unquote, ghetto side. And mostly white diners on the blue side. Okay, did they tell you that this was like ordered from above or that this person was directing other people to do the same? Or was this just one person's thing? So the sources I talked to you point to this one lead host. But all of these allegations and the segregation came to light internally in August. And the management of the restaurant said, okay, we're going to do an investigation and they interviewed employees and employees wrote written statements. But it seems the outcome of that was that according to my sources, this host was just put on different duties, but she was still a host. So just to get this straight, a number of people see a pattern of like pretty horrific. I mean, like just as a civilian come into this, a boss who's kind of a dick seems like a pretty much a staple of the restaurant world, particularly at the Gordon Ramsay world, if you've watched this show. But this other thing, a host who is engaging in illegal racial discrimination against clientele, that's less publicized, maybe it is common too. But so these people complain about this pattern. They're told to deliver written reports. The written reports are delivered and the person they're talking about faces not especially onerous consequence. Right. I will say the restaurant, when I reached out to them, they say they're still investigating this matter and that a source told me that they're reviewing video footage and so far they hadn't seen this discrimination. But six people who all say it was very blatant and many of them were submitted written reports. All this would have stayed quiet if it hadn't been that these folks walked out over abusive, sort of more general and less racialized abuse of treatment by their boss. Right. Right. And then they should say they said, you know, we don't want to work in the restaurant with this particular manager. At this point, the corporate HR gets involved and tells them, you're not handling this matter, you're complaints in the correct way. You are all suspended, don't come back to the restaurant. Well, we investigate this matter. It's sorry. The people who were suspended were the ones who'd complained about this. Yes. The employees who walked out with complaints of this racist hostile environment are the ones who were suspended. And it was only after I reached out to the Ramsey group and started recording this story that, you know, they received another email saying, actually, you are allowed to come back to work as we continue our investigation. It's a big picture of how common is this in DC restaurants. It seems like it's the dirty secret of the dining world. Yeah. You know, that's a very interesting question. And after the story was published, it was interesting to see. I mean, first of all, there were a number of diners on social media who said, oh, I was there and I said something to my husband, friends, why isn't all black people on this side? And I didn't think that much of it, but now I'm second guessing the whole thing. So there were clearly people eating at the restaurant who noticed. But the bigger thing that really stood out to me was how many people said, you know, this is nothing new. This happens at a lot of restaurants. And, you know, I think that will certainly be a topic of future reporting. If you're a black person in DC or really anywhere, you know, this probably is not the first time you've heard about someone of color, you know, getting a lesser table. Maybe it's not quite the same as what happened here, but it's not an anomaly. Speaking of personal experience, you know, growing up, my family would eat cracker bail. You know, like the chain of like, southern new restaurants. And basically my parents started boycotting it in half or years and years because the similar story came out. They would be seating black patrons closer to the kitchen and away from everyone else. So like, this doesn't feel surprising. It's a bummer to see it at such a high-end, like splashy, publicly visible restaurant. It makes you want to go in and ask for a seat by the window and see what happens. Well, what do you think would happen, Jessica? If your reporting had been about like some, you know, singular place that was not part of it, chain, not connected to like a national brand and a TV person, all these, you know, Gordon Ramsey and his company have a great, great deal to loot. That like, if, you know, some schmo opened their own restaurant, they would not necessarily have. There's no like broader economy with an individual person. Do you think the reaction would have been different if you had called that kind of place versus if you had a place that had like a corporate HR apparatus? I mean, I would like to believe that if this happened anywhere, there would be outrage. But, you know, certainly, I think there's a lot of attention when you have a celebrity chef involved. Just a lot of people aren't going to, you know, click on that story. But it should be outrageous no matter where it happens. What do you do as a reporter and as a person who gives people tips and writes up recommendations for where to go? How do you factor in this question of like, are these people, you know, bad people? Are they creating an unjust environment for their staff or an unwelcome experience for, for members of our community? How do you factor that into like, whether you recommend a place or what you write about a place? Do you, as you compile lists and so on, do you factor that into your ask that question just in general? Shaker, this is a hot topic. I'm sure we've had many conversations about this in the past. It became a very big topic, obviously, during me too. And you had all these big names, chefs at restaurant tours, accused of sexual harassment or sexual assault. And do you review the restaurant? Do you, do you put them on lists? And there have been different camps on this. Some people who say there are so many other people who make up the restaurant, who are, you know, are good actors and they shouldn't be punished for one person. And you can write about a place and mention the bad aspects, but still say good things about the food. There's another camp that says, you know, there are so many great restaurants out here in general, like why give them any limelight at all? You know, focus on places that you know are doing good things. It is also tricky because as a reporter and sometimes critic, you know, we don't know everything and we can't. It's hard to investigate every single restaurant that we might put on a best list to see how they treat their staff. Well, I think you can probably separate the questions. You were right about how you treat your staff. And I think the nature of the restaurant industry is just a lot of bad stuff happening to a lot of employees. But the question of what happens to the patrons is different. I mean, if you say 25% of the customers are discriminated against and shunted into a side room, you wouldn't be okay if it was like, well, only 25% of the customers got salmonella. Yeah, sure, sure, sure. They're supposedly investigating this matter. So we haven't really seen, you know, like what are they doing to fix this, right? So far, it's been kind of crickets. I haven't heard much. That does not sound super promising to me. But I would say right now, if someone's asking me for a recommendation of a restaurant, I'm not going to recommend Tell's Kitchen. You know, also you reviewed it previously and my colleague Ann Limpert basically said, hey Gordon Ramsay, like you need to go in and fix your own kitchen because it needs help. There's also that part of it. So speaking of food and excellence, you and Ann put together a list of I think 27 restaurant openings this fall that you are excited about. Tell us what we too should be excited about. Okay, yes. I think I'll mention two that have opened already so people can start checking them out in three that are coming soon. I would say the number one hot restaurant table to get right now is L president day in the union market area. This is a new modern Mexican restaurant from prolific restaurant tour Steven star who's the owner of Le Diplomat, very popular French restaurant you may have heard of. This is an ode to Mexico City and it has very colorful theatrical decor. I'd recommend you know checking out some photos. It looks very cool. Another place that has just opened that I've been looking forward to for a long time is called the square, which is a food hall. Yes, another food hall. So many food halls they keep coming. This one is a little bit more on the high end and it's from two alumni of Jose Andres think food grew, including one who was the chef at minibar once upon a time. And another guy who basically you know helped create union market and bringing a lot of the vendors there. So they've got a little bit of everything they're hoping to kind of revitalize that downtown area where nobody's going because everybody's working remotely. So we'll see how that goes for them. But a few of the concepts have opened so far and there are more that will be coming this fall in which are. And then what is to come? So another one that should be opening shortly that I'm also very excited about is called pariah on age street. And this one is a kind of a modern Filipino restaurant from a chef who had previously worked at bad saint and hokey boy, which is kind of a more casual Filipino joint that has since closed. And he's kind of putting kind of a modern spin on some family recipes. I think there's going to be a tasting menu as well. That's one to watch. Another one that I am very intrigued by is Minetta tavern, which is from restaurant or Keith McNally, who's kind of a Instagram provocateur. He has other restaurants in New York that are very popular. Allows are and pasties, which is also coming to the DC area. But Minetta tavern is, you know, described as like a Parisian steakhouse meets classic New York City tavern. And the location here is going to have this semi private lounge. It's called the Lucy of Mercer room, which is named after FDR's mistress. What does semi private mean? I guess TBD on that. I don't know exactly, but I imagine that it'll be like rented out a lot, but hopefully also open to the public. One other one that I'm very excited about is on the more casual end probably. It's called your only friend. And this is from the long-term beverage director of Columbia Room, which was the acclaimed cocktail bar that closed in Bagnallie. He's known for very inventive cocktails. And during the pandemic, he started the sandwich pop-up called your only friend. And just, you know, really good, good stuff. One of my favorites is he has like a mortadella, mozzarella, Italian sub that I think is just delicious. And he's going to be doing some fun drinks, kind of deli-influenced, like a celery gimlet or a rye-red old fashioned. But Dan, what on Jess' list is most appealing to you? I am pretty excited about San Pancho in Tacoma Park. It's from the people who own Cielo Rojo. In fact, it's the space that Cielo Rojo used to be in. They're moving up the street. And I'm super excited to see what they will do both with their food and also like to reinvent that space. Oh, Sidman, when you guys review this, will you take Dan read with you? Oh, yeah. If you want to come in, absolutely, Dan. No. Jessica, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. Dan, always awesome to talk to you. Yeah. Thanks for having me. And that is all for today here on CityCast DC. Our lead producer is Priyanka Tilvey, our producer is Julia Karen. Our newsletter writer is Kayla Cote-Stemmerman. Our production assistant is Susanne Brown and our host, Sir Bridget Todd and me, Michael Schaeffer, from Politico. Music is by Alex Roaldan. If you enjoyed the show, tell someone who loves trying new restaurants. We'll be back Monday morning with more news from around the city. Bye. If you enjoyed the show... Oh, you guys, what this thing? If you enjoyed this show, please give us a way to end it.