Lunch in the Washington Village
Washington is small enough -- and single-mindedly obsessed enough with its interlacing business of governing, lawyering, lobbying and journalism -- for power to concentrate in just a few places, rather than dispersing across the length and breadth of, say, a New York or London. Our company-townies -- the mighty and the not-so-mighty -- are herders.
See the Secret Service guys at Old Ebbitt Grill (convenient to the White House); the administration's youngsters at Oya; low-level Hill staffers at Tortilla Coast; the older society crowd at Cafe Milano (Dick Cheney and his SUV entourage stopped by for a private-room meal and a bottle of the good stuff earlier this month); and so on. Few places in town, though, seem to have been embraced with such distilled dedication as by the lobbyists nesting at Tosca.
Another of Tosca's unwritten rules is: Always call ahead. Still, there are moments when one is spontaneously overcome by cravings for a salad of radicchio and Bartlett pears with imported gorgonzola cheese terrine and toasted walnuts.
Lunch at the 'Power Section'
Unbound From K Street, Lobbyists Expand Waistlines, Horizons Into Favored
By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 20, 2009