Business & Tech

Foodie News: Sandy Delays Opening of Vino Volo, Cider Makes a Comeback

Foodie and restaurant news from around Montgomery County and adjacent Washington, DC, neighborhoods.

Get caught up with the food scene in Montgomery County and Washington, DC, neighborhoods with "1 Meat, 3 Sides." This week, a delayed restaurant opening in Bethesda takes center plate:

One Meat:

Popular airport wine bar Vino Volo pushed back the opening date of its first urban location—in Bethesda—to Nov. 16, Bethesda Patch reported:

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The store was originally scheduled to open Friday, [Nov. 2,] but complications in shipping store merchandise caused by Hurricane Sandy have forced the business to push its opening day back one week, according to [a] Vino Volo public relations representative.

"The restaurant menu will feature dishes already served at Vino Volo locations, including smoked salmon rolls and chorizo and chickpea chili, in addition to other tapas-style and full-sized plates," Bethesda Patch reported.

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Read more on Bethesda Patch.

Three Sides:

Famed chef Robert Wiedmaier's much-anticipated new restaurant, Wildwood Kitchen, is set for a Nov. 17 opening in Bethesda's Wildwood Shopping Center, Washingtonian reported. The menu will be small—featuring eight entrees and an equal number of appetizers. The space will seat 55, along with a bar that will fit about 15, Washingtonian added.

The restaurant will feature “south of France Mediterranean cuisine—we’re going very, very healthy on this menu,” Wiedmaier told Bethesda Magazine's "Table Talk" blog in February.

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Ever wondered how restaurants come up with menu designs? We're not taking about the menu offerings, but about the actual wording and layout of the menu, which can cost thousands of dollars and months to design, tweak and produce. Still, with the right design tweaking, a restaurant can pull in a few dollars more per patron—and that adds up, Washington City Paper reported:

While most diners don’t spend more than a minute or two looking at the menu, restaurants spend weeks, and sometimes months, “menu engineering” and experimenting with different formatting, pricing, and wording. The goal: draw diners to items they want to highlight and help increase check sizes. If it’s done right, the design of the menu can have almost as much to do with what you wind up ordering as your appetite does.

Read more about the fascinating science of menu design on the City Paper's website.

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Hard cider is making a comeback, NPR reported:

U.S. hard cider sales are up 65 percent over last year, and just about all the big beer companies sell it, as well as many artisan brewers. Finding cider at your local bar is often no longer a problem.

Cider is gluten-free, and "[it's] not all like sweet apple juice with a kick—[there's] more variety. You've got your drier ones, your sweeter ones, you've got your spiced ones. And I just think there's more room for everyone's taste in there," said Binghamton, NY, resident Amanda Geiger—who began drinking hard cider a few years ago, NPR reported. 

Read more about cider's resurgence on NPR's website.

Where is your favorite local place to sip a cider? Tell us in the comments.


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