Open for Business: The federal government may be shutting down, but that doesn’t mean some of the city’s hot restaurant areas, like H Street NE, will be dark. Tweets one neighborhood denizen: “Feds might shut down your computer, B’berry, send U home, but #HSt will be OPEN!! Great food, cold beer, baseball on big TVs. Life goes on!” Also Taylor Gourmet is “brewing up a shut down special for #fedgov workers.” Meanwhile, cable television reality star Spike Mendelsohn and his eateries should be OK! Let’s hope the trash gets picked up to avoid potential health hazards! [@HstreetDC; @Taylor_Gourmet; WBJ]

Expected Improvement: Washingtonian checked out Ashok Bajaj‘s remade Ardeo + Bardeo but left “with mixed feelings.” But “we anticipate that Ardeo + Bardeo will hit its stride soon enough. Bajaj rarely settles for anything less than perfection.” [Washingtonian]

Word Wars: Do you hate the word “foodie?” It really bugs one of Tom Sietsema‘s chat participants. The food critic, meanwhile, really hates the word “veggie.” “Yuck. It grates on my eyes and ears.” But what do grated eyes and ears look and taste like? [WaPo]

Sad: In Arlington, the county has canceled its sorta fake trout fishing season. [ARLNow]

Photo by Flickr user ashleigh290 using an Attribution 2.0 Generic Creative Commons license