Saturday, October 19, 7:00 P.M.
Members $85, guests $110

You might think it'd be hard to concentrate on the food at the hypertrendy eCiti Café & Bar. Carved out of a former warehouse, the vast restaurant-cum-nightclub compels attention with its soaring ceilings, catwalks, and floor-to-ceiling ads for dot.com ventures. Then there are the beautiful people and tech-heads who pack the hip sushi bar and "roaring bar scene" (Washingtonian).

Happily, Jamie Stachowski's polished "American Baroque" cooking, as he terms it, is more than a match for the stunning setting. As Cynthia Hacinli wrote in Washingtonian, "Here is a Modern American restaurant with food that can hold its own with the best of DC. The whiz in the kitchen is Jamie Stachowski..."

Stachowski grew up in a restaurant family that owned Italian restaurants, taverns, and soda shops. On top of that, he spent his teenage years on a farm, raising poultry, milking cows, making sausages, pickles, and sauerkraut. So, long before he took his first restaurant job at age 14, he knew a thing or two about food. As a young chef, Stachowski had excellent teachers who built on that foundation. In L.A. he worked under Joachim Splichal at the Regency Club and Wolfgang Puck at Ma Maison, as well as at the city's classic French Le St. Germaine. He extended his French training at Le Périgord in New York. In D.C., he spent time under Jean-Louis Palladin at his Jean-Louis at the Watergate. Other D.C. restaurant credits include Pesce and Mateo. At the latter, he made "poetry on the plate," according to the Washington Post's Phyllis Richman.

At eCiti in Tysons Corner, Virginia, Stachowski has crafted an eclectic menu—lobster strudel with Tunisian spiced carrots, fava beans, and lobster coral butter sauce; Havana pork chop marinated with chile oil and served with plantain tostadas, corn tamales, and black bean sauce— and his cooking gets better and better. The Connection described him as "a chef with pizzazz." Under his helm, eCiti won last year's Capital Restaurant and Hospitality Award for New Restaurant of the Year. Next on this talented chef's plate? A restaurant collaboration with his wife Carolyn, Columbia Dining in downtown D.C.