Tuesday, November 18, 7:00 p.m.
Members $125, guests $150

Whatever you do, don’t drive on I-95 on November 18. Oh, and on second thought, don’t make reservations for dinner in Washington, D.C., on the 18th, either. The reason behind both warnings is that all, and we mean all (okay, okay...14...but that’s a lot) of the city’s best chefs are coming to the Beard House to cook as part of this DC All-Stars & Friends dinner. Thank Roberto Donna for having the inspiration (and the energy) to pull it off. And thank heavens you just have to take a subway to get there!

Donna’s one of those chefs who could have a DC All-Stars dinner by himself, considering he runs some seven restaurants in the Capitol City area. But the jewel in this James Beard Foundation Award-winner’s crown is Galileo, an Italian restaurant John Mariani called “one of the best in the country” in a recent Wine Spectator roundup. Donna is a regular in the Beard House kitchen, where he’s usually beaming with pride for his friends and fellow chefs, aspiring young talent, and the cuisine of his native Piemonte. This may be why so many people are joining him to cook this dinner. Who are we to argue?

Spanish-born and -trained chef José Andrés is a familiar face around here, too. The quality and consistency at his three stellar D.C. restaurants, Café Atlántico, Jaleo, and Zaytinya, are the reasons he won a James Beard Award last year for Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic. Kirk Avondoglio’s Perona Farms isn’t in D.C., but ever since he began hanging out, hunting, and smoking salmon with the late Jean-Louis Palladin and his buddies, he’s been an honorary member of the Capitol Hill crowd. Jeffrey Buben bloomed onto the scene at the sweet Vidalia, and upped the ante with Bistro Bis, never compromising what Robert Shoffner of Washingtonian considered places so impressive “you can take visitors to show them just how good American cooking has become.”

When in 1926 Calvin Coolidge cut the ribbon on the hotel that’s now the St. Regis, you can bet the food served wasn’t as good as Didier Derouet’s modern take on French cuisine that’s on the menu today. Despite having the same first names, Enzo Fargione and Enzo Fabbraro aren’t related!! But the impressive quality of the food served at all of their Italian restaurants (Fargione’s are Barolo and Il Radicchio; Febbraro’s is Filomena) is of similarly outstanding quality. Fargione “goes the extra step,” wrote Phyllis Richman in the Washington Post, and Fabbraro’s right alongside him. With a name like Equinox, it’s no surprise that the menu at Todd Gray’s restaurant changes with the seasons, and even less of a surprise that this talented chef has been nominated several times for Beard Awards for his contemporary American cooking.

British-born chef Robert Irvine took a chance by joining Sea Cadets when he was a teenager, but that’s where he realized he loved to cook. Today, as chef of Atlantic City’s Caesars Palace, his gamble’s paid off. At Tosca, Cesare Lanfranconi prepares a personal style of Italian cuisine that Washington Post critic Tom Sietsema described as “superb.” Nagoya-born chef/restaurateur Kaz Okochi is not only an expert on traditional sushi, after having apprenticed for five years at the famed Sushi-Gen in Osaka, but also on the elaborate style of cuisine called “kaiseki.”

It wasn’t enough for Phyllis Richman to say that “nowhere else in this country have I had such authentic Tuscan food,” when she was writing about Francesco Ricchi’s table (his restaurants are Cesco and Etrusco). She added, “In fact, only in a handful of Florence’s restaurants is such traditional food available.” Need we say more? Beard Award-winner Michel Richard was described in Saveur magazine as one of the chefs “most passionately in love with his cooking.” We’ve been passionately in love with his cooking since we first tasted at Citrus in Los Angeles, and everywhere else this talented Frenchman’s been in the kitchen. Since 1998 Jeff Tunks has been attracting a crowd of discerning food-lovers to DC Coast for his take on modern American cooking. For an Asian twist, they can visit his Pacific-inspired Ten Penh. With 13 other chefs in Beard’s small kitchen, it might take a shoe horn to get Robert Weidmaier of Marcel’s, in too. The German-born chef of Belgian descent opened Marcel’s, a Belgian restaurant, in 1999, and like a fine lambique in a cold glass, the raves have poured in.

And if that weren’t enough, the battalion of chefs will be joined by Mark Furstenberg of Breadline, Doug Anderson of The Four Seasons Hotel, Washington, D.C., and Jim Swenson of the National Press Club.

It’s a busload of chefs who will no doubt be preparing a truck load of wonderful. There’s no extra charge for the camaraderie and fun.