Table For Two Wheels: Redefining Dinner Traffic

Someday, we may look back on what happened this weekend at Bistro Bis as the moment everything changed. Like the first time someone answered a cell phone during a concert, or opened a laptop at the beach.

It was Friday night, the end of a very hectic Restaurant Week promotion, and the swank Capitol Hill dining room was jammed with reservations and walk-ins. About 7:30, hostess Nadya Nikiforova looked up to see a sixtyish gentleman weaving through the lobby of the adjacent Hotel George and gliding up to her stand . . . on a Segway.

"Got a table for us?" he called down to her from his roughly seven-foot cruising height, according to the account Nadya first posted yesterday on the D.C. foodie Web site DonRockwell.com.

Nadya agreed to seat him, and the man dismounted. ("I fully expected him to ride his thing all the way to the table," she wrote.) But then he asked, "Where's a good place to put this?"

This posed a quandary for the restaurant, chef-owner Jeffrey Buben told us later. "You accommodate every customer and every need, you roll with the punch," he said. "Especially on Capitol Hill, that's 98 percent of the game."

But -- duh, no, of course there was no good place to put his Segway! "Haven't you got a coat room?" the man asked Nadya. When she explained that the coat room is for coats, he started looking around the room for other places to park, right near the entrance.

Nadya told him that wouldn't do ("Add a Segway, and our stylish lounge would suddenly transform into a Copenhagen trailer park," she wrote), and he ultimately agreed to stow it deep inside a closet.

What amazed Buben about the entire exchange was that "there wasn't even an indication from the customer that there was a problem. Some people worry about not wearing a jacket," but this diner never even paused.

"It definitely floored the restaurant," Buben said. "The first person in with a cell phone, we had to figure out what to do with them. Now we'll have to build rooms for Segways."

No word on whether the Segway rider left a good tip in exchange for all the groundbreaking efforts by the staff; Buben said he doesn't even know who the diner was. Do you? Tip us off at reliablesource@washpost.com .

Frumpy vs. Trampy

Barbara Bush at the Liberian inauguration.(Jason Reed - Reuters)

Someone gets a ticket from the Fashion Police, but who? At Monday's inauguration of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf , Liberia's first woman president, first lady Laura Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice went for the Queen Elizabeth look (jackets, sensible shoes, fusty hats), while first daughter Barbara Bush opted for "Sex and the City" chic in a skintight turquoise dress and open-toe snakeskin high-heels.

This Just In ...

· Yellow jersey, executive branch: President Bush and Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt may disagree on foreign policy, but the two men are in tandem when it comes to mountain bikes. They spent almost an hour in the Oval Office yesterday talking about important stuff like the Tour de France. Bush told reporters that Verhofstadt is a "huge advocate" of the bike scene and would give him a presidential lesson; Verhofstadt countered that the two are trying to figure out who should follow in Lance Armstrong's tire treads: "We have not made a final choice on who can be the successor."

· He's a man without a restaurant, but that doesn't mean Morou Ouattara can't be an Iron Chef. Ouattara won the local competition for the Food Network's hit show in October, then lost his perch at Jack Abramoff's ill-fated Signatures restaurant just a month later. Undeterred, Ouattara and Mayor Anthony Williams will be in the Big Apple for today's taping of "Iron Chef America." Ouattara will go knife-to-knife with one of the show's celebrity chefs, Williams will yak up the city's restaurant scene, and the results will be broadcast later this spring.

Quote

"I want to thank Jack Abramoff . You know, just because . . . I don't know why . . . Who would name their kid Jack but the last word's "off" at the end of their last name? No wonder that guy's screwed up. Okay, I just got bleeped."

-- Smart aleck George Clooney , class-clowning his way (unbleeped) through accepting a Supporting Actor Golden Globe for "Syriana."