The Weekly Dish

GROWING UP: Restaurant Eve (110 S. Pitt St., Alexandria; 703-706-0450) is poised to expand -- upstairs. The Old Town destination already counts three places to eat under its roof: the lounge, the bistro and the chef's tasting room. If all goes according to plan, sometime in 2007 customers will have a fourth place to sip and snack -- Eve's Bar-Kitchen. Currently the 2,400-square-foot space on the second floor of the building is an apartment, occupied by an investor in the restaurant while he waits for his house to be renovated. That should be completed in October, figures Todd Thrasher, a partner and sommelier at Eve. The upstairs attraction will serve food from both the bistro and lounge and seat about 25 customers. True to its title, the Bar-Kitchen will also give Thrasher plenty of space for all the gadgets he uses -- the foamer, the blenders, a sorbet machine -- to make his whimsical cocktails. And instead of coming in early every Saturday to prep the ingredients for his libations in the main kitchen, as he does now, the master mixologist can cook in front of Bar-Kitchen patrons. You read that right, cook. For "Millions of Peaches" alone, Thrasher poaches some of the fruit in Riesling and pickles the rest before adding peach vodka to the drink and garnishing it with a tapa, in this case, peach brioche capped with foie gras mousse. Good to the last . . . crunch.

TAKING TIME OUT: One of the grande dames of Washington restaurants is taking some time off for a well-deserved rest. The Occidental (1475 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, 202-783-1475), which closed after dinner service July 22, is undergoing a face-lift that is expected to take four months to complete. Among the many changes, "We're getting a state-of-the-art kitchen for our chef," general manager Chauncy Woodly says of the historic, portrait-paved venue, which will be celebrating 100 years later this year. The facility, which is used to prepare meals for both banquets and restaurant for upward of 300 diners at a time, "has a lot of mileage on it," adds that grateful chef, Rodney Scruggs, who took over the kitchen last October. The public space will look different, too. Regulars returning to the Occidental in late fall will find new upholstery and floors, fresh paint and rugs. But the dozens of pictures of bold-faced names past and present, a hallmark of the restaurant -- and (horrors!) whose fate was once up for discussion -- aren't going anywhere, according to Scruggs.