Dish

LOOK WHO'S BACK: The staff of Jimmy's on K Street (1700 K St. NW) got word on Sunday that their employer, McCormick & Schmick's, was pulling the plug on the downtown restaurant, which in its brief lifetime had trouble differentiating itself from a pack of nearby steakhouses. The closing was tempered by some happy news: All employees would be offered a position at one of the Portland, Ore.-based restaurant company's other local outlets -- which soon will include Jimmy's replacement, Restaurant K by Alison Swope.

The name pays tribute to a veteran Washington chef who last cooked at the Mexican-theme Andale (now Oyamel) in Penn Quarter. Although Swope, who held earlier jobs at New Heights in Woodley Park and Santa Fe East in Alexandria, says she will always be "a small independent in spirit," she welcomes the opportunity to focus on cooking rather than payroll, design issues and other distractions from the kitchen.

Her new boss is big. McCormick & Schmick's counts 72 restaurants in the United States and Canada; the portfolio includes a handful of boutique properties.

The group plans to rethink the K Street interior over the summer and reopen with Swope's name in September. The incoming chef's modern American menu will include wild mushroom "baklava," a shepherd's pie of crab and lobster, and two dishes that Swope served during an audition for McCormick & Schmick's chief executive, Doug Schmick, helping seal her deal: a mint- and chili-powered crab cocktail and a pork osso buco with lemon-thyme popovers.

-- Tom Sietsema