Here is a list of Dames and their restaurants and shops that are continuing to serve our communities and keep our industry alive. Please avail yourself of their services and encourage your friends to do the same.  
 
Stacey Adams' Tastings Gourmet Market in Annapolis has added many more staples and much-needed items to her product line so her customers do not have to go to crowded grocery stores. Her staff's sanitizing procedures and graciousness in handling business was noticed by a MD government tourism division employee. She told the staff that during the pandemic, she is promoting and noting local businesses on her bulletin board. She took a pix of the store and staff and said she would be back to shop. For more info, click here.   
 
Amy Brandwein's Centrolina and Piccolina are closed for dining but both restaurants are offering takeout and delivery. Amy's Centrolina market remains open offering her full line of fresh produce, meats and fish as well as staples and wine. All grocery items can be delivered as well. For more information, click here.  
 
Ruth Gresser's Pizza Paradiso restaurants' dine-in services have closed but all her locations, save Old Town Alexandria, remain open for online orders and delivery.  Click here for more information.  
 
Ris Lacoste's eponymous restaurant RIS is closed until further notice but began takeout and delivery service today. For more information, click here.   
 
Michelene Mendelsohn and her family's  Sunnyside Restaurant Group, which includes We The Pizza, Santa Rosa Taqueria and Good Stuff Eatery, are  open for delivery and takeout. As a special service, it is  generously offering Kids Eat Free during the COVID-19 pandemic at all of its restaurants.
For more information, click here
 
Suzanne Simon's and Bettina Stern's Chaia Tacos are closed but continue to offer takeout.  Innovatively, they have created a Chaia Enchilada Supper Club with a changing lineup of tacos offerings each day to order on Mondays and Wednesdays for pickup on Tuesdays and Thursdays between 5:30 and 6:30 p.m. at their Georgetown and Chinatown locations.
 
Janet Yu's Hollywood East restaurant is closed but continues to offer takeout and delivery services. www.HollywoodEast.com 
 
 
These Dames are using their talents and connections to help during this crisis.
 
Mary Beth Albright's Secret Table video series for The Washington Post featured  "Top food items to stock up on in case you are quarantined" on March 6.  Click here to watch the video. 
 
Jill Collins represents Hook Hall, the event space in ParkView on Georgia Avenue NW that has announced the launch of Hook Hall Helps, a program to assist hospitality industry workers. In partnership with The Restaurant Association  of Metropolitan Washington,  FoodPro and Sysco, Hook Hall employees and volunteers are assembling care kits for pick up at Hook Hall. The kits include shelf-stable foods and paper goods and are distributed from 6:00 until 8:00 p.m. daily through the duration of the COVID19 pandemic, as long as supplies last. Also, Industry Family Meals are provided from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. daily as well. The meals are being donated by area restaurants as well as being prepared by volunteer chefs who are creating hot meals from donated produce and perishables. Dozens of restaurants and suppliers have donated food and product. Occasions Caterers has donated trucks to handle delivery and pick up. For details click here.

Nancy Hart Trice and her husband, Chef Jerry Trice, prepare to celebrate the four-year anniversary of their restaurant, Gunther & Co., in May. In the meantime, they are reveling in the fact that the restaurant, once again, is included in Baltimore Magazines top 50 restaurants and reader poll for Best Alfresco Dinning.   To read more, click here.

Amy Brandwein, Chef-owner of Centrolina, is a James Beard Foundation Award semifinalist for Best Chef Mid-Atlantic.
 
Ruth Gresser, chef-owner of Pizzeria Paradiso, is a semifinalist for the Outstanding Restaurateur award from the James Beard Foundation.
 
Polly Weidmaier's and husband Chef Robert Weidmaier's Marcel's restaurant is a semifinalist for the James Beard Foundation's Outstanding Hospitality award.

​Patty Collette of PattyCakes, Inc. was named among the "Most Recommended" wedding cake bakers in Washingtonian Weddings magazine for the 25th consecutive year.
 
Toni Tipton-Martin , Pati Jinich, Kristen Hartke and Mary Beth Albright all are IACP 2020 Cuisinart Awards finalists. Mary Beth Albright: Corporate Online Video Series, Secret Table. Kristen Hartke: Narrative Beverage Writing With or Without Recipes, Now, There is Zero Proof That Alcohol Makes a Great Cocktail, NPR The Salt. Pati Jinich: Individual Online Video Series,  #MustEat  and Culinary Television Series, Pati's Mexican Table. Toni Tipton-Martin: Cookbook Awards,  Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African-American Cooking .  The winners will be announced March 28 at the IACP annual conference in Pittsburgh, PA. 

Pati Jinich interviewed The Washington Post Food Editor Joe Yonan at the Connecticut Avenue Politics and Prose on Tuesday, February 4 about his newest book, Cool Beans: The Ultimate Guide to Cooking with the World's Most Versatile Plant-Based Protein. In his book's acknowledgements,  he thanks Kristen Hartke for her "expert recipe testing, invaluable insight and good-natured outlook."

Johanna Mendelson Forman will lecture at Tshingua University in Beijing to the Schwarzman Fellows in February on Culinary Diplomacy and Social Gastronomy.   Then she will join Venezuelan chef and Chopped  winner Adriana Urbina who is now based in New York on a State Department visit to Peru to promote women entrepreneurs in the food space in Peru. 

Amy Riolo just released her first, private label EVOO- a blend from the Abruzzo region of Italy.  Trappeto di Caprafico, the award-winning estate where the oil is made, is one of the most popular stops on her Heart of Italy and Grape and Truffle Cuisine and Culture tours.

Toni Tipton-Martin's  article "The Legacy of Pralines," with recipes from her new book,  Jubilee: Two Centuries of African American Cooking, appeared in the December issue of Southern Living Magazine.  ​

Johanna Mendelson-Forman will be a speaker on Culinary and Gastrodiplomacy for the "Cooking the Nation" event hosted by New York University in Abu Dhabi.  The event will celebrate the decision by Abu Dhabi to brand the country's cuisine as "Nomadic" and feature the work of Hanan Sayed Worrell who wrote Table Tales: The Global Nomad Cuisine of Abu Dhabi. Johanna also moderated a panel discussion on November 5 for the School of International Service Global to Local: Food Insecurity program that included Ellen Kassoff-Gray as a speaker.
 

Tambra Raye Stevenson will be a panelist with Dr. Jessica Harris and Dr. Psyche Williams-Forson at the 5th Annual Smithsonian Food History Weekend on Saturday, November 9 at 10:30 am at the American History Museum. The moderated panel, "Women Saving Communities Through Food," will focus on women and food activism in American history. Tambra's children's book, Little WANDA Finds a Cure For Nana will be available for purchase at the museum store.  Click here for more information.  ​