Taste of Bethesda is back for its 34th year on Saturday, October 3rd, and with more than 50 restaurants and four stages of live music packed into Woodmont Triangle, this isn't a festival you wander into without a plan. Here's how I'm tackling it.Where to EatWith more than 50 restaurants slinging small bites, you need a strategy. A few new names joined the lineup this year — The Food Market, Sweeteria, Ooh La La Bakery, and Rosetta Bakery among them, alongside the crowd that keeps everyone coming back: Medium Rare, Tout de Sweet, Guardado's, Q by Peter Chang, Georgetown Cupcake, Mon Ami Gabi, Smoke BBQ, Mussel Bar, Aventino, and ala.Pisco y Nazca is serving the causa de pollo, and their ceviche is the kind of bright, citrusy bite that resets your palate between stops. Q by Peter Chang is bringing Beijing duck bao and Sichuan chicken bites, which is about as good a reason as any to save room early. If you're chasing something rich and unfussy, Cubanos has croquetas and empanadas that disappear in two bites, and Kadhai Boutique Indian Cuisine's chicken makhani is the kind of small bite that makes you wish it came in a full entrée size (it does, just not at TOB). If you are looking for a taste of Japan, Kusshi Sushi is doing pork dumplings and karaage that eat like a perfect snack.Save room for the sweet stretch: Georgetown Cupcake will have their usual lineup plus a pumpkin spice option for the season, and Levain Bakery is bringing six cookie varieties, chocolate chip and dark chocolate peanut butter among them, which is reason enough to walk the extra block.Small-world moment: Mon Ami Gabi is on the restaurant list this year, and Chef Andrew Fleischauer and bartender Devon Kloth from the team are also pouring cocktails for us on this week's Foodie & the Beast. So if you like what they're serving on the show, you can go find them in person at the festival.That's a handful to build a route around, but the full restaurant list and menus are here — ANNA PLEASE HOTLINK bethesda.org/taste-of-bethesda — AND t here’s Turkish, Peruvian, Vietnamese, Thai, and a full bakery row I didn't even get to fully here.Who to CatchFour stages means constant decisions, so here's how I'd work the day. Start at Veterans Park with Sara Jones (11am–1pm) to ease into the morning, then let the afternoon carry you: Kemi Adegoroye takes the Cordell Stage from 1:45–3:45pm, Honest Lee Soul closes out Norfolk in that same window, and Kara Levchenko wraps things up at St. Elmo. You can't plan this one too tightly, half the fun is following the music from block to block and seeing who's playing when you land somewhere with a plate in your hand.Bring the kids, tooThere's a Kids' Corner with crafts, activities from downtown Bethesda businesses, and face painting to keep the littlest festival-goers busy while you work the food line.It’s amazing that thirty-four years in, Taste of Bethesda keeps getting better and better. Incredible tastes, good music, and a whole neighborhood turned into one big outdoor table.The DetailsSaturday, October 3rd, 11am–4pm (ticket sales end at 3:30pm), Woodmont Triangle — Norfolk, St. Elmo, Cordell, Del Ray, and Auburn Avenues, three blocks from the Bethesda Metro. Entry's free, taste tickets come in bundles of five for $10, and tastes run one to four tickets each (beer and wine are four tickets). Mark your calendars and we will see you there.

Nycci has 24 years of industry tea, and she's spilling it here.

Nycci Nellis of TheListAreYouOnIt.com joined WTOP to highlight some of the DMV’s biggest summer restaurant openings. New arrivals include The Oak Room and Bernadette’s in Georgetown, the return of The Riggsby in Dupont Circle, Caribbean rooftop concept Croix in Navy Yard, and Agora and Call Your Mother in Bethesda. Other openings include Little Birdie, Duke’s Burgers, Slice & Pie, La Merna, Wheelhouse, and The Grace, with Ellizabetta and cocktail bar The Bit continuing the wave of new dining destinations into fall.

Ashok Bajaj and Chef Vikram Sunderam built the modern Indian dining scene in Washington DC, and in this chef interview they tell Nycci Nellis exactly how, starting with the night Ashok found out his landlord thought a building worth 40 million dollars still deserved a rent increase.Ashok Bajaj is the founder and CEO of Knightsbridge Restaurant Group, the man Forbes calls DC’s gastronomic power broker. Since opening the Bombay Club in 1988, he has built a ten restaurant empire that includes Rasika, Bindaas, Sababa, Rosselli, and his newest concept, Malabar, a coastal Indian seafood restaurant in Van Ness. On this episode of Industry Night, Nycci Nellis sits down with Ashok on location at Malabar, along with his partner of two decades, James Beard Award winning Chef Vikram Sunderam. They talk about Ashok’s path from hotel management in India and London to building an empire in Washington DC, why he tore down a struggling concept called Rosedale to build Malabar in its place, and his honest read on downtown DC’s post pandemic restaurant economics. Vikram walks through his own path from Mumbai to Rasika, the technique behind the restaurant’s famous palak chaat, and what excites him about coastal Indian cooking at Malabar. This is a DC food podcast conversation with two of the people who actually built the DC dining scene, thirty five years and ten restaurants in the making.Listen to the episode here, or watch it all unfold, here.