Montgomery County Fire and Rescue responded to a barn fire this morning around 4:45am after a nearby resident saw a “glow in the sky” and called 9-11.
The fire occurred on Stoney Creek Road near Wetherfield Lane in Potomac and has left one horse dead, according to Chief Spokesperson for Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Pete Piringer. One horse that managed to escape the fire has survived.
Firefighters arrived with water tankers to heavy fire at the barn, which was located on a narrow driveway, 2700ft off of a hard surface road.
Damage is estimated to be around $100,000 and the barn was a total loss.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation.
ICYMI (~445a) Stony Creek Road near Wetherfield Lane, Potomac, 40×50 (wood) horse barn, fully engulfed upon arrival, barn is located ~2700’ off hard surfaces road, 1 horse escaped another (1) perished https://t.co/aswDdR7LY5 pic.twitter.com/z5OTBncUUe
— Pete Piringer (@mcfrsPIO) March 10, 2022
Baskin Robbins will be closing its Cabin John Village location this week, per an employee of the store and confirmation via phone call. The store plans to locate to nearby Potomac Woods Plaza, located adjacent to Park Potomac. Potomac Woods Plaza is currently the home to Quincy’s Potomac, Brooklyn Deli, Walgreens, and more.
The current plan is for the new store to open in the spring. Below you’ll see the initial posting on the NextDoor app:
“Hi everyone, my name is Thu Nguyen and I am a local
high school senior as well as a part-time worker at the
Baskin Robbins in the Cabin John Shopping Center. On
behalf of my manager, coworkers, and myself we would
like to first thank you ALL for your support and kind words
as we get ready to sadly leave this location. This store
has been here even before I began visiting as a child as
well as a place of community for many others.
Our official closing date will be THIS Thursday, February
24. We welcome everyone to come get some ice cream
before the store finally closes!!! Luckily, our new locations
is only a five minute drive away in the Park Potomac
Shopping center next to Walgreens and near Dominos,
Brooklyns Deli, and Harris Teeter. The opening date is still
tentative but we predict sometime in the spring we will
officially open our new location. Thank you everyone
again!”
Last summer we let you know that the folks who brought you Kenaki Sushi to the Kentlands neighborhood of Gaithersburg and Aki to The Roost food hall at Capitol Hill would be bringing Kema by Kenaki to Cabin Village in Potomac. Initially the hope was for a late winter/early spring 2022 opening, but we spoke with sibling founders Ken and Aki Ballogdajan, who told us that some additional work was needed on the space and that it won’t be delivered until later this spring. The hope is now for the restaurant to open in October or November of this year.
The almost 2,000 square foot restaurant will be very similar to what Kenaki in Kentlands offers, but will be more “fast paced,” in what will be a hybrid between Kenaki and Aki. Kenaki is a full-service restaurant while Aki is a sushi counter at a food hall. Kema will offer signature rolls from Kenaki/Aki such as the Black Magic roll- made with “forbidden rice”, spicy tuna, pickled jalapenos, and truffle oil, the Donkey Kong roll- made with eel, fried plantain, cream cheese, cucumber, tempura flakes, togarashi spice mayo, and sweet shoyu, among others.
Featured photo by the @Kenaki_Sushi instagram
Rev. Protopresbyter Nicholas J. Despotides, 93, passed away on Sunday, January 23, 2022 with his family by his side. He was born on the island of Amorgos, Greece and moved to the United States in 1956.
He was the co-owner, with his wife, of Despotides Gardens in Potomac, MD. He made his home in Potomac, MD for 54 years before moving to Newport News, VA to be near his daughter. He was a founding member of St. George Greek Orthodox Church in Bethesda, MD where he served in many capacities as Chanter, Deacon and later in life as the Associate Priest.
He served the community and his family with love and devotion to his faith. Father Nick as he was called and will be remembered was preceded in death by his beloved wife of 60 years Moscha Despotides, son, John Nick Despotides and his brother Manoli Despotides. He is survived by his daughter, Presvytera Flora D. Chioros and her husband, Rev. Protopresbyter George Chioros, of Newport News; his beloved grandson, Constantine “Dean” George Chioros of Newport News and his four siblings Rev. Protopresbyter Markos (Presvytera Maria), Demetrios, Sophia and Moscha and many nieces, nephews and friends in Greece and the United States.
The family wishes to thank all those who loved and cared for Father Nick over the years especially Leila and Susan who became part of the family.
The family will receive friends on Wednesday, January 26, 2022 at SS. Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox Church from 4:00-6:00 pm with a Trisagion Service at 6:00 pm. A Divine Liturgy will be celebrated on Friday, January 28, 2022 at 9:30 am with the Funeral Service following at 11:30 am at St. George Greek Orthodox Church in Bethesda, MD. A private interment at a later date will follow in Gate of Heaven Cemetery, Silver Spring, MD. In lieu of flowers, donations in his memory may be made to St. George Greek Orthodox Church of Bethesda, MD or SS. Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox Church of Newport News, VA. Arrangements by Weymouth Funeral Home and Robert A. Pumphrey Funeral Home, Bethesda, MD.
Normandie Farm Restaurant at 10710 Falls Rd. announced today that the current owners will be retiring and the restaurant will be temporarily closing on June 30. New ownership will be taking over and are expected to reopen the restaurant in late summer.
Normandie Farm was founded in 1931 by Marjory Hendricks in the midst of the Depression. It is one of a handful of restaurants that are still in existence from that era.
Hendricks, along with her sister, purchased the property that had been planned for a country club and built it into a restaurant that remains unsurpassed today in its ability to satisfy with fine food, wonderful wines and sterling service.
Cary Prokos started at the restaurant in 1983 as a chef. He became the sole proprietor in 2007. Below, he announces his retirement.
From Normandie Farm’s website:
“Chef Cary Announces His Retirement!
I have always joked that they would have to “Carry Me Out of Here in a Box.
Now, after 39 Years and enduring the past 24 months, I have elected to walk out with my Toque Blanc On!
Don’t expect the doors to be closed for too long because new owners are excited to begin serving the community later in the summer.
What an “Awesome Gig” this has been!
I would like to thank all my Great Customers, Employees & My Family for their Support over the past 39 years!
In Addition, I owe a special thanks to my Landlords, Normandie Farm Joint Venture, who have been so supportive through the pandemic!
It’s so very hard to say goodbye to so many memories and friends we have met during this journey.
I can assure Each of YOU, that there will be many tears as we reminisce these past 39 years of our relationships!
I came to Normandie Farm, April 1, 1983, and much to my amazement, there were no popovers! As a child growing up in Northern VA, I was very familiar with the restaurant and its traditions. It was easy to recognize that my first job was to develop a popover recipe which is still in use today. In addition, I saw the potential for a grand Sunday Brunch Buffet in this Classic Dining Room which has been known for years throughout the DMV.
As many know, I met my wife, Margery, here many years ago when she served as a cocktail waitress. We were married a few years later & having keen common sense, I renamed the Lounge “Margery’s.” My three children were welcomed into the world by many of you with kind wishes & gifts of onesies! My youngest son, Charles, spent many a holiday helping his dad and now he is about to graduate from the Culinary Institute of America. His older twin siblings will also be graduating from college this spring, Maria from Case Western Reserve University, and Nicholas from Christopher Newport University. How blessed I am!
Over the years, I have seen MOCO grow up and change,and dodged numerous curves from mother nature including the 2011 earthquake which sent customers scurrying under the tables. While many of these unexpected challenges usually came at the most inopportune time, my loyal staff and I, starting with Mr. Kay and Carlos Marquina, always did our best to ensure the safety of our customers and uninterrupted service!
Finally, over these past 6 years, I have had the pleasure of my many talented music friends!
They have made Margery’s Lounge a special place to gather, forget our worries & just have fun!
I am so honored to have seen their weekly performances and how hard
they work in their different genres, and the respect they give to the music they play!
Needless to say, these past 24 months have been brutal.
We have survived with your and my staffs support. My Many thanks to all!
Normandie Farm will remain open for a la carte dining, music in Margery’s, Sunday Brunch, our special holiday buffets and for special occasions through June.
I Appreciate your business and your loyal support and would love to see you before we leave!
My Thanks to All and Remember “Health is Wealth”
Chef Cary”
About Normandie Farm:
Dan Binstock is a lifelong MoCo resident. The Potomac dad is now also a viral TikTok sensation, earning over 340K followers and nearly 30 million views in less than a month with his ability to hear a song just once and recreate it to near perfection on the piano.
Binstock was born and raised in Potomac. He started playing piano at the age of 5, when he realized he had an ear for music. After taking lessons growing up and continuing to play while he was a student at Wootton High School, where he was known for his piano-playing ability, he went in a different direction with his career, earning his law degree and currently owning and operating a company that recruits lawyers.
When the pandemic hit and everyone was stuck inside… “it just sort of happened” Binstock told us. One day he decided to do a Facebook live, taking requests from people, and playing as many songs as he could. “If I’ve heard it, I would play it. If I haven’t, I can listen to it on the spot just once, and then play it.”
In the days following the initial Facebook Live performance, he was inundated with requests for parties, fundraisers, business holiday parties, and more, all via Zoom. That led to Binstock starting his evening passion project, Virtual Piano Party, where he has been hosting piano parties on Zoom since December of 2020 until now, having successfully provided entertainment for over 150 events all over the world.
One of his friends kept telling him he should get on TikTok, a video-focused social networking service that hosts a variety of short-form user videos, from genres like music, pranks, stunts, tricks, jokes, dance, and entertainment. After initially thinking it was for teenagers, he quickly realized how many people were interested in his videos. One of his videos that includes his daughter attempting to stump him by letting him hear part of Lil Nas X’s “Industry Baby” has been viewed over 20 million times in just over a week.
@pianodaddan @lilnasx my dad playing “INDUSTRY BABY” by ear #piano #pianodaddan #fyp #pianochallenge #yerawizard
Dan was amazed at how quickly his following grew. His daughters were initially a little embarrassed and didn’t want him on TikTok. Now he gets texts from school with updates on the latest numbers on social media. “A really fun, new way of bonding” Binstock said.
His New Year’s resolution is to focus on posting music videos rather than watching the news and Netflix. So far, it has worked. His TikTok, @PianoDadDan, now has over 343,000 followers and 3.5 million likes. His most viral video has been viewed for over 162,000 hours. He told us he started doing this because he has always loved to make people happy through music. Growing up, one of his favorite things to do was to take requests and put smiles on faces, something he told us he plans to continue doing through his social media accounts.
Dan and his tunes can also be found on Instagram, @VirtualPianoParty
Back in August, we let you know that Yirasai Sushi would be moving from its Westbard location in Bethesda to Park Potomac (12525 Park Potomac Ave Building G), following a conversation with restaurant management.
From August: “Earlier today we spoke with a manager at Yirasai Sushi, located at 5110 Ridgefield Road in the Westwood Shipping Center in Bethesda, who told us that the tentative plan is to close to the current location later this year as they prepare to move in to the old Elevation Burger spot in Park Potomac that became available last month.”
The Bethesda location is now closed and the restaurant expects to open in Park Potomac in February, according to the Yirasai website.
The menu can be seen here.
Additional information about the restaurant:
“Kim’s Yirasai Sushi and Café is owned and operated by Mr. Kim. He took over the restaurant from the previous owner in 2004 and has worked hard to make Yirasai a neighborhood gem.”
”Yirasai has been recognized as many people’s favorites by others such as The Washingtonian and NBC4. Mr.Kim has many regular customers whom he has built friendships with over the past years. Accommodating to the customer’s needs, Mr. Kim and his staff are quick to make adjustments and changes if needed.”
Featured photo of the closed Yirasai location courtesy of Google.
Amici Miei has closed permanently, according to an email sent to customers this morning.
The restaurant opened in Potomac in 2004 and remained there until 2017, when it moved to the location it has been in the last four years in Rockville Town Center (6 N Washington Street).
Owner Roberto Deias will continue his career in hospitality as general manager of Trattoria Da Lina in Takoma Park.
The full e-mail sent to customers can be seen below:
Dear Valued Customers,
The purpose of this email is to notify you that Amici Miei Ristorante located at
6 North Washington Street Rockville Maryland, 20850 is permanently closed as of December 31, 2021.We have provided high quality Italian cuisine for over 17 years, and we want to thank you for your support and for making Amici Miei Ristorante one of your favorites dining venues.
It was a very difficult decision to close the restaurant, due to the pandemic Amici Miei Ristorante had difficulty to financially sustain the loss despite your support.
The restaurant business has been my specialty and I was offered an opportunity to manage Trattoria da Lina located at 7000 Carroll Ave, Takoma Park, 20912.
While managing Trattoria da Lina, I am looking forward continuing seeing you again. Please stop by to say hello and Thank You for your loyal patronage over the years.We Wish You All the Best for a Happy and Prosperous Future.
Sincerely,
Roberto Deias
Owner/Manager
Issa Rae was born in Los Angeles. After moving to Senegal for a couple years where her father, a pediatrician, attempted to open a hospital, her family moved to Potomac, Maryland.
While growing up in Potomac, she was in a gifted and talented program at Cold Spring Elementary School. Rae was quoted as saying that in her time in Potomac, she grew up with “things that aren’t considered ‘Black,’ like the swim team and street hockey and Passover dinners with Jewish best friends.”
“It was like living in a Saturday-morning ‘Saved by the Bell,’” Rae recalled in an interview with The Washington Post. “I had friends from every ethnicity. I went to a gifted and talented school with a bunch of nerds. It was great.”
The WaPo interview identified her years in Potomac as providing a touchstone for her. “Being black there was easy,” she wrote in an essay for the Huffington Post about racial identification. “I never really had to put much thought into my race and neither did anybody else. I knew I was black. I knew there was a history that accompanied my skin color and my parents taught me to be proud of it. End of story.”
Even her hair was a matter of pride when she lived in Potomac, she said in a piece written for Transitioning Movement, an offshoot of the beauty Web site Carolsdaughter.com. Having ethnically diverse friends “was great for my self-esteem. I was celebrated for being different; for having superhero hair that defied gravity and recoiled with lightning speed elasticity. My hair texture was the subject of awe, confusion and probably envy. I loved it.”
Rae and her family moved back to Los Angeles after she completed elementary school, which ended her time in Montgomery County. She remained in LA with her family for the majority of her teenage years. She graduated from King Drew Magnet High School of Medicine and Science, where she started acting and went on to attend and graduate from Stanford University with a Bachelor of Arts in African and African-American Studies. As a college student, she made music videos, wrote and directed plays, and created a mock reality series called Dorm Diaries for fun. At Stanford, Diop met Tracy Oliver, who helped produce Rae’s YouTube series, Awkward Black Girl (which was the pre-cursor to Insecure), and starred on the show as Nina.
Issa Rae has achieved wider recognition as the co-creator, co-writer, and star of the HBO television series Insecure, for which she has been nominated for multiple Golden Globes Awards and Primetime Emmy Awards. In 2018 she was one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influencial People. She also recently starred in the popular movie The Photograph.
Insecure ended its 5-year run earlier this week. The series has received rave reviews and the Boston Globe recently lauded Rae for using the series to show people that they can be their authentic self without worry. “It’s always been a show about growth” Rae said in a recent interview with Vulture. Rae has achieved heights the little girl from Cold Spring Elementary School would be proud of.
Featured photo courtesy of HBO
Two adults and a one pet are displaced after their home on Falls Bridge Lane in Potomac caught fire on Thursday around 3:30pm.
The cause of the fire appears to be combustibles too close to/malfunction with the chimney, according to Chief Spokesperson for Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Pete Piringer.
The fire originated in the homes basement fireplace and caused around $300,000 in damages. Around 75 firefighters responded to the incident.
Update – 9208 Falls Bridge La, Potomac; 2-sty SFD; Cause, combustibles too close/malfunction, chimney; Area of Origin, basement fireplace, extension to attic; Damage ~$300K; smoke alarms present/functional; 2 adult occupants & 1 pet got out, no injury; ~75 FFs responded https://t.co/J7prStEXnL pic.twitter.com/uud34YkwJq
— Pete Piringer (@mcfrsPIO) December 24, 2021
Glenstone Museum has announced that it will be suspending indoor dining at the Cafe and Patio and will be reducing visitor capacity starting today, Thursday, December 23.
Glenstone is an art museum based in Potomac. The museum displays exhibits of contemporary and modern art from post-WWII artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Louise Bourgeois, Alexander Calder, Andy Goldsworthy, Jeff Koons, Richard Serra, and more. A large portion of the museum’s art and architecture can be viewed through an outdoor walking tour experience, spread out throughout the 300 acre property.
The museum is free to visit, although tickets are required for entry. Glenstone offers a guaranteed entry (no ticket required) program for students, active military personnel, museum professionals, and Ride On Bus passengers. Glenstone also partners with MCPS to offer free field trips for students. All visitors must be over age 12.
You can learn more about Glenstone by checking out their website.
Additional COVID-19 Safety Measures
The safety and wellbeing of our visitors and associates are our top priorities and we have adjusted our visitor experience to include additional COVID-19 safety measures. These include:
• Requiring visitors and staff to wear masks indoors; masks must always fit snugly under the chin (please note: gaiters and masks with exhalation valves are not permitted)
• Scheduling visits in advance and reducing visitor capacity
• As of Thursday, December 23, 2021 suspending indoor dining at the Café and Patio, and offering outdoor-only dining at the Patio, weather permitting
• Requesting visitors reschedule their visit if they have tested positive for COVID-19 or been exposed to COVID-19 within the last 14 days, have not followed current travel restrictions identified by the state, or feel unwell
Featured Photo Courtesy of Glenstone
