Beautiful day for Preakness yesterday. We had a huge group this year. It's a family tradition for my wife, ever since her dad started going years ago. This is my fourth year going. We sit in the stands with the civilized people, rather than in the infield with the drunken idiots.

We arrived yesterday just before the 6th race of the day. I like to do a little betting, probably two $2 bets per race, more or less. Usually a little more on the actual Preakness race.

This year, we brought a friend, Heather, whose father is a pretty serious horse race enthusiast. He sent her some tips on the races.

On his advice, I bet a $2 exacta on the sixth race, on #3 Roshani and #4 Lady Digby. Imagine my surprise as they came around to finish in just that order, just ahead of #1 Valbenny, the pre-race favorite. I won $21.40 on that bet, which was a pretty nice way to start the day.

We didn't have any tips for race 7, so I had to make my own decisions. I liked #1, Roman Emperor, one of the favorites, and the wife liked #5, Da' Tara. I was even more surprised to win that exacta, too, paying off $12.

The word on the 8th race was #8, True to Tradition. I put down a $2 bet for a friend on him to place, and one for myself. I made my (so far) only mistake on the betting machine and accidentally bet him to show, but figured I'd keep the ticket anyway. When he finished second, both tickets paid, $5.20 and $4.20.

I didn't win anything else on the night, but I did get to see an impressive win in the Preakness by Big Brown. It sure looks like he has a good shot at the Triple Crown. Last time we had one of those was the year I was born. I didn't see the race.

And I ended the day up $10 (Well, not including what I spent on things other than betting). Any day of betting where you end up with more than you came with is a good day of betting.

After the race, we went to Chiapparelli's in Little Italy in Baltimore for dinner. It was good. They did a nice job serving our huge party, although they were a little late seating us. When you arrive 15 minutes early for a reservation, and get seated 10 minutes late, that's kind of annoying. But it didn't spoil our evening.

The wife and I had dinner at Rumba Cafe in Adams Morgan last night. It was a 1000 point reservation at Open Table, which puts us almost to a $50 gift certificate to any restaurant that deals with Open Table, which is awesome.

The Rumba Cafe website seems to be under maintenance this morning (I think it should be euthanized, personally (And did you know that "euthanized" isn't in the default Firefox dictionary? Weird)), but no matter.

We sat outside, since it was so nice last night. The service was very good, the beer mediocre, and the food was excellent. I had the steak with a fried egg on top, served with rice and black beans and a fried plantain. Reminded me of Costa Rican "casados", which I love. The wife had some kind of fish, I forget what, but it was good, too.

I highly recommend Adams Morgan when it's not overrun with kids (By kids I mean 23-year-olds). 8PM on a Tuesday it's alive with people (Plenty of kickballers and others just out for dinner or a drink) but doesn't have that "everyone around you is wasted" vibe that it gets on the weekend. It was just a nice spring evening.

Eat Well DC hires new chef | Washington Business Journal

Eat Well DC Restaurant Group has hired a new chef to oversee the company's four D.C. restaurants.

Branden Levine, who was formerly chef and owner of The Tavern Restaurant in Heathsville, Va., replaces Sal Del Rosario, who was with the company for 18 months.

This is interesting news. I've been to Merkado once, and to The Heights numerous times (How smug are we about being there opening night?).

I have no idea what's going to change with a new chef. The food there is good, although I liked what I had at Merkado better than most of what I've had at The Heights. There's something about the food at The Heights that knocks it down a notch. It's not that the food is bad, because it isn't. It just feels like they could tweak some recipes just a little bit and be much better.

So, we'll see what happens.