From left, Claire Jaja, Sara Cardello and Jennifer Hill drink up last year's Beer Cruise. (Gene Merritt) “I’m just a chef. I never thought DC Beer Week would ever get this big,” commented Teddy Folkman of Granville Moore’s about the annual celebration (now in its fourth year) of local brewing that he helps organize. As of Thursday, more than 80 events had been set for the week. “I think we’ll break 100,” predicted Folkman.

As of Friday, about 50 tickets remained at $125 a pop for Sunday’s Beer Cruise aboard the luxury yacht Odyssey, the kickoff event for DC Beer Week. This year the entire boat has been reserved for the three-hour floating bacchanal, which means everything has doubled from 2011.

“Two DJs, two dance floors, two buffet lines,” says Folkman. About 45 breweries will be serving approximately 75 beers, promises spokeswoman Melissa Gold. The cruise will mark the debut of Solidarity Saison, a blend of seven different saisons from area brewers.

Marcus Samuelsson and his wife, Gate Maya Haile, raved about the umami-rich cooking at Makoto during our two-hour lunch. (Tim Carman/The Washington Post)

There I was sitting at a two top at Makoto, waiting for Marcus Samuelsson to show up for our Saturday afternoon interview at the pristine Japanese restaurant in the Palisades. He was running late, and I was using the time to further investigate Samuelsson’s new memoir, “Yes, Chef,” while stealing glances at the noren curtains at the restaurant entrance.

At one point, I looked up and saw this strikingly tall woman with skin the color of toasted almonds poke her head through the curtains. My first thought was, “Oh, no!” which wouldn’t typically be my reaction upon seeing Gate Maya Haile . But unbeknownst to me, Samuelsson had invited his wife to join us for lunch, and there was no place for all three of us to sit, other than the counter.

So we lined up, three in a row, like lonely singles at the diner. Do you how awkward it is to essentially ignore an international model on the oppose side of your interview subject for two hours?

But once we settled into the conversation, it flowed easily. We ended up talking about all sorts of topics during our lunch, some related to the book, some not.

The first of two edited transcripts of our conversation is after the jump.

From left, 3 Star's Southern Belle imperial brown ale, Southern Belle cask ale with vanilla bean and Southern Belle cask ale with toasted oak. (Daniel Fromson for The Washington Post) Thursday afternoon, Dave Coleman and Mike McGarvey of 3 Stars Brewing, Washington’s third and newest brewery, stood by the windows at ChurchKey and debuted their first three beers. I had tasted only one of them before this official launch: Pandemic Porter, which is a perfect example of the big, bold beers that Coleman and McGarvey hope will set their brewery apart from the local competitors. (The porter was the focus of my profile of 3 Stars in this week’s Food Section.)

Now, I’ve tried all three beers — plus five variations, each a “cask ale” version of one of the original three, aged with additional flavorings and naturally carbonated with yeast rather than pressurized with carbon dioxide. More importantly, I can happily report that the beers are all not only big and bold, but also very good, with a couple of real standouts.

You don't need to cook the breast and legs separately to prepare a delicious duck. (Edward Schneider for The Washington Post) It’s always Duck Two Ways on restaurant menus — if not more. At a minimum, the breast needs to be pan-fried or grilled or roasted or sous-vided until rare or medium rare. The legs need to be cooked in fat or braised or slow-roasted until super-tender. Then there’s the neck, the tongue, the gizzard, the heart. . .

I occasionally do the multiple-duck thing myself, at least to the point of cooking the breast and (sometimes boned and stuffed) legs separately. It optimizes the cooking times and methods for each part, as one might for a hog: grill the chops, braise or barbecue the shoulder, cure the ham, roast the belly (yes, I said roast the belly; you should try it before you laugh).

But ducks are smaller than hogs. Can’t you just throw one in the oven and roast it, the way your grandmother did and the way everybody else untainted by modern cooking does? You sure can, and that’s, more or less, what I recently did with a duck from our local farmers market. I say “more or less” because there was one extra step before it went into the oven, as you’ll see.

Sweetleaf will add a little breathing room to its name.

Updated: 8 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 9

A trademark-infringement skirmish that has been simmering for years was quietly resolved late last month when Sweetleaf, the tiny Virginia-based cafe chain, agreed to add a little space and a couple of words to its name.

It will henceforth be known as Sweet Leaf Community Cafe.

The owners of Sweetgreen are breathing a small sigh of relief, even if they were hoping for more dramatic results.

“We’re happy to be done with it. I don’t like spending my time with lawyers,” says Nic Jammet, one of Sweetgreen’s founders who filed a trademark infringement lawsuit in April in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

The lawsuit was a last resort, Jammet says, after many talks between the two businesses to “clear any confusion” that might arise from the competing brands.

How identical were the Sweet Leaf and Sweetgreen brands?