Who did we see at the hot new Rays the Classics steakhouse in Silver Spring last Tuesday evening but grizzled investment sales vets Dek Potts and Jim Meisel, who tell us that after 7 years with GVA Advantis, they’ve just started at Holliday Fenoglio Fowler.

Dek says they wanted to take advantage of the national capital markets platform offered by HFF, which unlike a Grubb, Cushman, or CB, specializes in providing debt and equity for owners and avoids leasing, management, construction, and its own investment. The closest analogy seems to be Eastdil/Secured. HFF now has 18 offices and in DC has 30 people. It’s growing and moving in the spring to the Army Navy building.

Above, Dek (second from left) and Jim (right) break away from their rib-eyes and New York strips to pose with Argo Investment co-principalsRichard Perlmutter and John Austin, with whom they were having a belated closing dinner. When with GVA, they represented them andFoulger Pratt on the sale of 101 Orchard Ridge in Gaithersburg, 100,000 SF they sold to Columbia Equity Trust that closed at the end of September for $26 million.

On the home front, Dek’s family celebrated its first Christmas in the 1899Cleveland Park home they just finished renovating, in time to get a pool table from Santa. At the Meisel household, Santa left Jim’s wife an even hipper gift, a motorized Vespa scooter. No wonder the wives didn’t need to be out eating steaks.