We love to eat, and we love to eat out. Our friends frequently ask us for dining recommendations, and we try to stay current with all the new restaurant openings. We aren't professional restaurant critics, and our day jobs have nothing to do with the food or restaurant industry. We pay for all our meals.
There's just two of us, so we may only have the opportunity to visit a restaurant once before writing a review. We won't have been able to try a number of the menu items, so we invite you to share your experiences.
Thank you for visiting our website, and happy dining!
This entry was posted on 1/10/2010 9:40 AM and is filed under New American Casual.
Another addition to the Washington corridor food scene, this new restaurant has a warm, cozy vibe and very good food. Housed in a former pool hall, we dined here one recent Saturday evening. We had reservations, which are advisable, but walk-ins would likely have been accommodated. The bar area is good sized, with couches and coffee tables aligned along the wall. As is popular nowadays, there's a list of artisan cocktails. We sampled and enjoyed two. They were even willing to replace one to remove the anise-flavored liqueur at no extra charge. Service was good, and our server was well versed in the menu. Valet parking seems pretty much obligatory.
Shortly after we were seated, hot biscuits arrived. A nice start. We tried two of the snack items -- fried olives and pork rinds. The breaded, stuffed and deep fried olives arrived piping hot and were quite tasty. Although Alison Cook dissed the pork rinds, we liked the puffy fried skin critters. We moved on to the chicken fried oyster appetizer, which should have had "buffalo" somewhere in the name as the fried oysters were tossed in a spicy buffalo sauce and served on a celery remoulade slaw. Call them whatever you want, just call us to eat them.
For an entrée, we tried the duck confit risotto. The risotto was nicely cooked and well seasoned but not replete with pieces of duck confit. We'd probably not order it again. We shared another appetizer as an entrée -- prawns wrapped in bacon on cheddar polenta, topped with a poached egg. A nice comfort food dish, the shrimp were cooked appropriately, solidifying our membership in the plop a poached egg on pretty much anything fan club, but a little too much worcestershire in the polenta overpowering the flavor of the shrimp if you were trying to get a bite of both together.
