Brunch at Sticky Rice
I talk a lot about Sticky Rice. Like, A LOT. I always tell people to go there, and I routinely force my friends to trek out H St. for tots and sush. Come on, tater tots and sushi in one menu? And a liberal use of srircha? It doesn’t get much better than that. And on top of that, the sushi isn’t your standard spicy tuna rolls and cucumber rolls—they’re inventive and wacky and delicious. And there are enough options on the menu to keep me coming back again and again (and again).
When I heard Sticky Rice served brunch, I was intrigued. Would someone finally master my dream dish, the California bacon roll? Sadly, there isn’t an evil genius evil or genius enough in house at Sticky Rice to come up with that concoction (yet!), but there are plenty of other mouth-watering options. I forced my friend to get the Sticky Mess, which reminded me of a kitchen sink salad but without all those stupid vegetables getting in the way. It was rice and cheese and scrambled eggs and green onions and bacon and potatoes and so much more. It was stupid delicious. I had the breakfast balls, which has to be the worst-named dish I’ve seen in a long time. OK, this is the hangover cure I’ve dreamed of. Hangover cures are always such a greasy mess (ahem, red flannel hash at Founding Farmers) that I feel sicker after eating them. These breakfast balls were genius. Inari filled with veggies and rice and tempura fried with a creamy sauce on top. I mean come on. Amazing.
I can’t wait to go back and try some more options—The Kevin Bacon, I’m looking in your direction. And when I’m not nursing the previous evening’s bad decisions, I’m also going to jump head first in to Sticky Rice’s brunch drink menu. Sakimosas sound pretty revolutionary. I will warn those who don’t make quick decisions on Sunday mornings that Sticky Rice doesn’t seat many people for brunch, so I would recommend getting there early and setting up shop. If you let the breakfast balls sit for a little while, you’ll be ready for a godzilla roll before you know it.
There’s no way I could re-rank all 100 restaurants (the math alone would kill me) so I bring to you my ten favorite and least favorite meals. In no particular order (except Komi):
The Best
The Not Best
My parents became pretty intimately acquainted with the Washingtonian list by the time I was done. They’ve lived here a while, are champion diner-outers and listened to me talk for a year about these damned 100 restaurants. So when I told them that I was heading to Obelisk as my 100th and final dinner, they were pleased. Their responses were as follows:
Mom: “It’s French, right?”
Dad: “No, it’s like Moroccan or something. I think you eat with your hands.”
That would be incorrect on both accounts. And it wasn’t just my parents—lots of people had heard of Obelisk, but knew absolutely nothing about it. So here’s a little refresher for you all: it’s actually Italian, teeny tiny, a fixed menu and located in a townhouse on P St. So there you go, now we’re all caught up.
The lovely and talented Meagan has been a major player when it comes to eating this year, so it seemed only fitting that she accompany me to the finale. It was good we didn’t invite too many other friends because Obelisk falls in to the tiny restaurant category—I’d say there’s probably room for 30 diners at most. The dining room is startlingly well lit and noisy, giving that dressed down fancy feel that Komi does so well. The menu is hand written each day, with just a couple choices for each course. On this occasion, there actually wasn’t much on the menu that reached out and grabbed me. It’s not a knock against the kitchen, but with small menus sometimes you hit it on a bad night. And I hit it on a beet ravioli, roast quail kind of night.
The parade of antipasto was pretty wonderful—homemade mortadella, homemade burrata (my favorite), little risotto croquettes. The only issue was that all the plates came out at the same time and it was pretty hard to juggle them all on our little table. No matter, we just ate them faster. Then came the pasta course. I had the duck ragu, which was really flavorful if a bit on the tiny side. And Meagan had the beet ravioli—something I never would have ordered but actually thought was really great. The color was a little off putting but with beets come blood red ravioli filling I guess. Our main courses came out next—Meagan had a really beautiful and tender steak and I had the roast quail. Quail is always better in theory than in practice in my opinion. It comes out so cute and mini-chickeny and then it just ends up being a lot of bones and a little too hard for me to cut up. What little I did get in my mouth tasted really nice though.
Then there was a little cheese course and then dessert. Meagan and a great little pistacio panna cotta, and I had a lemon cake that was a little dry and heavy but only in the way I think all Italian cakes are a little dry and heavy, so I’ll give them a pass. All in all it’s a great meal in the vein of Komi—wonderful service, casual atmosphere and very tasty dishes. Seems only fitting that I end this project with a place like that. Call it: “From Komi to Komi-esque”.
When I was in my tween years, L’Auberge was like this mythical place far away that my really cool friends would get to go on their birthdays. I didn’t know much about it, but I did know that if I went there I would probably eat grilled cheese with caviar and ice cream made of gold. Or something equally fabulous and unbelievable. Then I got a little older and I sort of forgot about it. My friends started having boy/girl parties and let’s be honest—when you’re trying to impress your 15-year-old math class desk mate, you don’t want to have to do it at a fancy French restaurant. So in all my years in Washington, and after all the stories, I had never been there.
My original plan was to head over there on my final Sunday of my blog year to have a lovely French brunch with my parents. It would have been a regal end, I thought. Then, the Snowpacalypse. But because of those fabulous folks at the Capital Weather Gang, I was prepared. So on Tuesday I made alternative plans—I would beg my office to let me slip out in the middle of the day for a quick (ha) trip to Great Falls for lunch. And so I did.
It’s a long way out there through the rolling hills of suburbia, but then you come upon this little chateau as if out of the French countryside. As I skidded in to the parking lot (I didn’t see the restaurant until it was almost too late) I noticed that there weren’t too many other cars in the parking lot. Like NO other cars in the parking lot. Then my whole blog flashed before my eyes: the restaurant was obviously randomly closed, it was going to snow twelve million inches that night and then I wouldn’t ever be able to get here again. Luckily, I tried the front door just in case and it was open. Phew. And I wasn’t even the only one in the restaurant!
I had scouted out the menu ahead of time, so I knew what I wanted. Alsatian food is pretty heavy so I thought that a nice little quiche would be the way to get around that at lunchtime. It had ham, bacon and gruyere—a classic (and delish) combo. It was served with a little side salad, some green beans and about four different kinds of bread. Quiche doesn’t usually knock my socks off (I’m much more likely to go for the bagels and lox at a brunch buffet) but this version was pretty great. I expected salty and creamy, but it was also smokey and sweet. So many different flavors that all melded nicely. It might have even had umami, the elusive fifth taste, if I actually knew what that tasted like. And it was a huge portion. I didn’t come close to finishing it, not to mention the green beans and bread I left scattered all over the table.
I’m usually a proud lone diner, and I don’t mind sitting and munching by myself with just my magazine to keep me company. But one of my gripes is that I feel like restaurants try and shove their single diners out quickly with the courses coming fast and furious and the check on the table as I’m taking my first bites. The waiter at L’Auberge was quite the opposite—and while it was nice not to feel rushed, I finished my magazine a little quicker than I expected and ended up sitting for a good twenty minutes staring in to space as I tried to flag him down to bring the check. But if the only complaint I’ve got with a place is that their waitstaff is too considerate to bother me, I think it’s a-ok.
A quiche built for two.
Bread option number one of five.
It’s a good thing I ate myself in to oblivion last year instead of this year, because instead of “From Komi to Marvin”, the name of my blog would have been “From Komi to 3 Bar & Grill.” Doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. The list had it’s inevitable shift this year—some restaurants were up and some were down. It’s hard to really get too hung up on the order of the list since out of 100 it’s pretty hard to differentiate between number 61 and number 58, but I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have my own opinions, so here we go.
The Shooting Stars
The truth is, there weren’t a ton of major jumps up for last year’s restaurants. I guess that says a lot for…consistency? But there were some changes, some good and some inexplicable. The changes that made my think “hey! good for you!” were the likes of Rays the Steaks (#31 to #19) and Adour (#71 to #50). I think both of those restaurants are cult favorites that really are as good as everyone says they are. And for a fish and bread girl to praise Rays the Steaks as much as I do, you know it’s good. And then there are those shifts that cause epic eye rolls. For instance, there’s Blue Duck Tavern (from #42 to #25) and Charlie Palmer Steak (from #41 to #23). Both are good, but I didn’t think they were really incorrectly ranked to begin with. I don’t necessarily think either of these guys are among the top 25 places to eat in D.C. And there’s Jaleo. My nemesis. I still don’t quite get it, though it seems like everyone in the world (or at least the Washingtonian dining out staff) do get it. Jose Andres finagled his way from #46 to #32 this year. Watch out Komi, he’s coming for ya!
I’m Drowning, I’m Drowning!
I’ve become pretty attached to these restaurants over the past year, so I’m always a little sad to see them slip in the standing…or am I…? Well, sometimes I am. Especially when I saw the dive that Volt took (from #15 to #29). It may not seem like much since number 29 is still mighty impressive, but Volt was by far one of the best meals I’ve had this year and I’m sad to see it slip behind the likes of some lesser restaurants. Is Bryan Voltaggio’s fame just too much to handle? A few restaurants took a well-deserved tumble this year—BLT Steak (#11 to #22), Westend Bistro (#35 to #67) and Bourbon Steak (#16 to #35). I think these restaurants were the J&G Steakhouses of last year—maybe placed a little higher on the list than they deserved since they had a super cool celebrity chef attached. I think they’re in their rightful places now though.
And now that I’m done disagreeing with the Washingtonian writers, it’s high time to point out their little article they did on the wrap up of my blog. Feel free to check it out here. No need to leave comments on how poor my grammar is this time folks, I got it the last time.
Of all the many restaurants on the Washingtonian list, there was only one that my mom had dibs on. And just to make sure she wouldn’t bail on all the random restaurants I forced her to go to, I held out until the very end to try Vidalia. She loved the previous incarnation of Vidalia from back in the day when it was the restaurant, and so she was psyched to try it out now that it had been rehabbed and refurbished.
I never saw the before picture of Vidalia, but this subterranean space was anything but dark and dreary. Light colors and glass partitions gave it that lofty feel but without the picture windows looking out on the McDonalds and Jos. A. Banks of M St. outside. It was like a little escape from the hoards of office drones fighting their way in to the newest chic salad restaurant. I fully expected the clientele to be the standard expense account types, but there were quite a few tables of younger worker bees mixed in. I thought maybe the restaurant week menu had been extended, but no, they just came for the onions.
Since it was a serious southern restaurant, Mom and I went for some southern favs—shrimp and grits for me and fried chicken for her. My shrimp and grits were great, though there were a few shells on my shrimp, tsk tsk. The base for the sauce was rich and had a lot of depth and the grits were divine. I also appreciated that it was a true lunch portion—enough to fill me up but not enough to leave me effectively paralyzed for the rest of the day. My mom’s fried chicken was great too, with a wonderful crust and some really tender meat. It was served with some kale or some other kind of winter green that had an odd flavor we couldn’t quite place. Lucky for us we both hate winter greens, so the mystery flavor stayed a mystery.
So all in all, a very good meal and not terribly expensive. Was it worth of a number seven ranking? It would be tough for me to give it that, but maybe the dinner menu is a little more groundbreaking than the lunch menu. They did get a few points off in my book though because they didn’t have Sweet ‘n Low. What’s the deal, D.C. restaurants? Got something against the pink stuff? I wouldn’t expect that from a nice southern restaurant like Vidalia, I was just trying to sweeten up my tea for gosh sakes!
As I’m walking to dinner at Taberna (I’ve shortened the name to preserve my fingertips), I got a text from my friend and dinner date, Becca: “I’m here. This place is insane.” Oh Becca, I’ve seen insane. There’s no way an expense account restaurant like Taberna could be that crazy. Men in black suits and conservative ties would never have it! Oy, texts do not do this place justice. It is nutty on the inside. It’s a little like a Romanov palace meets the way hell is depicted on The Simpsons. Mayhaps that’s a bit harsh, but it’s the only thing I can think of. And dead on, in my opinion.
We thought the menu was going to be tapas-heavy but it actually was tapas-free. Our extensive pre-meal Googling failed us though, because we figured out that all the tapas was only served in the bar. (We think.) After doing away with our tapas dreams, the menu was overall pretty heavy. I was still in my post food poisoning funk so I wanted something light. I was definitely out of luck. Since us gals spent too much time gossiping and not enough time deciding what to eat, we froze up when the waiter came over and blurted out that we wanted the paella. Pork paella for two, very romantic.
Once our dinner came out, there was some superfluous tableside preparation complete with our waiter asking us how much we wanted, like a tuxedo-ed Jewish mother. It might have been because it was out of the cast iron dish by the time I got my hands on it, but there wasn’t that crunchy crust Food Network has taught me to look for in my paellas. Aside from that minor offense, I thought it was great. And the portion was huge, even for two people. Our Jewish mother/waiter came by to give us a second helping and though I pretended to protest, I obviously gobbled it up. I’ve had friends who ate there and ordered non-paella dishes weren’t too impressed, so I’m thrilled with our decision. My theory would be to go simple.
Aside from being decorated like a really, really classy brothel, we were also the youngest people there by approximately sixty years. There were a couple youngin’s at the bar, but for the most part it was us and large tables of awkward business dinners in the dining room. I probably won’t be running to eat there again any time soon—not a dig against the food, it just wasn’t my scene. But if I do have a hankerin’ for some not crunchy paella, I know where to go.
There have been a lot of restaurants I classified as “small”. Komi was small, Obelisk was small, Kotobuki was really small. But Makoto made all these teeny tinies look like the mall food court. Not only is it tiny when it comes to square footage, but it just feels small—no windows will do that to you. When you first walk through the door, you’re greeted with a space heater, a coat rack and some shoes and slippers. It’s a lot more like a mudroom than a restaurant. But this place means business and no shoes are allowed. Instead, you get some nice slippers and a sign on the wall that says the restaurant is not responsible if your stuff is stolen. Let’s eat!
The “dining room” is a windowless box with four tables and a little bar with probably ten (backless) stools. Unless you’re eating with a big group—and a big group would be four at Makoto—I would recommend bellying up to the bar. The chefs make everything behind the bar, and it’s so artistic the way they slice and mold all the food right before it’s sent out to you. There is a lunch menu, but I feel like not being able to read Japanese put me at a real disadvantage. It would say things like “Snapper” on the menu, and then would be followed by two lines of Japanese characters, which I can assume explained what exactly the dish was. No matter, I ordered the lunch box, which had absolutely no explanation. But at $17.50, it seemed like a steal.
And a steal it was. The lunch box is not the elementary school PB&J special with a napkin note from your mom—it is many courses of exquisitely prepared food. It started with a smoked mussel soup, which was hard to eat with just chopsticks and the little spoon, but I got the hang of it. I didn’t really know what to do with the shells though. That was actually my issue with the restaurant (but really myself). I always felt like I was offending the chefs or the waitresses with my dumb American demeanor (I asked for a spoon for my miso soup, whoops) but they were nice and friendly and hopefully didn’t spit in my food. After the soup came my first tray of little dishes—rolled rice and vegetables, some sauteed onion and mushroom, and salmon shad roe. The salmon was awesome and I could have gone for a few more helpings of that. I thought that was it, and was a little annoyed with how little food I got for my almost $18. Then came the next tray. Four little dishes of perfect 3 oz. portions of different fish—if you’re doing the math at home folks, that’s 3/4 of a pound of fish, not too shabby. All the dishes were explained to me, but I honestly missed about 2/3 of what the waitress was telling me and I felt kind of stupid asking her to repeat herself (see above). I loved the orange roughy, glazed with something sweet and charred just a bit around the edges. The huge pieces of fatty tuna sashimi were better than any I’d ever had before. There was a (I think) sea bass, with a nice clean smokey flavor. Last was a fish I never figured out, and it still had the little fins on there—not my idea of a good time. I was pretty full anyway so I left that one after one bite. Finally, my friendly waitress brought out a bowl of miso soup (and no spoon) which I gulped down somehow even though I’m not sure where I put it. I couldn’t imagine eating one more thing, but out came one more thing. This time it was some aloe vera shaved ice (which I knew was traditional from that episode of True Life: I’m a Competative Eater where Kobyashi trains his stomach by eating all the shaved ice and noodles. Anyone see that one? No?). Lucky for me, the aloe vera tasted much less like solercane and much more like a nice little tropical fruit than I expected.
I have a fondness for Makoto not only because the food was amazing, but because it reminded me of one of my favorite episodes of No Reservations. Tony (Anthony Bourdain to all of you not in the know) goes to Japan and has Morimoto prepare a meal at his restaurant using every part of a monkfish. That restaurant felt the same as Makoto—stark but clean, where the emphasis is on the food. I’m now officially one step closer to taking over No Reservations…Hello, Travel Channel, I have some time on my hands these days.