Today is technically the last day of my blog project (bloject?) and there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that I did, in fact, finish eating at all 100 restaurants in under a year. Actually, I finished with five days to spare so stick that in your pipe and smoke it. What’s the bad news you ask? I’m not done writing up the last few restaurants. So don’t fret, there are a few more posts to come though I am officially done with eating. Not necessarily eating altogether, but eating and then documenting everything I shove in my body for my adoring public. If you’re having separation anxiety, I’ll give you this: I had a pretty awesome Lean Cuisine pizza for lunch, though I added some extra cheese on top for a little pizzaz. I give it three and a half stars.
Where will the blog go when I’m finally finished thinking of interesting synonyms for yummy? Right now, it’s unclear. But as long as you, dear readers, keep reading I will keep writing. And keep spelling things wrong and using commas incorrectly. It’s kind of my calling card, you know?
8. Inn at Little Washington
Of all the restaurants on the list, Inn at Little Washington seemed the most daunting. SO far away. SO fancy. SO expensive. SO not my scene. But that which the list dictates, I shall eat. I put this one off long enough, so I bit the bullet and forced my mom to make the three hour (round trip) trek out to greater Ohio. Or Washington, VA. Whatever, anything past Tyson’s Corner is a mystery to me.
It was rainy and cold and dark on this particular Sunday night which normally would be miserable, but as we drove up to the Inn, it all seemed kind of perfect. To say that the service is impeccable doesn’t do it justice. Actually, no word in the English language correctly identifies how attentive the staff was. When we walked in the door the lovely, distinguished maitre d’ asked if we were the Messicks. Why yes, we are! I don’t know if I just look like I’ve got a lot of German heritage, or maybe we were the only people with 5:45pm reservations, or maybe they’re psychic. Then, we were seated and our menus had “A Warm Welcome to the Messicks” across the top. I mean, come on. I’ve been to one hundred fancy meals over the past year, and that’s the first time I’ve been on the menu. Fan-cy.
The dining room is decorated…kind of weird. The hotel is very English bed and breakfast meets Williamsburg Inn, but the dining has a splash of the Russian Tea Room to it. Every table has a very large fringed red lampshade hanging above it. It somehow all worked, but there was a lot going on. Perhaps that was why it took my mom and I about thirty minutes to figure out what we wanted to order. All the distractions, yeah that’s it. There are three ways to do the menu: the Tasting Menu ($188), the Tasting Menu with wine pairings ($288) or the relative cheap-o a la carte menu ($148). Being total cheapskates, we went with $150 option, which got us four courses for our money.
The thing about Patrick O’Connell’s menu is that every dish is decked out to the foodie nines. Foie gras, truffles, lobster—it’s all there. I started with the spicy big eye tuna, which was sweet and spicy and served with a really amazing sake sorbet. My mom had a tough time deciding when to eat lobster (appetizer or main) but she ended up with the chilled lobster served with avocado, grapefruit and lotus root. I wouldn’t really think to serve lobster and grapefruit together, but it was a great compliment. For our second course, I had the diver scallops and gnocchi. My only complaint was that it was a tiny portion. I would end up loving that there tiny portion later when I was forcing my main course in to my over-stuffed belly. My mom had the macaroni and cheese, which seems weird at such a fancy place, but it was unlike any mac and cheese to come out of a blue box. It was only six pieces of rigatoni in a perfect cheese sauce with parmesan crisps and Virginia ham, not to mention the several hundreds of dollars worth of truffles shaved on to the mac table-side. We were unsure whether or not we were supposed to tell the shaver to stop, like a pepper grinder, but why stop a good thing like truffles raining on your pasta?
I know it’s getting touch, but stick with me folks, there’s still two more courses to go. But we are up to the main course—it’s the home stretch. I had the tiny filets of black cod with the lemon vodka sauce. De-lish. And the little shrimp dumplings served along with the fish were pretty great too. My mom had the beef two ways, mostly because I forced her, but I think she was happy with the decision. The teeny tiny filet mignon was practically raw but so tender and flavorful. It didn’t look all that appetizing, but boy did it taste good. The real showstopper were the short ribs, which were doused in a delicious barbecue sauce. By this time we were losing steam but found the strength to keep eating. It was dessert time! I went with the totally reserved and figure-friendly bread pudding while my mom got the dessert sampler. Did she get it because I forced her to? Perhaps, but that’s neither here nor there. Everything was great, not that I expect anything otherwise.
The food at the Inn is all around amazing, but the service is really unparalleled. After our meal, our waiter took us on a tour of the kitchen. I’ve seen a lot of TV shows based around how a restaurant kitchen works, and usually it’s a lot of screaming and things catching on fire. That’s not the case here, the kitchen was a clean, bright and relaxing place. I thought about curling up next to the fireplace for a little nap, but I had a quick hour and a half drive ahead of me so I figured we better get on the road. I can’t imagine there are many regulars at the Inn, but if you have a really special occasion to celebrate and about six hours to celebrate it, definitely don’t count the Inn out. I mean, it’s not really that far. (It is.)
Inn at Little Washington
Washingtonian Review
Here’s an idea: Force your mom to order this then drive her crazy by commenting on how she’s a fatty for ordering seven desserts. Mom’s love that.
Food Porn Pic of the Day
Fattoush, Zaytinya
19. Corduroy
Those of you who follow me on Twitter already know this, but this Friday night I was taken down by food poisoning. Taken down, and taken down hard. I’m pretty tough when it comes to all things medical, but this being my first bout with food poisoning, I thought it was pretty miserable. And what was the source of my pain? That would be number nineteen on our hit parade—Corduroy.
Needless to say this post will be short because I don’t exactly want to relive the experience, but here’s what little I do have to say: the restaurant is West Elm-chic, the service was impeccable and the food tasted great. Had I sat down to write this post an hour after eating, it would have said some very different things.
But I didn’t write this immediately, so here we stand. And let me say, I’m not trying to start an Internet campaign to take down Corduroy or anything. I think these things happen and the fact that I’ve probably eaten no less than 300 dishes with seafood in them in the past year and not gotten deathly ill is a miracle. However, it’ll be a long while before Corduroy and I are friends again. Same goes for you, scallops.
Corduroy
Washingtonian Review
11. BLT Steak
It took me a long time to get myself over to BLT Steak. The combo of less-than-awesome reviews from friends along with the astronomical prices never exactly got me in the mood. But then someone told me about the popovers. Then EVERYONE told me about the popovers. So I had to go, for the love of popovers.
I didn’t have a reservation, so I pulled my regular move of showing up at exactly 11:30am for lunch. I find that even if restaurants are full with reservations at noon, they have a pretty hard time turning you away from a completely empty restaurant. So the hostess begrudgingly seated me by my lonesome in the back corner of the restaurant. What do they think? That I’m some kind of loser? Well let me just get out my Kindle and my tip calculator and…oh…I am a loser? Interesting development.
Anywhoo, once ensconced in my nerd-dom I surveyed the menu. My earlier assumptions were correct—BLT Steak is seriously expensive. The lunch menu gives those of us with lighter wallets at least a fighting chance with their sandwich offerings. I chose the Kobe beef and foie gras sandwich because let’s be honest, am I really going to be able to get through the rest of the menu after seeing that? It came out in literally three minutes, but I guess since I was still the only person in the restaurant there wasn’t exactly a backup in the kitchen. You know the saying, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts”? Well, this sandwich is the opposite. Individually, everything was great, but the sandwich was almost impossible to eat. Everything was sort of the same slippery texture so when I bit down, everything slid right out of the bread. And call me crazy but I don’t think Kobe is meant to be ripped apart by human chompers (at least not by my human chompers). By the end of my meal I wasn’t only a Kindle-reading loser, but a messy loser too.
Well, were the popovers worth it? Most definitely. They were delicious and the size of my head. And I can get behind any restaurant that serves me my bread not only with butter but a giant shaker of salt. Slather some foie gras on one of those bad boys and BLT Steak could really be on to something…
BLT Steak
Washingtonian Review
This is the before picture. The after picture looks a lot like this, but with all the food on my lap.
21. Teatro Goldoni
Everyone I know has a story about Teatro Goldoni. One person told me about the time they were eating there and the man at the table next to them proposed to his girlfriend. In response, she asked to go to the bathroom and never came back. Another friend told me about the time she was eating there with her parents and some ladies of the night, if you know what I’m saying, were conducting some business at the bar. I had no stories about Teatro Goldoni, so I was glad to finally make some memories of my own.
I had read a lot of reviews of the restaurant that referred to the decor as “circus-themed”. I was ready for some insane juggling monkeys hanging from the ceiling, but sadly, the only circus theme I saw was the diamond patterned walls. I guess it was a more reserved circus. Carnivaleit was not. But I guess if a restaurant was themed like the Depression-era dust bowl, it wouldn’t exactly make me want to spend $40 on lobster risotto. But I digress…
But I don’t digress too far! Before I talk food, I need to talk prices. After eating at lo these many fancy pants restaurants this year, it takes a lot for me to get sticker shock. Well, lucky for you Teatro Goldoni, you shocked me. Two plates of pasta, one martini and our bill was NINETY DOLLARS.I mean, come on people. Ninety bucks? For pasta? I know there was lobster in it, but it wasn’t full of lobsTERS or diamonds or Range Rovers or anything. A touch pricey, even for K St. standards.
But the food, was it $90 worth of good? Meh. It was probably $50 worth of good, but I needed to be seriously impressed for the money. I got the magic lobster risotto, the one dish that’s been recommended to me this year more than any other. It is a major portion and it is chocked full of lobster, though I found the tail meat to be a little tough. The claw meat was delightful. Patrick had the cavatelli pasta with Maine lobster and thyme cream sauce. Here is what Patrick has to say:
“Pluses: Food was delicious. Pasta was good. Sauce was great.
Minuses: I didn’t go for lunch, I went for dinner! And when I eat, I want it to be the last meal I eat for the night. And after I got to an Italian restaurant, I don’t expect to go to the gym after. I expect to fall in to a coma. To summarize, the portion size was small.”
He also complained that since the menu said “Maine lobster” he expected a giant lobster on his plate. Another notable quotable from Patrick:
“If the menu said Rhode Island lobster, it would have been fine. But it didn’t. It said Maine.”
I do think he would have been a pretty happy camper had the portion been about twice the size. I tasted a bit and it was pretty great, and his ratio of lobster to not lobster was a lot higher than in my risotto.
All in all, the food at Teatro was definitely good but next time I go I’ll need someone to subsidize my meal. Paging Mom and Dad!
Teatro Goldoni
Washingtonian Review
