60. Black’s Bar and Kitchen
I talk a lot about D.C. food families and chefs who sort of run the show when it comes to good dining in town. There’s Ann Cashion, Jose Andres, Cathal Armstrong to name a few, but the Black family restaurateurs might be my favorite. They own Blacksalt, Black Market Bistro, Addie’s (a favorite of mine though it doesn’t make the list) and Black’s. It’s true that a lot of their menu items are shared among their restaurants, but when you do mussels as well as they do, why not? The Black’s I remember from my days growing up on the mean streets of Bethesda was casual and a little empty, but with a major renovation a few years ago, Black’s is now a swanky and chic addition to Bethesda. However, it is equidistant from both the Tastee Diner and the Original Pancake House, so a Denny’s might seem swanky in comparison.
I popped in for lunch and wasn’t sure what to expect. It’s in an odd location, but it is right behind some major office buildings. As I should have guessed, the crowd was your average lunch break types with a birthday party and some ladies who lunch thrown in the mix. On this particular occasion, we fell in to the ladies who lunch category. My mom and I sat down for our meal and the first thing we noticed was that the restaurant was incredibly loud without even being full. Aside from the carpet, there is no fabric in the room to absorb any sound, so it’s probably not the best place to bring Grandma when her hearing aide is low on batteries. The menu was a pretty standard American fare goes to the beach combo—salads and entrees and sandwiches that seemed like the fish was added as an afterthought. I was pretty surprised at how few dishes on the menu featured seafood, especially at a restaurant that considers itself a raw bar.
I went with one of the aforementioned sandwiches with some fish thrown in—the Tilapia Cubano. Now, I love a good cubano sandwich, mostly because I like anything with pickles. A traditional cubano (or so say Wikipedia) is Cuban bread with a buttered crust, a layer of mustard, roasted pork, glazed ham, Swiss cheese and pickles. Ole! The way Black’s did their cubano was to take out the pork (boo) and replace it with a tilapia fillet and melt some American cheese on top. I guess that makes it Cuban/American fusion? They also weren’t going to win any awards with the bread, which was really too soft for me. The end result was a sandwich that between the bread and fish had the same texture and flavor throughout. Luckily, there were pickles.
My mom fared a bit better with her lunch. She went with the special du jour, which was a sauteed cod fillet with a white bean salad of feta, olives and capers. The cod was cooked perfectly and the white bean salad was to die for. It was also the perfect light lunch portion. My advice to the Black’s chefs would be to replace the cubano with the cod fillet and everyone will be a happy camper.
Of all the restaurants under the Black’s umbrella on the list, I have to say that Black’s was my least favorite. But that probably has more to do with some poor ordering on my part than anything else. So I will definitely give it another shot, I hate to even have a little blemish on my record with the Blacks Restaurant Group folks. But the truth is, the Calamari Salad at Addie’s is so good that it probably makes up for any cubano-related wrongdoings.
