56. Mio
When I saw Mio on the Washingtonian list, I thought to myself, “Self, your hair looks great today. Also, what the hell is Mio?” The fact that there wasn’t any hubbub (at least to my knowledge) about this restaurant told me and my feeble mind that this place was probably really great to make a mark on the illustrious list without Jose Andres in the kitchen. So I plucked it from obscurity for my mom’s birthday dinner.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t worth a special occasion dinner. Actually, it wasn’t worth any sort of dinner. The restaurant is definitely a cool space, and the bar seemed to be the place to be on this particular Friday night, but the food was full on tragic. My appetizer was so offensively bad, that it was like someone was playing a practical joke on me.
What was this heinous display of cooking? That would be the rockfish crudo, which my waiter recommended. He told me it was “kind of like ceviche” and that it was his favorite appetizer on the menu. Sounds great. I love crudo, the ones at Hook are especially note-worthy, and so I was glad to see it on the menu. Well, this was disappointing. The fish was cut way too thick and the little salad it was served over was disgusting. In probably a cup-worth of salad, there was a least a full lime cut in to huge chunks. I love lime, but I don’t want to EAT IT STRAIGHT. Aside from a gross ton of lime, it was essentially just cilantro and red onion. Totes bad. Other appetizers that made their way to the table were the “crab balls” (crab cakes with too much filler) and the calamari. The calamari might have been fine if it wasn’t overcooked, but it was pretty misleading. It came out as lightly sauteed strips of squid, which is fine, but for the squeamish in the house it might not have gone over so well if they were expecting their fish to be hidden by some fried bread.
The main courses fared a little better. The best dish of the night came on my mom’s place mat—the seared duck. It was served traditionally, but instead of cherries, it had braised olives. This component could have gone horribly wrong, but it actually was a nice salty compliment to the duck. My dad had the risotto with asparagus, which was fine, though the asparagus had been undercooked/added too late and was too crisp to match the glueteny rice. I had the roast chicken, one of my favorite dishes to order out since I rarely make a perfectly roasted chicken for little old me, and it fell a bit short. The portion was small and the chicken was a tad over cooked. Most offensive of all was the fact that the skin wasn’t crispy. Mama needs crispy skin if she’s going to give a thumbs up to roast chicken.
The service unfortunately didn’t do much for our opinion of the restaurant since it bordered on glacial. It seemed like the servers were caught off guard by a half-full dining room on a Friday night. Perhaps our food wouldn’t have been so overcooked if it hadn’t sat waiting to be delivered for so long. Or maybe it was just overcooked to start with. It wasn’t all a loss though, the drink were to die for. The blood orange margarita was delicious AND pretty. So my advice would be to come for the drinks, and flee before the food is delivered.
