6. Restaurant Eve
Before we start in on the restaurant, let’s break it down good news/bad news style. The good news: last Wednesday marked From Komi to Marvin’s half birthday, and though I’m at the halfway mark timewise, I’m actually way ahead of schedule when it comes to my eating. (I’m a prodigy, really.) The bad news: my dedication to my craft is making it pretty apparent that Washington’s best restaurants sometimes are kind of expensive. Who knew? I’m not letting it get me down though, I’m getting creative. This leads me back to my latest meal: Restaurant Eve. One of the best restaurants inside the Beltway, it takes some serious cash to do it right. The tasting menus rival Minibar and Komi, and unfortunately for Restaurant Eve, I ate those tasting menus first. So instead of the tasting menu, we had the deal of the century. Behold the Lickily Split Lunch:
For $13.50, you get two items off a menu that includes a few choices each of wines, appetizers, entrees and desserts. Am I making myself clear? That is $6.75 per course. To make sure I’m being perfectly clear, the latte I had this morning was $4.45. And my food way way more than $2.35 better. Are we all on the same page now? Great.
My mom and I were strategic in our ordering, she ordered an appetizer and an entree, I ordered an entree and a dessert. For our appetizer, which come to think of it she never said we would share (whoops!), was the papri chaat. I don’t think of Cathal Armstrong, owner of such restaurants as Eammon’s Dublin Chipper, as being terribly Indian-influenced but he made it work. Tons and tons of flavors (sweet, spicy, tangy, smokey), mixed in with chickpeas and toasted flatbreads. My mom and I are both new to Indian cuisine, and we both gave it a strong two thumbs up. For our entrees, we went with the two sandwiches on the menu—the Irish BLT and the sandwich du jour, homemade corned beef. The Irish BLT was great, salty like a margarita rim but that’s fine by me. The corned beef was the winner of the sandwich-off though, not only because the meat was wonderful and lean, but it was perfectly complemented by a great grainy mustard and a wonderful housemade roll. Both sandwiches were served with homemade chips (meh.) and homemade pickles (yay!). We finished up our meal with the Birthday Cake. I thought it would be more like “Birthday Cake”—some ingenious reinterpretation of birthday cake, but this was straight up Barbie pink, rainbow sprinkles, piped decorations and sugar rush for days Birthday Cake. My mom and I were not so into it, but when the bartender took it away he said “well, it’s the dessert you would have wanted when you were 12.” Touche, sir. Touche.
So there you go: great food at a great price. The holy grail of eating, and I found it. Well actually my mom found it. And it’s not really a secret per se. So…whatever, you should just try it. The portions are a bit on small side, but two courses at lunch even if they are light is plenty filling for me. And remember they don’t specify which courses you have to eat, just any two. If I were you, I’d just get two corned beef sandwiches and call it a day. You may not want to order that on a date though.
