DC Restaurant Week 2010 - Reviews

As my dedicated blog followers know by now, I have moved up to the Metro-DC area. As a grad school student, I anticipated two things: 1) Not much spare time and 2) Not much spare money. So, as a local friend of mine informed me that I happened to be moving into the area during DC Restaurant week, I knew this was one of my few opportunities to sample a little bit of the DC foodie culture on a budget before all hell breaks lose with schoolwork.

How it works: many DC area restaurants, including some in Maryland and Northern Virginia, choose to offer a 3-course prix-fixe menu lunch and/or dinner. The lunch menus are all fixed at around $20 and the dinner menus are fixed at $30, regardless of where you go. Most of the places also allow you to book reservations through opentable.com. Naturally, the typically more expensive restaurants and places on the Washingtonian Top-100 list fill up with reservations first. Overall, it's a real win-win for everyone- except for the boozehounds because they still have to pay the full price for their alcohol. The restaurants get to cater to a different clientele that might not otherwise have made the leap of faith to try their place for the first time, and obviously the customers score a major half-off or so discount from the normal prices (depending on where you go). I made it out for one Thursday dinner and one Sunday brunch. I was mostly catching up with old friends that are in the area and I also got to know some newer friends a little better. Larger groups also make it easier to sample and try different options on the prix-fixe menu.

My first stop was Vidalia, about 2 blocks south of Dupont Circle on M Street. Upon entrance, there is a short bar and a clear view into the dining room. The restaurant is housed in a basement that is well decorated, but obviously lacking any sort of natural light from the outside world. The lack of windows combined with the average-to-lower ceiling height made the restaurant seem a little enclosed. White tablecloths. My party of 3 was seated not in the main dining room, but in another small room off to the side that held 3 tables. We grabbed a few drinks, I tried Allagash White ($7) for the first time (eh), before sitting down at the table in front of the dinner menus.

The cuisine is described as being "modern American." I ordered a citrus-marinated salmon appetizer that was topped with a pea-shoot salad and small scoop of watermelon sorbet. It was quite nice and refreshing. The salmon was fresh, and maybe could've used a little bit more of a stronger marinade to stand out, especially because it was under the sweet, pea shoots. Maybe if the greens were left to the side it would not have been as much of a big deal. I ordered a thick-cut pork chop for my entree. In all honesty, I can't really remember much about the entree. There were some beans underneath (fava?) and allegedly some pork belly bits also (but I couldn't really discern). Yeah- it was just that memorable. As per the recommendation of the waiter, I ordered my protein cooked "medium" but it came out well-done. It was quite tough to cut through. One of my friends ordered the same dish and I could see that his was cooked to the proper temperature. Oh well. Our other tablemate ordered a trout dish, but the small portion paled in size comparison to our large pork chops. Last course was dessert, naturally. Here is where Vidalia shined. Our table chose 3 different desserts and we passed them around: a bourbon glazed pecan tart, a lemon chess pie with lemon custard and a shortbread crust, and a buttermilk cake. All of the desserts were fantastic and not overly sweet. Each one just oozed flavor. The cake was moist and topped with coconut. The lemon chess pie's crust was dipping a fresh, shortbread cookie into lemon cream heaven. Hands down, the table favorite was the pecan tart. Unlike the typical mass-produced store bought or even homemade pecan pie, this tart's flavor and texture was not defined by corn-syrup. Rather, this pie had a pleasant denseness to it and a wonderful bourbon aftertaste. Wow! Overall, I was a little underwhelmed by Vidalia's food proper but very happy with the dessert.

My Sunday brunch spot was over near Union Station on E St. NW at Bistro Bis. Bistro Bis also happens to a be la soeur de Vidalia, as they are owned by the same people. Bistro Bis is just an eyeshot from the Capitol and attached to the Hotel George. The interior is great: very open (2 floors), tons of natural lighting, and well-decorated with a lot of wood tones and materials. It stood in stark contrast to Vidalia's enclosed cave feeling. White tablecloths here also. There is indeed a bar near the front entrance, and it is clearly stacked and loaded to serve the workers on Capitol Hill after a long day of greasing the American political machine. Our party was seated towards the back of the main dining room, close to the kitchen. There is a textured glass wall that separates the dining room from the internal workings of Bistro Bis' kitchen. A fireplace is also operational during the colder months, but now it held some standalone, electric A/C units (which weren't needed that day).

The first impression of the food and service at Bistro Bis was the staff uniforms. Servers wear vests and ties, with aprons tied at their waist. It's the sort of thing you would expect out of a French bistro, I suppose. Our server informed us immediately that their normal menu remained unchanged during Restaurant Week. I was very pleased to see a wonderful selection of traditional French bistro favorites with their own special twists available for tasting. A few of us started off with mimosas ($10/pop!), naturally. We were also given a basket of baked goods with bread: sliced baguette pieces and some nice mini-muffins with a coarse sugar topping. For my first course, I order a country-style pâté. People who know me well know that I am a sucker for pâté, whether it's soft or firm and regardless of what animals' internal organs are used. The pâté was firm and contained some pistachios in it. It was accompanied by two slices of olive oil toasted baguette and a small green salad with a simple vinaigrette. The pâté flavor and texture was ok- the nuts were a little bit of a strange texture, as I'm used to a smoother consistency. I wish there were maybe one or two more pieces of bread, as the bread: pâté ratio was a little off-balance. Albeit simple, I thought the scoop of greens was a nice touch. The acidity helped to cleanse the palette after the saltiness of the pâté. For the main course, I ordered a recommendation from the server: a duck confit, poached egg, and garlic potato hash. The whole thing was also topped with a hollandaise sauce. Deeee-licious! The richness of the hollandaise and the fatty duck had a nice flavor foil with the red-wine poached egg and the sauce made from some sort of reduced, dark drippings. The red-wine poached egg had a dark pink/light purple color and was cooked over medium. The dark dripping sauce on the bottom of the plate contained a lot of the duck essence with just the slightest bit of acidity. I might be a sucker for brunch food in general, but this was a hearty, tasty, and overall-satisfying main course. As we all sat around the table, talking about the latest episodes of Top Chef DC, our server brought by the dessert menu and offered his recommendations again. Bistro Bis' pastry chef happens to be Italian. An Italian in a French bistro? Whaa? What this leads to a some mash-ups of the traditional French dishes. I ordered basically an Italian tiramisu made with mascarpone cheese. The dessert came out as a coil piped from a pastry bag with a little bit of cocoa powder on top. The mascarpone made the dish a little too thick for my tastes, and it needed maybe a little more of the alcohol marinaded "cookies" (with amaretto usually) to break up the flavors a little. I also got a little taste of the passionfruit crème brûlée with mini-madelines, which had a bold, fresh passionfruit essence to it. That was quite nice. Overall, I was highly satisfied with the meal. The bright interior, excellent service, and the delicious food amounted to a brunch that I would be willing to pay full price for. Yeah the portions are small- but so are the French, so what else would you expect?


I'm glad I got to take part in the 2010 Restaurant Week here in my new neighborhood. Restaurant weeks are generally a good excuse to get out, try new things, and meet up with good people. A meal that didn't meet certain expectations can be justified because at least you didn't spend +$50/person on the check. I am not exactly a cynic when it comes to restaurants, but after exchanging my overcooked pork story with some of my friends' poor restaurant week experiences, I can't help but wonder if certain establishments take the event more seriously than others. One of the more shocking tales was from a friend of mine who heard a staff member walk a returned appetizer to the kitchen and then told another staff member that they were simply going to "walk through the kitchen and back out onto the floor with the tray" without fixing the problem. I wonder if the sort of gaffs we experienced aren't unusual on an everyday basis at these sort of restaurants, OR if some restaurants feel that preparing dinners under $50 a check is beneath them. Regardless of the reason, I would hope that the restaurants that are serving some of the most important representatives of US politics, business, and foreign dignitaries would always put on their A-game. Still, I would like to thank every restaurant that participated in making the event such a big delight for the whole region- I might not have visited your restaurant this year, but I'll be comin' for ya soon enough!