Lyon Hall

The irony doesn't escape me that despite spending 3.5 months in France and eking out only two food write-ups, one week in DC and visiting one restaurant with a French city in its title brings me back prodigal-food-writer-style to amateurly critiquing food.

I'm not going to lie: it's been hard being back. Instead of Special K 100 calorie bars, I bought €5 bars of artisinal chocolate. €3.50 bottles of wine were better than some glasses (ok, three) that I was offered at a fine American steakhouse and turned up my nose at. I consider cheese a dessert, I have heavy disdain for bread that's not two feet long and baked this morning, and I'm going through pastis withdrawals. I'm intolerably snotty, I have to check myself from beginning every sentence with "when I was in France, I ate...," and my palate has decided to only like French imports, which are decidedly pricier than their related products manufactured, sold, and bought in France at half the price.

So, imagine my surprise when after a week of being in DC, where the only things giving any pleasure to my enlightened but petulant culinary consciousness were leftover French chocolate, a few glasses of Bordeaux a night, and clementines from California, I eagerly and happily ate an entire meal. This was epic, for an amateur food writer who used to be satisfied with soy nuggets for dinner and then got spoiled by foies gras, bloody steaks and the like.

So what is this place that casually uses the name of France's gastronomical capital, Lyon? Lyon Hall is a restaurant in Arlington that impressively and creatively serves mostly French-themed dishes with either an American or Alsatian/Hungarian/Basque/German twist. It's of peu importe: most dishes come with sausage or bacon so it's sort of like intellectual comfort food.

And it was pretty much the most flattering pre-food-blog writing experience ever. My charming company, including the indefatigable, supportive food-blogging trifecta of Andy, Kerry and Mike introduced me as a veritable above-average amateur food critic. Expectiations that I actually know something intelligent about food were high, but so were the opportunities to nip bites from other peoples' plates. And what a place to take spoonfuls of other peoples' food.

I started off with the beet and arugula salad. Innocuous and nearly what I ate for New Year's: roasted beets, pistachios, arugula, shaved fennel, and goat cheese (ok, I really want to say chevre but I will keep it hidden in the parentheses). The vinaigrette wasn't too strong and I would only criticize the little goat cheese balls forming a triangle around my plate. That's why I'm unnerved by Wendy's square burger patties: beef (and cheese) aren't meant to be shaped certain ways. Also, I liked my salad because my dining neighbor, Pete, mentioned how he hated canned beets too and was discovering that fresh beets can taste sort of amazing, like I have recently discovered. Remarkable, these non-canned beets.

Did I mention I spent $18 on two pricey (but delicious) American beer (in the background)? Lyon Hall 1, Julie 0.

So I got the mussels for dinner, because that seemed sufficiently Frenchtentious (I may decide to delete that tomorrow). But, since Lyon Hall is only partially French (the host had the French complicated scarf tying going on but was sufficiently un-French in his reception), my mussels normande were American-French: mussels with blue cheese, empire apples, bacon and a Calvados-leek broth. Since blue cheese is my current favorite (especially coupled with apples), I approved.

The main highlight of the meal was trying other peoples' food, something I silently demand from men with whom I date (it's a test) and something that drives my brother crazy, but that delightedly, none of my tablemates and friends minded. I tried Mike's squash soup (pumpkin-beer puree, duck-fig sausage and celeriac kraut: it didn't taste that complicated but was satisfyingly hearty), Andy's sauerkraut (pleasantly earthly and un-tart) and his lamb sausage plate. This place is where you go where you feel insatiably cold and need something amelioratingly warm (or post-France after a semester of language, etc.). Merci.