Johnny's Half Shell

Well, the moment had to come when a restaurant didn't meet full top 100 muster. But at the high-level of competitive food critiquing my friends and I engage in, there is little room for error. So after tonight, where the mood and intonation of the waitress was a bit too affected (and eerily similar to how Annette Bening would sound self-righteously reading her own Beatnik poetry) and two beers and a basket of bread were delivered without our explicit consent, I could not fully endorse Johnny's Half Shell as the 44th best restaurant in DC. I was out with the regular crew, who were able to adeptly examine the strengths and shortcomings of Johnny's, succinctly between dessert and before the quarters in the meter ran out.

It began well: an interesting array of glad handers, pin-wearers, name tag-sporters, and toothy smilers stocked the bar, the white and green hexagonal tile on the floor added a bit of old-timey charm, and the whole restaurant had the ephemeral DC political buzz where you feel important things are being said and deals are being made all around that I rarely experience. We even saw Michael Steele.

Ok, well, that's Andy, but that's Michael Steele's arm in the distance.

We're all such easy diners: the girls got Stella, the boys got Anchor Steam. We ordered 12 oysters and everyone had their appointed three. Dinners were laid down and Mike initiated the food offering (a scallop on my plate) that was quickly followed up with various forks criss-crossing to help themselves to others' dinners. If Esther Williams and her synchronized swimming pals went out to dinner, they would have been hard pressed to coordinate their fork movements as effortlessly as us.

In the same vein, Andy observed that when ordering, it was helpful having a backup as we all frequently tend toward the same items. How cute. Andy got what Mike considered, Mike got what I normally would order, while I should have followed my instincts and gotten what Kerry had.

Kerry with the fritti misti (fish, shrimp, calamari, and fennel all lightly fried) and Andy with the what-should-have-been-wild-steelhead but substituted for another fish, pan-roasted with mild mushrooms and sauteed spinach in a vin blanc sauce.

Mike had a beautiful plateful of scallops in a lemon-caper sauce with a warm salad of roasted winter vegetables and olives.

I think I lost and had two alarmingly unique textured appetizers for dinner. I started with the grilled squid, served with a small arugula salad with crispy shallots and lemon viaigrette. It wasn't the delicious and crispy sucker-laced tentacles that bothered me.

It was the fact that it appeared that I had four huge insect pupae on my plate. I saw the Lion King.

Our minimally clever waitress--more interested in her turn of phrase than in the act of listening--said the crabcakes were the most popular item on the menu. They were fine, but I would have thought their namesake state was much farther away so that they could still be called Maryland crabcakes while embodying such mediocrity. The coleslaw, long strands of cabbage, carrots, and onions, was delicious though.

Dessert, as always, compensated for past wrongs. Kerry and Andy got the coconut cake:

Mike got the apple pie with a crumble topping:

And I had the chocolate bread pudding, served with chili-infused slices of blood oranges, which were responsibly chocolatey and cleverly sweet and spicy, respectively:

But it was still all surprisingly uninspired on the whole: we universally agreed the decor was an amalgamation of inconsistent styles and a poor use of space, the service was just a shade too preoccupied and indifferent, and there was a very glaring disconnect between a restaurant that appears to coast on its good reviews and tourist patronage with the sort of place so close to the Capitol that could be a bastion of quiet sophistication. But, Johnny's Half Shell put me 18 restaurants away from being halfway done.