The Oval Room

I mean this in the most progressive and feminist way possible, but there are some things girls love to do regardless of their age or professional status: gossip, eat good food, and dress up. My friend Christine and I reached the novel discovery, however, that if there are no compelling men to tempt us to indulge in the latter two, then we'll just arrange for it ourselves.

Last night, we donned silky dresses, high heels, and excessively remarkable jewelry to try The Oval Room's seven course tasting menu. A girl doesn't need to fear the dangers of potent roasted garlic, the perils of dark-sauce indulging, or the liberties her mouth takes with multiple glasses of wine when a good girlfriend is in tow. With our quirky and descriptive waiter, we each had a uniquely DC evening at a table that was a 30 second walk from the White House (I had to round down because the White House has restricted access on Google Maps).


The beauty of dining out with a good girlfriend is that that not only are you able to explore multiple strands of salacious conversation, you can double back and maneuver those strings of conversation in a way that makes them perpetually interesting. Girls' (ok, our) conversational agility became more obvious upon observing the clearly newly minted couple to our right whose frequent hand-holding across the table suggested that that was the most exciting thing going at the table.



















The Oval Room is fairly minimalist on the interior: simple, small abstract paintings adorn the walls and modern yet luxurious chandeliers hang from each dining room. The service is crisp and professional, but out waiter watched over us both hawkishly and fraternally to ensure we were delighted at each dish (which we were).


We started off with the pastrami-cured kampachi (Japanese yellowfin) with tomato jam, hot mustard ice cream, caraway, and pumpernickel croutons. It was clear when the waiter came over and explained the dish's punch line to us that we realized neither the menu nor the waiter were entirely conventional: it was a rendition of a pastrami sandwich with deconstructed components.


The beauty of the menu was the inclusion of normally unappetizing components paired cleverly: items like caraway, licorice, or peas and carrots rarely get a chance to shine as more than a pesky backdrop, but not here.

The second dish was Hawaiian sweet shrimp with roasted garlic butter, pistachio and lime. Christine, who doesn't like most shellfish, and me, who usually tries to dignifiedly restrict sopping up every last bit of sauce, acted a bit unconventionally ourselves and did the contrary to our proclivities.


The dish I was anticipating the most was the truffle pasta, which made us both act and view ourselves as the princesses we envisioned ourselves for the evening. I think each of us envisioned that some very smart pig was dispatched to find the truffles exclusively on our behalf, truffles that were lovingly infused into the pasta and placed in small sheaths on top of the pasta. I ate each small noodle individually to savor it for inordinately long bites.


The crispy rockfish was the first of the entree-like items. Its skin was caramelized and the small filet was set atop a Peekytoe crab chowder, pancetta, and licorice. Licorice in the form of an apertif builds the appetite and was a refreshing middle-of-the-meal respite.


The only low point was the roasted lobster with peas and carrots and a morel vinaigrette. The lobster was beautiful: claw meat and other meat (Christine, lobster connoisseur expressed reservation about eating lobster outside of the North East but then we started discussing something juicy and dropped off of serious seafood conversation). It didn't have a lot of flavor and the peas overpowered the delicate lobster.


The last dish caused us to go into raptures, surprising for the last of five dinner dishes. Its arrival caused new colors of wine to be ordered and detailed inquiries into all its components: lacquered aged beef short ribs with a fennel/dill salad and a tarragon/blood orange sauce. Despite the seven strings of gossip ongoing at the time, we took a moment to cheers each other a few times again to congratulate ourselves on our fine decision choosing a restaurant, deciding on the tasting menu, and having the means to buy this tasting menu ourselves.


Lastly, we enjoyed the strawberry shortcake popsicle, an unexpected, throwback delight (seriously, I look like a kid who normally gets half melted grape popsicles who got lucky and got a banana split). Top 100: I will defeat you.