In my top 100 quest, it's proving impossible to sprint to the finish: I'm ending not with a bang but with a whimper. It's ok, though, because so are my restaurants. Today I took my second trip to the Rockville area in as many weeks (the top 100 list is the only reason I know Rockville exists). I bundled myself up, braved leaf-swirling winds, prepared myself with only Cheerios for breakfast, and parallel parked in quaint historic Frederick, Maryland (Frederick is past Rockville, or a mere 53 miles away from my apartment) to dine at Volt.This is a restaurant where you anticipate going and the dining room is charged with excitement. The staff over the past week has called me twice to confirm my reservation. The restaurant even has a separate voice mail box where you confirm your reservation via answering machine. I found this silly and onerous, but I'm crotchety in my old age.
I arrived early--I superficially perused Frederick's charming main street, including an artisinal tea shop--and relaxed briefly in the leather-clad bar. The atmosphere at Volt is formal yet warm; the staff wear uniform semi-formal attire with the same dark Converse low-tops.
It's easy to relate my experience at Volt today with the sometimes disappointing romantic trajectory of a single girl, though: the first few culinary forays were exciting, breathtaking, and whimsical, while the final engagements were mediocre and a tinge uninspired. The food was never bad, but the dating equivalent trajectory for the meal would be a great mini-golf first date with a two-straw-shared strawberry milkshake to cardboard-crust pizza with watered down beer in a dingy bowling alley a few weeks later. I'll explain myself.
Delicious fennel pollen-ed and sea-salted breadsticks arrived first and I ordered the leña cocktail with mezcal, allspice dram, orange, lemon, mole bitters, spiced salt. I didn't like it but was warned of its uniqueness; while I couldn't resist trying a drink with mole in it, I sent it back. That was my fault, not the restaurant's, as that's a clever cocktail.
The amuse bouche was a delicious beet macaron with foie gras mousse. The texture wasn't completely and convincingly macaron-esque, but it was delicious, beautifully constructed, and quite clever.. and I was delighted.
A generous and pleasant treat around brunch time is good and plentiful bread, particularly in a tasting menu (I ordered the five-course variety) where bread can calibrate one's stomach to tolerable levels of hungry and full. A server would regularly come around with beautiful breads-- chocolate croissants, bacon scones, cheese/chive biscuits, and a traditional sea salt rolls--which all helped either curb the pre-meal hunger, sop up sauce, or permit nibbling while waiting. I took three.
The first course was hamachi, or raw yellowtail. It was beautiful and covered in ribbons of fennel and crunchy ginger, as well as sprinkled blood orange vesicles (don't worry, I had to look that up). If My Little Ponies and Barbie invented the perfect color scheme, this would be it and that's not an insult. This was tremendously good.
Next, I had a signature Volt dish, goat cheese ravioli atop a parsley root purée with vegetable ash and black trumpet mushrooms. A year ago (fine, in Paris) intimidation turned to respect for these mushrooms, which in French translate as "trumpets of death." Now I am compelled to always order dishes with them. The flavors were exquisite--rich and new (vegetable ash was tasty)--and the textures of foam, grainy ash, al dente pasta and creamy cheese kept my eyes from rising once from my dish until I finished.
Unfortunately, in subsequent dishes, my brunch branched off from exquisite: it became standard trending toward mediocre. I had rockfish--smooth and flavorful with a crisp skin--with a tablespoon's worth of farro, butternut squash, and half a mini brussels sprout. The next course was beef cheek with cippolini onions and yukon potatoes. The first bite was very hard to cut off and a gelatinous ribbon running through the middle was off-putting. It was pretty, but disappointing. Both dishes tasted fine, but paled in creativity, flavor, and spirit from the previous ones.
I sorted out my thoughts over an espresso, opting for a haphazardly artistic self-portrait via the sugar bowl. I was already a bit discombobulated because I pushed on the wall thinking it was the bathroom door and when trying to get out, kept pushing and pulling before someone outside slid the pocket door open for me. Take my critique with a grain of salt as my anecdote may be an indicator of my intelligence.
For the dessert course, I was expecting a simple marshmallow (another thing I learned in Paris is that marshmallows or grimauves can be arts unto themselves) but I had a plate of five desserts in one (it's uncharitable to call it a mess; I'll just say it's a pastiche). The textures were delightful-- gooey marshmallow beneath, crumbled textured chocolate, a crispy baked bark, ice cream, and frozen cocoa balls--but nothing was particularly or exquisitely delicious or memorable.
I wanted to like everything, really--at each course, I reverentially listened to the rapid-fire description of the dish--but I just couldn't. I returned to my car, peeled yet another top-100-induced-parking-ticket from my windshield, and wished I had waved the white flag after course two.