America Eats Tavern

I love American food. I love a steamed hot dog in crinkled foil with only a few pumps of mustard from a vat to adorn it. I love McDonald's French fries: the short, pointy, crunchy ones and the long mushy ones that have absorbed generous sprinklings of salt alike. I love macaroni and cheese from a cafeteria hot bar, pineapple upside down cake with uniformly-arrayed-pineapple-from-a-can at picnics, and juicy burgers with even juicier tomatoes. I particularly like the complement beer and potato skins add to already good conversations. Real American food, however, is not improved with condescension and tradition-skewering improvements. I suppose that's my opening shot.

Christine and I this afternoon had a lovely day celebrating Western landscapes and colonial portraits at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. We admired photos of Americana by Annie Liebowitz and the juicy still lifes.














We saw portraits of Reagan, Davy Crockett, cowboys, Indians, Benjamin Franklin, and expansive landscapes of mountains and gorges, with glimmery waterfalls, idyllic little deer, and light that can't possibly exist in reality. Patriotism was clearly in no short supply, making us extremely biased toward sampling our Motherland's food.

As such, we decided to try Jose Andres' new restaurant, America Eats Tavern. The space that previously housed Cafe Atlantico and its swankier 6-seat restaurant-within-a-restaurant upstairs, Minibar (both top 100s), has been converted to a dining room "that brings the history of America to life on your plate." It's like a food Epcot, without any animatronic Presidents.

You can tell from the subtle derision I've already exhibited that the concept didn't fly like Old Glory on a windy day, for a variety of reasons. One, Americans don't really eat like this (you'll see). Two, American food is significantly cheaper that the prices we were charged (our bill was $100+). And three, our waiter's puritanical view of food (he invoked the glories of the restaurant's "catsup" while freely admitting there was nothing on the menu to put it on) coupled with his latent snootiness (he called me out for rolling my eyes when he mechanically said the strawberry shortcake's selling point was that the berries came from the nearby farmer's market). Christine wisely noted that there is no point changing something that's already good if you're not making it better.

After 10 minutes of perusing the menu (each item had a small paragraph more focused on food history than actual ingredients), we were exhausted and needed a drink. I had the Moscow Mule with lime, ginger beer, and vodka and Christine had the French 75, a cocktail created at Harry's New York Bar in Paris (with gin, lemon and sparkling wine). We split biscuits with blackberry butter.



















Clearly, we were looking past our slightly intrusive waiter (who readily admitted to listening to our conversation--quite a juicy one at that) and enjoying our cocktails and sweet things.


With our first dish, we realized that really delicious classics--the historic culinary favorites a restaurant like this is both celebrating and capitalizing on--oftentimes can't or shouldn't be improved upon. Case in point: Waldorf salad is good because of the creamy mayonnaise, the grassy and nutty crunch of celery and nuts, and the tart apples ubiquitous in each bite. Instead, the potent integration of the various textures and tastes today was watered down and deconstructed with layers and lettuce for a reasonable $12.


Christine wanted a burger, but the filet-mignon-grind was mixed with bone marrow. Instead, she had the fried hot dog on a crusty roll and relish. It was tasty but, well, a $10 hot dog.

I didn't fare much better: I had the peanut butter and jelly sandwich with foie gras. The sandwiches were charmingly pocketed into little pouches but they were heavy and, I found, an unappetizing mish-mash that went half eaten. The milk and the chips were good, but I guess they were the only parts that made me successfully and sufficiently nostalgic.



















We had dessert, largely driven by the fact that I was still hungry. Since American Express and Dole are sponsors of America Eats (not sure how this works since you'd think the patrons were being sufficiently financially extorted), pineapple was on the menu. It was admittedly beautiful, but was a little too sugary, lacked sufficient amounts of pineapple in the cake, and missed a tacky maraschino cherry on top (ok, I'm not judging them there but who thought I'd miss it). Next time I have American, it will be in baseball stands, on a paper plate, or on a stick, please.