Graffiato

I return penitent, since it's been two months since I've bothered to codify my thoughts of love and food in 2D .html form. And there have been intersections, but few since May quite as satisfying as last night. Since our last installment, I've heard from old friends (former high school quarterback #34 I knew in an era when I'd barely heard of Pearl Jam), made new friends (football stars, cops, and even, superficially, sumo wrestlers) and eaten quite well (seafood ravioli on a pleasure cruise, not-revoltingly-un-midwestern barbecue past midnight, and a juicy burger on July 4th). But, I've forgotten to photograph much of it in any detail. Well, who are we kidding, I couldn't help memorializing a bit of it and this is what, in Team America, would be called a montage.

Real sumo wrestlers at an afternoon of sushi and sake tasting

Hill Country barbecue

Pre-pleasure-cruise (and three hours before I heard the Macarena for the first time since I was 12)

Homemade cuisine making: sweet and sour pork

The world's worst chili dog at a Nats game

Exquisite Parisian steak tartare

Picnic while watching "South Pacific" at Wolf Trap

I've clearly eaten well (or surrounded myself with good eaters). The impediment has been that I've tried to balance fine food with a very earnest effort to keep to some semblance of a budget and remember that the price of one meal oftentimes equals the amount I could spend on groceries for a week. While I'm sure my lamenting is probably onerous and uninteresting, hyper-budgeting (i.e., putting all leftovers in the fridge and consuming them all no matter their level of freezer burn) has made me re-appreciate the beauty of a good meal. So, we finally arrive at Graffiato (the 22nd best restaurant on the Washingtonian's 2012 Best Restaurants List), where Christine and I went last night.

Graffiato is one of those mono-title restaurants that I've wanted to try for a while to knock them all out; this one is especially famous because a Top Chef contestant owns it. The reviews were great. I arrived alone and had the front door drop after a magenta-Polo-shirted K Streeter neglected to hold it open for me (it would be difficult for me to qualify my rage). The 20-something hostesses glibly exuded a bit of sass when I asked about sitting at an empty bar stool (simpering "I'm sorry, we reserve those for diners") for a 15-minute drink while I waited. And the whole crowd seemed so, well, DC. I pounded my prosecco as fast as was appropriate to improve the state of things.

However, Christine, freshly returned from a week of adventure, arrived and we ascended the steps to the upper dining room, had a seat, and were warmly and genuinely welcomed by our waiter. Rarely does a write-up that is expecting to be so hostilely dismissive about-face like this: our waiter was lovely.

We began with the flatbread with pepperoni sauce. We were initially lukewarm on the idea: how good could a seemingly Cici's style menu item be? Well, we ate every morsel and were exhuming the sauce long after it was tepid (we had much to discuss).

We debated over which vegetables to order and ended up getting both (we tried to restrain ourselves throughout the meal and being unable to ever really decide, eventually ordered everything we initially considered). We had broccolini with feta, walnuts, and a spicy pepper relish. It's unnerving to see vegetables so naturally technicolor and be deliciously fresh and crunchy: I even rabidly consumed the stalks, it was all so good.

We also had the roasted cauliflower, a vegetable transformed from its normally peaked self. Ubiquitously, it was sprinkled with pecorino cheese and mint, with sliced red onion on top. The mint and pecorino were barely visible, but each bite bounced between rich cheese and refreshingly rural-tasting mint.

          

 

After suspending our decisions as we continued to catch up, we settled on the burrata and stopped deciding again. The brilliant thing about our waiter (which I've rarely seen exhibited) is that he realized we hadn't seen each other in a while (he probably thought it was months when it was a week) and while we were eager to proceed with ordering, we preferred to catch up first. He only addressed us when there was a breaking point in our conversation and was extremely unobtrusive (a hard characteristic to have in the extreme positive). He was astonishingly self-aware and thoughtful. Like the burrata: sweet melon with thoughtful tomatoes and a very considerate burrata, sprinkled with black sesame seeds.

The only small fault our waiter made is bringing us the dessert menu at this point. We politely noted to him that we had not yet begun to fight and that we'd take two plates of pasta, please. We ordered the gnocchi with truffles and wild mushrooms (my favorite)... 

...and the papparadelle with guanciale and egg (Christine's favorite). Christine kindly let me have the last lardons-heavy bite. What a thoughtful friend to know I have a small attachment to lardons.

Then, we capitulated and had our two desserts: a pistachio cake with cherries and and an orange gelato (and prosecco)...

...And chocolate cake with salted caramel ice cream and some serious flourishes of chocolate and caramel.

I had my first post-fancy-dessert espresso in ages (while simultaneously admiring the damage we did to two previously-laden dessert plates) and we both thanked the restaurant gods for giving us an evening that merited and justified our lack of budgetary restraint.