Inn at Little Washington

Where to start? I'm almost done with the top 100, have started a new top 100, and have left amateur food critiques in the far corners of my mind, never to be recounted and shared with my handful of dear readers. I'm lost in the wilderness of wanting to write but not knowing where to pick up.

But alas, I'll put the self-flaggelation aside: if the top 100 quest were high school,  last night was the prom. Dotti and I dressed up, car-pooled, and took ourselves to the Inn at Little Washington. I've long feared it: the drive, the romance, the fear of failure for not being proposed to while dining there. It's hung over my head like a pitiful black cloud; so, instead of waiting for a strong wind in the form of a wealthy food benefactor to blow it away, I just made a reservation myself four days ago. Unlike prom, it was everything I hoped it would be, a dearth of Boyz II Men music notiwithstanding.

It was exquisite--it was like being invited to someone's home, where all the dishes were clever and everything that was chopped or diced was chopped or diced in the tiniest, most detailed, and uniform fashion. Our food explorations almost seemed Gulliver-esque and Waldo-ish, as we leaned over every plate to commend the effort that went into each dish and tried to determine every component.

Like any good prom-goer, however, we included a bit of a pre-party before the big night. The drive from Washington, DC to Washington, VA was more than an hour and a half, so we couldn't resist not stopping at one vineyard en route. We chose Gray Ghost Vineyard, mostly because of the name and only less so because it was right off the highway. For $3, we tasted eight delicious wines and took a full glass of red Ranger Reserve onto their patio overlooking the vines (living where I live, I have an obligation to relay that the wine's name stems from Mosby's Rangers, a unit headed by the "Gray Ghost" and Confederate cavalry battalion commander, John Singleton Mosby).

Gnarled grape wines, the highway and rocky dirt: I ensured I captured the grittiest parts of an otherwise lovely estate

Dotti and I drove a bit further and parked near the Inn, wandered the grounds, and did some shopping at the Inn's store. Washington, VA is sort of like Napa Valley: technically a small town, but without the tractors, rusted pick-up trucks, and dilapidated barns typically in a community of such a size. Instead, the landscape is Epcot-like in its color and placement: down this path, for example, is a pen of sheep and a view of the mountains.

We wandered into the Inn's lobby and from that moment on, were welcome guests. The host shook our hands and took us to the breakfast room, where we looked out over our delightful floral china (and menu!) at a small patio and garden. While still soaking in the plethora of items on the menu and glasses on the table, we got our first amuses bouches, potato crisps filled with an onion mousse and topped with a bit of caviar (served on shiny rocks) and spoonfuls of pork belly and an apple puree.

One of the many lovely parts of this dinner was the diversity of textures, including the next amuse bouche, a chewy, doughy,  hollowed-out-yet-crunchy chive gougere and a shot of warmed apple rutebaga soup. I hope it's not the last time I have a baked ball of butter and cheese on a pedastal. The bread also was exactly what a baguette should be: unforgivingly crusty on the outside and a poreous interior waiting to be buttered.

The gushing-in-delight about dinner really started when the appetizers arrived: we each were presented with plates that had raw, frozen, shredded, friseed, slathered, crisped, and sesamed elements. Dotti had her first carpaccio, barely seared baby lamb with pesto, onions, capers, and ceasar salad ice cream, unsurprisingly, a delight to us both. I had the tuna tartare, one of the best I've had: the tuna was cranberry red, tender and flavorful (giving in consistency like a ripe tomato) and covered in sesame seeds. Since the tuna and frisee were sprinkled with red pepper, there was cucumber sorbet to offset the heat. I'd construct a wrap-around porch and rocking chairs myself in the summer heat if in return, I could spend summer afternoons there with a few pints of this stuff.

Dotti, celebrating her southern roots, had one of the cleverest plates of macaroni and cheese yet, even after a variety of manifestations of it under top 100 auspices. Here, a single layer of rigatoni was laid out atop a thin slice of ham, with a curl of a cheese crisp sheltering a small spray of frisee. I went over the top with hot and cold foies gras: a lobe on the left with a raisin reduction and creamy, cold foise gras on the right with Sauternes gelee cubes and prune (I think?) preserves. In case the dish wasn't rich enough, I could slather foie gras of choice on slices of buttered brioche. The whole dish was wildly indulgent, like the time I put putter on a bite of chocolate bar: in both cases, I think my arteries threw their hands up for a few moments in protest.

We introduced red wine to the table for the entrees alone: Dotti's pseudo-stew and my big game meat. Dotti had a dish of braised short-rib and beef tenderloin with just enough sauce and vegetables to suggest it could elect to be a stew if it decided to add back in the boring stew-stuff. It had carrots, mushrooms, potatoes and onions standing independently, with bone marrow panna cotta on the side. I had one of the most elegantly-evocative-of-winter dishes I've ever had (I think the superlatives are all well-deserved): juniper-encrusted venison, mustard spaetzle, caramelized onions and cabbage with a few cranberries, and braised endive (which, with radicchio, belongs in the worthless-lettuce-derivatives category). I scraped everything off the plate save that pesky endive.

  

As if raw meats and fish and medium rare steak-things weren't enough, we thought we'd have eight desserts. We opted to split the apple tart: we wanted to try a real adult-sized dessert and sample the pastry. The apples were thin and tender and the buttermilk ice cream cut the sweetness.

We outdid ourselves, however, with the Seven Deadly Sins. Please forgive the introduction of multimedia; it seemed impossible, however, not to ask these desserts to pose. On stage left, we have a mint chocolate chip mousse, a dense chocolate cake, an apple tart (another!), a butter pecan ice cream sandwich with caramel sauce poured over at the table, a lemon tart, Tahitian vanilla panna cotta, and a chocolate cherry bombe. 

 

If you can't withstand the temptation of the video or have Comcast, see the photo below, conveniently arrayed as a before-and-after comparison.

 

While we were enjoying our coffees (three-plus hours of eating can try ones alertness), our waiter brought us boxes of cookies and chocolates, conveniently sheltered in Inn replicas. We couldn't resist compiling all the promotional materials in one frame.

Or getting our photo taken with our new presents in front of the fireplace.

Or taking somewhat creepy photos (ok, that was me) of the kitchen from just far enough to not fog up the windows.

It one of the finest meals of my life--there was detail and creativity in every bite, a subtlely playful but not too-cute sense of humor infused into the dishes, and extraordinary elegance coupled with professional but warm service. When it comes to the top of the top 100, there is no papering over the differences.