Last week, as part of this culinary whirlwind, friends kindly threw me a send-off dinner for starting a new job in a few days. We reminisced and looked to the future in the beautiful brick-walled dining room at the Top 100 The Red Hen, spreading our drinks and dishes out on the hefty wooden dinner table. Situated on First Street NW--near Howard University--it's perched on the corner of a residential area with a few bars a stone's throw away. It felt like a neighborhood bar and restaurant for its very lucky neighbors.
We started with cocktails, lovely and simple gems of vibrant color and flavor. My drink, on the left, was the Alligator, bright and crisp with gin, dill syrup, and Dolin Blanc vermouth. My man in plaid had a sidecar, up. He had an equally charming glass, which seemed to entreaty let's-all-chat-about-the-new-streetcar-coming-in-and-our-phonographs.
We tackled an appetizer as a team, ordering grilled octopus with shelling beans and romesco sauce. The crunchy suckers of the octopus were many--nicely flavored and not too chewy--but the sauce seemed too strong and smoky for the beans and didn't pair well. The bites of frissee were a nice counterpoint, salty and coated well with a vinaigrette on its little fronds.
Team plaid ordered crispy brussels sprouts, perhaps the best item we had that night. Each sprout seemed to be lovingly feathered--some patient chef seemed to have pulled each separate sprout leaf layer from the sprout core and then fried it--and the crunch kept pulling us back to our side dish instead of our entree. The sprouts had dill in them and were served atop an anchovy aioli.
My man friend had a very tasty--but not terribly creative--rigatoni dish with a fennel sausage sauce and pecorino romano. The sausage was beautifully sweet and the sauce had a delicious flavor. It was solid, re-orderable, but not particularly noteworthy in its simplicity. My dish was more out-there--which, in this case, is not a value unto itself--and was disappointing. The saffron pasta was lovely and the rabbit sugo--a sauce that in Italian apparently means "juice"--was tender and flavorful. The kale, however, was grilled but tasted smoky--not sultry smoky but burned smoky--and turned me off of the dish. It broke my pasta-loving heart.
The service, I will note, was charming and helpful and unobtrusive the entire time. Our waiter noticed a developing trend of which I myself wasn't yet entirely aware in my growing proclivity for after-dinner drinks served in small glasses. When my eyes perked up at the word "amaro"--the man friend and I chatted with a friend about amaro and bitters at a bar earlier in the week--the server brought me Cardamaro amaro, served in this adorable glass....
...From this adorable bottle. It is apparently Moscato wine infused with relatives of the artichoke family (including "cardoon") then aged it in new oak for six months. Much tastier than its components make it sound.
For dessert, we decided on the banana cake instead of the pecan tart. Because we had a charming, attentive, and kind waiter, he brought the tart too (it may also been because he knew I was starting a new job or that I had a food blog that he may have assumed was much less amateur than it actually is). The banana cake was delicious--but a bit dry--but the gelato (marscapone/straciatella) was transformative. The pecan tart was wonderful, particularly with its maple gelato, and like its dessert brethren, had its last little bits scraped off the plate.
It was a lovely night--the service reigned--and would be worth another trip. After 24 more Top 100s are crossed off the list.
With that, I hope I can tell you about another fancy dinner redux, this time five years later and that is now on the Top 100. The first time I went to Brabo, I went in true Boca Sola style and sat at the bar next to a crazy Russian woman and hope I can claim I'm as funny as I was five years ago.
The dishes were fine--fancy, small, cutesy--but I finally decided that instead of trying, probably unsuccessfully, to satiate myself on food, I ended up drinking my dessert, which was ultimately more satisfying although arguably more pretentious. (Particularly since one digestif could have bought me two burgers and fries at Five Guys down the street). This is to say that the portions at Brabo--like they were in 2009--are quite tiny.
I started with tuna crudo with beautiful shaved radishes and an espelette ailoi (espelette is a fancy dried pepper from Basque country in France and Spain). It was a beautiful dish, but felt so delicate in its tuna-paltriness.
My friends were charming in insisting I photograph their food as well. In our party, we had mussels and fries... and a super-soft--almost squishy--octopus confit...
...And foie gras soup.
The entrees were beautiful but had a pecking order: the scallops were not nearly as tasty as the swordfish. The exterior had no crunchy sear and the cabbage slaw and apple butter seemed too sweet.
The man friend bucked the table-wide trend of scallop ordering and had the swordfish, beautifully cooked in an autmunal ras al hanout (a North African spice mix) crust with baby carrots, a silky puree of squash, and super-sweet compressed pear cubes. He won.
