Bistro Bis

What a week. It started with low country (on Monday, Valentine's Day) to high-dining on Friday at Bistro Bis. Then, to add an element of complexity to it, while drinking a Sonic limeade today and talking to my mom, I came up with a new theory on dining out: Roland Barthes' reader response theory may apply. Whatever, we'll get there later.

First, time for a montage from Georgia Brown's (I had three valentines who acquiesced to modeling their delicious gravy-covered "low country" southern cuisine):

So, last night I went to Bistro Bis, one of the higher ranked restaurants on the list at number 14. It's in the Hotel George, in a mostly swanky neighborhood (I saw a guy relieving himself in the neighboring alleyway when I left) on Capitol Hill. Back to the cerebral stuff, reader response criticism in literature posits that "the reader is an active agent who imparts 'real existence' to the work and completes its meaning through interpretation." I am going to reinterpret that theory in my own amateur criticism world to mean that my experience at a restaurant will depend on how I feel coming into the restaurant, how a restaurant makes me feel in return, particularly how the food and service impact my aesthetic engagement.

Phew. As always, it started innocently with a glass (quite full) of red wine and fresh bread and butter. I decided I don't like butter that looks like the icing borders on Wal-Mart cakes because it's just too cutesy: give me full cups of butter, Mickey Mouse-silhouette butter patties, or nothing.

When butter gets serious:

Like last week, I got a series of appetizers because they were much more interesting and innovative than the entrees. I started (ok, uninnovatively) with the beet salad with the Beet Salade au Citron, roasted heirloom beets with goat cheese, walnuts, orange slices, salade frisee, and citrus infused olive oil. It was beautiful and delicious, once I made a mess of it.

Next I had the quennelles, which I first had in Paris at Alain Ducasse's restaurant Aux Lyonnais (sigh). I didn't know what they were then but they were exquisite.

Can I show you a picture of my first quenelle? Thanks.

Oh oh oh, what about the one I had in Lyon, home of quennelles?

My pretentious point is that there is an element of complexity to the dish that you might be able to see: creamy sauce and a merginguey-yet-solid exterior and then what you can't see: a very smooth, delicate, but complex interior that's dumpling-ish yet still foamy and very fishy. (My smile in Lyon attests to my satisfaction.)

Unfortunately, it was all foam and not fishy (but with neat little crescent pastry on top), making it a pretty pale imitation of an obscure dish.

To conclude my series of mini entrees, I had the veal cheeks; the word "exquisite" kept running through my head as I ate them. The server boasted I didn't even need my knife; I took him at his word and cut all three of them with my fork. They, too, were served with a hint of citrus, carrots, and small cippolini onions.

The fancy literary theory applies here: I was in a bit of a sour mood when I arrived and the off-pace service, minimally interested waiter, and short skirted/red velveteen-suited 23-something couple to my left didn't help. When I realized the server neglected to serve me gougères that I saw a neighboring table receive and not relay the dessert items du jour, my smouldering rage got a bit hotter. Another table recommended I order the dessert du jour, which I asked about and got.

A pear tart is on the right, with caramel/vanilla ice cream on the left. It was unremarkable too, but I'm not sure if that was just because I was grumpy. Oops, I'm a not so objective food critic. Deep breath; I'll try again.

The Source

Tonight I realized it may not be a coincidence that I'm working my way through the top 100 and turning 30 this year. Because, as a frequently single diner (although you wouldn't think it these days), there is something to be said for being in your 20s and sitting at a bar for dinner. Especially when your bartender was born in circa 1987.

Tonight I went to The Source, only because it seemed to be the closest restaurant to me when I finished my afternoon tea at Teaism in Penn Quarter (incidentally a lovely place to read, drink chai, and try and sort out one's future).

"Wolfgang Puck," "Asian food," and "suckling pig" were the only things I associated with the restaurant before walking down Pennsylvania, bewilderedly looking for The Source or any other open restaurant and finding it on the northwest corner of the Newseum.

I came in from the bitter cold and had the warmest service: my coat was taken, I was offered the full range of dining options in the bar (communal table, a legit table when one opened up, or the bar where the "fabulous" bartender would take care of me), and the hostess even asked me to forgive her that she couldn't offer a spot in the dining room (when I had legitimately just walked in off the street). I sat at the bar, sighed contentedly, and had a glass of wine.

The layout is minimalist and exposed to the street on two walls, and a translucent staircase linking the bar area to the dining rooms upstairs. Another wall is the kitchen and the wall that spans both floors is a well-lit wine cellar. The decor seems like it would be cold and overly modern but with the exceptional service and constant movement of people, staff, and vibrant plates of food, the atmosphere was surprisingly warm.

Staircase leading up to the dining room.

As may have been readily apparent, I was treated well by the bartender, in addition to the hostess. He helped me adjust my order to what plates complemented each other and which were his preferences. And refilled my wine while I was mid-meal without asking. I started with the crispy suckling pig, accompanied by a black plum puree, cipollini onions on top and a sweet bean sauce. The pork was recomposed into three cubes, with a layer of crispy skin atop each. And I ate them with chopsticks, which made them taste better.

I cheat a bit: this is how they appear on the website:

The plates progressively became better, with a high bar set with the suckling pig. At the bartender's suggestion, I ordered pork belly bao, two small rolls sliced and stuffed with pork belly, a hot sauce sweetened and reminicent of barbecue sauce, cilantro, sprouts, and cucumber. I made four small bites last about 10 so I could savor them.

The final dish, my favorite of the three, was the stir fried Colorado lamb in lettuce cups with pine nuts and a small salad atop each. The sauce was deeply flavored and sweet, the salads cut the richness and the pine nuts added a luxurious nuttiness. I slowly created my own proportional bites of meat and vegetables with the chopsticks, then started eating them like tacos.

By this time, there was no need for dessert but the great experiment necessitated at least a glance at the dessert menu if not an actual choice. Again, the bartender suggested the carrot cake, one of my favorite desserts anyway. I went to the ladies' room and returned to my glasses being covered by napkins and a new glass: a German dessert wine. Just as a bartender-offered complement. I kept from giggling. The carrot cake, nearly true to its 15-layer claim was actually ten very thin layers, each overlayed by cream cheese and served with ginger ice cream and toasted and candied walnuts.

Everything was exquisite: the service was attentive, the food was well-portioned and clever and I got two free glasses of wine. I picked up my coat at the coat check, gushed to the hostess how lovely my evening was due largely to the service, and avoided walking straight into a glass door by realizing the hostess's squeaked-out "oh" of concern was due to my own inattentiveness. Ironic.

Bibiana

Conviviality and hospitality are two words tied unconditionally to Italian food. The emphasis on friend-creating wine, cheeses meant to be shared, pasta dishes that invite forks aggressively sampling foods across the table, and heart-gladdening olive oil in Italian food usually complements the rapport between two friends. In my gastronomical world, friends and diners enjoying Italian cuisine should feel enveloped by metaphorical Italian grandmother's arms and her nagging insistence at how welcome they are to her hospitality.

My friend Dotti and I last night went to Bibiana, the 99th best restaurant in DC. After taking a series of one-way streets going in the opposite direction of the restaurant and realizing the restaurant was on the total opposite corner of where we were in relation to the monolithic building to which the restaurant was attached, we desperately wanted a warm seat and a drink when we arrived.

The bar, lounge and dining room are all beautiful: sophisticated, full of clean lines and luxury. We took a seat at the bar, which somehow had a delightfully warm counter top where we defrosted our hands. But that was the most sincere attention we got for the approximately 30 minutes we were there while we waited for our table.

We asked the bartender why the wine servings beyond glasses were oddly labelled QT and BTG. "Is it Italian?" we asked. He responded that was just how they were labelled, then wandered off and bursted out like a small child who just mastered a curse word, bottiglia. (I had to google that.) After asking if he would take our wine order, we ordered a bottiglia, which he set down before us without uncorking it and with two glasses, not returning for another five minutes. He finally returned, uncorked the wine and poured it; then our table became available and I huffily took the bottle. A manager had the attentiveness to notice I was awkwardly carrying an open bottle of wine to our table and relieved me of it. That was a welcome gesture, but the bewildering inattentiveness of the waiter was alarming.

The menu was beautiful and we didn't put our finger on it then, but it was sort of cold and a reflection of the restaurant. The descriptions lacked voluptuousness, the font was tiny and austere, and Dotti even asked, crestfallen, "where's the lasagna?" This didn't bother us any: we were raucous and loud with a hint of vulgarity, but not because the restaurant encouraged that type of celebration over food.

Ah well: the bread was delicious, porous but tender, with a delicate olive oil.

Dotti and I both had antipasti. She ordered the datteri, a sentimental favorite of us both: here the roasted dates were stuff with Crescenza cheese and pancetta and covered with probably honey and candied pistachios. It was a hint too sweet, but still flavorful and rustically textured.

I ordered the burrata, one bite of which I've only ever had at Acqua al 2 and I've been haunted by its flavor and texture since then. Last night, it was Pugliese burrata (Puglia being a region in southeastern Italy) with picked beets and mint. It was exceptional in its simplicity.

Not surprisingly, it took inordinately long for our dinners to come. And having been a waitress, I always worry when a hot plate arrives (as it did), as that usually indicates it's been sitting under the heat lamp for too long. I'm not sure if this is a heat lamp type of place, but the pacing was still decidedly off. Dotti ordered the braised lamb ravioli with almonds, espelette, mint, and pecorino. True to form, that's what I was considering ordering too.

Instead, I got the burnt wheat cavatelli, a delightful pasta that seemed full of kinetic energy with its tight spirals. It was served with espresso sausage, broccoli rabe, and pecorino. The broccoli rabe was rich, coupled with the cheese, and the sausage was broken into small pieces so it paired up more easily with bites of pasta. It could has used more pecorino, but it was a cleverly-constructed dish.

Despite the uninspired and mildly frosty service, I still had an appetite to keep going as the food was delicious. I ordered the Study in Chocolate/Hazelnut, which was exquisite: at the base, crushed hazelnuts composed into a sort of unhealthy but appropriately-desserty granola, surrounded by a pool of hazelnut cream, girded by a Viennese cookie (delicate exterior with a chocolate/hazelnut filling inside), hazelnut chocolate atop it all, with a smear of Nutella on the side. Seriously.

The food was admirable: beautifully plated, delicately arranged, classically constructed, but it all lacked the requisite Italian gregariousness that makes food that should be bursting with character remain as lifeless as the disengaged service. Molto triste.

Johnny's Half Shell

Well, the moment had to come when a restaurant didn't meet full top 100 muster. But at the high-level of competitive food critiquing my friends and I engage in, there is little room for error. So after tonight, where the mood and intonation of the waitress was a bit too affected (and eerily similar to how Annette Bening would sound self-righteously reading her own Beatnik poetry) and two beers and a basket of bread were delivered without our explicit consent, I could not fully endorse Johnny's Half Shell as the 44th best restaurant in DC. I was out with the regular crew, who were able to adeptly examine the strengths and shortcomings of Johnny's, succinctly between dessert and before the quarters in the meter ran out.

It began well: an interesting array of glad handers, pin-wearers, name tag-sporters, and toothy smilers stocked the bar, the white and green hexagonal tile on the floor added a bit of old-timey charm, and the whole restaurant had the ephemeral DC political buzz where you feel important things are being said and deals are being made all around that I rarely experience. We even saw Michael Steele.

Ok, well, that's Andy, but that's Michael Steele's arm in the distance.

We're all such easy diners: the girls got Stella, the boys got Anchor Steam. We ordered 12 oysters and everyone had their appointed three. Dinners were laid down and Mike initiated the food offering (a scallop on my plate) that was quickly followed up with various forks criss-crossing to help themselves to others' dinners. If Esther Williams and her synchronized swimming pals went out to dinner, they would have been hard pressed to coordinate their fork movements as effortlessly as us.

In the same vein, Andy observed that when ordering, it was helpful having a backup as we all frequently tend toward the same items. How cute. Andy got what Mike considered, Mike got what I normally would order, while I should have followed my instincts and gotten what Kerry had.

Kerry with the fritti misti (fish, shrimp, calamari, and fennel all lightly fried) and Andy with the what-should-have-been-wild-steelhead but substituted for another fish, pan-roasted with mild mushrooms and sauteed spinach in a vin blanc sauce.

Mike had a beautiful plateful of scallops in a lemon-caper sauce with a warm salad of roasted winter vegetables and olives.

I think I lost and had two alarmingly unique textured appetizers for dinner. I started with the grilled squid, served with a small arugula salad with crispy shallots and lemon viaigrette. It wasn't the delicious and crispy sucker-laced tentacles that bothered me.

It was the fact that it appeared that I had four huge insect pupae on my plate. I saw the Lion King.

Our minimally clever waitress--more interested in her turn of phrase than in the act of listening--said the crabcakes were the most popular item on the menu. They were fine, but I would have thought their namesake state was much farther away so that they could still be called Maryland crabcakes while embodying such mediocrity. The coleslaw, long strands of cabbage, carrots, and onions, was delicious though.

Dessert, as always, compensated for past wrongs. Kerry and Andy got the coconut cake:

Mike got the apple pie with a crumble topping:

And I had the chocolate bread pudding, served with chili-infused slices of blood oranges, which were responsibly chocolatey and cleverly sweet and spicy, respectively:

But it was still all surprisingly uninspired on the whole: we universally agreed the decor was an amalgamation of inconsistent styles and a poor use of space, the service was just a shade too preoccupied and indifferent, and there was a very glaring disconnect between a restaurant that appears to coast on its good reviews and tourist patronage with the sort of place so close to the Capitol that could be a bastion of quiet sophistication. But, Johnny's Half Shell put me 18 restaurants away from being halfway done.

Central

Thankfully the next slated restaurant is a seafood joint, because the amounts of butter and fried pork I'm consuming are at unsustainable levels. Last night, I went to Central, a restaurant run by French chef Michel Richard. Years ago, I spurned it with derision because it served "faux" gras, which I assumed was a typo and at a French restaurant, I found that to be insupportable. Apparently it was a conscious choice on the part of a French restaurant to not serve foie gras, which I could consider even more offensive that force-feeding geese.

Anyway, Central is on the list and since it's French, it had an irresistible pull, anti-gavage stance or not. It was charming, mostly because it combined the best of both American and French dining. The atmosphere was intimate and convivial, but had enough space between tables to be private, was well-lit to encourage boisterousness, had a nearly-open kitchen to make dining interactive and featured comforts from French cuisine (charcuterie, gougères, tarts) and American cuisine (meatloaf, burgers, macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, and banana splits (keep reading)). I tried ordering Ricard at the bar (I got there a bit early) and after a little explanation, got a Pernod. The drink itself was sort of irrelevant because the beauty of the bar was the tilted mirror above it where you could have a drink and see the entire dining room.

We went to the table and surveyed the wine list, which was surprisingly light on French wines. That turned out to be fine too, because I was in the dining room and could both see better being there and use the mirror to supplement my people-watching.

We started with a cheese plate, featuring a random selection of goat, gouda, camembert, bleu and a mystery one on the far right. They were delicious, creamy when necessary, and served at the right temperature.

We also got an order of gougères. I'll say I preferred them at Adour, which may not be a rousing endorsement since I didn't even know what they were called then. But these were still delicious and had a popover consistency.

Being a creature of habit/exaggerated French tendencies, I got the salade frisée with lardons and a poached egg. It was a mad swirl of frisée, lardons (French bacon bits) and one shy poached egg in the middle of it all waiting for its moment to shine.

Before:

After:

Then I had steak tartare for the second time in my life.

You knew it was coming, but below is a picture from the first time (the archives are well-organized, even if the photographer has little reliable skill):

Both were exquisite when I abandoned myself to savoring its slightly unnerving consistency.

True to form, French and French-inspired restaurants have impressed me recently in the taste and presentation of dessert. Since there were three of us, we logically ordered three. Christine's clever idea was that I use my real camera and she did you a service, dear reader.

We started with Michel's Napoleon, which was stellar. I find Napoleons get stale quickly (and are nevertheless served) and oftentimes their creamy interior is little better than the filling of cream cheese danishes on a conference room table after lunch. The layers weren't repeatedly alternated, which allowed for a more thorough tasting of the individual components: the gossamery, flaky crust and the substantive cream. Don't believe me?

Next, we had Michel's chocolate bar with vanilla ice cream. True to its reputation, it tasted like a souped up and sophisticated Kit Kat bar.

I ordered the banana split. It was even better than it looks.

Above was vanilla and chocolate ice cream, with strawberry sorbet in the middle. On the bottom were two thin slices of banana covered with whipped cream, pineapple bits, chocolate covered rice puffs, and strawberry sauce, between two pools of caramel and chocolate. Who's foie is the gras now?