The Weekly Feed: Navel-Gazing Edition
Restaurant Week or Restaurant Weak?
It happens twice a year. Whether you love it or hate it, it's the Restaurant Week breakdown. Who brought it out like a champ, and who deserves the title of chump?
Some DCist staffers hit up a few spots:
Spezie
I just had a pretty good RW lunch at Spezie. The raddichio salad had a nice balance between the bitter greens and walnuts and cheese. Braised lamb with fennel was a generous portion, and the fennel and lamb played nicely together (the fennel wasn't overpowering as it can be). Panna cotta for dessert. Only downside was that soda was $2.75. Definitely better than the last meal I had there, a couple years ago for RW dinner. Oh, and the list of choices was huge: 10 things per course, 5 desserts. - Eric Denman
Marrakesh
I stopped by Marrakesh on Wednesday not realizing they were participating, but we were able to get a table fairly quickly without a reservation. The service was fantastic and the ambiance was wonderful, with the Moroccan music and a dancer. Unfortunately,everything we ordered had that Restaurant-Week-mass-produced kind of blah taste, with slightly overbaked phyllo and some bland lamb. I suspect they can do better on a regular night, especially if the service is always that good, so I'd go back. - Heather Goss
Ceiba
Ceiba's restaurant week deal was a good one, with every item on the menu available and the wait staff friendly and attentive. The Cuban black bean soup had an almost mole taste, while the tuna steak was mouth watering and the accompanying crab taquito was fantastic, with just enough lingering spiciness. The scallops were well prepared too. Add in $5.50 pisco sours and fantastic guava cake with a rich pannacotta-like addition and it was money well spent. - Andrew Wiseman
My wife and I went to Ceiba for lunch yesterday. The black bean soup, although it looked like a can of black beans in a bowl, was at least flavored well with fresh bits of parsley and bacon. The guava nectar cake was dry by itself, but when you spread the nectar around and eat it with the accompanying panna cotta, it more than made up for the dryness of the actual cake. Neither of us liked our sandwiches...the Cuban sandwich had little flavor (the gruyere-in-place-of-swiss didn't work), while the hamburger was a buttery sloppy mess served on over-buttered sourdough. (Should have gone with traditional seafood fare or the steak churrasco). Oh, and the wait staff didn't treat us like Restaurant Week trash (I'm looking at you, Galileo and Vidalia) and the coat check girl needs to find some job-appropriate clothing (so said my wife). - Andrew Chriss
Photo by christaki
The Oceanaire
I found myself at the Oceanaire Seafood Room with a group of seven other people. We were clearly the low class clientele of the night, as we held firm to the restaurant week menu despite our server's best attempts at salesmanship. My three course meal began with clam chowder and went on to a main course of Cajun grilled mahi-mahi, finishing with bread pudding with a raspberry sauce. I'm not much of a seafood connoisseur, but the meal was well worth the $32, and no one in the group seemed to feel otherwise. - Sriram Gopal
Restaurant K
While it might have seemed like a good idea at the time, newcomer Restaurant K by Alison Swope probably should have sat this one out. It was hard to tell if the waitstaff was overwhelmed because of Restaurant Week or just simply overwhelmed. Friendly, but abysmal; please remember to clear the first course dishes before bringing out the second. The food was mediocre at best -- indescribably dry pork osso buco (in spite of the thick layer of fat) -- though the chocolate cake and house-made sausage were solid senders. Upcharges weren't bad, with the enter menu available and an extra $5 add-on for market price items like lobster and the New York strip. The deal was sweetened with a selection of wines also marked down to $30.08.
Overall a surprising disappointment. While the place may be new, Swope herself is not, having made a splash in DC not that long ago with Andale. I'll probably give K the benefit of the doubt and swing by again in a month or two. But when the best part of the meal was the amuse (a raft of smoked salmon piled with crunchy, vinegar-laced diced veggies and a dollop of creme freche all on a little pool of incredibly light olive oil), it's hard to haul yourself back somewhere. - Gayle Putrich
Poste
Dinner at Poste Brasserie was the hands-down highlight of RW. Some of the servers were clearly not that thrilled about the week, but warmed up after some chatting -- and we were much chattier once they got around to bringing the bread (I'm pocketing some of those warm, salt-crusted rolls next time!). Though the menu for the week was fairly limited, several of the rock-star dishes I've heard friends rave about were there, including the crispy-skinned striped bass, which is topped with a red-wine poached egg and served on a pile of caper-laced, buttery mashed potatoes. The yolk running down the fish and into the citrusy liquid around the edge of the place made for pure protein heaven. It was clear that the same care that went into regularly-priced dishes also went into the RW promo plates. The promotional event did its job, though: it got me in the door and I'll definitely be back at full price. - Gayle Putrich
City Paper's blog has some posts up as well. So how did everyone else's Restaurant Week go?
Small Bites
Like a Bacon McMuffin value meal
Comet Ping Pong Pizza will now be open starting at 11:30 a.m. on the weekends. You can look forward to the traditional weekend boozing with mimosas and Bloody Marys, as well as meatballs subs and a new pizza with applewood -smoked bacon, egg, white cheddar and a fried potato pancake. Then work it all off with a rousing game of ping-pong. Almost sounds like McDonald's for adults. [via metrocurean]
Lost and Found
We've been looking for the real deal doner kebabs for a while. And we've found them... sort of. All the way down in Leesburg, Hamburg Doner is upgrading from a truck in the Virginia Village Shopping Center to the Mighty Midget BBQ space. We feel bad for the Mighty Midget owner, but at the same time are excited that the Hamburg Doner will find a more permanent home. You can check out their MySpace to watch some very strange Doner-based videos.