In a year full of high-profile restaurant openings, perhaps no restaurant’s opening was more highly anticipated among the foodie crowd than PS 7’s. Why? The Penn Quarter restaurant would pair former Vidalia chef Peter Smith with 2006 RAMMY award winner and former Notti Bianche general manager Danny Boylen. And how couldn’t that be a winner?
Not much more than a month after its opening, we’ve heard through the grapevine that Boylen has parted ways with Smith and PS 7’s — inevitably leading us to draw comparisons to expert mixmaster Derek Brown’s abrupt departure from the troubled Agraria not long after having been hired away from Firefly. And a recent visit to PS 7’s bar may very well explain why Boylen — who didn’t respond when we contacted him — made an exit.
Because PS 7’s opened so recently, we thought we’d have to push through the crowds to find friends at a peak hour on a weekend night. Instead, we found plenty of room in the 40-seat bar — an alcove with floor-to-ceiling windows that face I Street. Although the then-employed Boylen was an approachable host who had trained his staff well (when I asked for a Lillet — which he didn’t have — his assistant insightfully offered Vya, a vermouth aperitif as an the alternative), getting the attention of staff often took a while and occasionally irritated our companions. We could chalk it up to the fact that Smith’s wife and her entourage were eating in the bar room, though service was slow for their table as well.
