By DCist Contributor Nathan Wilkinson
The 701 Restaurant (701 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW) reopened last month with a facelift and a new menu. DCist was recently invited to check out the new digs, and we liked what we saw and ate.
Owner Ashok Bajaj has given one of the Districts’s oldest restaurants a $500,000 interior design update that features dramatic paint colors, wall coverings, and a large central wall sculpture. The theme is modern and relaxed with solid exposed wood tables, and Italian chairs of varying sizes and styles. Then there’s the eye-catching sculpture that looks like twenty evenly spaced, cracked dinosaur eggs mounted on the wall with their glittering gold interiors exposed. All these touches create a fun and less formal ambiance for a place The Washington Post described as “best for a business dinner” in 2011.
Executive Chef Benjamin Lambert is rolling out a new menu designed to defy expectations as well. The savory carrot funnel cake with burrata cheese, gooseberries and pickled onions, for example, is an appetizer that would traditionally be served as a dessert. Other unusual appetizers include bone marrow mole shortrib served in the bone, and butternut squash duck confit on steam buns. These are decadent starters you might find individually at many D.C. ethnic eateries, but it is surprising to find them so well-prepared at one restaurant.
The menu layout encourages diners to mix and match between Meat, Fish, and Bounty & Grain categories with small plates listed above the entrée portions. Start with a beet salad with labne, pomegranate vinaigrette, and pecans for a dark, earthy delight, or try the heirloom tomatoes with corn flan and tomato dashi to enjoy the sweetness of the summer harvest. The Spanish octopus side was perhaps the most richly flavored octopus dish I’ve tried; with roasted potatoes and mint salsa verde, it was tender, not chewy, with a pleasant char-roasted bitterness. Presentation is paramount for Chef Lambert’s entrée menu, whether it is a pasta dish like the lobster bucatini with not-so-spicy XO sauce or tender monkfish served atop an oyster emulsion and garnished with sea beans and artichokes.
701’s cocktail menu carries the modern theme of the restaurant with drinks that turn classic cocktails on their heads. For instance, The Bijou, ordinarily a gin and Chartreuse drink, is made with St. George rye and Campari for a more bitter twist on the original. Rather than use vermouth in a Manhattan, they use Pedro Ximenez sherry. And you can get a Laird’s Jack Rose, a cocktail once thought to be near extinction, made exactly as it was in the early 1900s.
But my recommendations for the most unusual combinations begin with the Blackberries, a Chartreuse and grappa daiquiri-like drink with a blackberry puree, and the Frenet Margarita, made with a bitter root liqueur called Frenet Vallet. This drink will take you out of the comfort zone of typical margaritas with its dark tasting center and smoky Patron Citronage finish. The Sherry Flip also deserves mention as a dessert drink with rich, foamy egg white, chamomile honey and manzanilla sherry and garnished with a fragrant star anise.
Happy hour runs from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday with $7 dollar wines, cocktails and snacks. Dinner prices range from $15 to $20 dollars for the small plates and $20 to $30 dollars for the entrées. A prix fixe lunch menu is available for $28 dollars, and a special pre-theater menu offered Monday through Friday from 5:30 PM to 6:45 PM goes for $35 dollars.
