136 Paramount Park Dr., Gaithersburg, Md. Tom Sietsema on La Vie in Rare, Washington, D.C. It's rare that Washington Post critic Tom Sietsema writes a zero-star review, but, La Vie compelled him to warn readers against ever paying. Riding shotgun: a tamal of housemade masa wrapped in Swiss chard. Tack on dessert, if only to see what cheesecake tastes like as a ripply cloud spun from whipped cream, cream cheese and lemon. Beferdu uses the recipes she learned from her restaurateur-mother as a girl growing up in Addis Ababa and later showcased in a trio of hotels she ran in Ethiopias capital. No barriers to entry; ADA-compliant restroom. A&J offers its menus in Chinese and English, but fear not: The lists are the same, except for the fuller descriptions on the English version. Wells Silverman and team seem to have sweated every detail. The server has been on board since Frankly Pizza! No barriers at the entrance; a lift in the bar allows access to the main dining room. Surprise! Ive been eating with you since you started, one of my oldest friends said over a dinner that began with a gratis mocktail when a server heard me say my pal didnt drink. See a pupusa on the list? These days, customers can still count on Smiths high standards in every order of carryout. Chef Amy Brandweins corner of CityCenter is an ode to Italy. Ill be with you in a moment this restaurant might disappoint you. Washington Post's Tom Sietsema Awards Del Mar 3 Stars. Cant decide which of the dozens of dishes to try? Tom Sietsema has been The Washington Post's food critic since 2000. Service just about everywhere has taken a hit during the pandemic. Takeout and delivery via DoorDash, Grubhub and Uber Eats. The prized seats are those at the counter, where patrons no longer sit knee to knee but still get to observe the chef up close. Small plates capture big pleasures. Ask Tom: Dining during the pandemic - The Washington Post Inquire and the response might be rabbit in a hot-and-numbing sauce with sliced lotus root and velvety strips of seaweed. Ninety percent of the restaurants business now is takeout; the minority of customers find potted plants atop tables to maintain social distance. The former White House chef even manages to make cabbage seductive. A tangle of slippery lo mein noodles shows up slick with chile oil, crisp with fried shallots and colorful with red cabbage and chopped scallions. (Maybe youve heard. A roulade of flank steak from Paris, as in Virginia, veers Mediterranean with eggplant, olives and roasted tomatoes. The welcome includes warm-from-the-clay-oven flatbread and sabzi, a plate of fresh herbs, radishes, walnuts and feta for grazing yours even when you order takeout. (Scott Suchman. Biscuits are baked every 30 minutes or so, and the side dishes are first-class. We're counting down Post food critic Tom Sietsema's Top 5 restaurants in and around Washington for 2022 over the next two weeks, highlighting one restaurant each weekday until Tom's full. A Caesar assembled with pea shoots, charred snap peas and breadcrumbs instead of croutons is unconventional but so good, even purists polish it off. A motherly server adds to the outing, revealing that the chicken wings are on the hot side and pork shoulder tacos are enough food for a family. Calamari fritti capture the ideal: greaseless, crisp, garnished with fried parsley and sunny with lemon. When Onyona was able to partially reopen the space for on-site customers in June, his target audience of nearby embassy and World Bank employees was mostly working remotely. A dinner from this big-hearted restaurant, whose seating now spills onto the street, is almost guaranteed to result in tonights midnight snack or tomorrows lunch. Pair the citys best-known host with one of its premier chefs, and what you get is a night to remember courtesy of Ashok Bajaj and Frank Ruta. The second is a world-class stew coaxed from fistfuls of herbs cooked down to a thick green bog and completed with tender morsels of beef and kidney beans. Mesghali sweats the details. His rib-eye, for instance, hails from Seven Hills in Virginia and enjoys a salt cure before its pan-roasted and served with two terrific toppings: a puree of herbs and a whip of hollandaise and brown butter. Indoor seating only. is followed by the offer of a Tide stick from a server. Indoor and outdoor seating. Press Alma . The tomato sauce a touch sweet, a little tangy comes from an old family recipe; the bacon is made in-house. Delivery via DoorDash. The first few moments alone compensate you for having made the trek to Virginia hunt country and the patio of the family-run restaurant, where the background music is spun by a fountain, a handsome stone chimney rises nearby, and the surrounding trees and bushes hint at the possibility of lemon, figs, kumquats and more on the Italian menu. Meet the owners: Lydia Patierno is the welcoming mistress of ceremonies outside and in. No takeout or delivery. Proof of vaccination required. History reimagines ratatouille as a summery salad garnished with a savory sorbet. 2020 Fall Dining Guide - Washington Post The best 27 restaurants in the Washington, D.C., area The best 27 restaurants in the Washington, D.C., area Skip Navigation Sections Home Try 1. Delivery Friday via website. Among the treasures from the original menu are tandoori salmon and ever-fiery green chili chicken. Hang in there, Pennyroyal Station! The bowl packs in seafood and country ham along with seemingly a bushel of vegetables, in a broth made rich with a quartet of stocks. Takeout via Tock or phone. The owner likes nothing more than when customers opt for a thali: All the flavors of Nepal in an assortment of dishes, says Subash Rai, who does double duty as the restaurants chef. Delivery via DoorDash and Caviar, Afghan flagship is full of heart and heartiness. Wheelchair users are asked to call in advance. For the full Anju experience, though, you have to order aged kimchi. 402 Snowden Dr, Andalusia, AL 36420-2537 +1 334-222-0459 Website. Ahn combines arborio rice and pecorino cheese as deftly as any Italian chef, but makes his risotto singular with the help of dashi instead of chicken stock and diced boiled abalone as the featured attraction. The restaurants smart service with a smile feels like old times. Robert Sietsema's 15 Best Dishes of 2020 - Eater NY A shortage of staff meant a delay in seating guests in the dining room, which partially opened recently. The patio treats customers to a mural abloom with flowers and incorporating local architecture. When he opened his Maryland pizzeria seven years ago, friends told him he needed to round out the menu with appetizers and pasta. In a small strip mall, the facade is nothing to look at. The chef not only wants us to eat well, he encourages us to think about our impact on the Earth one reason he named his restaurant after oyster mushrooms and oysters from the water, both eco-friendly and sustainable. My father was a perfectionist, says Jermaine Smith, who co-owns the operation with his sister, Henrietta Smith-Davis. Dinner Tuesday through Saturday. Crafted from rum, curdled and clarified kefir and a puree of cilantro and mint, its the color of life green and inspired by mint chutney. Know that the signature steamed mussels still come in a double pot, with a thatch of crisp fries in a newspaper-lined, copper-colored vase. Dinner Wednesday through Sunday. Kenya native and self-trained chef Kevin Onyona poured $2 million into transforming a basement dining room (the one-time Vidalia) near the corridors of power into an upscale African statement. The dining room is just as seductive. Breakfast, lunch and dinner Wednesday through Sunday. His tasting menu changes from visit to visit; the nine or so courses marry just-picked ingredients with abundant creativity. Diners are instructed to mix the ingredients with a nearby sauce based on gochujang so that each bite delivers the taste equivalent of a little bugle blast. It would be easy to fill up on pancakes alone; the scroll-like dosas, wrapped in both wax paper and foil and tucked into pizza boxes, are excellent. Rooster & Owl is all about making it easy for you to enjoy the restaurant, even if youre not actually inside. Dinner Tuesday through Saturday. Proof of vaccination required for indoor dining. Indoor and outdoor seating ($100 for gazebo seating). Flat sidewalks lead to the dining areas, and ramps lead to ADA-compliant restrooms. No matter what you think of the bridge between Latin America and the Mediterranean created by Enrique Limardo, you cant say he overpromised. His lightly pickled wild sardines, served sashimi style, are from Hokkaido, Japan, noted for the freshness of its seafood. Takeout and delivery. No delivery or takeout. 202-765-0500. gypsykitchendc.com. Im equally enamored of the slender lumpia, stuffed with ground pork and shrimp; sisig, the funky and fiery stir-fry of pigs ears, headcheese, Thai chile, garlic and cane vinegar; the pale-green, super-moist pandan cake made by the chefs sister; and some of the best fried rice for miles, this bowl enriched with crab fat and longanisa, sweet sausage thats made on site and that Fernandez plans to sell. To keep things interesting for everybody, Kuya Ja is selling Filipino soup kits, featuring weekend specials (whole fried snapper with peanut curry) and offering the occasional kinamot. The richest dish of the lot is the slow-cooked lamb, shaped into a soft terrine and grouped with red cabbage, sweetened with agave syrup, and an uber-silky potato puree inspired by the late French chef Jol Robuchon. Wisely, Barry Dindyal kept Al and Adrienne Carters Southern theme fried whiting and $14 lamb chops enjoy a serious constituency, after all while expanding the menu to include the Indian food Dindyal grew up eating. His cooking is careful and consistent. Or dense and delicious morsels of lamb rolled in a grass-colored paste of raw green papaya, ginger, mint and red chiles. 6395 Seven Corners Center, Falls Church, Va. Takeout via website, phone or DoorDash. Sea bass cooked low and slow with lavender and lime and delivered on steel-cut oats and hedgehog mushrooms is one of those combinations that make you go huh when you read about it and whoa! when you taste it. Buckboard Restaurant. Otherwise, it feels like 2019 in the sedate dining rooms, where servers in smart Alton Lane suits attend to your needs like the pros they are and the ever-epic menu is divided into categories that prioritize the thinking of chef Eric Ziebold. Thirty days time makes for a pleasantly funky ferment. Dinner daily, brunch weekends. The servers act as if theyd rather be getting root canals than greeting or seating you. That said, kudos to a sommelier who, without prompting, steers diners to liquid treasures that are well south of three digits. Ive saved the best for last. Wheelchair users are asked to call ahead so a ramp can be set out at the door; ADA-compliant restroom. I still stand behind stalwarts Bucks Fishing & Camping in Washington and Charleston in Baltimore, which you can find in my Hall of Fame. Even his more straightforward-sounding dishes sparkle at Daru. Another reassuring detail is the plastic shield over the cloth mask worn by whoever serves you. Proof of vaccination or negative test required for indoor seating. Pandemic pivot spurs a surprising revival. The roomy, unisex restroom thoughtfully includes Braille type near the entry. Takeout via Toast. Chocolate chess pie is a slice of heaven made possible with a coffee- and orange-flavored cream and candied ginger. "Im trying to be more conscientious about what I eat," says chef Marcelle Afram, who also oversees the popular Maydan. Were she able to fill those positions, Seki says, she and her father, Hiroshi, the 32-seat taverns 74-year-old chef, could expand service to Sunday and offer longer hours. A perch at the convivial bar lets you watch the skilled mixers and shakers and glean the latest mating rituals. Owner Rose Previte thinks of Argentina when she slices into the bavette set off with bold, cumin-laced chimichurri, Argentina being home to asado and the country where the restaurateur spent her honeymoon. The itinerary embraces seven generous courses and can be tailored for vegetarians. Such beautiful food! The game-changer prefers to surprise customers and maybe change your mind.. When we marvel at the staffs efficiency, a host tells us, We have lots of little corners to seat people, including a rear enclosed patio with a two-stool chefs counter that looks into the pizza-making operation. Long and clattery, the dining room is warmed up with vintage accents and young servers who look after you like good neighbors. No takeout or delivery. Wheelchair users can enter through a side door; ADA-compliant restroom. It helps that he retained his entire staff, who still went through two weeks of training before reopening the dining room in June. Besides, his melt is built with tuna confit, housemade mayonnaise, thick Pullman bread and Gruyere, which bubbles after a moment under the broiler. The white tufts run red with raspberry coulis when pierced with a fork. Quality is matched by quantity. The beautiful salads capture whatever season were in corn, cucumber and nectarine in August and side dishes such as tomato-sauced Romano beans scattered with feta cheese are snapshots of the chefs childhood, both at home and on visits to Greece. Theres no more fetching kitchen in town than the open one at Albi Arabic for my heart surrounded by a mural of characters holding hands. But fans in summer and heaters in winter let patrons enjoy the chefs surprises, year-round, in the great outdoors. Count on crisp fried chicken, a shrimp curry that pulses with ginger and side dishes of distinction. A bite of fried bread followed by a taste of daikon sweet followed by savory and decidedly sour wakes up the appetite. For now, then, admirers of his singular omakase staged at an oak counter in the rear will have to be content with memories of the refined feast. The better update: The selection of Japanese fish is "expanding by the week" and reflected in the daily specials, and the kitchen now offers housemade delicacies for purchase.

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