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IN THIS ISSUE

DC Dining
By John Mariani

Applebee’s of the Air:
American Airlines First Class Dinner
By Andrew Chalk

NEW YORK CORNER
Gramercy Tavern
By John Mariani

NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR
Penfolds Celebrates Its 170th Anniversary in London
By John Mariani

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DC DINING

By John Mariani

         With all the wrangling going on in Washington--interrupted only by frequent Congressional vacations--it’s surprising the politicians ever get to go out to dinner.  Indeed, the sighting of a major political figure at a restaurant is sufficient fodder for the local newspapers (those that are left), though a true celebrity is even better for the media mill.

         Still, the nation's capital is a solid dining city, frequented by those who live in and around it and by the millions of tourists who visit. Here are some of my favorite new spots in town.

 

DEL CAMPO

777 I Street NW

202-289-7377

delcampodc.com

        What hits you first as you enter Del Campo is the aroma of sweet smoke coming off everything from skirt steak and sweetbreads to charred beets and mortadella cheese sizzling on the huge grill that underpins most of the cooking at this grand South American restaurant located next to D.C.’s Chinatown.

        Peruvian Chef Victor Albisu, whose grandfather was a Cuban baker and whose mother ran a market where her son learned to grill from Argentinean and Uruguayan butchers, has focused his expertise and energies to create a meat-centric menu on which everything shares common ground. Even seafood and ceviches are lashed with good olive oil and share the plates with chilies, charred onions and corn, yucca fries, tangy romesco sauce, chimichurri and salsa criolla.  Bread is baked in cast-iron skillets, and, when the kitchen closes, the bar serves street food--empanadas, albondigas, chicharones, and a chivito sandwich ($20) stuffed with seared ribeye, mortadella, ham, olives, hearts of palm, and fried egg. 

        The heart of the matter here is the array of meats: chorizo sausage (four kinds), short ribs, ribeye, lamb shank, pork belly, all gleaming, fat-rich, generously sliced and piled high, and whether deep red, rosy or pink, always charred black ($9-$72).

        You feast on all this in a splendidly expansive dining room with concrete walls and oak floors, antique mirrors and chandeliers, worn leather chairs and South American antiques.  If Peruvian food in this country needs a template for the future, Del Campo is surely one of the most exciting new restaurants of this era.

Del Campo is open for lunch Mon.-Fri. and for dinner nightly.

FUEGO COCINA Y TEQUILERIA

2800 Clarendon Boulevard

Arlington, VA

571-970-2180

fuegova.com

        Another Latin-American restaurant--this time mostly Mexican--has made a big splash over in Arlington, Virginia, where Chef Jeff Tunks, Gus DiMillo, and David Wizenberg took over a defunct, two-story eatery and turned it into a riot of color, with Aztec-style tiles and textiles, mirrors and a copper-clad fire pit, a 50-foot bar with gleaming shelves stocked with more than 120 tequilas (the signature margaritas are terrific), brushed metal barstools, a grand staircase and an outdoor patio. The name of the restaurant means “fire kitchen and tequila bar.”

        This is one of Passion Food Hospitality’s many local restaurants, which include DC Coast, Acadiania, Ceiba, and Passion Fish, and the largess of this newest enterprise is part of the company’s usual m.o.--make it big, make it fun, make it authentic.  Tunks and his crew spent considerable time enlivening traditional Mexican cooking, so start off with a few botanas, Mexican cold and hot plates such as the quesadilla de jaiba packed with lump crabmeat and three chile sauces ($10), or the flautas de pato of juicy shredded duck confit with Oaxacan white cheese and a black mole sauce ($9).

        There are several tangy ceviches and main courses--if you can stop yourself from ordering the small plates--include a pozole verde of hominy with slowly braised pork and green chile ($8); a vegetarian chile with avocado and crème ($8); and a “sizzling skillet” of meats, corn, and tortillas (market price).

        Along with a fine tres leches cake (right) with cream cheese icing and guava sauce ($7), there are desserts you won't find in typical D.C. Mexican eateries, like torejas, a Mexican-style pressed French toast with vanilla ice cream, and cajeta cheese.

        The Latin American bottlings on the wine list are exceptional.

Open for dinner seven nights a week; Tacos & Tortas Mon.-Fri. and for brunch Sat. & Sun.

CAPELLA HOTEL

1050 31st St NW

202- 617 2400  

capellahotels.com

        The most modern and exciting new hotel in the Capital is Capella, located above the C&O Canal in Georgetown and designed by Peter Silling. (Capella also has hotels in Bangkok, Dusseldorf, Singapore and Cabo San Lucas.) The minimalist brickwork of the exterior opens to a glittering foyer and high-ceilinged, very comfortable Living Room, where you may have coffee and rolls in the morning or drinks later on, and artisan craftsmen have been hired to work the polished Austrian woodwork throughout.  

    There are 49 guest rooms and 12 suites, with personal assistants assigned to you who can easily and efficiently tend to any request. In my case, a lost bag, left in the taxi, was retrieved within an hour of my arrival.

        The swank 26-seat Rye Bar has become a prime watering hole in Georgetown, and the sleek 70-seat Grill Room, overlooking the Canal, is where Chef Jacob Esko, from Sweden, shows off his commitment to buying very fine beef that includes a 40-day dry-aged Virginia Prime ribeye with Smoked Gouda, caramelized onions, porcini gratin, beets and a smoked sauce laced with rye for $56--which is $9 less than the steak alone at Bourbon Steak around the corner at The Four Seasons. 
    This, like many other dishes, including fish, Esko cooks on the bone to retain the food’s juiciness. There’s a bargain $29 three-course lunch. And there is a daily rotisserie item, such as chicken with mashed potatoes and vegetables ($29), and pork tenderloin brined in honey mustard with wild mushrooms, fiddlehead ferns and pea sprouts with gnocchi and Sherry sauce ($32).
    The wine list could be a lot longer and less pricey than it currently is.

        I also like the nice touches like the Champagne cart with some exclusive Taittinger labels, the beef tartare prepared tableside ($20-$26), and the dessert cart, which offers a made-on-the-spot baked Alaska.  Those who shrug that fine dining is dying should see how it's been reformulated in the sleek style of The Grill Room.

The Grill Room is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner daily.

NOPA

800 F Street, NW

202-347-4667

http://www.nopadc.com

    Billed as an “American Brasserie with French and Asian influences,” this new 160-seat restaurant in Penn Quarter is run by the redoubtable Ashok Bajaj of the Knightsbridge Restaurant Group, which also owns the superb Indian dining room Rasika and the fine Italian spot Bibiana.  Far less focused than those others, Nopa aims to hit too many niches--from raw bar and snacks to sandwiches and burgers, but there is plenty to love on the menu.

    When I visited, the main dining room, done in white brick, rough wood paneling and steel accents, was outlandishly loud, but I’m told that baffling was put in to tamp down the noise; in any case, the room away from the main one is quieter.

    Chef Greg McCarthy, who worked with Jean Georges Vongerichten in New York for six years and at Nobu 57 there, has a talent for richly flavored food, evident in his Chilean sea bass with baby eggplant and spring peas shot through with wasabi ($28);  a vegetarian will be over the moon for the glazed vegetable pastiche in a sweet-sour broth with black quinoa ($18).  I also loved the roasted rockfish with citrus salsa and fingerling potatoes, and, in season, the crisp soft-shell crab with a lush avocado puree scented with basil.  

    The best starter I tried was an expertly rendered terrine of foie gras with carrot and ginger.  For dessert, you can hardly go wrong with the freshly baked madeleine cookies ($7) or the chocolate nougat bar with roasted almond toffee ($9).  And for those with a soul for the South, don’t miss the fried strawberry pies with fromage blanc ice cream ($9).

Nopa is open Mon.-Fri. for lunch and dinner, Sat. for dinner and Sun. for Champagne  brunch ($30) and dinner.

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Applebee’s of the Air: American Airlines First Class Dinner
By Andrew Chalk

       Flying back first class from London gave me a chance to board first, sleep on a full-flat seat and take on board something larger than a reading glasses case without being charged more than the price of half a tank of gas. Another perk of first class travel is first class food. American Airlines says its menu selections are “inspired by you and created by our experienced culinary team. So sit back, and satisfy your cravings with the fine cuisine offered onboard.” They then say: “Satisfy your palate with our chef-inspired menu options that range from succulent entrées to light and refreshing selections.”
       Buoyed by such promises,  I eagerly awaited meal service. The glossy, printed menu informed me that I would start with an amuse-bouche of “Chicken Pakora with Mango Chutney” (right). The wait was not to be long. Cabin staff bustled around in the kitchen and reappeared with china bowls containing . . . containing what? Two spherical mediocrities on a cocktail stick atop a miserly portion of chutney. The uninspiring appearance turned out to be this dish’s biggest strength. In the mouth, these pakora were just glutinous balls of tasteless glop. Either the recipe had gone wrong in the kitchen, or these were made of those resins you see on documentaries about industrial plastics. These images show the light snack fritters that I was expecting and they bear no relation to the dense, leaden orbs that we were served.
        On to the starter. I passed on the Thai Chicken and went with the choice of smoked salmon. Salmon is always a good bet at 35,000 feet, owing to its strong taste, and smoked salmon has the strongest salmon taste (below). If the previous course had been arranged by an apprentice on his first day, then this was his second effort.  He seemed to have grasped the rudiments of presentation and constructed a dish that could, with the shaping of the cream cheese and the placement of the folded salmon slices on the blinis, be described as appetizing to look at. The taste was more of a mixed bag.  The strong points were the forceful taste of the salmon (likely raised in a concentration farm in Scotland) on the blinis along with those large capers. But the spring peas in the blinis were bland and the cream cheese must have been some leftover pus from the documentary that inspired the first course.
     Thus far, American Airlines wasn’t doing well. I wanted the names of those chefs who had inspired these dishes. Had they flunked out of the first week of "Hell’s Kitchen"? Did they stage at White Castle?
     Morel mushroom soup tasted like morel mushroom soup and even looked attractive with its deep earth tones against the backdrop of its white serving bowl.  But Americans culinary winning streak was not to last. Seasonal greens with fresh vegetables, asparagus and pesto mozzarella with honey Dijon dressing may have been better described as “grass with gloop.” The oversweet honey Dijon dressing would never get through French customs.  If Paula Lambert of The Mozzarella Company in Dallas had made the airline’s cheese, she could have used it to fill holes in the Deep Ellum sidewalk, not for human consumption.
     The entrée was another step up (confidence-restoring would be too strong a term). Look at the color of that Chateaubriand (right), as it is luxuriantly called. Perfect medium rare and with gratin potatoes and sautéed leeks that stood up to the strain of high altitude. The tenderloin wasn’t Prime grade , but it wasn’t Kevlar either. A reasonable effort.
      One of the other entrées made me think of home. Crab cakes with spicy hollandaise, warm cabbage, sautéed greens and roasted potatoes were straight from the Sam’s Club freezer case. To compensate for the lack of any crab flavor, they had been weaponized with salt. To paraphrase a million yelpers, “yum.”
     Desserts come on a separate menu and so they should. The Traditional Ice Cream Sundae is Ben and Jerry’s vanilla ice cream scooped into a bowl, drizzled with butterscotch (or hot fudge) from a jar, and sprinkled with pecans from a packet and whipped cream from a can. This masterpiece of culinary technique was so divine that I wanted to ask for a second one.
     All of this gastronomic excess is yours for about $8,600 each way. Although the wine list is a compensating bright spot, I am so glad I used miles to buy my seat as it dulled the disappointment that the pinnacle of what American Airlines does is so appallingly bad. It’s only April, but so far this goes down as my worst meal of the year.

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