The Inn at Little Washington (2/100, 2011)
The Inn is one of the most highly praised restaurants in the country, and certainly one of the best in the area. A one hour drive west from the beltway into rural Virgina finds this gem nestled amongst quaint B&B's and wineries. Reservations are highly sought and can be hard to get on the weekends, especially holiday weekends, so we were ridiculously lucky to be able to get a table on short notice during labor day weekend.
The room rates at The Inn are quite steep though, starting at $425 a night and increasing rapidly by room category. That is not even including the additional $245 for Saturdays, $145 for Fridays, and $75 for Sundays plus seasonal increases. In short - yikes!
We decided to save our money for what really counted (dinner and wine) and stay next door at the Middleton Inn.
For the price of a basic room at The Inn at Little Washington, we got a whole two-story cottage complete with jacuzzi tub and fireplace. It was just gorgeous! And the owners offered wine and cheese in the afternoon and port after dinner. While we were enjoying our wine and cheese, we met a couple who were celebrating their 50th anniversary. They had come down all the way from Michigan just to eat at The Inn, and had made their reservations a year in advance. They had eaten there the night before and tried to prepare us for what we were about to experience.
What we were about to experience was dining perfection, from the food to the quirky humor of the menu to the service The Inn knows exactly what it is doing. We only experienced one minor hiccup that night - we had asked in advance if we could bring in our own Champagne and they had said - of course! We had a bottle of Dom Perignon that was given to Jasper by his superiors as a gift for a job well done and brought that in. The sommelier chilled and opened it for us, but he also chastised us for bringing in something that they had on the menu. The policy makes sense, of course, but it should have been mentioned when we first asked if we could bring a bottle in. We were a little embarrassed but moved on quickly from that and ordered a bottle of wine by way of an apology, and the rest of the evening was flawless.
We were greeted by a menu that has a personalized greeting printed at the top, a list of local vendors, and a list of produce grown in The Inn's own garden. We were tempted by the ten course "Gastronaut's Menu", but found that the most exciting dishes were only on the three course menu so we opted for that.
I began with a carpaccio of lamb with Caesar salad ice cream that was just fantastic and incredibly innovative. Jasper had the "tin of sin" - a tin of crab salad topped with caviar - which was absolutely divine!
For my second course, I had the macaroni and cheese with Virginia country ham and black truffle. Absolutely decadent and rich - we both agreed that it was better than Jasper's dish, which is saying something. Because Jasper's dish was seared foie gras with frisee, house made bacon, lamb confit, poached egg, and truffle.
For my main, I had the veal sweetbreads and Virginia country ham on pappardelle with a grilled local plum sauce - perfection. Jasper had the pepper crusted tuna "pretending to be filet mignon" with foie gras and burgundy butter sauce, and you can probably guess how amazing that was.
Dessert was such a hard decision! Eventually I settled on a triple cream cheesecake with roasted local figs and champagne-berry sorbet. I was sad that it was so little because it was so divine. Jasper ordered the chocolate menage a trois - black forest mousse bombe, chocolate creme brulee, and bittersweet chocolate souffle.
At the end of the meal, I was presented with chocolates and cookies as usual, except that these were nestled inside a tiny house!
This was one of the best dining experiences we have ever had and we are dying to go back. Especially because there are so many more dishes that we want to try: a "marriage" of hot and cold foie gras with sauternes jelly; roasted beets from the garden with beet mousse; day boat scallops with gnocchi, tomato, lemon, capers, and brown butter; duck breast with sweet corn pudding and peaches; veal loin with bone marrow custard and fennel; a "painter's palette" of sorbets for dessert; and the "seven deadly sins" dessert sampler.
In an effort to hold on to the experience, I bought the cookbook - signed by the chef of course!
And in the morning, we were treated to a lovely breakfast at Middleton with homemade ginger and cherry scones.
And a gorgeous egg strata with fresh fruit.
This is a trip we will definitely be repeating!
Sushi Taro (24/100, 2011)
We have been to Sushi Taro before, but this time we decided to try the Omakase - a personalized dinner with the chef and owner, Nobu Yamazaki, presiding. This is the ultimate dining experience at this already fantastic restaurant (that flies its fish in fresh from Tokyo daily). You must make a reservation in advance (and they can be hard to get, as there are only 6 spots per night). We booked a holiday Monday and were lucky enough to be the only ones there - earning Chef Yamazaki's undivided attention. The Chef's wife will e-mail you ahead of time asking about preferences and restrictions. She also informed us that the restaurant had received some blowfish, and asked if we would be willing to try it. "Rare poisonous fish? Sign us up!" we said. When we arrived, we were escorted to the Omakase counter, which is tucked behind a screen in the back. To the left we could see the entrance to the kitchen, and behind Chef Yamazaki's workspace was a pretty bamboo garden.
We began by ordering sake and were offered a variety of sake cups to choose from. We were introduced to a fantastic sake that we had not tried before - Dassai 23 - it is a nigori (unfiltered), but is clear instead of the usual milky color. Chef Yamazaki informed us that the 23 stood for the percentage of the grain that the rice was polished down to (50% is the norm for the highest tier of sake). Then the Chef grated fresh wasabi (one of our very favorite things) for us. The flavor of fresh wasabi is vastly different from the green paste you find most places - ask for it whenever possible. The first course was Yamazaki's signature sesame tofu, which is made daily from sesame and a Japanese mountain root. It has the most distinctive texture - soft and silky and creamy, but more solid than regular tofu. It was served in a bonito broth and topped with fresh uni (sea urchin). I have had this dish before at Taro, and I am such a huge fan of it. There is nothing like that tofu out there anywhere else. The second dish was albacore and bok choy. The third dish was one of my favorites - Japanese hairy crab with an egg yolk based sauce (somewhat like hollandaise). It was sweet and creamy and all kinds of delicious. Next came the famous blowfish or fugu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugu). Yamazaki sliced the fish into extremely thin pieces of sashimi, so thin that they were translucent. The fish was slightly chewy (one of the reasons it is sliced so thinly), and had a very delicate flavor. The Chef also finely sliced the three layers of skin, which each had a different texture and flavor. I preferred the chewy, rubbery, outer layer of skin. After we finished, Chef Yamazaki asked us if our lips were tingling. "Ok, good" he said when we told him "no". So I guess we didn't get any poison! I would definitely try blowfish again (prepared by someone as skilled as Yamazaki), the flavor and texture were very unique.
The next dish was a combination of many elements: conch that had been cooked for 2 hours so that it was still chewy, but not painfully so; a square of savory monkfish liver pate topped with sweet ponzu gelee; warm, soft nuts stuffed with fish cake; a tiny fried whole fish simmered in a sweet soy glaze, with a lovely delicate crunch from the bones; and lastly, a candy sweet kumquat in syrup. After that came the sashimi course, where Chef Yamazaki showed us boxes of fresh seafood and said we could have whatever we wanted. He told us that the best parts of the fish are saved for the Omakase counter. We tried fatty tuna, blue nose, and alfonsino - which I had never even heard of but was one of our favorites. Another of our favorites was the wagyu beef, seared quickly on a grill, and served with fried garlic chips, chives, and a citrus soy and salted plum sauce that tastes somewhat like bbq. The New Zealand salmon was creamier than other salmons I've had. We also had a wild yellowtail that was incredible, very different from it's domestic counterpart. The sweet shrimp were something that I remembered from our first visit to Taro - they are incredibly creamy and sweet; the texture is unlike any other shrimp. Somebody in the main restaurant must have ordered a prawn dish, because Chef Yamazaki took the leftover heads and fried them for us. Fried prawn heads are one of my very favorite things - salty, crunchy, briney goodness. We tried the live scallop, which was sweet and creamy. The Chef told us that the scallop liver was edible, but that the flavor is very strong and that he didn't normally serve it to people. I told him that I had read about it and wanted to try it. It was good - somewhat like foie gras. This choice apparently put us on the "adventurous" path (which I will explain later). We told Chef Yamazaki that we didn't really prefer mackerel, and he decided to change our minds. He served us sweet mackerel, then minced us a delicious tartare. We could have kept ordering sashimi forever, and he would have let us, but we felt it was time to move on.
After the sashimi course, we were served blowfish soup with fish cake and turnip, then tempura fish and vegetables. Next came a delicious grilled skewer of miso marinated duck and fresh bamboo. I mentioned before that we asked to try the scallop liver. This made us seem adventurous to the Chef, who served us a couple of dishes "because we like the scallop liver". The first was a dried squid with innards. Usually the innards are cleaned out of squid before it is prepared, because the flavor is so strong. The dish was was almost like squid jerky, with a strong ocean flavor from the innards. The second dish was a bright orange mound of sea cucumber entrails that were salty and slimey and not my favorite. After that we were served hot sake infused with blowfish tail, before moving on to the sushi course. We ordered all of our favorites from the sashimi course and watched as Chef Yamazaki expertly crafted the sushi by hand. Again, we could have ordered forever and he wouldn't have stopped us, but we were very full. We were given a dessert menu to choose from. I chose a pineapple and wine compote with a vanilla panna cotta and red wine ice cream - it was very good. Jasper had a banana and chocolate crepe. Then we were served a block of gelee filled with fruit.
It was a fantastic experience. We learned so much and had a great time talking with Chef Yamazaki, plus the food was incredible. This is definitely a rare occasion, however, as the total for 2 people was around $400. I would love to try it again in a different season.
2941 (6/100)
A happy week brought us to 2941 to celebrate and relax. If you have never been here before, it can be tricky to find - set behind a wall of trees on the the first floor of an office building. But my-oh-my is it worth the hunt. The location is stunning, first of all, with several koi filled ponds flowing and waterfalling down and around the glass-walled building. The inside of the dining room is no less beautiful, with long strands of glass sculpture hanging like curtains from the lofted ceiling. The mood is very serene and romantic. The cocktail list is innovative and fresh. I ordered something with grapefruit and elderberry - fantastic.
We ordered the 6 course tasting menu with wine parings. I should have taken notes, because I can't remember all of the dishes (which may have something to do with the wine pairings...). Which is not to say that they were not good, they were all wonderful. The dinner blends together in my memory in a mix of culinary joy and romance. The bread that is served is baked in house daily. There was a variety and they were all fresh and yummy. Our first course was a duo of canapes - two perfect bites. Beef tartare on brioche with quail egg was rich and delicious. Smoked salmon topped with popcorn (yes, popcorn) was equally good. This was followed by a perfectly cooked scallop. Our fish course was paired with a creamy souffle of masa harina (native American corn) that I couldn't get enough of. Before desert, we were served a shot of frozen wine. I had the desert presented on the tasting menu - a sour cherry gateau - and Jasper requested something chocolate. Neither of us was disappointed.
The tasting menu changes daily, so don't expect to see what is on the website, or what you had last week, or yesterday. But do expect it to be fun, fresh, delicious, and beautifully presented. (And ask for a copy of the menu if you want to remember what you had - doh!)