Food

eCitie Restaurant & Bar

A zippy hangout for NoVa's tech crowd.

From January 2003 100 Very Best Restaurants

Few restaurant venues are as interesting as eCitie. From the outside it looks like an airplane hangar. Inside it looks like a lively airplane hangar. There's plenty of space with 45-foot ceilings. To the left is one of the peppiest bar scenes in the area. To the right is a restaurant. The lower parts of the walls are covered with colorful fashion ads and photographs; higher are billboard-size Internet ads.

Good choices as starters are grilled calamari salad with cilantro, feta, and cucumber; a lump crabcake with corn garnish; a quesadilla filled with smoked duck, goat cheese, and roasted peppers, then topped with crème fraîche; tuna tartare with a soy-sake glaze; and a shrimp-and-lobster bisque.

Main courses to savor include veal piccata with lemon-butter sauce, fried-almond polenta, and capers; a smoked double pork chop over flageolet beans and peanut ragoût; veal meatballs laced with green olives, doused with lavender veal jus, and perched on house-made pappardelle; and veal forestière, a veal cutlet with wild mushrooms, wine sauce, and a delicious dried-plum polenta. Just about any dessert provides a fitting conclusion. The wine list is good, but it does not give most vintages.