Vidalia
1990 M St., NW; 202-659-1990
This Southern-themed restaurant, number 11 on our January list of the 100 Best Restaurants, is more delicious than ever. RJ Cooper—a James Beard Award winner for best chef in the Mid-Atlantic region—is cooking lush comfort food remarkable for its lightness, intricacy, and finesse. Shrimp-and-grits and jumbo lump crab cakes are predictable temptations, but the seared-hamachi starter rivals the efforts of the city’s best sushi bars, a plate of sweetbreads with agnolotti is refinement itself, and a pork-belly cassoulet is a shimmering new gloss on an Old South staple. The cooking is backed by a stellar wine list and a terrific selection of wines by the glass.
2941 Restaurant
2941 Fairview Park Dr., Falls Church; 703-270-1500
With chef Jonathan Krinn’s affinity for Asian spices, esoteric fruits, and all things seafood, you’d think his summer menu at 2941—number 8 of our 100 Best—would be as light and bright as the glass sculpture above the maître d’ stand. But except for a few cool dishes—licorice-poached lobster on shaved jícama, honey-and-soy-marinated Chilean sea bass with green papaya—the chef seems to yearn for sweater season. Duck confit and foie gras show up with New England scallops; cardamom-spiced venison is matched with gnocchi, oyster mushrooms, and rich Madeira sauce. Still, Krinn’s plates are as artfully composed as ever. So it’s a shame when you wait a half hour to order only to see appetizers arrive just as your spoon hits the amuse bouche.
Kinkead’s
2000 Pennsylvania Ave., NW; 202-296-7700
Time is slipping away to savor some of the season’s soft-shells. This legendary seafood emporium—number 17 of our Best Restaurants—honors the local delicacy with sure-handed cooking: The insides are meaty and sweet, a faint sheath of fry-batter giving them a light crunch. Add a platter of oysters, a bowl of Chesapeake oyster chowder, and the glorious fried Ipswich clams, and you’ve got an ideal late-summer meal for two.
This appeared in the September 2007 issue of the magazine.
Ann Limpert joined Washingtonian in late 2003. She was previously an editorial assistant at Entertainment Weekly and a cook in New York restaurant kitchens, and she is a graduate of the Institute of Culinary Education. She lives in Petworth.
