Et Voila! is one of the recommended Mother’s Day restaurants by our editors. Photograph by Chris Campbell.
Mother’s Day is less than two weeks away, and we’ve been pondering our options as much as anyone. (If you think we’re tough critics, you should meet our moms.) Restaurants around Washington are bringing out the big brunch guns—as evidenced by our extensive guide—and it can be hard to choose. Here are a few of our personal picks—places where we’d toast our own moms. Caveat: We haven’t tried certain set menus or judged service during a holiday crush. Consider these guidelines, not guarantees.
This isn’t a compilation of “wow” moments. It isn’t about dishes that made me close my eyes in sensual contemplation or exult at my great privilege to be eating professionally on your behalf. I had those, believe me. You can’t eat out 500 times a year and not have those.
This is a personal list, and the moments are, too—private snapshots I hope to extend by writing about them and carry forth with me like keepsakes in this scattered and altogether too fast existence.
What, I asked myself, were the meals among the 500 that stood out the most?
The answers were as interesting as they were surprising. What bubbled up to the surface of my memory were not the long, multi-course feasts I was fortunate to consume in the course of my daily rounds as critic. For whatever reason, my mind refused to sort and classify according to the usual empirical categories of good or bad, and if I happened to think of a particular dish, I did not immediately come up with the sort of sensual specifics I often rely on to write my reviews.
