Only the top 40 restaurants were ranked in 2011's Best Restaurants list.
The forces behind this sleek dining room are Jeff and Barbara Black, who also own neighborhood mainstays Addie’s, BlackSalt, and Black Market Bistro. The menu here draws some inspiration from those restaurants. A generous pot of mussels with tomato, lemon, and shallots is straight out of the Addie’s recipe book, and a super-spicy Thai version and an excellent hanger steak with chimichurri are as good as the ones at Black Market.
But enough of the menu is unique. Appetizers are generally better than main courses, which can be ultra-buttery and rich (especially the fish dishes). Start with something as homespun as warm cornbread with honey butter or as refreshing as a grapefruit-and-shrimp salad. At the raw bar in front, you’ll find icy trays of Kumamoto oysters that are well-shucked and delicious. Weekdays from 4 to 7, Chesapeake Bay bivalves are two for the price of one.
Also good: Shrimp cocktail; fried chicken with sweet-potato waffle; saffron-scented fish stew; rib eye with béarnaise sauce; lemon meringue tart.
Open Monday through Saturday for lunch and dinner, Sunday for brunch and dinner. Expensive.
>> See all of 2011's Best Restaurants
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.
