Weekend Brunch, Breakfast, Good Bar/Cocktails
Slideshow: Inside The Brixton
At the Brixton, on DC’s U Street corridor, a wooden bar, shiny as a Beefeater’s belt buckle, anchors the downstairs dining room. Upstairs, a burgundy leather sofa faces a fireplace and an ornately gilded mirror. A heated deck tops the roof, perfect for witnessing the revelry below.
From the get-go, the six-month-old pub—from brothers Ian and Eric Hilton, who also own the District’s Marvin, Chez Billy, and the Satellite Room—was fated to become a go-to neighborhood spot for a frothy pint of Boddingtons or Newcastle. But its promise as a dining destination has been less clear.
The first time I ate there, shortly after it opened, a server couldn’t identify a single cheese on a sampler platter, and an appetizer of samosas showed up looking—and tasting—as if it had come out of a Trader Joe’s freezer. A mixed-greens salad withered under too-salty dressing.
But then something curious happened: The Brixton got good.
Chef Jorge Pimentel inherited the kitchen from Jeffrey Jew, who never returned to the restaurant following a brief stint on the current season of Top Chef. Pimentel has tweaked the menu: Recent additions include an entrée of rosy little lamb chops—irresistible when dredged through creamy tzatziki—and a trio of tuna-tartare towers with slices of pear, garlic chips, and capelin roe. Beer-battered haddock with skinny fries, a terrific malt-vinegar rémoulade, and a side of mushy peas is one of the best fish-and-chips plates in town. And while novelty probably prompts most orders of the Scotch egg—sausage-wrapped, dipped in panko, and fried golden-brown—its lovely contrasting textures showcase the kitchen’s culinary chops. And those lifeless samosas? They’ve been replaced with dumplings as flaky as those at the best Indian restaurants.
Still, flaws remain: Buttery, sesame-marinated grilled kampachi is saddled with a side of soba noodles in a flavor-starved broth, and the horseradish vinaigrette on the mixed greens still delivers too much salt. Upstairs, a surly attitude behind the bar sometimes eclipses the charm of drinking on the roof. And cocktails—such as a wanly flavored Pimm’s Cup—have been uneven.
But it’s hard to grumble when a place that could easily get by on handsome looks and plentiful booze aspires instead to create truly good food.
This article appears in the January 2013 issue of The Washingtonian.
Discuss this story
Feel free to leave a comment or ask a question. The Washingtonian reserves the right to remove or edit content once posted.