No. 46: Cafe 15
Hotel restaurants wishing to avoid the cliché of expensive but blandly generic cuisine usually take one path: hire as big a culinary name as they can afford and mount a publicity campaign. The Sofitel did just that when it launched this contemporary French restaurant, bringing aboard chef/consultant Antoine Westermann (two Michelin stars) and wooing gastronomes with the likes of frog’s-leg lollipops and beer-battered brioche with beer ice cream. Westermann is gone, and with him went some of the restaurant’s cachet. As a result, a lot of people who like really good food have never heard of the place.
The staff understands how to maximize your pleasure without being showy. And even without a famous chef attached to the kitchen, the food is assured and occasionally surprising, with a refinement that doesn’t obscure the often big, countrified flavors. A terrine of green lentils, chicken, and duck is a reminder of the robustness of classic bistro cooking, but it’s so elegantly fashioned and light that it makes a fitting first course. Scallops atop a pool of celery-root purée pair white with white, a monochromatic arrangement that doesn’t hint at the earthy depths on the plate. Fish is a strength; chef Emmanuel Billand doesn’t overwhelm it with a wash of flavors, but he isn’t afraid to experiment. One night’s wild salmon, soft and pink, was ingeniously paired with a lightly creamy cauliflower broth.
Occasionally the kitchen overcooks its meats—veal medallions were a recent victim—and sends out all the excitement of conventional upscale hotel cooking.
Desserts are an unexpected surprise—a rhubarb tart boasts a light, buttery crust, and a chocolate-apricot cake shows how to be rich but not heavy, sweet but not cloying.
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.
