Cuisine: Restaurant impresario Jeff Tunks’s latest raw bar and seafood emporium dabbles in influences near (crab cakes), far (Mexican seafood cocktail), and farther (Thai-style crispy flounder with tamarind-chili sauce).
Mood: With a soaring dining room, artfully bubbled chandeliers, crisp service, and good-life chatter at the tables, the most ambitious restaurant in Reston Town Center exudes a big-city aura.
Best for: A business lunch or dinner; cocktails at the bar; a date.
Best dishes: Clams casino reimagined as a dip and served with a warm baguette; Big Daddy, a seafood tower of iced oysters, clams, shrimp, crab claws, and lobster; spicy bigeye-tuna roll; fried oysters with apple slaw; fried clams; roasted whole branzino with green sauce; butter-poached lobster in red curry; crab cakes; freshly fried doughnut holes.
Insider tip: If reservations are tight, try the bar, which has lots of dining space.
Service: •••
Open Monday through Friday for lunch and dinner, Saturday for dinner. Expensive.
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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.
