100 Very Best 2015“Play with your food” seems to be the mantra at this Clarendon restaurant tricked out with concrete and brightly colored casserole pots. Many of the exuberant Southern-meets-French-or-Latino dishes are best eaten with your hands. Wedges of custardy cornbread, steamy in their iron skillet, are waiting to be dipped in maple butter. Buffalo ribs get swiped in rich blue-cheese sauce. And a ramekin of snails and mushrooms arrives with toast for sopping the juices. If you’re missing your knife and fork, a good New York strip with marrow butter and a crispy pork shank with plantains can get you reacquainted.
Don’t miss: Fried shrimp with spicy mayo; pig tostada; chicken pot pie; tuna toast with red-pepper rémoulade; bacon cheeseburger; mac and cheese; fried chicken with biscuits; huevos rancheros with pulled pork; pie of the day; peppermint-bark roulade.
See what other restaurants made our 100 Very Best Restaurants list. This article appears in our February 2016 issue of Washingtonian.
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.
Anna Spiegel covers the dining and drinking scene in her native DC. Prior to joining Washingtonian in 2010, she attended the French Culinary Institute and Columbia University’s MFA program in New York, and held various cooking and writing positions in NYC and in St. John, US Virgin Islands.
