location_on 1323 Fourth St., NE
language Website
Keith McNally’s original Pastis opened in New York’s grungy Meatpacking District in 1999. Quickly, it became heaven for Page Six obsessives. There was Monica Lewinsky, seeking respite in its crowded dining room post-Zippergate. Or Sarah Jessica Parker, who used the place for a baby shower. In the two-plus decades since, McNally has closed the New York Pastis and partnered with mega-restaurateur Stephen Starr to reopen it. This year, it spawned spinoffs in Miami and DC.
The original Pastis helped kick-start the Meatpacking District’s transformation into a shopping, dining, and velvet-rope mecca back in the early aughts. And Stephen Starr, also behind nearby El Presidente and St. Anselm, can call this new DC Pastis “gritty” as many times as he wants. But in reality, despite the rows of warehouses, the Union Market neighborhood is home to a Warby Parker, a Framebridge store, and a food hall filled with $17 sandwiches and $4 doughnuts. It’s the only place in the city you can visit a Herman Miller showroom and buy a $5,800 Eames lounge chair. Starr and McNally spent $13 million creating the 250-seat dining room and the tented outdoor dining areas, where one night my neighbor was an impressively behaved Bernese mountain dog.
It’s often said that Starr’s first DC restaurant, Le Diplomate, feels like a Disneyfied Paris bistro. Pastis does, too, with its mottled mirrors and a tin ceiling that looks smoke-stained but has been in use here for, oh, four months. The menu, as at Le Dip, is rooted in French classics. But there are a few pleasant surprises, such as a cheffy scallop crudo with passionfruit and hazelnuts, an excellent lemon spaghetti, and a plate of grandmotherly pierogi, slick with butter and filled with smooth potato, sour cream, and cottage cheese.
At its heart, though, Pastis is a bistro. The holy trinity of this kitchen is parsley, butter, and garlic. Everywhere, often all together. When it comes to the cast-iron skillet of escargots, that’s a good thing. (Plus, there’s terrific bread, made at Starr’s nearby bakery, Bread Alley, to sop it all up.) But it’s less alluring in the case of the chicken Kiev, which arrives looking like a corn dog crowned with mashed potatoes. When you cut into it, the over-salted and -breaded chicken roll-up belches watery parsley butter onto the plate. (Get the duck confit instead.) You’ll see lots of bar steaks sailing through the dining room, each topped with what looks like a full stick of green-flecked butter. The $72 lobster frites, as flashy and unexciting as a bottle of Veuve, was downright overwhelmed by its drenching of garlic butter.
The menu, which is also printed on the paper placemat, is massive and uneven. Salt (So. Much. Salt.) derailed an otherwise delicious steak-and-Gruyère sandwich and another evening’s skate grenobloise. The far better fish order was a restrainedlooking cut of grilled branzino with perfectly vinegary salad, plus crudités and aïoli. A New York strip was not only too salty but also tough and chewy, with just-okay fries. Order the steak hache, though, and you’re rewarded with what tastes like a hybrid of a great burger and a great, mustardy steak tartare.
It’s a similar story when it comes to cocktails. The bar makes a top-notch dirty martini, and I loved creations like the frothy, Chartreuse-based Eiffel Sour. But the L’Obscure, touted by the server as resembling a Sazerac crossed with a Manhattan, tasted like an airplane Coke after all the ice has melted.
The thing about the original Pastis is that it didn’t have to be about the food. That part could be straightforward and merely fine. This DC offshoot is crowded, loud, and feels like an epicenter, too. But of course it does—it’s still new (and a current influencer darling). What will its sprawling dining room look like in a year? Will it have the same bustling energy that Le Diplomate, its alpha-dog sibling on 14th Street, has managed to sustain for a decade? I’m not sure. Because you can import an onion soup and some red leather banquettes but not a thrilling scene. As my friend, visiting from LA, put it: “I’ve never seen worse outfits on people.”
Hours: Open Monday through Friday for lunch and dinner, Saturday and Sunday for brunch and dinner.
Neighborhood: Union Market.
Dress: Everything from spiffed-up jeans to teeny-tiny dresses.
Best dishes: Escargots; moules frites; pierogi; scallop crudo; lemon spaghetti; duck confit; steak hache; branzino with crudités.
Price range: Starters $12 to $26, entrées $19 to $72.
Bottom line: The newest French bistro on the block has a huge, hit-or-miss menu. But it feels like the place to be–for now, at least.
This article appears in the May 2024 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.
