About Ardeo + Bardeo
This is the iPod Shuffle of restaurant menus. There are
trendily bad-for-you bar snacks like cheese fries but also esoterica such
as French breakfast radishes with butter. Timid eaters can order a chicken
breast; the adventurous can dive into a seven-hour braised leg of suckling
pig with redeye gravy. And that’s not to mention the charcuterie, boutique
pizzas, and big, soulful bowls of pasta.
This something-for-everyone approach puts strains on a kitchen
and means that Ardeo works best as the neighborhood restaurant it was
intended to be—where regular patrons swing by a couple of times a week and
order the same few things as always.
Don’t miss: Miniature
open-faced steak-and-potato sandwiches with horseradish crème fraîche;
salmon rillettes with “everything” bagels; chicken soup with
green chili; rabbit Bolognese; vanilla-mascarpone cheesecake;
chocolate-pistachio tart.
Open: Monday through Friday for
dinner, Saturday and Sunday for brunch and dinner. Expensive.
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.
