100 Very Best Restaurants 2014: Restaurant Eve

No. 12 on this year's list.

Cost:

Photograph by Chris Campbell.

If it were a car, it would be a luxury sedan with fine-tuned engineering and plush leather seats. This is a smooth, almost magisterially controlled operation, the kind you can trust to make that milestone birthday worthwhile. Some restaurants aim for the big statement; Eve—which recently consolidated its tasting room and bistro and is all the better for it—aims for a lot of little ones.

Start with an unfailingly gracious greeting, then move on to Todd Thrasher’s superlative cocktails, and you’re certain to be put in a better mood. Cathal Armstrong’s Continental cooking finds the seam between heartiness and elegance, nowhere as convincingly as with his preparations of game. Add in a they-think-of-everything staff and a space that combines Shaker simplicity with a Northern California cool and you have, well, one big statement. 

Open: Monday through Friday for lunch and dinner, Saturday for dinner. 

Don’t miss: Charcuterie board; beef tartare; gravlax with fingerling-potato crisps; Basque stew; veal sweetbreads with cornbread; pappardelle with pork rib; lima-bean agnolotti with corn; seared duck breast. 


Ann Limpert
Executive Food Editor/Critic

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.

Food Editor

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.