Cuisine: Butter, cream, cheese, and bacon super-charge nearly every dish—even the salads—at Jeff Tunks’s homage to Louisiana cooking.
Mood: With drab carpeting and embroidered rose-colored banquettes, the subdued dining room feels more DC buttoned down than New Orleans jazzed up. That’s okay by the lobbyists and lawyers who have turned it into a second office.
Best for: Dealmaking; cholesterol-be-damned indulgence; Sazeracs and gin fizzes at the bar.
Best dishes: Fried green tomatoes in tangy shrimp rémoulade; a beef-filled turnover with black-pepper-ranch dipping sauce; deviled eggs topped with pickled shrimp, crab, and ham; charbroiled oysters in garlicky butter; seafood gumbo; pepper-jelly-glazed half duck; barbecue shrimp; lunchtime oyster and shrimp po’ boys; chocolate doberge cake with orange-blossom ice cream; Pimm’s-cup cocktail.
Insider tips: During weekday happy hour, many cocktails are discounted to $5. Ask the bartender for a bread basket—excellent buttermilk biscuits with pepper jelly and cream cheese—to nibble on. Many dishes, especially charbroiled oysters, the trio of pies, and barbecue shrimp, are big enough to share.
Service: ••½
Open Monday through Friday for lunch and dinner, Saturday for dinner, Sunday for brunch. 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.
