Only the top 40 restaurants were ranked in 2011's Best Restaurants list.
If you crossed a lived-in house with a polished restaurant, you’d get something like this 15-year-old favorite in DC’s Adams Morgan. Black-and-white portraits of children and great aunts in mismatched frames lend a cozy feel to the place, which is bathed in a soft yellow glow.
Chef John Manolatos’s food, influenced by his Greek background, follows the homey theme with upscale fare that has the heft and rusticity of a grandmother’s cooking. There’s also a more serious and studied side to his menu that shows in textbook sauces and soufflés as well as house-made pasta.
Brunch is excellent; although the menu is limited, the twists on the usual choices—such as waffles made with cornmeal and walnut butter—make it one of the best weekend-morning choices in DC.
Also good: Sampling of extra-virgin olive oils; smoked-bluefish rillettes with pickled beets, oranges, and caviar; house-made tagliatelle with chicken livers and mushrooms; bison sirloin with hand-cut fries and house-made steak sauce; bison burger with a poached egg (brunch only); toasted pound cake with buttermilk ice cream.
Open Tuesday through Saturday for dinner, Sunday for brunch and dinner. Expensive.
>> See all of 2011's Best Restaurants
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.
