Food

100 Best Restaurants 2011: Tosca

No. 33

Only the top 40 restaurants were ranked in 2011's Best Restaurants list.

The beige dining room is about as romantic as a boardroom, and indeed there are often lobbyists and lawyers consorting over chef Massimo Fabbri’s Northern Italian cooking. But the food has soul.

Fabbri favors earthy, robust flavors. Pork sausage with lentils is a wonderful starter. Cheese-filled tortelli demonstrate his fondness for mushrooms and black truffles. The “chocolate salami” dessert—slices of fudgy dark chocolate studded with nuts and fruit—is a whimsically tasty way to end a meal. Eating at the bar can keep costs down: Half portions of pasta are an affordable way to tour the menu.

Also good: Truffle-laced kabocha-squash soup; soft-shell crab with peas and ramps; salad of Parma ham, melon, and figs; carrot pappardelle with rabbit ragu; meat-stuffed ravioli with red-wine sauce; chestnut-and-potato gnocchi with sausage ragu; strawberry-rhubarb crostada with lemon semifreddo; tiramisu.

Open Monday through Friday for lunch and dinner, Saturday for dinner. Very expensive.

>> See all of 2011's Best Restaurants

 

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.