For me, there are three small pleasures at brunch: Irish coffee; cheesy grits; and someone else making an egg dish for me at odd times of the day. This meal prominently featured all three. On the first two parts, the Irish coffee was some of the best I've had (oddly enough, it's easy to mess this up... it's called too much Jameson at the expense of Bailey's), and the cheddar grits were fine (which is to say traditional, and not overwhelmingly buttery or cheesy, much to my chagrin).
Texas and I split two dishes: first, two poached eggs on gruyere toast with hollandaise, with a side frisée salad with pulled pork. Poached egg + frisee salad is a pretty regular combination, and this could have easily fallen into a safe category. But the gruyere toast was superlative, a nice flavor addition to the traditional eggs Benedict. Even sans meat, I found myself enjoying the sharp taste and wonderful crunch of the bread.
The second dish was basically a reordered version of the first: a pulled pork sandwich with two fried eggs, goat cheese, and caramelized onions. If the pulled pork got lost in the shuffle on the first dish, it didn't here. Seasoned well, it was mild enough to not overshadow the other ingredients, but still provided enough flavor to pack a punch. If anything, I wished there was more goat cheese on the sandwich, but it's a small quibble.
Upscale, classy, a shimmering mix of browns and beiges... and that's just the bar. Fiola is one of the more spectacular dining rooms I've seen, from the modern bar section to the mixed modern dining area. The square bar fills up the whole space when you walk in, with a row of circular high bar tables behind it. A soft glow comes from the light fixtures made of what can be called glass bubbles hanging over the marble bar.
Follow a set of wine coolers and down a small set of stairs to the main space, a mix of country-inn with granite brick walls, to beige leather couches along chocolate furniture and walls. Seating is a diverse mix, from two large half-circle booths on the left, to back-to-back rows of two-tops in the center of the space. Outside of the lack of space for couples, it's otherwise a beautiful space.
To start, I had one of Jeff Faile's creations (who, we realized, served us at the bar at Palena): a Root Down, a mix of Zaya rum, Carpano Antica vermouth, and root liqueur. I had no idea what any of those words meant, but the mix was a nice warm mix for a cold autumn night.
To start, we started with the recommended meatballs, served with sunny side up egg and pecorino cheese. Housemade meatballs from high-end restaurants are always great, but these were exceptional, the perfect mix of meat and fat. The egg also did a great job of bringing the whole dish together and gave it a nice finish, despite the lack of starch. And spoiler alert: it was the weakest dish of the night.
For dinner, CC and I split two half portions of pasta. The first was tortellini, with goat cheese, sweetbreads, and fennel pollen. People talk in reverent terms about Chef Trabocchi's old restaurant Maestro, and it's clear to see why. The fresh housemade pasta sang, providing a lightness that was surprising for starch. The sweetbreads were as creamy and smooth and well-cooked as any I've had before, especially with pairing with the goat cheese. Still, everything about the dish left you satisfied without feeling heavy.
On the more savory side was the marubini: butternut squash ravioli with quail and rosemary in a roasting jus. This was just amazing; the quail and jus just so rich with the perfect amount of salt, with the squash giving the dish a depth that was perfect for the season. Again, the pasta was well-made, and the flavors were spot on.
The bartender talked us into dessert and suggested the bombolini: donuts filled with ricotta. Crisp on the outside and delightful on the inside, these were little sugary bites of heaven. Followed by some lovely and diverse petit-fours.
Finding ourselves right smack dab in the middle of a food truck gathering the night of the annual Dupont Drag Race, Official Girlfriend of DCWD Texas and I needed to find a truck that suited both of our needs: veggie friendly but with meat options, and most importantly delicious. So we went with Rolling Ficelle.
Rolling Ficelle sells a variety of sandwiches in long baguettes. I'll admit that I had no idea what a ficelle was before this moment, and I'm not entirely sure what it is now (The Google tells me it actually is the bread, not the sandwich). Rolling Ficelle sandwiches are all named after modern artists, from Rothko to Frida Kahlo (an interesting choice), and in this instance I ordered the Davis: chicken breast, parsley, lemon aioli, almonds, avocado, and romaine. The bread was okay, neither as soft or as toasted as I would want it to be. At best, the fillings were like a decent chicken salad, with the almond an okay addition but the avocado almost nonexistent.
For her part, Texas ordered the Klee: hummus, piquillo peppers, Swiss, tomato, and baby spinach. Her sandwich was desperately lacking, with too much spinach and no real filling; all the ingredients were complementary pieces and not star attractions, so it felt like it was missing the key piece that tied the whole thing together. So, at $6, not exactly a steal.
This time, Talia and I arrived early enough to score patio seats on a lovely late summer night. Being a pescetarian, we ordered three veggie friendly dishes to split between the two of us (plus a fish dish, and one meat dish for me). This came along with the pinot noir flight: a wonderful rose champagne, a pinot blanc, and a burgundy.
First up was the avocado, served on grilled bread with pistachios, pistachio oil, and sea salt, a dish so good that the couple next to us ordered two of them. I guess this dish hinges on how much you love pistachios, almost as much as avocados. The texture is lovely, and the avocado is surprisingly mild, balanced out with the salt, but the pistachio is the complementary flavor that brings the whole dish together.
We also ordered the chickpeas in a saffron broth, with swiss chard, tomato, and mint. This was less of a success for us, the chickpeas not soft enough, and the broth not strong enough to make up for it. Great in theory, fun flavor profile, just not great execution.
Last in this round was a Mediterranean sea bream, with fingerling potatoes, parsley, garlic sauce, chili oil, and garlic chips. The crisp of the skin on the dish was nice, but the taste was overwhelmingly parsley, with the herb being made into a paste that the fillet sat on. For all the other subtleties, this dish was very one-note for me.
Still hungry, we went with two more dishes. First, the brussel sprouts served with pancetta, apple, and brown butter. I would have been much more excited about the dish had my bowl come with more than two morsels of pancetta; I kept digging for more, excited to perhaps find a third, but it wasn't meant to be. The brown butter sauce was tasty and everything well-cooked, just not balanced in terms of actual product.
Our second round brought the oil-cured roma tomatoes and goat cheese on grilled bread. From the menu, this wasn't what I was expecting; instead, it came out more like bruschetta (which in fairness, should have been fairly obvious). I liked the combination, and the microbasil that came with it made for a decent caprese taste, but I guess I wanted more punch from everything.
On our last trip to Pizzeria Paradiso, Official Friend of DCWD Rajistan and I visited the Dupont Circle location; this time Official Girlfriend of DCWD Texas and I headed for a pizza-making session in the Georgetown version, for the 20th Anniversary of PP, situated in the restaurant's cozy basement bar.
Monday, November 7 – $20 Take Out. Get one large and one small pizza for $20 on take-out orders only.
