BON APPETIT – Dishcrawl: Touring D.C.’s Best Foodie Neighborhoods, One at a Time
May 1, 2013
Alex Barron
Restaurant Critic
Bon Appetit
Photos: Elise Vu/DC Spotlight Newspaper
A couple of young doctors from New York take their place around a large square table next to a group of Georgetown law students, a retired couple from Takoma Park and a thirty-ish woman from Arlington. (“I usually meet my girlfriends here, but they’re out of town and I didn’t want to miss it,” she explains.) The setting is Smith Commons, an updated version of an English neighborhood pub, [...]
BON APPETIT – Passion Fish Restaurant: The luxury ship of seafood cuisine
April 1, 2013
Alex Barron
Restaurant Critic
Bon Appetit
Photos: Elise Vu/DC Spotlight Newspaper
In light of the recent ocean cruise boat disasters, prospective passengers might be forgiven if they suddenly feel a little hesitant about hopping aboard a luxury ship. A safer journey might be to Reston, Virginia’s Passion Fish, an upscale seafood restaurant owned and operated by D.C. chef and restaurateur Jeff Tunks. The restaurant’s interior — divided into multiple decks and bursting with aquatic blues and greens — is a modern [...]
BON APPETIT – Ambar Restaurant: D.C., meet Serbia and enjoy
March 1, 2013
Alex Barron
Restaurant Critic
Bon Appetit
Photography: Roshan Ghimire
As more and more quality restaurants pop up in and around D.C., the scene as a whole continues to grow in increasingly diverse and cosmopolitan directions. A night out in almost any of its most popular neighborhoods offers a vast array of ethnic cuisines: Mexican, Thai, Mediterranean and increasingly, Ethiopian, Vietnamese and Peruvian. But to even the most experienced eaters, Balkan food is generally an alien concept. (Not that it requires an adventurous [...]
BON APPETIT – Drafting Table: Fourteenth Street’s Newest Attraction
February 1, 2013
Alex Barron
Restaurant Critic
Bon Appetit
The décor at Drafting Table, the new neighborhood bar located on the perpetually evolving Fourteenth Street Corridor, evokes the studio of an architect: the framed blueprints of various Washington landmarks adorn the walls, and patrons sit in revolving wooden-backed chairs that could have been borrowed from a high school shop classroom. The whole concept foreshadows the menu, the result of meticulous planning and tinkering, but it also reflects the current state of the neighborhood, which [...]
BON APPETIT – Zengo: Fusing Innovation with Longevity
December 1, 2012
Alex Barron
Restaurant Critic
Bon Appetit
When Zengo opened its doors in Chinatown more than seven years ago, the area still had a reputation for being dicey—the kind of place that would send Capitols and Wizards fans flocking back to the Metro the moment the game at the Verizon Center ended. Times have changed on Seventh Street, however. As the area becomes hipper and trendy restaurants pop up one by one, Zengo has been established as a reliable mainstay.
It is a [...]
BON APPETIT – Restaurants presidents love in Washington, D.C.
Photos: DC Spotlight Newspaper/Drew Angerer
November 1, 2012
By Alex Barron
Restaurant Critic
Bon Appetit
For D.C. restaurants, not much is better for business than a visit from a president. Case in point: After the Obamas dined at the Blue Duck Tavern for their 17th anniversary in 2009, the restaurant became one of the hottest reservations in town.
Three years after the fact, any reference to this West End
restaurant is often accompanied by a mention of the presidential milestone that it hosted. A [...]
BON APPETIT – Bistro Vivant: Breathing New Life into McLean’s Culinary Scene
Photos: Joshua Lanier/DC Spotlight Newspaper
October 1, 2012
Alex Barron
Restaurant Critic
Bon Appetit
McLean, Virginia, has always had a reputation as a pleasant suburb, known for its opulent mansions and appealing location adjacent to Great Falls Park. However, given that McLean is close to Bethesda in terms of demographics, one might be surprised to find that it offers relatively few dining options. Until recently, a trip down the heart of Chain Bridge Road—the main drag, as it were—featured a Domino’s, a Japanese restaurant, and [...]
BON APPETIT – Johnny’s Half Shell: Seafood to Die For
September 1, 2012
By Alex Barron
Restaurant Critic
Bon Appetit
The reinvention of Johnny’s Half Shell over the past six years is a great American success story. Prior to 2006, the inconspicuous oyster shack in
Dupont Circle was popular with locals, but relatively obscure to the District at large. When managing partners Ann Cashion and John Fulchino moved to a piece of prime real estate within eyeshot of both Union Station and the Capitol Building, they received flak from fans who worried that the restaurant [...]
La Forchetta: A celebrity chef makes a comeback in DC
Photos: Joshua Lanier/DC Spotlight Newspaper
July 1, 2012
By Alex Barron
Restaurant Critic
Bon Appetit
The management at La Forchetta, the stylish new trattoria in the the posh Wesley Heights neighborhood of Northwest D.C., has a bit of a challenge on its hands. It needs to appeal at once to the sophisticated palates of families and older couples from the affluent surrounding neighborhoods, while hopefully keeping prices low enough and an atmosphere relaxed enough to draw students from American University (just a few [...]
Breakfast at Blue Duck Tavern: A Washingtonian way to start the day
June 1, 2012
By Alex Barron
Restaurant Critic
Bon Appetit
To some, hotel restaurants carry a certain stigma; there is danger that the uninformed may lump together the sumptuous new breakfast menu at Blue Duck Tavern with the Free Continental Breakfast at Motel 6. The modern American bistro (with the sensibilities of an elegant country kitchen), may be housed within the West End Park Hyatt, but truly, it has long since shed the label of “just a hotel restaurant.” To those already [...]
RAMMYS Awards: Showcasing old favorite restaurants and new upstarts
Photos: Joanna Morena/DC Spotlight Newspaper
May 1, 2012
By Alex Barron
Restaurant Critic
Bon Appetit
According to the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington (RAMW), there are 1,841 restaurants in the greater DC area. For any one of them, June 24th is the Oscars, the Super Bowl and Super Tuesday all rolled into one.
That’s the scheduled date of the 2012 RAMMYS Awards: the annual prizes given out by the RAMW. This year’s theme is “Hats Off to Restaurants,” an appropriate choice, given the association’s tendency to reward those [...]
Assaggi: Authentic Italian Cooking Inside the Beltway
Photos: Joanna Moreno/DC Spotlight Newspaper
April 1, 2012
By Alex Barron
Restaurant Critic
Bon Appetit
A popular knock on Washington, DC has always been its dearth of solid, authentic Italian restaurants – which is no doubt related to its relative lack of actual Italians. Unlike neighboring cities to the north, DC has no “Little Italy,” and it is not uncommon to find that even its seeminglygenuine trattorias are run by owners and chefs from Asia, Central America or some other location far away from The [...]