Monday, August 4, 2008

More Missed Places - The Disappointments

Okay, so I've tried to catch up some in preparation for the new restaurant week. I know I've been to a whole bunch of places that would be wonderful to write up, but alas, I can only do what I remember well enough to write up. I'll need to go back through Open Table and try to get to what I've been to.

3 (Clarendon): This place was a bit of a disappointment. It is owned by the same people who own Whitlow's on Wilson, also in Clarendon. I saw it being built and got to speak with one of the owners before it was prepared. When it was finally opened, I was quite excited to try it. It has been quite a while since I was there, but I was very disappointed. I don't particularly remember what I had there, but I remember not liking the wine, the service was average, the food was average and overpriced, the dessert was pretty good, but I think I was just in the mood for sugar. I don't recall my friend being overly impressed either. The only thing that I remember being worth the price of admission was the atmosphere. It was pretty well decorated and you were able to hear pretty well.

600 Restaurant (Watergate): The only thing I can say is don't go here. This restaurant has actually made me second guess 1000 point reservations on Open Table. Yes, it got me 1000 points on Open Table, but it wasn't worth it. I wanted a random nice dinner on a Friday night and I went there. I had a strip steak and I think my friend had a surf and turf. I think disappointed is the wrong word for it. This place had bad service, average atmosphere (you could hear very well because the restaurant was EMPTY). The food wasn't very good, although they did give us a decent amount of it. Dinner was far more expensive than it should have been as we somehow ended up paying $45 a person or so at a place that pretends to be moderately priced. Just consider yourself warned about slightly below average food for a high price. On the good side, it's right next to the Kennedy Center?

Evening Star Cafe (Del Ray, Alexandria): Okay, so this is a pretty cool place to hang out. The bar was kind of nice and their drink selection wasn't terrible. The location was in the hipster Del Ray right down the street from the Dairy Godmother, a fantastic frozen custard store. Parking is available, so that's pretty good. They told us that we would have a 30 minute wait, so we went up to the bar to sit down and have a drink. 90 minutes later, they finally took us to our table, which included very hard wood benches and an inability to hear anything. The service was average at best, partly because the restaurant was packed too close and they didn't have enough servers to deal with it. The food was okay, but it was far more expensive than it was worth and the menu didn't describe items very well. I do recall them having some fairly good desserts as well and somewhat creative. I didn't love it, but it wasn't the worst place I've been to. Not worth the trip to Del Ray, but if you're already there, you want to sit down and listen to live music or you can't get into Del Merei Grill, it's alright.

Tomorrow if I have time, I'll try to put out a couple of good bets.

2 comments:

Jeff said...

How about some restaurant recommendations for those of us who aren't going for the meat items on the menus?

Andy said...

I'll try my best, but know that I tend to eat meat when I go to restaurants. I push the side items. Frankly, you don't want to try the places on this list anyway.