Cafe Promenade

Cafe Promenade
1127 Connecticut Ave, NW
Inside the Mayflower Hotel
Nearest Metro: Farragut North (across the street)

My first restaurant week endeavor this year was to Cafe Promenade. I was particularly excited about this trip. I've been trying to get R-week reservations there for three iterations and I finally got them. Boy was I disappointed. Some places realize that Restaurant Week is a time to show off their stuff for potential future customers during regular times. I have found several restaurants I have re-visited numerous times from Restaurant Week (Willow, Taberna, Oya to name a few, but certainly not all). Cafe Promenade seemed to be of the other school. Shepherd in as many guests as possible, serve them food that is not on your normal menu, but at least your chef approved the recipe and try to sell drinks and make money. Just try to get through it. I've heard good things, but I was pretty turned off, I will not go back any time soon.
Menus - Restaurant Week

Appetizer:
Me/Friend - Beat salad with argula and an olive oil dressing
Friend - Clam Chowder

Entree:
Me/Friend - Mahi Mahi with mango, spinach and fingerling potatoes
Friend - Petite Filet with red wine reduction

Dessert:
Me - White chocolate mousse in a chocolate shell with fresh seasonal berries
Friend - Fruit Tart
Friend - Creme Brulee

Sweet:
Atmosphere - The atmosphere in Cafe Promenade was very classy and nice. It was a very open restaurant which for those of us in the center of the place took away a lot of the mystique, but at the same time, you were able to feel like you were there in the middle of a big event like in Hello Dolly. You thought an elegant dance floor could just pop up from the ground. It was also pretty cool being in the Mayflower Hotel (the modern day Watergate with all the scandals). The atmosphere and location are fantastic. The room being so large with high ceilings made it very easy to hear those next to you and even though it was crowded, the tables were spread apart pretty well.

Beet Salad - The beet salad was actually delightful. It didn't start out that impressive, I would have called it pretty bland and boring. It was beets with pine nuts and argula in an olive oil. The strange thing was that the more I ate (and I ate the whole thing), the better it got with every bite. By the time I finished the last beet, it was all of a sudden quite delicious. I think I give a lot of credit to the consistent aftertaste.

Filet - In the one bite of the filet that I had, it was delicious. The sauce marinated the steak very well. I am really only a huge fan of two types of steaks. There's the steak that the meat speaks for itself (like at a steakhouse) and then there's the steak where the preparation transcends. The two don't usually mix. You get the solid "man's steak." where you take the steak rare (hurray for the Chicago Chophouse) or you get the medium rare steak with the really good sauce. This was the medium rare steak with the really good sauce. It kept the steak moist and the sauce mixed in with the steak where it just tasted good, not like good steak, just good. The chef did a good job with this one.

Fruit Tart: Well done by my friend who got the beet salad, filet and fruit tart for her meal. She definitely did the best of us. I didn't have any of the fruit tart, but the fruit was fresh and so was the tart. She described it to me as follows: "You know how you have a fruit tart and sometimes you choke on the crust because it's so dry. This one is really good, it's pretty moist and it tastes like it was made today." Fresh fruit, pretty good cream and a fresh tart makes me think it was good. It was gone too quickly to try or get another opinion on.

Bland:
Clam Chowder: The clam chowder received no rave reviews (as I obviously didn't touch it). My friend said it was okay but nothing special. It looked relatively thick but from appearance, it was inferior to Legal Seafood, but costs more. That's a little disappointing considering that Cafe Promenade advertises a Friday Night Seafood Buffet. The clam choweder is also the only item that we had that is actually on the Cafe Promenade normal menu for $7.50.

Mahi Mahi: Okay, this one goes here because of a weird story. I think that the Mahi would have been in the sweet section if the service was better. Because the service was bad, my friend got a bad Mahi and mine was very good. Mine was moist, cooked perfectly and very flaky. The potatoes were inconsistent as some were moist and some were dry. There was the right amount of olive oil and a good infusion of Mango. The spinach was wonderful with a slight hint of garlic. My friends was overcooked and the potatoes were dry (he ate all of the spinach). I had a bite of his and it tasted almost like canned tuna fish as overcooked as it was. He said that the Trader Joe's tuna he had for lunch was better than the Cafe Promenade Mahi. That said, he thought mine was excellent. It gets a bland for the inconsistency.

White Chocolate Mousse: The mousse was pretty subtle. It was good, but white chocolate (not really chocolate for those who don't know) is normally a stronger taste and mousse is supposed to be thicker. This was almost like eating whipped cream with fruit. It was very good whipped cream with fruit but there was basically no white chocolate flavor. It gets a bland because the fruit was fresh raspberries, blueberries and blackberries and it was good. The fruit was the flavor in the actual item, but I was really looking for more out of the mousse.

Creme Brulee - My friend said it was very good, but unless you're absolutely raving about a creme brulee, I'm not going to talk it up too much. Apparently it had a soft top instead of the traditional hard top, but otherwise, it looked pretty standard. Creme Brulee is easy and it's a bit of a cop out dessert for a pastry chef. I can make a creme brulee that's almost as good as most restaurants, so it takes a lot to move up.

Bitter
Service: You know that it's a problem when you don't see service until this point. The service was downright pitiful, especially for an expensive restaurant. The servers took a while to come to our table. They were relatively rude, especially when we ordered ginger ales and cokes and largely ignored us. You can tell a lot about a place if the server is nice when you don't order drinks. I suspect that my friend's food was overcooked because it sat under a heat lamp, they charged me $5.00 for a ginger ale that they never refilled despite it spending half the meal at the bottom of the glass (they filled the diet coke once because she pulled the server aside and asked). They tried to pull my friend's dessert away when he wasn't finished because he wasn't actively chewing when they were in front of him. They hovered over us while we were eating and while we were talking to make sure to clear our plates, however, they couldn't even walk over to the table to ask how our food was where they would have been informed that the one Mahi Mahi was overcooked. Finally, the part I found most appaling is that the servers at a fine dining establishment were going outside for a smoke break in their full uniform and not airing out before coming back and walking right up to tables. Two different staff that approached the table wreaked of cigarette smoke causing me to cough. The service was bad enough that I almost walked up to the manager to complain, but the manager wasn't in sight. He probably doesn't care about restaurant week patrons to bother to come in. I never leave less than 22% at a fine dining restaurant in DC. I was hesitant to leave 15.

Recommendations
Quality: ** The food was decent, but very inconsistent. I'm guessing that their regular menu is better. I would say that the chef has a good feel for designing items, but poor control over what actually leaves his kitchen. A chef without pride in his work doesn't get rave reviews.

Value: $ You can't get out of Cafe Promenade full for less $80 a person and that is without drinks. It is an expensive restaurant that doesn't give you enough food to make you full without costing a whole lot more and the experience just isn't worth it. For that much money, I'd expect to be treated like Elliot Spitzer with Kristin at the Mayflower Hotel (sorry, I had to try to make the joke). I wouldn't recommend the place to anyone.