Spezie

Spezie - 1736 L Street, Washington, DC
Metro: One Block from Farragut North

My first Restaurant Week foray was to Spezie in the "midtown" area of DC. We looked at the R-Week menu as well as the regular menu. Their R-Week menu was pretty exhaustive and gave a pretty good sampling of their regular menu. My friend and I ended up ordering one R-Week meal and one off the regular menu.

Menu:
Appetizer - Roasted peppers with buffalo mozzerella and anchovy parsley sauce (normal price $14)

Meals:
Mine - Herb crusted lamb chops with white wine braised artichokes and black olive sauce (normal price $34)
Friend - Handmade fresh ricotta gnocchi with fresh tomato sauce (normal price $19)

Dessert - Double chocolate and hazelnut mousse cake
With seasonal berries and vanilla sauce (sort of)

Sweet:
Decor/Set Up: The restaurant was beautifully decorated. We had a pretty early reservation (6:00) so the place was not very crowded when we got there and it wasn't overly crowded when we left. The seats were comfortable and the tables were spread out far enough that we could enjoy a pleasant conversation without too much distraction from other tables.

Appetizer: The appetizer was absolutely delicious. The buffalo mozzerella was among the better ones I've had recently and the roasted pepper and anchovy sauce was surprisingly subtle, but pleasant. It came served over some light greens which took in the flavor of the sauce nicely.

Ambivalent:
My Meal - My meal was nothing special. The lamb seemed to be a good cut of lamb, but it was a little bit overcooked (I asked for rare to medium rare, they gave me medium rare to medium). With an olive/white wine sauce, I was expecting something a little bit saltier, but the sauce was actually a bit too sweet from the white wine. It had a bit of an odd aftertaste that pretty well overpowered the artichokes (which I don't love in the first place). The sauce did go pretty well with the lamb though and complimented the rosemary that is an imperative for every lamb dish. The roasted potatoes, while small, were quite good.

Service - We were served primarily by one waitress. She was a very polite Italian immigrant. She was pretty attentive when we were among the only people in the restaurant at 6:00. She kept an eye on drinks and they were full throughout our meal. The food runners and bussers did a pretty good job getting us our food, however, there were a couple of screw ups with dessert. We were offered tiramisu and ice cream before we were brought the dessert we actually ordered. There were some issues when we were trying to get our check while the restaurant was a little bit more crowded and I felt that the bussers were trying to rush us just a little bit.

Bitter:
Friend's Meal - My friend did not particularly like the gnocci. In fact, at one point, she went as far to call it "bad gnocci." She soon relented, but said that it definitely did not cure her gnocci craving. It is not a traditional potato gnocci, it is a ricotta gnocci which is not overly satisfying texturally and the sauce was apparently lacking in flavor. While I didn't taste it, the tomatoes did not smell like the type of sweet tomatoes one would expect in such a dish.

Dessert - The dessert was average at best. I'm not entirely sure that it was even what we ordered. It had an orange gelatin of sorts on top of it and it didn't taste overwhelmingly like chocolate or really even hazelnut. The overpowering taste was actually the berries and the berry sauce that was surrounding it (not vanilla sauce). We weren't sure that it was what we ordered, but after they brought us the wrong thing twice, we relented. After checking the dessert menu again, we decided that it had to be what we ordered, but it wasn't well labelled. It was relatively moist, but nothing special.

Recommendations:
Quality: **.5
Value: $

Two and half stars. There are many better Italian restaurants in the DC area for the same price or cheaper (see Filomena, Luigino, Bebo Trattoria, et. al).

Value - Normally - poor, restaurant week - decent. Spezie is a nice, classy place that you ought to try, if for nothing else than the decor and location, but try it when you can get most of their menu for $30.08.