The Quintessence of Ham

Upscale junk food? Who would believe it?! So read the shocked reviews of this mediocre burger joint. The locally-raised “kobe” beef pat­ties are small, dry, and over­cooked. A bizarre combo veg­gie burger and kobe is equally dis­ap­point­ing, with the veg­gie patty’s strong crab-cake-without-the-crab’s taste over­pow­er­ing the mea­ger beef patty. Fries are adver­tised as cooked in olive oil, which seems like cyn­i­cal mar­ket­ing since plenty of other unsat­u­rated fats are far more suit­able for deep-frying. In any event our fries were greasy and over­salted. Home­made milk­shakes are the lone stand­out, though made too thick to be truly enjoy­able. Even in its aggres­sively fran­chised state, Five Guys blows this place out of the water.

Sarah and I first dis­cov­ered this place one after­noon while look­ing at real estate. “$1 Sushi,” read the neon sign. Who could resist? After a big day look­ing at lit­tle houses, we returned that night with a very hun­gry Veronica.

Once inside I imme­di­ately made a series of inter­est­ing discoveries:

1. Dol­lar sushi is only on Mon­day night.
2. It leans Okinawan.
3. “Maneki Neko” means “wav­ing cat,” Sarah’s all-time favorite piece of restau­rant decoration.

Maneki Neko makes its salmon skin roll by first deep-frying the skin with plenty of meat still attached. It’s not the most sub­tle prepa­ra­tion but very deli­cious and cer­tainly one of the best I have ever had. Veron­ica espe­cially enjoyed it. In fact, she enjoyed most every­thing, much to the shock of our neigh­bor­ing table, whose child list­lessly picked at some kind of teriyaki. My plan to raise a friande is working.

Maneki Neko always has one or two spe­cial items that are beyond the usual tuna-salmon-yellowtail line-up: e.g. live orange clam, live scal­lop, and rock­fish. They also have a sticky rice and banana dessert which was a big hit with V.

Now Veron­ica always wants to eat “Japa-sneeze” food.

For Sarah’s birth­day, I took her to Mae­stro, an Ital­ian restau­rant located in the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Tyson’s Cor­ner. Since Sarah and I once actu­ally lived in the Shang­hai Ritz-Carlton, we fig­ured we would feel right at home. But in our Chi­nese Ritz-Carlton, I don’t recall the fire alarm and safety lights ever blast­ing at meal­time. But first, the food.

At Mae­stro, din­ers have just two choices money-wise: five courses for $135 or seven for $155. Once that deci­sion is out of the way, they must decide among courses listed on two dis­tinct menus, “tra­di­tion” and “evo­lu­tion.” Alter­na­tively, one can sim­ply place your­self in the hands of the chef, as we decided to do. Usu­ally I like to study my menu like plans for D-Day, but some­times it’s fun to let some­one else do the work.

As Maestro’s prices hint, the place is really aim­ing at the upper end of fine din­ing. In this case, the invest­ment pays off: thanks in no small part to the assis­tance of his able som­me­lier and maître d’hôtel, chef Fabio Tra­boc­chi has earned five dia­monds from Mobil and four stars from the Wash­ing­ton Post.

Restau­rant review­ers fre­quently praise Tra­boc­chi for his “whim­si­cal” cre­ations, a word which in the con­text of food invari­ably fills me with dread. Sure enough, an early course fea­tured a fish broth appallingly served in a test tube. Once I over­came my 90s flash­back to test-tube bar shots, I found what amounted to a per­fectly ser­vice­able bour­ride inside. Sarah was less sat­is­fied and recorked her tube after a mod­est sip. I guess I am not wild about any­thing served in a shot glass, espresso cup, or test tube other than (respec­tively) liquor, espresso, and, well, noth­ing at all.

Local review­ing genius Tyler Cowen argues that Tra­boc­chi fails to muster enough fla­vors for his seven course menu, and I am inclined to agree. The amuse-bouche and first course each con­tained fresh toma­toes and basil, and two later courses were heav­ily laden with shaved truf­fles that were approach­ing dry and leath­ery side. None of these courses were bad, just repetitive.

The evening’s real enter­tain­ment arrived in the form of flash­ing strobe lights, blar­ing sirens, and a very loud record­ing repeat­edly instruct­ing us to “please evac­u­ate the build­ing.” To our amaze­ment, our fel­low din­ers con­tin­ued to stuff their mouths all the while, although con­ver­sa­tion nec­es­sar­ily ceased, and there was some­thing a lit­tle rigid about their proud smiles of gus­ta­tory plea­sure. I sus­pect that Mae­stro is some­what of a “des­ti­na­tion” restau­rant, and some peo­ple are sim­ply unwill­ing to let any­thing dis­rupt their “per­fect meal.” Mean­while the wait staff pre­tended as if noth­ing at all was the mat­ter, while the kitchen ground to a halt with line cooks gawk­ing at the din­ers to see what they might do.

Sarah and I imme­di­ately quit eat­ing – how could you not? – but decided to eval­u­ate the sit­u­a­tion. After a good fif­teen min­utes of sirens, I had had enough. Accord­ing to my logic, one wouldn’t tol­er­ate such an atmos­phere at McDonald’s, so why put up with it here? When I voiced my con­cern to the maître d’hôtel, he offered us the meal on the house and asked us to come back another time. Sarah was of course mor­ti­fied by my behav­ior, and she will doubt­less pro­vide her own (and cer­tainly more accu­rate) char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of my demeanor. Nev­er­the­less, she agreed to leave, though by the time we reached the lobby the sirens had abruptly stopped. Sarah then made the absolutely bril­liant deci­sion to return to the restau­rant, which by now was largely deserted. We were greeted like heroes and offered mul­ti­ple courses of cheeses, desserts, Cham­pagne, port, and of course coffee.

Despite mis­steps in the kitchen, in the front of the house, and at the fire sta­tion, Mae­stro is eas­ily the best haute-cuisine restau­rant in the DC area, partly because this region is weak out­side of “eth­nic” din­ing and partly because Tra­boc­chi and team are really oper­at­ing at another level that few seri­ously attempt around here (other than by sim­ply jack­ing up their prices). There’s also a cer­tain degree of hon­esty about ingre­di­ents and qual­ity that’s tough to dis­like. If you screw up truf­fles and veal, you still have truf­fles and veal. If you screw up a chicken fried steak at Applebee’s, please kill yourself.