Rose's Luxury, Staunton's The Shack: Southern Living Best New in South

[Joe H]

#2 and #10.  http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/14/living/10-best-new-southern-restaurants-eatocracy/  I'll be back in line soon...at both.  Huge publicity:  this is the link on time.com:  http://time.com/3101672/the-souths-best-new-restaurants/  The first link is from CNN.

The Shack has a total of seven tables, mostly two tops.  I may bring a sleeping bag for our next visit.

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Edited September 13, 2014 by DonRocks

[Lori Gardner]

heading to The Shack tomorrow night!  getting there early to get in for first seating. will report back assuming we get in.

[Joe H]

heading to The Shack tomorrow night!  getting there early to get in for first seating. will report back assuming we get in.

They open @5:00PM.  I would get there at 4:30.  Good luck!

[Lori Gardner]

arrived just before 4:30 and was first in line! by 5:00 there were about a dozen people waiting to get in.  actually most of the tables are 4 tops, but they seat parties of two and then will put another random party of two at the same table.  People seemed to enjoy mixing it up.  We were at the only two top.  I will write more about our dinner later, but the accolades are warranted.  Our three course meal was $45 and what a steal it was.  Get here if you can!

[The Hersch]

The other nine restaurants are indeed in the South, but Rose's Luxury is not.

[ktmoomau]

The other nine restaurants are indeed in the South, but Rose's Luxury is not.

Well if you are going to quibble about DC being the South, then you should also be questioning Texas too.  Both are technically below the Mason-Dixon, but are they really the South culturally?  To me Texas is Texas not the South, it is it's own regional cultural entity.  Really, same for DC and parts of MD, which are technically the South.

[Joe H]

They open @5:00PM.  I would get there at 4:30.  Good luck!

Both Rose's Luxury and the Shack have outstanding twitter sites and tweets.  Rose's Luxury is https://twitter.com/RosesLuxury

Ian Boden, chef owner of the Shack is https://twitter.com/chefiab It also seems that Chef  Boden photographs almost every single dish he serves and posts them on this site.

FWIW he had an interesting tweet about the waiting time last Saturday (one of only two days that he does prix fixe service; other days is a la carte).

The Shack"@chefiab

Doors are open and we are completely full!

[The Hersch]

Well if you are going to quibble about DC being the South, then you should also be questioning Texas too.  Both are technically below the Mason-Dixon, but are they really the South culturally?  To me Texas is Texas not the South, it is it's own regional cultural entity.  Really, same for DC and parts of MD, which are technically the South.

Happily, I haven't spent much time in Texas, but it was part of the Confederacy, it's full of neo-Confederates and other secessionist kooks, and most of its denizens who aren't Hispanic speak with recognizably southern accents, like LBJ and Ann Richards. Even the Connecticut Yankee George W. Bush affects a southern accent so he can masquerade as a Texan. None of that southern baggage applies to Washington. The Mason-Dixon line's only "technical" meaning is as the border between Maryland and Pennsylvania (and parts of the PA-WV and MD-DE borders); it doesn't put Washington in some sort of "official" South.

[ktmoomau]

Happily, I haven't spent much time in Texas, but it was part of the Confederacy, it's full of neo-Confederates and other secessionist kooks, and most of its denizens who aren't Hispanic speak with recognizably southern accents, like LBJ and Ann Richards. Even the Connecticut Yankee George W. Bush affects a southern accent so he can masquerade as a Texan. None of that southern baggage applies to Washington. The Mason-Dixon line's only "technical" meaning is as the border between Maryland and Pennsylvania (and parts of the PA-WV and MD-DE borders); it doesn't put Washington in some sort of "official" South.

Sorry to get all cantankerous, but I just don't think your definition is correct.  Because I don't think there is a correct definition.  Where do you put Oklahoma?  Or Maryland which tried to secede but federal troops and martial law stopped it from happening and was a slave state.  And West Virginia has a southern accent and is typically considered the South, but it was both part of a confederate state and a union state.  Many Marylanders have a Southern accent.  And I don't consider a Texas accent a Southern accent, it's different.  But I also think I have a West Virginia accent and not a Southern accent, but if you aren't from the South you would probably say my accent in Southern.  There is no official South, except the US Census Bureau, perhaps which does consider DC the South.  There is a Old South pre-1860, Old South post-1860, New South, Deep South, Coastal South, etc.

[Barbara]

Sorry to get all cantankerous, but I just don't think your definition is correct.  Because I don't think there is a correct definition.  Where do you put Oklahoma?  Or Maryland which tried to secede but federal troops and martial law stopped it from happening and was a slave state.  And West Virginia has a southern accent and is typically considered the South, but it was both part of a confederate state and a union state.  Many Marylanders have a Southern accent.  And I don't consider a Texas accent a Southern accent, it's different.  But I also think I have a West Virginia accent and not a Southern accent, but if you aren't from the South you would probably say my accent in Southern.  There is no official South, except the US Census Bureau, perhaps which does consider DC the South.  There is a Old South pre-1860, Old South post-1860, New South, Deep South, Coastal South, etc.

I thought we were considered "Mid-Atlantic." Works for me.

[Joe H]

I would make the argument that Washington has more in common with a number of European cities than any other.  It certainly has the feel of one.

[porcupine]

JFK summed it up nicely.

[Cajun]

Let me just say, where I come from "way up north" is Shreveport!

[Pat]

FWIW, Garden and Gun, a lifestyle publication that covers "the best of the South," also includes DC as part of the South.  Back at the end of 2013, they profiled Rose's as one of the five most exciting new restaurants in the South.  And DC was the "D" entry in their New Encyclopedia of Southern Food:

"Over the past few years, the nation's capital has become one of the South's culinary capitals, too, as old-guard dining rooms have given way to trendsetting bars and restaurants from up-and-comers such as Maryland-bred Aaron Silverman, whose eccentric menu keeps Rose's Luxury, on Capitol Hill, packed. The latest chef to watch is Jeremiah Langhorne, a Virginia native whose new Beltway project will celebrate foods of the Chesapeake when it opens later this year.

They also included a dish from Mintwood Place in the best dishes of 2013 feature (though that had one complete non-Southern outlier).

This is what the map looks like for their definition of The South.

[The Hersch]

I guess I meant to disparage Texas, and I'm sure I shouldn't have. Sorry for that, but I still wouldn't want to live there.

Beyond that, I'll say only this: I am a Washingtonian, and I am most emphatically not a southerner.