Degrees Bistro (Formerly Fahrenheit) at the Ritz Carlton, Georgetown

[brian]

I'm going to an upcoming client dinner in the chimney stack of Fahrenheit at the Ritz in Georgetown. Has anyone tried it recently? After Sietsema's negative review, the lack of buzz has been deafening.

[Capital Icebox]

I've been there several times for breakfast (my boss stays at the Ritz when he's in town). Every time, it's been pretty underwhelming and overly expensive. The waitstaff had little command of the English language and served us a glass of milk warm once. No idea if dinner is any improvement. Not a bad spot for a drink, though.

[crackers]

Had a look at smoke stack last spring, before they fixed it up to make it a private dining room, when it was still musty and dark, without lighting and open to the sky. Even then you could tell it would be the most amazing space to eat in the city - except maybe the White House - looking straight up that narrowing brick stack to the stars at night, in a "secret" circular den - kinda spooky. Don't know about the food - good drinks at the bar though.

Edited August 28, 2005 by crackers

[brian]

I definitely enjoy drinking there - I usually sit in the lobby rather than the bar area, but the service is good and the cocktails are always well made. Maybe there's a tasting menu available from the bar instead of the restaurant?

[DonRocks]

Officially, Quang Dong has come from The Grill at the Ritz Carlton downtown, and taken over from Terence Feury, who has moved up to Villanova and is opening a restaurant there in the very near future.

Unofficially, who cares?

Let me say that, in no uncertain terms, this is the single worst ultra-luxe fine-dining meal I've had in years.

The positives? It's a beautiful room, with soaring, thirty-foot ceilings, a workable (but overpriced wine list), decent raw ingredients, an attempt at a loving presentation of the dishes, and an eager-to-please staff punctuated by our gregarious server Marc, who was pretty much the highlight of an otherwise dismal meal.

Tomato Soup ($10) was a tureen of hot, "fire-roasted tomato" soup, each served with a little finger sandwich that was basically a mini-"grilled cheese" made with smoked mozzerella. It was bland and merely decent, as opposed to being something compelling in this, the prime of tomato season.

Fire and Ice ($14) was a trio of seviches - a quartered plate of scallops, tuna, and bass, the fourth quarter being "pickled watermelon" taking the place of a ginger mound. It was a good, complex seviche, with the highlight being a great scallop, sliced horizontally into about four strips. At $14, compared to the price of crudo and sashimi these days, it was in the ballpark of normality, and wasn't a bad dish.

A large order of Pan-Roasted Rockfish ($29) was impossibly dried-out fish, served atop a little pool of garlic sauce, and plated alongside the biggest joke I've seen in quite awhile: a "pork dumpling" which was thick, tough, cold, and stuffed with some sort of shredded pork - not only a mismatch with the dish, but of lower quality than anything you could possibly buy frozen at an Asian supermarket and make yourself.

A small side of Mixed Summer Vegetables ($9) put this meal over-the-top in terms of mediocrity, the "vegetables" perhaps being fresh, but absolutely no better than a "rip-and-nuke," "crack-and-suck," plastic bag of frozen Birds Eye, with certain individual things (the thick, tough, tasteless asparagus) appearing fresh and pared, and others (the carrots, the snap peas, the haricots verts, the laughably bad broccoli) no better than you'd find at a large, 300-person hotel banquet in the worst Atlantic City casino.

I visited this handsome-but-amateurish skeletal-attempt-at-a-restaurant tonight because it was the bottom thread in this forum, and I felt that someone needed to bring it up to the top. It was a three-figure tab for a terrible meal, a fine-dining travesty, and a restaurant to avoid at all costs, even if you're staying in the hotel. How can anyone actually dine here when they can simply walk three or four blocks and go to Citronelle lounge?

Spending my money so you don't have to,

Rocks.

[FunnyJohn]

I visited this handsome-but-amateurish skeletal-attempt-at-a-restaurant tonight because it was the bottom thread in this forum, and I felt that someone needed to bring it up to the top. It was a three-figure tab for a terrible meal, a fine-dining travesty, and a restaurant to avoid at all costs, even if you're staying in the hotel. How can anyone actually dine here when they can simply walk three or four blocks and go to Citronelle lounge?

Spending my money so you don't have to,

Rocks.

Well, perhaps you should give up on the "bottom" feeding, Rocks.