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Posh Restaurant and Supper Club - Closed


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How curious. From the writeup: But it is a supper club of the twenty-first century. It's evoking itself? :)

Well, technically, based on that description, it's wanking itself, but the Open Table blurbs are usually so pointless that no restaurant can be held responsible for them (even if they wan wrote the blurb themselves).

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They have a website. And even though it says Interactive Website coming soon, if you click on the PoshDC in the upper left, you get more website here. and some menu information. Their website had indicated they were opening on Oct. 24th-ish and then got updated this week to what you see now so I would guess that they've opened but haven't confirmed.

Thelistareyouonit says "Chris Willis, formerly author Tom Clancy's personal chef at his Eastern Shore home, is the new executive chef for the oh-so-soon to be opened Posh."

I was planning to try it within the next couple of weeks when I'm downtown seeing the Cirque du Soleil show, depending on what the rest of their menu looks like.

Edited to add: I found the cached version of the old website that says opening Oct. 24 but the countdown is going up instead of down. Makes me feel like I'm going back in time. :)

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Good luck. Stuff like this makes me wonder:

Lamb Lollipops Allow yourself to travel into the aromatic indulgences of India with our trio of luscious lamb lollipops marinated in a medley of aromatic India based spices, then grilled to glorious perfection. Presented with a magnificent complement of mojito sauce and sprig of fresh mint.
Indian lamb with mojito sauce? :)

Although the idea of "traveling into the aromatic indulgences of India" sounds pretty appealing...

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Good luck. Stuff like this makes me wonder: Indian lamb with mojito sauce? :)

Although the idea of "traveling into the aromatic indulgences of India" sounds pretty appealing...

YEEEAAHHHH! Those lamb lollipops be ALL THE RAGE these days in Mumbai!

I like this one: "A first glance, a first tasty and the beginning of a delicious adventure you will forever remember." Really? Forever remember? Forever? It's like ads for the Mustang Ranch and Thomas Kinkade "Painter of Light" got mixed together. Who the fuck is writing this shit??!! So much luscious, indulging decadence for my dipping pleasure. And just look at those pictures from what must have been a succulent press preview. Yeah, I got a spicy tuna roll with dollops of frosted wasabi.

What kills me is this place will probably be packed. Choke me with a ventworm nut to glorious perfection!

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I think what's least promising is the language they're using to describe themselves.

Dining Style: Casual Elegant

Cuisine: Contemporary American

...

Dress Code: Smart Casual

I don't think they could have chosen sillier, more meaningless boxes to put themselves in if they tried.

But hey, who knows--let's not get too down on the poor new guy yet. It might turn out to be superb.

Right?

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It reads like a PR buzzword style manual exploded all over the website. I am restraining myself from offering them a washcloth.

But, maybe the food is good. I eagerly await a report from an brave Rockweiler.

This could be a fun place to visit just to check out the crowd.

As for the smart casual dress, I think I am going to wear this hat...

post-37-1161869544_thumb.jpg

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Their schtick is not unlike that of a certain Penn Quarter lounge that masquerades as a fushion restaurant, and a similar multi-roomed venue in Georgetown that shall remain nameless. There's a market for it. Some people will eat overpriced meat lollipops and love it if they're in a "fashionable environment" with sexy people and the hottest global beats blasting from the overhead speakers. Instead of, like, gagging yourself with a spoon about Posh, you should be happy that it exists as it will guarantee more open space at restaurants that act like real restaurants.

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YEEEAAHHHH! Those lamb lollipops be ALL THE RAGE these days in Mumbai!

I like this one: "A first glance, a first tasty and the beginning of a delicious adventure you will forever remember." Really? Forever remember? Forever? It's like ads for the Mustang Ranch and Thomas Kinkade "Painter of Light" got mixed together. Who the fuck is writing this shit??!! So much luscious, indulging decadence for my dipping pleasure. And just look at those pictures from what must have been a succulent press preview. Yeah, I got a spicy tuna roll with dollops of frosted wasabi.

What kills me is this place will probably be packed. Choke me with a ventworm nut to glorious perfection!

My daughter is a freshman at VCU, majoring in Mass Communications. After her first test, I asked her how it went and she said, "It was really easy if you speak English." 400 students took that test and there were only 2 As (my daughter receiving one of them). I am guessing that the writer of this promo material is among the other 398.

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From a WaPo chat today:

The VIP lounge will be open to an invite-only 200 people with black cards.

That pretty much sums up the place. I think the dinner part of the "dinner club" is only a marketing gimmick trying to differentiate from all of the other downtown bling palaces.

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I love the menu. It's...amazing. I mean, who could resist enjoying the pleasure of indulging in escargot with ease? And did you notice that the onion soup is "capped with crostini and decedent melted smoked mozzarella"? The cheese DIED for you! As for the chapleted grain mustard sauce, the American Heritage dictionary defines "chaplet" as: a. A rosary having beads for five decades of Hail Marys. b. The prayers counted on such a rosary. The cheese dies for you, the mustard sauce prays for you. It all fits.

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I just got this email from the Penn Quarter Neighborhood Association:

Posh Restaurant and Supper Club Opens Friday, October 27

with

Lorraine Bracco Launching Her Wine Company

(Lorraine Bracco plays Dr. Melfi on The Soprano’s)

Limited Dinner Reservations

202.393.0975

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And did you notice that the onion soup is "capped with crostini and decedent melted smoked mozzarella"? The cheese DIED for you!
:) I can't believe I missed that. And thanks for the chaplet definition. I missed the rosary angle; I was thinking more along the lines of "coronet."

Lorraine Bracco has a wine company?

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Gosh, I hope this place does well. I am starting to think that that location is actually cursed.
If you get a really good deal on rent in a space a few other restaurants have cycled through, there's usually a very good reason for it. Ask Agraria LLC.
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I was planning to try it within the next couple of weeks when I'm downtown seeing the Cirque du Soleil show, depending on what the rest of their menu looks like.

Well, the rest of the menu is online, and unfortunately (fortunately?), they don't have any vegetarian entrees for the +1. I don't think he'll be satisfied to "wander through Posh's secret garden, lush with classic favorites and refreshingly original works of art" and have the citrus bibb salad for dinner nor do we want to try the place enough to ask about special requests. So I guess someone else will have to be the guinea pig and report back. :)

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Hey everyone - so maybe its because I've been sheltered (NOT), but the last time I heard reference of a "supper club" was in North Carolina, where I was taking a class a few years ago. So, I figured it was a Southern thing. Can someone help? what exactly IS a supper club?
A "SOUTHERN" thing??? My God, Girl. You make me feel so OLD. :)

OK. Go back to the days without television. AHEM. If you wanted entertainment--of the not-homemade variety--you went OUT on Saturday night, in particular. People who didn't live in big cities and/or didn't have a lot of money stayed home and played cards with the neighbors. Or, like my parents in Texas, had patio parties at home where everybody BYOB'd and danced to music on the "Hi-Fi." We are SO spoiled these days. Or, maybe not.

Supper clubs provided good food and drink and GREAT entertainment. Plus, dancing with the house band. And, EVERYBODY knew how to dance. Why, you might ask, was there the "Big Band Era?" Because the most famous bands in America travelled around the country appearing at the biggest venues in the biggest cities. Just think about the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movies. Virtually ALL of them took place in "Supper Clubs." (Possibly the MOST famous "house band" was Duke Ellington's at the Cotton Club. The Classic Supper Club.)

When radio became ubiquitous, bands like Glen Miller's appeared LIVE on the radio from places like the "Cafe Rouge" in the Hotel Pennsylvania in NYC. ...PENNSYLVANIA 6-5000 (which was the phone number for the hotel). Some of us on this board remember when "modern" direct dial had numbers (those first three numbers on any American listing, after the area code, of course) referenced some weird area. Enough of that.

No, not a purely "Southern" thing at all . . .

Lots of very talented people made a living doing this. Now, it is MUCH harder getting noticed. And, did I mention?, EVERYBODY knew how to dance.

Some "modern" improvements aren't really. :)

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So this is a new one on me: I got a text message today from Posh telling me they just opened today and suggesting I stop by. I never text-message anybody and have no idea how they got my phone number to send me the text. It's especially weird to me since I used to work at Ortanique. Anyway, I suspect they just bought a list of Sprint customer phone numbers (or maybe bought numbers from OpenTable or something) and spam-texted a laundry list of folks. Did anybody else get this? It's a new type of marketing from my vantage point, that's for sure.

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I think a flash mob with everybody wearing Ortanique chef jackets would be funnier. Especially if Every. Single. Person. ordered a mojito. Unfortunately, I didn't nab a jacket before Ortanique and I parted ways.

I feel sorry for Posh's staff having to run up and down those back stairs to and from the walkins. Believe me, I remember it well.

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[Yes, let's give this one a rest for a while. Cheers, Rocks.]

I'm sorry. I just can't do that when their menu says things like this:

Classic Jumbo Shrimp Cocktail

Perfectly chilled colossal US shrimp imported from California. Garnished with cilantro and a lemon wedge. Accompanied by our housemade cocktail sauce.

How is shrimp chilled imperfectly? But more importantly, importing US shrimp from California? I'm sorry, but these folks just deserve what they're getting. (But I'll leave typos, like Wangyu Kobe Beef, out of it. :) )

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Perfectly chilled colossal US shrimp imported from California.
The swanky menu’s flowery superfluousness and razzle-dazzle dissertation adjectivery upstages even Air-Mall, Men’s Hats and Spencer Gift catalogs combined! A whimsical Rita Crosbyesque audio narrative would deliciously compliment the blossoming spawn of labored alliteration and detailed ambiguity which sets a lofty standard for any bargain barrow boy or closet costermonger trying to hawk shoddy bric-a-brac and Sanka cans sans promises on Craigslist.

I totally tip my Persian Envoy Shearling hat to the elite editorial squad at Posh for the sultry veal caption/adventure essay. The imported Italian robusto cheese allegedly rivals any good-humored soft-eyed customs agent’s interrogation of suspicious globetrotting vagabonds arriving at Newark.

Chef Willis’s tenure as personal chef to author Tom Clancy is purely coincidental.

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Jlock and I popped our heads in last night, but we were not intrigued enough to stay for even one drink. Strangely unwelcoming and unoccupied but loud. Quite garish looking too. We would be willing to actually try a drink with someone sometime, but we decided it wasn't worth trying alone.

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From Tom's review:

Some ideas sound like delicious jokes but fall flat on the tongue. Take the lamb "lollipops," which translate as three choplets standing in a small bowl of a cloying mix of rum, mint and simple syrup that attempts to mimic a mojito

......yuck. Holding my front teeth just reading it.

Again:

One of the roles of a critic is to help people make good investments of their time and money. In the case of Posh, I wasted mine, so you don't have to.

...ouch! And thanks for taking one for the team.

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I thought he gave Pigalle no stars.

Posh Restaurant & Supper Club: Diamond in the Rough

We've seen it happen so many times. A restaurant opens it doors to the public with aspirations to revolutionize the city’s dining scene. Based on a skewed view of public expectation, it peppers its menu with grandeur visions of culinary fine dining. Before it has had time to find its niche, a major market critic capitalizing on the restaurant's novel appeal hastily reviews the new locale and slams it for not meeting his or her antiquated gastronomical standards. The venue subsequently acquires a less than favorable reputation, which - oftentimes - it never overcomes.

Posh Restaurant & Supper Club, could be the poster child for this culinary adage.

In late 2006, Posh emerged on the DC scene as the new "it" trend in dining experiences: a hybrid of the supper club theme then making its way through Los Angeles and New York hot spots and a nightlife destination. To support a fine dining reputation Posh flaunted progressive takes on nouveau riche cuisine with menu items, such as, shrimp cocktail presented in dry ice, Cornish game hen glazed with pomegranate sauce and snails in puff pastry. Less than five months after the Grand Opening, Washington Post restaurant critic Tom Sietesema bashed the restaurant with a 1/2 star review for cuisine not meeting his standards.

Foregoing a debate of Mr. Sietesma’s journalistic merits - which are frequently and heavily criticized for being pretentiously "gay chic", not catering to the general public and containing obscenely low ratings for the sole purpose of grandstanding - one can agree that the restaurant’s Beta release should have avoided a Michelin star approach to dining. Posh, like so many other restaurants before it, fell victim to the classic industry misnomer - that the common diner’s interests are primarily reflected in the often elitist culinary views of the critics that review them.

Since that time, however, Posh has certainly found its place in DC's dining scene: an upscale restaurant serving consistently excellent modern American fare with a backdrop of live entertainment.

In finding its own, former private chef for novelist Tom Clancy, Christopher Willis (one of the most underrated chefs in the nation) streamlined Posh’s menu so that it now contains simple takes on classic American dining: perfectly grilled salmon with roasted sweet corn and wild rice pilaf, meaty jumbo lump crab cakes crisp with panko, and some of the best truffled French fries in the city.

The highlight of Posh’s menu, however, may come as a surprise: the grilled black Angus filet. At a price almost $10 less than the same presentations at fine steak houses it is only surpassed by BLT Steak’s cut in our vote for the tastiest filet in the District. Not to mention, that it is accompanied by some of the best garlic mashed potatoes we’ve ever had.

When dining out almost five nights a week, it is hard to find a restaurant that both appeals to the general public’s taste and delivers consistently outstanding quality in terms of food and value. Based on a baker’s dozen of visits over the past two years, in this respect - Posh has never disappointed.

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