franch

i think it only seems natural that i'm the one to start this thread, eh? in any event, Laura Hayes profiled French Quarter Brasserie recently. gone are the most comfortable bar seats in all of history. in is a spin-off of a Cajun-inspired Fairfax spot.

respectfully, it's not surprising it's lower given your order. the correct order is your choice of meat over rice with an absurd amount of white sauce and a little hot sauce.

"Ten minutes of serious mulling over the number of people who will spend almost $500 to eat dinner more then once should have stopped this nonsense before a dime was spent." made me think that he was discussing any restaurant at that price ($185pp)

....are you the Palace fan?

can't imagine this place anywhere else.

was there last night. heartbreaking.

are you seriously implying that a restaurant charging $185 per person for food is unable to survive anywhere in the country, let alone dc(where this already exists)?

well then.

one of my favorite deals in DC! want to share that screaming eagle?

this is right around the corner from my office. I'd be stoked if it wasn't tofu bowls.

interesting that a lot of the criticism of The Shaw Bijou sort of echoes the criticism of Eleven Madison Park by Pete Wells (NYT) when it overhauled its menu (the first time) to prix fixe only. the central theme being no story, not the history of food in NYC and not Chef Onwuachi's path to success, is interesting enough to be told over 14 courses as a narrative. it's been pretty consistent for TSB -- I wonder if the new menu will have toned this down. (notably, after the Wells article, EMP did tone down the narrative quite a bit. they retained a couple bits for flavor, which Wells still hated three years later, but awarded the restaurant four stars with none of the vitriol of the 2012 article).

with the former DCity pitmaster opening Federalist Pig and DCity opens, I think that "rapid change" is an understatement -- it seems the whole game has changed.

where is the support group for the original guests meeting? i need to rsvp.

speechless. i will write more when sober.

Had the chance to eat at The Bird recently. What a cool space -- the entire restaurant is decorated by local artists. There are four distinct parts of the restaurant themed after each of the seasons, complete with a "summer" patio outdoor space on the second floor. We both started with the Charlie Parker cocktail ($13) (rye, apple brandy, madeira, peach, pomegranate, bitters). It was fantastic and a boozy sipper. My wife and I elected to try some small plates to share, so we didn't order any of the main courses, despite being very tempted by the spicy fried chicken ($17). The triple fried Korean-style wings ($10) were topped with a soy-garlic style glaze and were fantastic. My only complaint about them is that there was so much sauce that the dish was a bit overwhelming and intense. The duck meatballs in spicy tomato curry ($9) were fantastic, and the spicy tomato curry made for a bit of a break from all the heavy fried-style food. The curry was spiced well and in a very balanced way. These came with a creamy yogurt to cool the dish down. The Hudson Valley foie gras torchon ($14) was spectacular, especially for the price. It came with walnuts, berries, and toasted bread. It's hard to go wrong with foie and fruit on toasted bread for me, and this is no exception. The flight of the egg ($9) consisted of three eggs: an organic chicken egg-pickled in tamari with gold rice, a deviled duck egg with duck fat mayo, duck pastrami, and toasted caraway, and finally a quail “scotch” egg soft poached, encased in sausage, breaded & fried. My wife's favorite was the chicken egg with gold rice - simple with a tang from the pickling; mine was the duck egg - decadent deviled eggs with some truly flavorful duck pastrami. The quail "scotch" egg was very good as well, though it's more of "fried sausage" than an egg, given the sizes of both components. We also had a side of Brussels sprouts ($7), which were a good diversion from the heaviness of the poultry dishes. Like at The Pig, their Brussels sprouts are cooked perfectly in a way I never seem to be able to at home. We finished sharing a miso caramel gelato ($3). This was just sublime. Imagine the best salted caramel ice cream or gelato you've ever had and make it a little bit more umami. The quality-to-price ratio is out of this world here. We expected this would be just enough food for us due to the plates being small, given the prices. This was not the case - this was SO MUCH FOOD. You get at least 50% more foie than you expect for $14. You wouldn't expect 6 large duck meatballs for $9. You certainly wouldn't expect a huge scoop of gelato for $3. The customer service here is truly impeccable. We arrived not terribly long before they closed, and asked if the kitchen was still open, fully expecting to leave and get some pizza or something. Our waitress checked with the manager and ushered us to a seat. We ordered quickly out of courtesy to the kitchen staff, but were told we could take as long as we like. We were so concentrated on the food that we had neglected our cocktails a bit, and our waitress asked if we didn't like them, offering to take them off the bill or have something else made. I'll definitely be returning -- very very impressed.

I wanted to like this place so much more than I did. My wife and I went here for dinner last weekend on a last-minute reservation. The place is very cute and homey -- a great "date night" type of spot. The wine menu is small, but delivers what you need -- skews heavily Italian, of course. We ordered a couple glasses of wine - Ornellaia's third wine, Le Volte ($17) and Tolaini's Valdisanti ($19). A bit pricy -- both are around $20 bottles -- but nothing too bad. We decided to sample as much as we could. We shared the buffalo milk mozzarella($7) and the spicy 'nduja salami($7) to start. The mozzarella was, surprisingly, only okay. I've had better at numerous places in DC -- this just wasn't particularly flavorful. The 'nduja, to contrast, was intensely flavored and delicious (it was served with streghe crackers). The bread course is a bag of streghe crackers that lists the story of the crackers and their origin in Italy. I can't help but feel that this type of homey-style Italian place should have bread and olive oil, but the crackers are pretty good in any event. I'm not sure why (although it had been a while since we finished our starters), our waiter brought out the beef agnolotti del plin as a complimentary dish. This turned out to be the best dish of the night. It was cooked perfectly and the pasta, parmigiano, black truffle, and beef all melded to make a very decadent umami and savory experience. Our pastas arrived (we considered the white truffle pasta, but at 3 grams for $60, we decided to pass -- definitely on the steep side). I ordered the spaghetti chitarra($22) which was prepared "carbonara style" and delivered with a sunny-side-up egg on top. The pasta was cooked well. It had the savory richness you look for in a carbonara, but it had an overwhelming taste of smoke that dominated the dish. It was as if someone added a few drops of liquid smoke to our guanciale as it was cooking. My wife ordered the seasonal mushroom pasta($25) which unfortunately isn't on the website's menu. It came in a brownish sauce with round disc-style pasta. Again, the pasta was cooked well -- a consistency that is rarer than it should be. Her dish was great -- it was, like the other pastas, on the heavier side, which was a bit unexpected -- the description would lead you to think it's on the lighter side. The mushrooms were fantastic. Despite being full, we elect to share the Nonna's lemon and hazelnut cake with whipped mascarpone($8). This, of all things, is an airy and light dessert. It was fantastic,a nd I'd be hard pressed not to order this again. The restaurant has Italian dessert wines (in addition to port and madeira) that we were not familiar with, so we shared a glass of Brachetto d'Acqui($8) and Passito di Pantelleria($16). It was interesting to try grapes and wines we weren't familiar with, but it sort of reinforced my belief that with Italian wine, one should stick to reds (the Brachetto was sort of like boozy strawberry soda and the Passito was a poor man's sauternes). At the end of the day, I'm not sure this finds a spot in our regular rotation. Part of that is simply that it's not that convenient to get to compared to other places we like better. Another part is everything seems a bit too expensive. And honestly, as much as I hate to admit it, for this price, I'm 9 times out of 10 choosing RPM Italian.

B&B/CK have had quite a merry-go-round of executive chefs this year -- Kyle Bailey left in April, Nick Sharpe has just left. Bill Williamson (The Riggsby, Osteria Morini) has started. ChurchKey has four or so pasta courses now on the menu that are very new.

Zach was one of our favorite bartenders at ChurchKey -- he's incredibly knowledgeable and nice, and an asset to any bar.

@Gadarene, I haven't been back for cocktails yet. DCist is reporting the addition of some more affordable options -- a la carte bar menu service, $115 New Year's Eve lunch, $150 New Year's Eve party: "Shaw Bijou Rolls Out More Affordable Dining Options" by Travis Mitchell on dcist.com

The menus are up and they are taking reservations.

according to Kwame's instagram, the bar is now open to the public beginning at 5:30pm, and there will be a la carte bites available. i hope this becomes as great as the Eleven Madison Park bar did -- for when the full tasting menu price was unrealistic (and reservations not easy to come by), some great dinners could be had at the EMP bar.

>:(. unbelievable. manages to diss Sushi Taro (w/ a Star), Sushi Ozawa, and Sushi Capitol at the same time as offering a view of DC restaurants that was last accurate about 10 years ago. Nakazawa is welcome (and amazing), but DC doesn't have a lack of good expensive omakase places. it has a lack of quality cheap sushi in the 3-rolls-for-15 vein that is such an essential NYC staple.

holy crap guys I'm dying laughing over here. edit to add: ?uestlove and Mike Isabella both gave shout outs to The Shaw Bijou on twitter, with ?uestlove calling it "on another level", if we're keeping track of reactions.

they are included. no idea what the price would be if we stuck with cocktails during dinner. ffs. #humbleBUTNOThumbleATALLbrag

@DonRocks - Thanks for your informed post. You definitely know more about wine than i do, particularly French wine, long my weak spot. It's just so unapproachable that I don't know where to start, despite really liking many French wines. Yes, the pairings were $185 each. If it helps, the champagne we passed on was identified by Sietsema as Larmandier-Bernier -- I would hope it would be a like-for-like substitution in price though. The dessert wine identified in the email was 2014 Abbazia di Novacella, Praepositus, Moscato Rosa -- the (included) seventh glass would bring down the price to $26ish a glass. I wouldn't be surprised to know that each glass was 5 ounces or so with the top-ups. The sommelier was very generous with coming around with the bottles (which I know is a psychological thing - I'm more impressed at "top ups" of 3 ounce glasses than I probably would be at a straight pour of 5 ounces). The Haag was amazing. We *love* Riesling and have had this wine from other vintages, it's truly spectacular. I believe it was paired with the Butter Garlic Crab and Squash Veloute. The Barolo had been decanting, but to my knowledge wasn't blended. I was also a bit surprised to see a 2010 Barolo poured -- it was delicious, although it presumably would be better in 15 years. 2010 Barolo is an acclaimed enough vintage that those bottles will only appreciate in price and presumably as a wine. For everyone's information, I responded to the sommelier's email noting the omitted glass. He responded apologetically and invited us to come visit the bar at our convenience so they can make up the mistake to us. Classy move IMO. @Keithstg - I hadn't heard of LastBottle! What a cool concept. Feel free to shoot me an invite if you want a referral credit. Any other of these sites I should know about? @Simul Parikh - I like to think I would have been impartial even if the dinner was a total nightmare!