TomA

My wife and I went to Farrah Olivia this past Saturday for their fixed price brunch. At $20.07 it is a superb value, with well executed and very fresh apps and entrees. The highlight was the simplest dish...a wonderful roast white meat chicken breast that was moist, flavorful with sinfully crisp skin. It was served with a wonderfully homey porcini mac-n-cheese side. This was not a typical dish in a place known for it's "deconstructing". My Salmon with beet risotto and leek cream sauce was also very good, especially for the $$...Salmon was very, very fresh and done medium rare as requested; the rest of the dish neither enhanced nor detracted from the velvety fish. The grilled asparagus and smoked salmon apps were decent as was the dessert of "Spice" and Citrus cheese cake. All in all for 20 bucks ahead, a very, very good quality to price ratio.

As usually satisfied regulars to Bebo, I would like to put the pro and con Bebo arguments in perspective by summarizing an experience my wife and I had last night at Murali in Pentagon Row. We ended up there after running a few errands in the mall and expecting to catch the always decent happy hour at Lebanese Taverna. Much to our chagrin, it was closed for a private party. looking for the least bad option in that wasteland, we chose Murali, which we hadn't been to in years. For $92, we got 6 glasses of wine, a crab/avocado salad with brownish avocado and slighly "old" crabmeat and split a $26.50 plate of seafood risotto which was a mixed bag to say the least...the seafood was actually fine in it, but the rice was overccoked, the sauce bland and strangely out of place huge chunks of cold tomato were all over the place! The moral..for less than this "stuff" costs, at Bebo you can get outstanding risotto for $19 bucks, good salads, good ingredients in all dishes and at least decent, sometimes outstanding preparation of most dishes plus of the 20+ pizzas I have had, all have been at least good. most very good to execellent. And service..once you become a regular at the bar, you are treated as such...Chef Donna always says hello to us and the the sous chef Amy came out are last time there to see if we enjoyed the whole wheat spaghetti special..Bebo is not perfect, but we all need perspective after blundering into some the price point competition. Our expectations for a Donna restaurant are indeed high, but essentially at this point, Bebo is the best place of its type in NOVA, albeit with slim to no competition...BTW please people somebody try Cucina Vivace up the street..on our way home last night at 8:00 PM..nobody was in there!

My wife and I ate there last week for dinner and found both the fish curry and lamb korma to be lacking in any zip or depth of flavor....what has happened to this once more than solid neighboohood Indian? Lost a Chef, perhaps...

The Crystal City Jaleo had been excellent on are three last visits...the new manager has instilled the staff with a higher degree of quality control...highlights from those visits have been the grilled squid with green olive puree (one of the best calamari dishes in the DC area IMHO), the Basque crab stew, the grilled chicken with green/garlic sauce and the white gazpacho with crab. All of the standards (like the fritters and patatos bravos) have been fresher tasting and more carefully presented than in the past. Sietsma's third star is, at least for now, earned at this location. Also a nice Saturday lunch at Bebo, which offered its full menu for the marathon weekend...great whole spaghetti with rapini, garlic and hot pepper and a nice marinara pizza with eggplant.

Last Friday, my wife and I had a lunch special of red wine braised beef ravioli w/butter sage sauce which was superb...the salad trio appetizer was fine, with the grilled eggplant being the highlight...our pizza marinara with smoked mozz was very good but the center was a bit "wet" from olive oil and my sloppy cutting of the slices...I think if the pizza was precut, most cases of "wetness" in the pie center could be alleviated..the table knives are not ideal...the tomato sauce is still the gold standard for pizza sauces in our area and the crust is great. Service at the bar was very good.

Pizzaiola's NY pies are indeed some of the area's best just as Bebo's Neopolitan pies are among the best of that style. One note: Pizzaiola uses a conventional convection pizza oven but Chef Ponzi told me that he lined the oven with clay tiles to increase the heat and maintain higher cooking temps..this at least simulates the cola oven effect and produces a nice crisp and chewy crust.

A good "non-pizza" report from Bebo on Sunday night....risotto with red snapper, tomato and proscuitto was exceptional..also it looks like the beet salad has been rethought...beets, yellow tomatoes (not quite ripe enough) and the buffalo mozz served as seperates on the plate and not tossed together...works alot better..the beets were in large chunks and very flavorful. Business was good and service at the bar was above average. BTW I live in Crystal City and am not a Bebo groupie but we can go often and evaluate the evolution of the place. So far, it seems to be settling into a "groove" of sorts.

Dropped by Bebo for lunch...RD was manning the oven and he made us his special smoked Mozz pizza..."bianca neuva (sp)" for $14....it was as Joe H billed....superb crust and a nice balance between ricotta, smoked mozz and garlic. Certainly one of the top pies in the area IMHO..Also had the calamari salad which had much better greens than calamari (chilled and didn't really add much to the otherwise nice tangy composition)...and the regular menu Shrimp w linguini ($14.95)which was very good...great shrimp with langastino-like flavor; firm, favorful noodles and a lemony sauce applied in a light manner..a refreshing pasta for summer..for garlic lovers could have used a bit more garlic. Service at the bar was fine and RD was graciuous as usual. Again Bebo is was it is and that's better at their price points than alot of places around these parts. As for pizza, they seem to be getting better and better at the consistency game and quality control. They have a chance to be the best in the metro area.

another Saturday pizza update...two of the best pies we have had at Bebo....did the bar early (11:45)....got a marinaraw/eggplant and black olives and tomato/mozz with arugula and procuitto..... better than the last I have had from Paradisso and 2 Amy's...service was competent at the bar but a bit sullen, but who cares when the pis were this good. Both pies had better crust than our previous ones (perfect blistering and crust texture/flavor..no wetness in center)..decent mixed salad came with the pie via a coupon. The marinara as a base for one or two toppings is really a revelation. Permalink | Report | Reply

My wife and I have eaten 4 pizzas at the bar (where, else, to avoid service issues in the dining room) the past two weeks and am happy to report all four (white, marinara, marinara w/smoked mozz, and the eggplant/olive) were at least 8.5 on a scale of ten...no evidence of "wetness", almost perfect to near-perfect crust and premium toppings...good news: Roberto was not cooking the pies in our case, but his pizza makers were performing up to standard (earlier non-RD pizzas have been noted as not quite done at times, or "wet". Bebo pizza is notably better than current 2 Amys IMHO at this juncture. Other dishes we had were a great pork shoulder panini and some nicely dressed salads with top notch greens and chopped vegetables. Note, we ate at the bar and on "off" hours so service was fine...cannot guarantee anything in the dining room or at prime time, but for the $$, Bebo is top notch value/quality ratio if you ignore the service "eccentricities". Saturday is pizza, salads and salumi only for lunch due to Crystal City being not so busy on weekend days. My take on the famous smoked Mozz non-menu Pizza..order a $10.00 marinara pie and add $2.50 for the smoked mozz..its great....if you like crisper crust always go with the Marinara with one or no toppings. Also, we have proably eaten about 6 other pies prior to this report and would rate them 6.5 to 9.0; the lower rated ones were either over sauced or slightly underdone..generally, of the 10 pies we have had, the average on my scale is about 8.0...not bad and with the RD bar being high, at least as good as the usual suspects...2 Amy's, Comet table tennis, etc.....alos with Cafe Pizziala in the 'hood..Crystal City may be ground zero for Washington area pizza..NY style and Neopolitan..Once you become "known" at Bebo, service at the bar becomes pretty good and RD is always gracious to us, and we are no high rollers who drop $100-150 a night. Generally, for the price all fo the food we have had is at least decent, often very good and occasionally execellent. For entrees that usually run under $20, thats not bad....but RD does need to get good floor managers to get the level of service to his food...BTW.. I think he DOES CARE.