Upscale Bangers and Mash
A British approach to cured meat works for a Columbia Heights restaurant
By Tom Sietsema
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, Oct. 26, 2008
Sound Check: 80 decibels (Extremely Loud)
Charcuterie plates tend to show off shopping, rather than cooking, skills. With few exceptions, most restaurants are comfortable putting out a plate of sliced cured meat, a few gherkins and some bread and calling it a day.
CommonWealth, a daring upstart in Columbia Heights, takes the road less traveled. Its Butcher Plate eschews the usual selection of protein -- prosciutto, salami and the like -- for dishes you may never have heard of, let alone tasted. "What's fuet?" a curious dining companion asks our waiter. "What are trotters?" he presses. "Is head cheese what I think it is?"
The waiter smiles and patiently answers each question:
"Pork sausage."
"Pig's feet."
Head cheese is not a cheese at all, my friend is informed, but what you end up with after braising a pig head and mixing the meat with parsley, capers and preserved lemons.
When you're working in the first British-themed dining room on the block, you're called upon to do a lot of translating.
Chef Jamie Leeds, with two Hank's Oyster Bars to her credit, and her business partner, Sandy Lewis, are gambling that their "people's gastropub" will help fill a need for good food in this rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. CommonWealth has its roots in Great Britain and is modeled on watering holes aspiring to offer better than bangers and mash (read: sausage and potatoes). Executing that vision here is chef de cuisine Antonio Burrell, whose background includes kitchen duty at the Eleventh Street Lounge in Clarendon and the late Viridian near Logan Circle.
The tavern invites customers to get out of their comfort zones. Yes, there are hamburgers. But why eat a burger when you can get an excellent thin-crusted Cornish pasty (imagine an empanada from across the pond) stuffed with beef and pork? Frog in a Puff slips dense but tasty lamb sausage between sheets of golden, and slightly greasy, pastry. The appetizer, a slightly more civilized cousin to pigs in a blanket, prompts smiles all around.
Scotch eggs make a great icebreaker, too. The featured attraction, a welcome change of pace from all the deviled eggs out there, consists of two hard-boiled eggs encased in sausage and bread crumbs, split in half and served on a metal stand with a trio of dips; stick to the green herb sauce, a nice foil to the substantial snack.
This is a kitchen that likes to pickle. Diners are treated to little bowls of sharply seasoned carrots, green beans, peppers and okra after they sit down, a nice offering given the richness of what can follow. And they can continue the tangy trail with Stuffed Trout Rollmops: fillets of pink trout wrapped around Swiss chard. The combination of the pickled fish and garlicky greens is electric.
The dough for the crusts is made here, but far more impressive are the animal sides that are brought in and butchered in-house, a trend that more restaurants are jumping on these days. Cutting up whole shoulders and legs saves a restaurant money and allows a chef to show off those tasty bits and pieces, odds and ends, heads and tails that most patrons never get to try.
Which brings me back to that butcher board. I've not sampled anything from the 10 or so choices that I wouldn't be eager to eat again. My idea of utter decadence brings together a slab of that head cheese, custardy deviled sweetbreads and pink coins of garlic sausage served with a pot of mustard. Three terrific tastes for $24.
Sunday roast nights are a particularly good time to drop by. That's when Leeds and company let you pretend you're back at home and being fed by Mom -- well, provided your mom was the kind of cook who made big batches of comfort food for her brood. Thick slices of roast beef with pasta shells draped in melted cheese and whatever vegetable happens to be fresh at the market add up to a hefty care package. There has also been "Moroccan" lamb, but its timid seasoning suggested Middle America.
The side dishes, or "Trimmings," bridge the Old World and the New. Yorkshire pudding is basically a collapsed roll served with onion sauce. Macaroni and cheese demands more salt, but I can't resist CommonWealth's glam take on the all-American green bean casserole, made here with cremini mushrooms, delicate ringlets of fried onion and a winy cream sauce.
CommonWealth is vegetarian hell, though the kitchen tosses a good, basil-fragrant vegetable salad. Pescetarians fare better. They will find creamy crab served on a raft of toast, fat cakes of shredded smoked haddock and cubed potatoes, and Simply Grilled Fish, perhaps a thin piece of bluefish ringed in a verdant parsley sauce. Fish and chips are a letdown, though, done in by fat and undercooked french fries ("half the reason for ordering" fish and chips, groused a tablemate). And as cute as it looks in a beer glass, the Pint of Prawns reveals less-than-sparkling seafood in my only encounter with it.
The cocktails and wines are fine, but beer goes down best with this kind of food, and the staffers are helpful guides to what's on tap. The English penchant for unusual branding extends to the suds, which sport such names as Golden Monkey, an ale with banana notes, and Entire Butt, a sweetish porter. ("I got it just for the name," Leeds says of the latter.)
"I'd like this better in winter," a buddy says between bites of chicken pot pie on a warm autumn evening when almost every seat on the front patio is taken. He's got a point. The food here is on the hearty side. What's not fried is packaged in a crust, and many of the entrees come with rib-sticking mashed potatoes. I still manage to make room for CommonWealth's chocolate pudding, though, and so do my friends, taking turns diving into the big bowl with their spoons until only white is visible.
The setting, near the Columbia Heights Metro stop, is new construction. But the designer has done a clever job of creating a moody environment that appears to have some years on it, using existing cinder blocks, reclaimed lumber and faux black leather to create a pub feel. The many hard surfaces make for a lot of din. Ask to sit in the glass-wrapped private dining room up front if you want some peace with your (minted) peas.
