District Commons

Keeping it simple

By Tom Sietsema
Sunday, Feb. 12, 2012

Here's one of the reasons I admire District Commons: During the most recent Restaurant Week, the Foggy Bottom newcomer let customers choose from nearly its entire menu, in the same generous portions it has dished up since opening in October. Whether you got a giant brick-pressed chicken or shrimp and grits during the promotion last month, the food was delivered by servers who, despite the crowds, appeared to be happy explaining the restaurant's pretzel loaf and flagging the presence of 99 all-American beers at the bar.

A warm welcome and value have long been the hallmarks of Passion Food Hospitality, a little empire of dining rooms co-owned by chef Jeff Tunks that includes Acadiana, Ceiba and DC Coast in Washington and PassionFish in Reston. (District Commons' neighbor, Burger Tap & Shake, is a sibling that shares a kitchen with the 180-seat tavern.)

That pretzel loaf, a baguette by way of Munich, costs $2 and comes with a mustard butter for spreading on the warm bread. You can mindlessly tear through it as you sip your beer, cocktail or wine (and bravo to the server who steered me to a less pricey syrah than I was mulling one night). Just remember that what's coming to the table is going to dominate the space.

Also keep the company's fish-rich portfolio in mind when you're ordering. Except for the limited selection, oysters on the half shell always please me, and so does shrimp cocktail with a biting sauce. Chowder is crammed with seafood - crab, shrimp, chopped clams - and jolted with chipotle adobo. Oyster crackers dusted with dill seed and served in a wax paper packet are both a fun visual and a complement to the soup.

District Commons refers to its Caesar salad laced with anchovies as a "Second Date" Caesar. It's more fun to hear the explanation - a heaping helping of garlic - than to eat the routine salad topped with airy croutons. Trout splayed on its plate with crisp broccolini is mugged of its flavor. The culprit: astringent citrus butter.

Sense a theme at District Commons? Simple is the path to follow. Tilapia, blackened just to tease rather than to torch the tongue, was among recent satisfying specials. A colorful toss of greens, dressed to a light gloss with champagne vinaigrette, fills out the plate. On a heartier front might be shiny roast duck flanked with nutty wild rice and diced sweet potatoes: cold weather comfort.

If you exclude the three "recession-proof" entrees - a New York strip steak, crab cakes and lamb chops - main courses at dinner average a tavern-friendly $18.

There are some lemons in the lot. One of them is a pot pie built with a pedestrian shell and a filling of beige root vegetables and squash that could pass for a sad prop in an English boarding school of yore. Where's the color, the flavor (and did anyone run this by a focus group)? The pork chop teetering on a custardlike johnny cake has thickness going for it, but its eggplant relish lacks the tang of a good chowchow, and the meat is overdressed with mozzarella and ham. And while I like that enormous chicken with its garlicky pan juices, its mashed potatoes are more watery than creamy.

Late diners will have to tell me whether the Family Meal is worth staying up for, but I dig the idea of offering customers the food the staff eats. At 10 p.m., the sound of a bell signals the chance to try (in the bar or lounge only) a slab of meatloaf, chicken-fried steak, or pupusas and fixings; the dishes are priced to please at $12.

And three cheers for a children's menu that includes the day's grilled catch with mashed potatoes for $6 in addition to what a restaurant kitchen must feel forced to put out: a burger, parmesan pasta and fried chicken with french fries. Truth be told, if I were 10 again I'd probably make a grab for the ham biscuits, another kids' option.

The pastry kitchen's best effort is a riff on Boston cream pie, rethought as a little tower of sponge cake sweetened with a filling of custard and finished with a glossy curtain of sauce made with melted fudge. A dollop of caramel sauce hit with a sprinkle of sea salt makes it even more modern.

Chocoholics are likely to head for the devil's food cake, its sweetness tempered with creme fraiche (and its hazelnut ice cream stuck on mute). I know the funnel cake counts fans, but I'm not among them. The cloying dessert smacks of under-fried batter.

I've never dined in this open expanse, conveniently close to the Kennedy Center, that I haven't found myself bobbing forward and back like a toy dipping bird. Surely you know why: The high ceilings and the hard floors do nothing to tamp down the noise of the crowd at peak hours. On the plus side, the curved wall of windows facing Washington Circle puts diners out on the street in the best possible sense. One night, the exterior show captured the vice president amid a fleet of shiny black cars and flashes of blue light. A shock of silver hair in one of the limousines gave away Joe Biden.

The restaurant isn't blazing any culinary trails with its cooking, but sometimes a diner just wants a decent piece of fish with a good drink and a side of pampering.

District Commons, you're being paged.