At Trendy Lia's, Old Country Is Cool

By Eve Zibart
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, Oct. 20, 2006

Ah, the pace -- and the price -- of evolution. Within a few years, restaurants in Washington have gone from predictable to fashionable to trendy to that even more tenuous and transitory stage, hip. (Make that "hip.")

This odd though not necessarily unpleasant phenomenon is strikingly obvious when you consider Lia's, which opened midsummer in the suddenly upscale Friendship Heights neighborhood. The wine-warehouse-chic dining rooms are filled with longtime Chevy Chase condo-ites in tailored suits; the bar harbors the sleek and self-assured "service assistants" of Jimmy Choo, Barneys, Max Mara et al.; and the outer fringe, which in nice weather includes the patio, is the clamorous domain of those neo-Sloane Rangers, the Jenna-ration Y-ers -- Cosmo in one hand and CrackBerry in the other. All this, only steps from where Houlihan's once held solitary, pre-measured and semi-underground sway.

Happily, Lia's has not only suavity but polish enough to make sense of these disparate patrons. An offshoot of the Chef Geoff's modern-American restaurants but inspired by owner Geoff Tracy's tasting tour through trattorias of the old country (the name is half of "Italia"), Lia's obeys the prime directive of Italian cooking: Get the best ingredients and get out of the way. Let there be light!

Lia's pastas are a prime example. Trofie (a thickish twist) with lobster and cherry tomatoes is just dense enough to make sinking one's teeth into it a sensual pleasure, and it is tossed in a vanilla-scented butter perfectly emulsified, not melted and broken. Ravioli stuffed with goat cheese are set against only roasted peppers and unbriny black olives.

Carefully roasted halibut lies in state in a shallow bowl of prosecco broth, surrounded Roman-style with fingerling potatoes, artichoke hearts and pencil asparagus. Stuffed quail is very fine, the breast boned and filled with a morsel of speck, cheese and spinach and left rare and juicy, served with al dente wild mushroom risotto. The only question about a recent appetizer special -- venison tenderloin studded with coarse pepper and served rare over butter-sauteed broccoli rabe and onion-jus cream -- was why it wasn't offered as an entree; it was fine and filling. (Perhaps it was a recipe test.) Roast chicken was nicely browned and seasoned, and its zucchini ribbons and polenta cake both delicate, though the bird itself, perhaps out of excessive caution, was overdone and a little dry.

The "meats and cheeses," as the menu calls the antipasti choices, are of first quality and can be ordered in various assortments with bread and fig jam. (These are serious options: Lia's Web site and menus tend to announce, "There's no better way to say I love you than with pancetta!" or " . . . than with pecorino!") The kitchen makes good and sometimes surprising use of them as well: The risotto and quail had a tall sail of crisp-fried prosciutto that had twice the flavor impact a soft slab wrapped around the quail in the usual fashion would have had, not to mention the pizazz. The pizzas that come with salami or pepperoni, etc., get the real things, far more pungent than the deli versions. (The pizza dough is not the best in the neighborhood -- Potomac Pizza has that -- but it's pretty good, and the toppings are uniformly attractive. Among the choices are wild mushroom, fennel sausage and fontina; serrano, manchego and onion jam; and chicken-thyme sausage with asparagus, apples and taleggio.)

Seasonality is a granted. When the late-summer tomatoes were deep flavored, the kitchen sent out a large ramekin-molded bread salad with mild house-made mozzarella that had been tossed with only enough salt, oil and balsamic vinegar to soften the bread. A creamy corn soup with a swirl of basil was silken and insinuatingly sweet.

Patience is a virtue here -- a virtue of the cooks, though not, rather surprisingly, one particularly required of the diners. Risottos and polentas have distinct textures, and vegetables are just tender. The kitchen manages frying in style: The calamari is delicately battered and crisp (although at $12.95, one of the most expensive starters), and the risotto balls, with their soft hearts of melted fontina and roasted tomato dip, are greaseless.

Even the layout of the restaurant, which at first seems awkward (the entrance is through the bar, which is divided from the dining rooms by a long hallway that fronts the kitchen), starts to seem smart. The roomy bar has fairly unobtrusive televisions, a dozen beers on tap and good, not too large cocktails. A gas fireplace in the hallway is visible from the patio (and offsets the draft from the patio doors), and the hall dulls some of the noise from the lounge. The dining rooms, divided by see-through wine racks and walled in by plywood stamped with case-like markings, pick up the concrete and stone-look flooring.

To gild the lily, the good wine list is half-price on Sunday nights, another Chef Geoff's tradition, which might easily lead one into temptation. (The list is not, as the staff sometimes says, entirely Italian but includes such attractive Cal-Itals as Randall Gramm's Ca' del Solo Malvasia Bianca and the Coppola Sophia.) And the gelatos are dangerously alluring.

There are a few flubs. The ravioli have been somewhat too thick and tough at the edges. A couple of the artichoke hearts with the halibut could have been trimmed a bit more carefully, and the trofie outshone the slightly scant and slender lobster. Also, the table may or may not be served bread, or supplied with olive oil, and the waiter may pour the red wine to taste before the white. But all in all, Lia's is a welcome surprise, and one that runs proudly counter to the bigger, heavier, better theory of customer indulgence.