Inn at Little Washington

2012 Fall Dining Guide
By Tom Sietsema
Washington Post Magazine
Sunday, Oct. 21, 2012

It's hard to stay on top. If you've never been to one of the most storied inns in the country, your first encounter with truffle-shaved popcorn with cocktails in the lounge, a “tin of sin" -- caviar-paved peekytoe crab -- in a plush banquette or “a painter's palette" of seasonal sorbets (best sampled in the garden) can astound. If you've been before, your expectations shoot to the moon: Can chef-owner Patrick O'Connell sustain the magic you recall from your first, or after your 20th, visit? I thought I had seen it all here when I dropped by this summer, but before the inevitable drinks and eye-popping canapes, the suited servers trotted me outside to tour the Inn's garden, beehive and henhouse -- dressed with a chandelier. The food is by turns playful and serious. The “dressing" for a lamb carpaccio on a shimmering green herb sauce is tiny scoops of Caesar salad ice cream; the support for sliced pigeon with blueberries is a delicate zucchini crepe that I was sorry to see go. And perhaps the best surf and turf of my entire year is the duo of sauteed cod and dainty pork dumplings splashed with lemony vodka sauce. Not every dish soars. Shrimp with chorizo is the sort of dish that might impress on an upgrade in the sky, but not on this hallowed ground. The Inn's desserts erase any aftertaste of the ordinary, though. I dare you not to swoon when you spoon into the brilliant pineapple-lemon grass sorbet, served alongside pink peppercorn granita, or “grandmother's" apple tart, a pie by way of Paris. Or heaven. When a bug dropped into my glass of Roland Tissier et Fils Sancerre Rose, the sommelier whisked it away with typical grace and humor: “At least it has good taste."