A Name to Remember

The paella's equal in the meat department: lamb served three ways. A pesto-edged piece of loin, cooked to keep the meat moist, is joined on its plate with a tender shank that collapses at the touch of a tine, and lamb sausage that resonates with cumin and garlic. The trio of proteins -- the shank, braised with cinnamon and chilies, is particularly appealing -- rests on a shallow base of white beans accented with tangy tomatoes and crisped bacon. "White beans," the chef muses, "make you feel good inside." Certainly his treatment does.

Because the menu regularly changes, I can't say you'll find the same hits. What I can forecast are high-quality ingredients, handled in such a way to make them shine, and charmingly staged.

If there's a crack in this picture, it's the occasional heavy hand with the sweet notes (oddly, this is not an issue with desserts). Salmon glazed with a tamarind sauce edges on cloying, for instance, a slip partially righted by some pleasantly bitter broccoli rabe and fragrant jasmine rice on the plate. And otherwise succulent sliced duck breast, treated to a piece of foie gras, is ever so slightly diminished by a "caramelized chardonnay" sauce made with a drop too much vanilla.

Foti's applies the same thought to its desserts as it does to its savory courses. An autumn sampler of smooth pumpkin cheesecake, comma-shaped poached pear and amazingly light apple crumb cake -- "We had [the cake] on the table at every family get-together," the chef might tell you on one of his walk-throughs in the dining room -- comes as close as you can get to leaves crunching underfoot and a bite in the air while remaining indoors. And as ubiquitous as cookie plates have become in restaurants, this one tastes like it has some good stories behind it, because it does: The biscotti and the honey-dipped walnut cookie, fragrant with orange, use Maragos family recipes; the buttery, strawberry jam-filled linzer cookie is present because "my sous chef is Austrian and insisted on it," Maragos says, referring to Andreas Ortner, another alumnus of the Inn. Even the more obvious inclusions -- chocolate pot de creme, banana coconut tart -- are several subtle notches above what other restaurants of this caliber offer.

The restaurant's moniker? Maragos says it's a family name derived from the first name of the man, Foteos, who introduced the chef's grandparents to each other. In Greek, according to Maragos, it means "to enlighten" or "bring new."

How fitting.

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"Take it outside!" I thought to myself when a diner sitting three tables away from me at a new Washington restaurant got into an argument with somebody on his cell phone -- for a very long and very loud 10 minutes. His side of the conversation, which involved threats of a lawsuit, could be heard by the entire restaurant, including the cooks in the rear exhibition kitchen. Yet no one on the staff bothered to silence him. If my reader feedback is any indication, such aural assaults seem to be getting worse, and more brazen: During a recent online discussion, one poster shared a tale of two diners chatting during their meal with a third person -- via speaker phone.

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