At Occidental, a Happy Return

Rodney Scruggs's Maine lobster salad with micro cilantro. (By Jahi Chikwendiu -- The Washington Post)

To call a restaurant a "classic" is to consider the meaning of the term. Classic as in stereotypical? Old-fashioned? A little kitschy? The Occidental is one of those establishments that endures all those implications but earns the appellation partly because of its age and atmosphere, that disappearing sense of gentility and influence, and because of its mid-Atlantic continental repertoire of shellfish and farmhouse meats. (It's too bad that the Mandarin Oriental Hotel is south rather than east of the Occidental -- it would make such a great mnemonic for their cuisines.) And although at various times it has struggled to find a balance between traditional and tired, the Occidental menu, under prodigal chef Rodney Scruggs, presents many of the most familiar dishes in judiciously reconsidered, if far from radical, contexts.

Lobster's delicate flavor is easily obscured or corrupted, but Scruggs's lovely tender, butter-poached lobster is set off by two distinct but equally muted flavors: chestnut, turned into a lightly sweet custard, and candied endive in a ginger-infused sauterne, supplying a bittersweet and spicy note that refreshes against the butter. Plump, fresh Maryland oysters are shucked and just warmed before being bedded in an herbed tomato cream surrounding a timbale of delicate spoonbread and "seasoned" with bits of country ham for salt, wilted leeks and spinach -- a dish somewhat in the style of the Inn at Little Washington. Wild mushroom ravioli are a fine version, stuffed not with chopped sauteed mushrooms but a luxuriant duxelles-like concentrate, and with the mustiness shadowed by a hint of black truffle and fennel.

But Scruggs knows better than to think all shellfish need to be coddled. Meaty saline mussels gain an unexpected and bracing edge steamed in carrot-ginger broth. And pan-seared jumbo shrimp, as large as advertised, easily hold their own against a potentially deadening white bean coulis and smoked bacon.

Listed as salads are several dishes that could easily be mid-size entrees. Among them is a loin of lamb, roasted and sliced and fanned out over ratatouille and served with a goat cheese on croustade, and black olive vinaigrette. Lobster salad is also fine, served over quartered artichoke bottoms with a grapefruit dressing (but it's $13, and for only $2 more, the poached lobster is far out in front). Seared venison carpaccio is more smoky than gamey, paired with cold lentils and macerated currents. And while roasted red and yellow beet salad with goat cheese and pistachios is almost a staple these days, Scruggs's version is still satisfying.

Scruggs, who returned to the Occidental about six months ago, started his career there 20 years ago as a 17-year-old line cook and worked his way up to being Jeffrey Buben's second-in-command. He opened Cesco in Bethesda for partners Francesco Ricchi and Roberto Donna, and went back to work for Buben when he opened Bistro Bis on Capitol Hill. Scruggs and his pastry-chef wife, Lisa, also worked for five years at the Imperial Hotel in Chestertown, Md., where he first began to reconstruct some of the regional dishes he has on the menu here. (She is currently the pastry chef at Equinox.)

His is one of the most refreshing versions of salmon, neither poached (and leached of flavor) nor grilled (and charcoal-embittered) but sauteed, sided with lump crab and its oily aftertaste cleansed by blood oranges and braised fennel. Even the rib-eye steak, so often left over-fatty and under-flavored, is exactly seasoned with kosher salt and finished over smoke. (The blue cheese sauce is gilding the lily but popular.)

But whether through caution or a pare-it-back sensibility, Scruggs doesn't always come up to his best. His style, though wide-ranging in terms of ingredients, is relatively simple, even sometimes a little too laid-back.

His twist on pecan-crusted rockfish, which can have a bitter back taste from scorched nuts, intelligently substitutes a lower-key lentil batter, but that affords an opportunity for something a little more impressive as a spice than the mild leek cream and scant truffle essence. The brined and cider-marinated pork chop (thick, but no "rack") had a good whiff of apple in the meat, but the brining, pulling out some of the blood, makes it susceptible to dryness (it should be kept medium to medium-rare), and the apples and pickled red cabbage were uncharacteristically predictable.

Veal osso buco is tender and moist, and the shank bone generous with marrow, but the veal, which is not so inherently potent as lamb, rather pined for a less subtle braising to give it more character, and the bland baby vegetables didn't offer much help. The crab cakes are admirably lumpy -- the ingredients uniformly high-quality -- and the potato puree so smooth by comparison that it seemed pressed through a sieve, but there was an odd bare trace of something sugary in the dressing that bound the patty, which altered the crab's own sweetness.

The Occidental has several other virtues, including an independently interesting lunch menu (sauteed rainbow trout with apples and fried country ham; Provencal-style halibut with artichokes, black olives, fennel and roasted red pepper), good hot dinner rolls, a short but not boring list of wines by the glass, and that sense of established good manners that seems to affect even out-of-towners. "Classic" encompasses class, after all.

The Occidental 1475 Pennsylvania Ave. NW (in the Willard Hotel), Metro: Federal Triangle or Metro Center 202-783-1475 Kitchen hours: Open Monday-Thursday 11:30-3 and 5-10, Fridays and Saturdays 11:30-3 and 5-10:30, Sundays 5-9:30. Prices: Appetizers $9-$15; entrees $24-$35 for dinner Wheelchair access: Good (use side entrance)