Lean and Green
Viridian's fresh ingredients get a flashy makeover

By Tom Sietsema
Sunday, April 30, 2006

** Viridian

1515 14th St. NW (near P Street) 202-234-1400 http://www.viridianrestaurant.com/

Open: for lunch Tuesday through Friday 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.; for dinner Tuesday through Saturday 5:30 to 11 p.m., Sunday 4:30 to 9:30 p.m.; for brunch Saturday and Sunday 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Closed Monday. AE, D, MC, V. No smoking. Metro: U Street-Cardozo. Prices: dinner appetizers $5 to $12, entrees $13 to $22. Full dinner with wine, tax and tip about $70 per person.

On paper, the recipe for Viridian sounded swell: The Washington restaurant would celebrate the dreams of a trio of friends, in a neighborhood that begged for places to eat. Work by local artists would dress up the one-time car showroom in Logan Circle. The menu -- designed by a former cook at the late Rupperts restaurant on 7th Street NW -- would honor fresh food and simple preparations.

That sunny scenario quickly turned into a soap opera. Less than two months after Viridian's launch last November, Sidra Forman, the health-minded kitchen spirit, parted ways with owners Giorgio Furioso, the local developer and arts maven, and Saied Azali, who runs the Asian-themed Perry's restaurant in Adams Morgan. There were hurt feelings all around, and diners who had become regulars were left scratching their heads, wondering what the next episode would bring.

Enter Antonio Burrell, the former chef at Bistro Bis on the Hill. With his French training and close ties to butter, he was an unlikely replacement for Forman, a vegan. Yet, in February, he won her job after Furioso challenged him to come up with fresh treatments for existing dishes on the menu. Red snapper with spinach was reworked as red snapper with a reduction of carrot juice, coriander and honey. A straightforward beet salad took a glamorous, multi-hued turn. Austere when Viridian opened, desserts became something a diner actually wanted to finish. Burrell says he took what he saw on the page and simply "sexed it up a little."

The restaurant hasn't done a complete about-face. As in the beginning, the bread-basket comes with ramekins of chopped black olives and garlicky white bean dip instead of butter, and soups tend to be clear rather than creamy (and a little salty, in the case of a bowl of meaty mushrooms and baby chard). Burrell, like his predecessor, buys good ingredients and doesn't manipulate them beyond recognition. But he's definitely a more flamboyant arranger.

There are dozens of beet salads playing around town. Burrell separates his version from the lot by using a long white plate to parade three shades of the vegetable -- pink, gold, red -- each sandwiched with a bit of goat cheese in its center. Thanks to their base, a thick puree of ground walnuts and mild white cheese, the whole beets stay in place as they make their way to the table. A similar, dramatically horizontal presentation sets off a more daring first course: sea scallops balanced atop wafers of watermelon, an ingredient the chef seems to have a fetish for. The soft-crisp textures and warm-cool temperatures of the appetizer show surprising affinity for one another, and each morsel (there are four scallop-snacks per plate) is propped up on a little drift of pureed avocado. Order tuna, and, to no regular patron's surprise, square bites of the fish are laid out like fallen dominos on their slender plate. Cooked rare and edged in herbs, the tuna gets a zesty lift from its backdrop, a shimmering salsa verde.

To my mind, halibut is a snooze of a fish. Burrell makes it less so by topping the entree with crab and setting the fish on a bright citrus sauce. The chef does well with meat, too, judging from a pork T-bone splashed with a smoky bacon vinaigrette. Traces of Burrell's past crop up here and there. A customer can taste them in his robust arugula salad -- tossed with crumbles of cheese and slivers of duck confit -- as well as his sweetbreads, cooked so they're crisp, and jolted with lemon and capers. And a patron can see them on the wine list, which leans short, French and intriguing.

Don't expect to go home with a doggie bag. With few exceptions, the portions at Viridian suggest that a health spa is feeding you. To accompany your entree, consider ordering a side dish. Fluffy and mild, the newly fashionable grain known as quinoa gets a hit of curry and a sprinkle of currants. (Close your eyes, and you think you're eating couscous.) Asparagus -- white asparagus, as the menu failed to point out -- is limp and mushy, and Israeli couscous is served too cold. Better ways to fill up: caramelized, orange-scented fennel and roast Yukon Gold potatoes tossed with rosemary and sea salt.

There are also desserts to fill in any remaining hunger, and they run small and dear. Warm pistachio cake is matched with creamy pistachio ice cream. Spice-fragrant carrot cake gets an escort of coconut sorbet. Spiked with espresso and lapped with a coffee-flavored custard sauce, bread pudding is lighter than at most places. Nothing is too sweet.

Viridian was created with the neighborhood in mind. But the neighbors might get tired of the choices if Viridian sticks to its current output of no more than six appetizers and six main dishes. Frankly, scallops and watermelon are a trick that can get old fast. (The latest menu finds wedges of watermelon clumsily stacked with avocado and feta cheese; the pink tower looks like something Wilma Flintstone might have whipped up for a dinner party of cavemen.) Service veers from forgetful -- Hey, where's our breadbasket? -- to attentive and informed. One waiter's accurate description of the wines made him sound as if he were channeling Robert Parker. Viridian runs not so much hot and cold but warm and cool.

Named for its green exterior trim and located just steps from Studio Theater, Viridian is evidence that less can be more. See-through drapes in the expansive front windows let diners catch the show of pedestrians, and vice versa. The walls and chairs are white, the floors are smooth concrete, the lighting is muted. Given all the hard surfaces, you'd expect a lot of din when the place gets busy, but someone cleverly thought to add foam padding to the undersides of the tables to help absorb the noise. Color comes by way of the brown-clad servers, the eclectic crowd that fills Viridian's 90 or so seats and whatever Furioso deems best for display. (The artwork changes every six to eight weeks and recently included a mesmerizing silent video of urban life splashed above the bar.)

Dinner at Viridian, now featuring patio seating, ends on a sweet note. "Bruleed apricot," a server announced one evening as he set down a tiny dish with even tinier bites of the warm, fire-singed fruit. The gratis gesture was perfectly in keeping with the restaurant's original goal, as stated by its opening chef: "Food that is easy to eat, and food that is good for you." With a few tweaks here and there, it might also become food that keeps us coming back for more.

Ask Tom

Gabe Goldberg recently took his waiter's recommendation at Mon Ami Gabi in Bethesda and ordered a Friday night special of beef Wellington. "It was mediocre at best," the Falls Church reader wrote me. "And I was stunned to discover from the check that

[the $32.95 special] cost twice the menu item I'd considered." A follow-up letter of complaint brought "a gracious and generous response from the restaurant's general manager," according to Goldberg, including an apology for not being told the price, a detailed query about why the dish was unsatisfactory and a $75 gift certificate "with the request that I introduce myself to the general manager when I next eat there." David Russell, a manager at the French restaurant, confirmed the details of Goldberg's story, adding that servers are taught to mention the price of specials there. While he wishes Goldberg's concerns had been addressed the evening of his visit, Russell was pleased with the eventual outcome: a diner with positive memories of Mon Ami Gabi. "We would rather have customers remember how we dealt with an issue," Russell said, "than the situation itself."

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