Dish

An edited excerpt from the Going Out Gurus blog (http://voices.washingtonpost. com/goingoutgurus):

After a $2 million makeover, the former Hermitage Inn in Clifton will reopen Monday as Trummer's on Main. The modern American replacement in the 19th-century building was conceived by former New Yorkers Stefan and Victoria Trummer, who chose Victoria's home town rather than Manhattan to open a restaurant of their own.

The first floor of Trummer's (7134 Main St., Clifton; 703-266-1623) will feature a bar, lounge and room for the restaurant's 8,000 or so bottles of wine. Go one flight up for the kitchen and two dining rooms: the Loft, with seating for 45 patrons, and the larger, glass-enclosed Winter Garden, which Stefan Trummer describes as resembling "a big greenhouse."

The couple hired Clay Miller to head the kitchen staff of about 15 cooks. The 38-year-old chef was executive chef at Norman's (as in Norman Van Aken) at the Ritz-Carlton Orlando, where he spent the past five years.

Miller's modern American menu is short and intriguing, with entrees priced from $18 to $32. In a telephone interview, the chef sounded especially proud of an appetizer he refers to as "vanilla belly," pork brisket marinated in Asian aromatics and injected with vanilla paste. The dish is set off by spinach puree, batons of pickled rhubarb and a dollop of grenadine-spiked Chantilly cream atop the pork.

Miller will be supported by pastry chef Chris Ford, late of the whimsical ChikaLicious Dessert Bar in Manhattan.

Stefan Trummer, perhaps best known as a mixologist in New York, plans to put his stamp on the liquid side of Trummer's. The showiest cocktail might be his $13 swirl of grape vodka, muddled grapes, elderflower liqueur, verjus and champagne, dressed up with champagne sorbet, a miniature iceberg.

He calls it the Titanic.

-- Tom Sietsema