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1226 36th St. NW
(202) 965-1789
Hours of Operation and Prices
Dinner: Sun-Th 6-10, F-Sat 5-11; Entrees: $18-$32
Pre-Theater: Sat-Sun 5-6:45 pm, $25
Other Information
• Credit Cards: All major
• Reservations: Recommended
• Dress: Jacket required
• Parking: Complimentary valet
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Grandmother visiting? Out-of-town CEO? Japanese industrialist or Swedish poet? 1789 looks like American history and serves the kind of modern American cooking that shows why we now are considered competition for the French and the Italians.
Dining is on two floors, but my favorite is the main downstairs room, with etchings and old maps of Washington on walls, silk-shaded brass oil lamps and tiny bouquets of flowers on tables. With federal furnishings and a working fireplace, it's the most formal room. Yet even the least of 1789's small dining rooms is handsome and cozy. And the service benefits from waiters who've been around countless years.
The menu is of modest length - seven or eight offerings for each course - and particularly shows the seafood-cooking skill of chef Ris Lacoste, who spent most of her career as sous-chef to Bob Kinkead in Nantucket and Washington. Dishes change daily, and most reflect the seasons, though the menu also includes such year-round stalwarts as filet of beef (albeit with mustard, tarragon and malt scotch), rack of lamb and grilled chicken breast. There's also formidable seafood, perhaps fresh shrimp with grits and Smithfield ham or tuna, seared as an appetizer or cut thick and glazed with hoisin sauce as an entree. The crab cakes are creamy and garnished with something surprising such as thumb-sized fresh artichokes and oranges. And fish fillets are attractively but sedately seasoned. Seafood stew especially shows Lacoste's poise in updating traditional dishes. Its clams, mussels, shrimp, chunks of fish and crab meat are in a broth flavored bouillabaisse-style, with croutons spread with the classic rouille, yet it has a spicy bold American flavor.
Here's a restaurant where the entrees are every bit as good as the appetizers, and the breads are outstanding. Thank goodness the desserts are the least exciting course, since I'm usually too full to do them justice.
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