washingtonpost.com: B. Smith's

B. Smith's
By Phyllis C. Richman
Washington Post Restaurant Critic
From The Washington Post Dining Guide, November 1996

Union Station, 50 Massachusetts Ave. NE
(202) 289-6188

Hours of Operation and Prices
Lunch: M-F 11:30-4; Entrees: $12-$19
Dinner: Sun-Th 5-11, F-Sat 5-midnight; Entrees: $12-$22
Brunch: Sat-Sun 11:30-4, $5-$22

Other Information
• All major credit cards
• Dress: casual
• Reservations recommended
• Parking: Validated, 2 hours
• Nearest Metro: Union Station
• Entertainment: Jazz W-Th 8-11, Sat 8-midnight, Sun noon-4
• Handicapped accessible

When a restaurant is named after a New York model, the Oil of Olay girl, you expect skimpy salads and ascetic, dry-grilled fish. But that's not what you get at B. Smith's. The restaurant that has taken over the historic presidential waiting room at Union Station serves its bronzed salmon with butter-thickened bearnaise sauce and its salads with whole strips of bacon or plenty of Swiss cheese and Smithfield ham dressing. The menu is abundant with barbecued ribs and fried catfish, crisp onion rings and gravy-drenched mashed potatoes.

B. Smith's is a mood. The entrance has the feel of an art deco supper club, with a fan of burgundy fabric as backdrop to the maitre d's station and jazz wafting in from the lounge. The soaring, vaulted room, festooned with gilded and painted fancy work, is the match of many cathedrals. And along the side is an enclosed terrace with stone columns and wicker chairs, a hint of one of Paris' elegant squares.

The menu reads like a family album of Southern cooking, albeit with newfangled modifications. B. Smith's produces a full range of food, from simple to exotic, light to heavy, luscious to truly dreadful. I can't remember tasting better red beans and rice. They make me forgive the excess sugar in the corn bread that accompanies them and wish they were my full meal, not just an appetizer.

In a Southern restaurant it makes sense to save room for dessert. Both the Southern cheesecake - with cherries and nuts - and the pecan diamonds could hardly be richer, the diamonds' dough more like caramel than like cookie. And the coconut cake is about the sweetest dessert I have ever eaten - almost like fudge - but the coconut itself is fabulous, and I ate every bit to prove it. Washington might be a little embarrassed to have to import a Southern restaurant from New York. But I'll take my red beans and coconut cake wherever I can get them.

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