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3908 12th St. NE
(202) 832-6117
Hours of Operation and Prices
Open: M-Sat 11:30 am-11 pm, Sun 11:30-10
Entrees: $9-$16
Brunch: Sun 11:30-3; Entrees: $6-$8
Other Information
• All major credit cards
• Reservations recommended
• Dress: casual
• Free parking lot
• Nearest Metro: Brookland-CUA
• Handicapped accessible
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Irish pubs aren't what they used to be. They're more ambitious, and this one's better. Ellis Island Restaurant & Pub, a spinoff of Capitol Hill's Irish Times, brings to the Catholic University area a restaurant priced low enough for students and nice enough for them to show off to their parents. Where else can you find Keats' poetry and a three-cheese pizza on the same menu?
The place has a scrubbed, blond-wood look, with seating at the bar, tables or booths (or in a small, bricked rear courtyard if the weather is nice). The beer list features local Wild Goose brews on tap. And the menu is small but cuts a wide swath. You can order anything from a basket of fresh-cut french fries to a proper dinner of, say, a lightly smoked and grilled fillet of salmon with rice and buttery fresh spinach. The current pub favorite, fried calamari, is one of the kitchen's glories, tender under its crunchy cornmeal coating. The pizza crust, too, has a cornmeal graininess, plus an agreeable addition of sliced plum tomatoes. It's not great pizza, but it has an honest, handmade quality. The menu also features ribs and burgers, pastas and a grilled vegetable salad.
For such a small menu, desserts take up a lot of space. And given such choices as strawberry shortcake, coffeecake, chocolate sour cream cake and lemon poppy-seed cake (not to mention daily specials,
perhaps apple pie or sweet potato pie), you might be tempted to skip right to the end.
© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company
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