Germaine's
By Phyllis C. Richman
Washington Post Restaurant Critic
From The Washington Post Dining Guide, November 1996
When a restaurant plays to full houses year after year, you know there's good reason. At Germaine's, which was Washington's first luxurious Southeast Asian restaurant when it opened decades ago, the reasons for its steady popularity include satays and Asian entrees grilled over an open hearth, and an emphasis on seasonal ingredients in a full range of Asian dishes, both classical and creative.
Now there's more. Chef-owner Germaine Swanson revisited her native Vietnam in recent years, and she brought back the inspiration for new dishes. She's added calamari sauteed with leeks and tomato, crisp whole fish with ginger and lime sauce, grilled fish buried under fresh dill on thin rice noodles, meats sautéed with lemon grass and onion and lunch specials of noodles and noodle soups. Not only has she revamped the menu, but she's redecorated the large, comfortable dining rooms so that they are as light and as colorful as her food.
Germaine's modern cooking is not fusion food. It is rooted in tradition. But where other Vietnamese restaurants use beef jerky in their fiery, shredded, papaya salad, she uses crunchy, highly seasoned shreds of fresh beef. Her mango salad with sweet, juicy little shrimp is lusciously tropical. Her pine cone fish is among the most endearing fried fish imaginable. And no other curry in town is as succulent as
her delicate and refined lamb curry.
The menu is dizzyingly long and varied, but given the top-quality
seafood, the lean and tender meats, the abundance of fresh herbs and the charcoal grill, it would be hard to choose wrong here.
