800 Connecticut Ave. NW (202) 463-8700 Hours of Operation and Prices Lunch: M-F 11:30-3; Entrees: $10.50-$18.50 Light Fare: 3-5:30; Entrees: $5.50-$14 Dinner: M-Th 5:30-10:30, F-Sat 5:30-11; Entrees: $14.50-$20 Pre-Theater: M-Sat 5:30-7, $22.50 Closed: Sun Other Information • Credit Cards: All major • Reservations: Recommended • Dress: Jacket & tie • Parking: Complimentary valet at dinner • Metro: Farragut West • Entertainment: Pianist at dinner • Handicapped accessible

The menu is a playground for the products of the seasons and the flavors of the world, featuring appetizers of squash pasta with frizzled sage or cured salmon and tuna tartare with wasabi and daikon, entrees such as grilled shrimp on white bean mousse with diced ham hock or rack of lamb with ratatouille and flageolet beans in a cumin broth. Some appetizers are memorable, especially the velvety chicken-and-pistachio sausage on a bed of white beans with tomatoes. Another, timbale of cured salmon and tuna tartare, is gorgeous, a turban of coral salmon with a band of black seaweed hiding the diced raw fish. Yet fried calamari is pale and limp, and a tart of goat cheese and caramelized onion is sometimes subject to clumsy reheating.

So go the entrees, too. The magnificent veal chop is thick and flavorful, with a rosemary sauce that blends subtly with the wild mushrooms, grilled radicchio and sedately garlicky mashed potatoes. Swordfish is moist and cleanly fresh, on a bed of polenta as creamy as Southern grits, with vinegared greens. Yet from the same kitchen comes rack of lamb overwhelmed with cumin-flavored ratatouille, bland grilled tuna or faintly bitter shrimp with cartilagenous ham hock. Seasonings are sometimes confusing, frequently too strong. But be patient: There's creme brulee at the end. And it's so rich and smooth and cracklingly caramelized that it rights all wrongs.