While I like what I do by day (well let me honest, most days), I do not live to work. I work to be able to experience great eating and drinking experiences here in DC and around the world.
I am starting this blog because I want to share my experiences with anyone else who shares this passion or who just wants to decide if a given restaurant/bar/happy hour/food event is worth it. I will also be sure to include prices as I know this detail is key and it really irks me that Tom Sietsema, Washington Post food critic, leaves this information out of his reviews. $50 good is a lot different than $300 good. And while far from a critic, I appreciate good service, value creativity and good ingredients, and promise candid accounts of my dining experiences. Plus it always makes me smile to remember a good meal and will remind me not to go back should the experience prove the other way.
So having been excited about delving into the world of amateur food critic for a while, here it goes:
Dr. Granville Moore's http://www.granvillemoores.com/Beer.html
This past Friday, B & I headed to Granville Moore's on H Street. I must admit that Granville's had been a spot that I had wanted to try for a while, but H street is a haul from my condo and not easily accessible via the metro. But the Food Network re-aired the Bobby Flay Throwdown at Granville's and I could not resist the urge to try mussels with bleu cheese and pork fat!
So after a long week of work, B & I jumped in a cab and got to Granville's by 6:15pm. Actually, we first waited for the H Street Shuttle at Gallery Place but it failed to show up, and then decided to get a martini at Clyde's. YES This is entirely too early for dinner, but the place is tiny and we were glad we heeded advice to show up early as no less than ten minutes after we were seated the place was at an hour wait. (Since there is no room to wait for a table, diners are sent next door to the Pug and called on their cell phone when a table opens up.)
First impressions -- The space is cozy, and brown, and feels like somewhere a gnome would take up residence (in a good way). A bar lines one side of the galley-like space and tables that seat up to four line the other, with two large booths up back and a smaller version of the space replicated upstairs.
There are four beers on tap -- I had the Dravik and B got the other Belgium on tap (can't remember the name -- $10 for his, $5.50 for mine.) While not nearly the selection of a place like Belga Cafe on Capitol Hill, both were great (especially at the end of a long week) and served in the proper glasses. I should also note that there hundreds by the bottle, but I am definitely more of a draft beer person, so I did not even look at that list.
We started with the antipasto--totally gratuitous given the food to come, but it was quite decent with some cured meats, an earthy cheese, and some pickled vegetables.
Of course we got the mussels with bacon and bleu cheese. They did not disappoint; they were cooked perfectly with no hint of the taste of stale ocean that tends to plague the bivalves, and the blue cheese and pork combined to add texture and a really rich flavor. We also got a small (read: huge) side order of fries to share with the horse radish and chipotle raspberry dipping sauce. The fries were great -- crispy with sea salt and herbs. On the sauce front, there were about 8 choices and I would have never picked the raspberry sauce (the raspberry sounded like an odd ingredient), but the waitress recommended it, and it was fantastic -- just a hint of the fruit which was heavily countered by a heavy dose of the chipotle. Somewhere during all this we of course got another round of beers too.
It really was worth the hike up there. The atmosphere was unique (one of those small intimate spaces that DC tends to lack in favor of huge dining rooms) and the food and beer were a great compliment to one another. Dinner for two with two rounds of drinks, antipasto, two orders of mussles, and shared order of fries, tax and 20% tip was $95.
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