One of the dull posts I promised
Georgetown. You know it. You loathe it. Or you do if you live in DC and you're anything like me.
For those of you that don't live in Our Nation's Capital, Georgetown is a self-important, extremely affluent, suburb-like neighborhood within the borders of DC proper. For my Minneapolis readers: Imagine that you took the least diverse and most snobbish sections of Minnetonka and Edina, smashed them together, kicked out the black people (both of them), and then installed picturesque row-houses and high end East Coast retail boutiques. You would be well on your way to having a reasonable facsimile of Georgetown. You'd need to find yourself a few self-important young republicans to populate the bars on the weekends and maybe a 'famous for D.C.' politician and/or pundit to spice up your trendy eateries, but those are minor details.
I don't spend much time in Georgetown. You can't get there via the Metro, so I rarely frequent the pubs. The shops are too expensive for a man of my modest income, and the parking is downright terrifying on the weekends. Georgetown is Washington, D.C. for people that don't actually like cities. Put another way, Times Square is to New York City as Georgetown is to Washington. You should probably see both the first time you make a trip to their respective cities, but nobody with any knowledge of either place goes there without a really good excuse.
There are two acceptable reasons for entering the homogeneous confines of G-Town.
1) There are a couple of really exceptional bars that have some of the best views of any beer garden in the city. The view of the rowing shells on the Potomac and the Kennedy center combine, along with your proximity to the infamous Watergate hotel, to help you almost forget about the colossal douche bags jabbering away at the table next to you.
2) Georgetown is one of the best neighborhoods in DC when it comes to good restaurants. Not much you can do about that. Gourmet cooking tends to stay as close as it can to wealthy neighborhoods.
From time to time Miss Viking and I like to pretend that we're respectable adults. This only occurs a few times a year, but one of the recurring triggers for these bouts of respectability is the bi-annual DC Restaurant Week. Twice a year the best chefs in the city open their doors to the unwashed masses. For $30 bucks a head, you are treated to a three course dinner in some of the nicer settings in American dining.
It's not unlike allowing the caddies their 15 minutes a summer in the country club pool, and Miss Viking and I never miss it. So this Saturday I ventured to Georgetown for dinner. We had 7:30 reservations at Agraria which, according to the website, is "owned by and sources the highest quality products from family farmers across the country." I have no idea what that means, but they had a picture of a combine and a barn near the hostess station. I didn't know you could be trendy and still call on the symbolism of the dying family farm, but they give it a shot at Agraria. I kept expecting to hear LCD Sound System do a cover of 'Our Country'.
Since this post is ostensibly about dinner I should probably say something about the food. It was acceptable for what we paid, which was more than we should have for a Restaurant Week meal (more on that in the next paragraph). The mussels were very good and so was the pumpkin pie cheesecake. Everything else was only acceptable for the price, assuming that we had paid full price. Miss Viking's rockfish was pretty tasty, but the portion was very small. My desert was uninspiring. If you're going to price out your chocolate cake at more than it costs for me to see a movie, it should be better than average.
My main problem is that when I'm eating at these upper crust places during Restaurant Week, I always forget that while the meal may be coming to me at a reduced price, the booze is not. Miss Viking and I have before dinner cocktails, several glasses of wine with dinner, and some port or Irish coffee with dessert, and somehow I'm still mystified by my $180 check. Mental note; just because I'm only spending $60 on food that should cost well over $100 doesn't mean that I have to buy the 20 year old Port. No matter how good it tastes.
For those of you that don't live in Our Nation's Capital, Georgetown is a self-important, extremely affluent, suburb-like neighborhood within the borders of DC proper. For my Minneapolis readers: Imagine that you took the least diverse and most snobbish sections of Minnetonka and Edina, smashed them together, kicked out the black people (both of them), and then installed picturesque row-houses and high end East Coast retail boutiques. You would be well on your way to having a reasonable facsimile of Georgetown. You'd need to find yourself a few self-important young republicans to populate the bars on the weekends and maybe a 'famous for D.C.' politician and/or pundit to spice up your trendy eateries, but those are minor details.
I don't spend much time in Georgetown. You can't get there via the Metro, so I rarely frequent the pubs. The shops are too expensive for a man of my modest income, and the parking is downright terrifying on the weekends. Georgetown is Washington, D.C. for people that don't actually like cities. Put another way, Times Square is to New York City as Georgetown is to Washington. You should probably see both the first time you make a trip to their respective cities, but nobody with any knowledge of either place goes there without a really good excuse.
There are two acceptable reasons for entering the homogeneous confines of G-Town.
1) There are a couple of really exceptional bars that have some of the best views of any beer garden in the city. The view of the rowing shells on the Potomac and the Kennedy center combine, along with your proximity to the infamous Watergate hotel, to help you almost forget about the colossal douche bags jabbering away at the table next to you.
2) Georgetown is one of the best neighborhoods in DC when it comes to good restaurants. Not much you can do about that. Gourmet cooking tends to stay as close as it can to wealthy neighborhoods.
From time to time Miss Viking and I like to pretend that we're respectable adults. This only occurs a few times a year, but one of the recurring triggers for these bouts of respectability is the bi-annual DC Restaurant Week. Twice a year the best chefs in the city open their doors to the unwashed masses. For $30 bucks a head, you are treated to a three course dinner in some of the nicer settings in American dining.
It's not unlike allowing the caddies their 15 minutes a summer in the country club pool, and Miss Viking and I never miss it. So this Saturday I ventured to Georgetown for dinner. We had 7:30 reservations at Agraria which, according to the website, is "owned by and sources the highest quality products from family farmers across the country." I have no idea what that means, but they had a picture of a combine and a barn near the hostess station. I didn't know you could be trendy and still call on the symbolism of the dying family farm, but they give it a shot at Agraria. I kept expecting to hear LCD Sound System do a cover of 'Our Country'.
Since this post is ostensibly about dinner I should probably say something about the food. It was acceptable for what we paid, which was more than we should have for a Restaurant Week meal (more on that in the next paragraph). The mussels were very good and so was the pumpkin pie cheesecake. Everything else was only acceptable for the price, assuming that we had paid full price. Miss Viking's rockfish was pretty tasty, but the portion was very small. My desert was uninspiring. If you're going to price out your chocolate cake at more than it costs for me to see a movie, it should be better than average.
My main problem is that when I'm eating at these upper crust places during Restaurant Week, I always forget that while the meal may be coming to me at a reduced price, the booze is not. Miss Viking and I have before dinner cocktails, several glasses of wine with dinner, and some port or Irish coffee with dessert, and somehow I'm still mystified by my $180 check. Mental note; just because I'm only spending $60 on food that should cost well over $100 doesn't mean that I have to buy the 20 year old Port. No matter how good it tastes.
Labels: My 'The City'
posted by DC Viking at 1:50 PM
2 Comments:
This is a GREAT description of GTown! OOO - I hate that neighborhood too! But I will concede to the excellent restaurants.
I wish I'd been able to take full advantage of Restaurant Week last time we came to visit. Nothing like being pregnant with twins to put a damper on the festivities, huh?
Oh well, it just gives me motivation to come back for Restaurant Week 2010.
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