after dinner sneeze

t says: For our first dining experience in 2020, we enlisted the help of one of my new work friends. A wizened DC foodie, she suggested we try out her favorite new DC restaurant Emilie’s. So we booked the reservation, invited her and her husband, and went on our first DC double date!

January 2020, Friday Dinner. WHAT??? No photos!!??? You call this a food blog?? Where’s your instatweetotube?? … I’ll admit it: I forgot. It’s like I forgot how to be a blogger. The entire meal, I only reached for my phone periodically to ensure that our babysitter hadn’t called. I was lost in the food, the wines, and the new friends! Consequently, there are no pictures of the crispiest fried chicken we have ever had (and it was so flavorful!! I hadn’t had chicken that good since the days of eating Korean fried chicken at Meritage helmed by Chef Coll). Missing are snapshots of the intriguing and delicious cheese-less take on cacio e pepe pasta (secret ingredient: miso). The tartare was top-notch. The desserts were incredible. The service was competent, courteous, and had a sense of humor. All in all it was a dining experience that we had been craving since we moved here, but sorely missed on our two previous outings (O-ku and RPM Italian: take our advice and just don’t go). An excellent job by Emilie’s that restores our faith in the DC dining scene.

A few items we hope will evolve at Emilie’s … First, the “cart” I kept hearing about was … cute. It seems to provide diners an introduction to some smaller dishes that sounded pretty ho-hum by written description, but when presented table-side really caught our interest. So it was a welcome experience overall – but don’t go into it expecting the same level of cart performance as provided by one of our SF favorites, Statebird Provisions – that’s a whole ‘nother level. Second, the wine list is on the verge of greatness, but could benefit from some re-organization. With a substantial number of of wine-nerd wines (common grapes from uncommon places, or uncommon grapes entirely) at various price points, it becomes very challenging to make an educated decision. While this could typically just be resolved by chatting with a sommelier, I feel like diners nowadays should be more empowered to make their own choices, kind of like how we can read a food menu (organized by dish size, or richness, or ingredients, or whatever) and make decisions. The wines, themselves, were pretty solid (we went for a steely, minerally albarino and a fun “orange” pinot gris from Willamette Valley*), so I’m excited to keep on exploring the list in future visits.

So bring it on, DC! We’re ready! Let’s see what else you got!

*These wines are not counting in our “20&20 in 2020” challenge.