Majestic Cafe

[vengroff]

I went for the first time today, for brunch. I'm eager to return for dinner soon, as there were some definite high points.

Majestic opened at 11, and by 11:15 it was filling up. Having arrived just in time, we began with white peach bellinis and blood orange mimosas, and some really excellent coffee roasted at Misha's across the street. A basket of assorted breads and butter got us going while we looked over the menu.

The highlight of the meal was a ramekin of cheese grits. They were just about everything grits could ever be, and then some. They were light and fluffy and full of the rich cheese flavor one finds in the best homemade macaroni and cheese. There were also some tiny flecks of pink pork, either bacon or ham, I'm not sure, for added flavor.

We also had some nice waffles, homemade apple sauce, and an intriguing dish that's new to the menu, deep-fried poached eggs. The eggs are poached, then coated in panko and deep fried. These upscale scotch eggs are them served over a bowl of "caviar lentils" with a tarragon vinagrette. The lentils were very much like puy lentils, if perhaps a bit smaller. I though the combination was good, but I would have liked it even better it the yolks had been runny. The double cooking leaves them just firm. I'm not sure if it is possible for them to be runny--they would have to be very lightly poached, I suspect--but that really would have made the dish for me. But that's just me--others may prefer their eggs more thoroughly cooked.

Other brunch menu items which we didn't get a chance to try included steak and eggs, a burger, homemade corned beef hash and eggs, and trout. Plain grits and hash browns are also available as sides, but it would be hard to get me to stray from the cheese grits.

I found it well worth a pleasant Sunday drive out to Old Town and look forward to returning.

[dennisp]

Here's a link to the Wash. review. ....http://www.washingtonian.com/dining/Profiles/majestic.html

Susan Lindeborg, chef, is active in Slow Food, (served heritage turkeys last year) and tweeks Southern without being cliche. We find it always consistently good at lunch and dinner. My only complaint is that I can't go every day.

Plus, Alexandria is a fine dining wasteland. We needed the Majestic. What makes Bethesda different politically than Alexandria? Why is that? Certainly the demographics are there.

A lot of people blame it on the Old Town Civic Association and the parking restrictions.

The Majestic is a island in a sea of has been mediocrity.

[Steve Klc]

Darren--Susan's corned beef hash is killer. You have to give it a try.

Dennisp--a question--was there ever a time when Old Town and Alexandria boasted a thriving food scene? If so, that was before my time. And as far as the comparison between Bethesda and Old Town--I think both destinations fail to deliver on their promise and may have more in common than you think. I tend to agree with Sietsema when he writes that Bethesda restaurants, in general, are not as good as they should be. I think both destinations suffer from having a too-conservative clientele--Bethesda just has MORE restaurants and more competition dumbing down to the fairly conservative and predictable. I think you see this culinary conservatism even in Susan's excellent cooking--she makes her stuff just a little more accessible, a little more conservative and less adventurous--to appeal to her new audience there and to fit her new goals there. I don't know any tapped-in foodies who prefer her cooking there and don't lament the loss of what she was doing at the Morrison-Clark. (I can tell you she is working every bit as hard!)

I also never have any problems parking in and around the side streets of Old Town for weeknight dinners at Majestic, Five Guys or Vermilion. But I'm never there on weekends or peak Fri/Sat evenings and usually never venture near the water.

I also think your comment about has-been mediocrity applies to much more of Virginia and the suburbs than just Old Town. It's increasingly hard to find interesting cooking taking place in the strip mall-food court-franchise-ethnic-chain restaurant-dominated burbs past one or two obvious examples. The burbs don't support a Firefly, a Cafe Atlantico, a Komi, insert your favorite under $20 entree happening place food-wise here. We're too complacent about the conservative mediocrity we find out here, it's too convenient and we're very ready to hop on into town for mid-level to high-level interestiing, creative food. In effect, we only have ourselves to blame if chefs aren't encouraged to move out to the burbs, if we as diners support the places out here in the burbs not doing as good a job as they should be doing and if critics aren't called to account for over-rating and over-praising the burbs, based on some impartial sense of geographic representation.

[mighty quinn]

i lived in old town before majestic opened and after- definitely improved the dining scene. seems as though the city puts new establishments through the ringer when it comes to opening. majestic sat for months teasing me before it opened. i think the problem with old town lies not with the locals- you can easily walk to majestic. on the contrary, it appears that it's mostly old town folks at the restaurant. i usually sit at the bar when i go- just look at the jaws drop on the tourists as they look at the menu prices. the average old town "touron" won't pay for good food- or wait in line for it! the tourists just keep on moving to that chain pizza joint down the street-good- more room for me! looking forward to getting back to the area to go to majestic again and give vermillion a try. v

[Al_Dente]

she be on to it

[mighty quinn]

steve klc- on closer examination of your post- yeah, the typical old town type who will spend greater than $20 on an entree won't have the most adventurous palate in the world-you're spot on about that. when i lived in east b.f. maryland i would eat in bethesda because that was closest- i thought that the restaurants were pretty mediocre-this was in '97-'98 time frame- but it sounds like little has changed. georgetown and old town both attract the tourist element- the big difference is that college parents and eurotrash (shit, did i really say that- i'm pms'ing!) seem to pay bigger bucks for bad food! amazing that it looks like there's a crop of cool new places just down the road in foggy bottom. is there such hope for old town?

[Mark Sommelier]

Plus, Alexandria is a fine dining wasteland. We needed the Majestic. What makes Bethesda different politically than Alexandria? Why is that? Certainly the demographics are there.

A lot of people blame it on the Old Town Civic Association and the parking restrictions.

Having owned a restaurant myself in Montgomery County once, I can tell you that the county itself is partly responsible for the awfulness of the dining scene. The county liquor control board almost guarentees a crappy winelist. Restaurants run out of wine on their lists because the county only delivers once a week. New taxes and license fees show up in the mail almost daily. The crowning touch to make business more difficult to do in Bethesda is the smoking ban.

[cjsadler]

Hit the Majestic for brunch on Sunday. I had some very interesting deep fried poached eggs with 'beluga' lentils. The eggs were poached, coated in panko and nicely fried to maintain a runny yoke. The beluga lentils, which I'd never heard of before, were very tiny lentils cooked in chicken stock with carrot and celery and then had some vinegar added. This was an excellent combination-- one of the most inspired brunch dishes I've had in awhile. As Vengroff reported, the ramekin of cheese grits was top notch-- everything they should be. My girlfriend had some wheat waffles which were unfortunately a bit cold, but came with a nice pecan-orange butter and some crisp bacon. A nice brunch with great service as well. I'm definitely looking forward to having dinner here soon.

[SanFran88]

We live on the seam between Old Town and Del Ray and absolutely agree the best places to eat in Old Town are Majestic and Vermillion. Also worth going to are Evening Star (I believe they are owned by the same people who own Vermillion) and (in a Five Guys vein) Taqueria Poblano. Both are on Mt. Vernon Avenue just a few blocks northwest of the King Street/Braddock Street metro area. Evening Star is next to a wine shop (again, I believe under the same ownership), and they let you bring wine over.

Does anyone think that getting a Jaleo in Crystal City will have a cascading effect into Alexandria?

On a separate but Jaleo-related note, we were fortunate enough to (repeatedly) sample Steve Klc's take on rice pudding at the EPCOT Food and Wine Festival was amazing. Really amazing. The "apple pie" was good too, but the rice pudding was the best single thing we ate the whole week we were there.

[dennisp]

I’m always curious about the notion that “the Provinces” can’t support either the experiments or the tabs of the more adventurous destinations we drive into the city for. We’re willing to drive to the Inn at Little Washington, an extreme example for sure but in the reverse, we drive into the city to eat.

And demographically Alexandria can hold its own against the income levels of most of the metropolitan area. Surely we don’t think that people in McLean and Potomac and Old Town can’t afford the cost of a dinner at the Minibar.

But we don’t perceive Alexandria as a restaurant destination the way the Penn Quarter is viewed. It isn’t. Obviously it has as much to do with buzz and the hip quotient as it does with income levels. But it also has to do with local government making small businesses a priority over chains. Business diversity just isn’t valued over the mall culture mono-crop and its sales tax revenues.

The parking issue in Old Town has been going on for as long as I’ve been around here (20 years). The Clydes owners purchase the old George Washington Club property on Washington Street almost 20 years ago and the city parking requirement were one of the factors in preventing them from using the site (still vacant and for sale).

The City Council has been willing to make retail and commercial concessions to allow The Gap and the Federal government to put cars on the streets but they have been unwilling to support small businesses like restaurants that are perceived to bring late night parking problems.

Alexandria is the 15th most dense city in the country and its density has increased dramatically in the past 10 years.

I think Alexandria has more in common with Georgetown. Both have extremely strong residential housing values with vocal ownership, tourists (if you want to call urban street shopping malls that), and parking problems.

Most homes in Alexandria and Georgetown do not have private parking spaces. Alexandria treasures its pedestrian past and values the proximity residents have to services. It is why so many people (myself included) want to live or work here. Sure the housing stock is expensive and totally mature, but in its pedestrian nature Alexandria has more in common with center cities than the suburbs. Walking is a necessity of living here.

And then we have to get in a car to drive to Washington for anything worth dinner.

[Steve Klc]

Dennis--no one is saying the "provinces" can't support dining which is chef-driven, creative, high-priced, etc.--we're saying that they won't or that they don't. That's a big difference. Why they won't or don't remains an open question. I think on one level your Georgetown analogy holds a lot of water--there's very little worthy food-wise there either.

"Does anyone think that getting a Jaleo in Crystal City will have a cascading effect into Alexandria?" That's interesting--however I suspect the reverse is true--it will have a cascading effect drawing Alexandrians in search of better options INTO Crystal City.

[Tweaked]

Living on the Hill, I'm finding this debate rather interesting. As many lament, the dining scene on the Hill isn't stellar (I live on the SE/Eastern Market side of the Hill) with a few restauraunts that I would consider good. Montmartre being probably the best.

I find the Hill and Old Town somewhat similar in that they are both residental urban areas where many people commute to the office, although I would suspect that the age and house prices in Old Town are higher. But neither are really food destinations. Obviously Old Town caters more to the tourist element then the Hill does.

Anyway, in the few times that I've been to Old Town, there is always plenty of people around, both residents, DC/MD/VA-ites, and out of town tourists. So are chefs just playing it safe? Knowing that if they dish out mediocre takes on "Bay area regional food" (here I'm thinking of the seafood restaurants near the Torpedo Factory) that they'll still pack the place. Do these places never close, because they are profitable enough serving food by formula that there isn't turn over in good restaurant spaces.

What would happen if someone said screw it and opened a mid price (said entrees in the high teens) restaurant that was serving creative and innovative food? Has that ever happended in Old Town? It seems that there is the population of local high income residents alone that could support such a place.

[vengroff]

We went again yesterday under the misinformed notion that they would have brunch on a Saturday, which they do not. The meatloaf sandwich was good, but when you have your mind set on those cheese grits, anything else is a letdown. We politely inquired if there was any possibility of obtaining grits, but alas, none were to be had. Obviously it was our own fault for not calling ahead to check.