Darko Zagar

Chef's table at Kushi Izakaya and Sushi

Chef's Tables in Washington

Spending the day taking in openings at the National Gallery, the Corcoran and the Sackler is a perfectly splendid thing to do, but at the end of the day, the guide I’m looking to follow isn’t holding an umbrella—he’s offering me a tasting menu and a seat at a special table in front of the action.

Superstar chef, humanitarian and impresario extraordinaire José Andrés took the trend to a new level when he opened the six-seat counter-cum-theater Minibar a few years ago and introduced Washingtonians to the 30-course meal. Today, chefs all over town use the concept as a pretext to whisk patrons on guided tours of their culinary visions.

Put down the guidebook, pick up your forks, and check out these exhibits, where chewing up the scenery is widely encouraged.

Note: These are some of Washington’s most acclaimed and sought-after tables. Make your plans well in advance.

In urbane Mount Vernon Square, former chef Darren Lee Norris and his wife, Ari Kushimoto Norris, have teamed up to open Kushi Izakaya and Sushi (465 K St., NW; 202/682-3123) in the City Vista Building. The space is stark and chic—high ceilings and poured concrete—and perfectly sets a mood for putting exquisite cooking methods on display. A sushi bar sits on one side of the restaurant, and an open-air charcoal-grilling bar thrills guests with its front-and-center location. (“Kushi” means “skewers” in Japanese; an izakaya is the Japanese answer to the tapas bar.)

Take a seat at the grill bar, and you’ll learn fascinating new techniques to use on your Weber. A team of cooks deftly prepares dishes from the robata grill fueled with charcoal imported from Japan. This is a good vantage point to check out the omakase (chef’s choice) nine-course tasting menu, which changes every three weeks. The meal may start with a bite, such as scallop fringe wrapped in cucumber, and then proceed to a sashimi assortment of extra-fatty tuna, flounder, large spot prawn, squid roll and live scallop—all fresh and sea-sweet.

On my visit, a broth with a quenelle of hamaguri clam mousse, rapeseed flower and yuzu is crystal-clear, a rendering that’s considered an artisan craft in Japan. (They have a 62-year-old chef who specializes in it.) A kobachi (small plate) of pan-roasted duck breast, fried bamboo shoot, shrimp and white asparagus rests on a bed of spinach cooked in dashi and garnished with a potato chip.

Skewers of charcoal-grilled pork belly, foie gras wrapped in chicken breast and a beef kalbi short rib are delivered from the kushiyaki. (Many are cooked at 135 degrees for 17 hours. Most of the meats are pre-cooked in the vacuum-seal sous-vide manner and then finished over charcoal.)

A whole squid grilled on the open-fire robata grill is meaty and tender, touched with a bit of sweetness, thanks to tare glaze reminiscent of teriyaki, but not as cloying. Just when you think your appetite may be waning, out comes a sushi assortment that could include marinated tuna, sea urchin, salmon roe, horse mackerel or a roll of sweetened tamago omelet.

Desserts are, not surprisingly, restrained. A cherry blossom rice cake made from mochi (rice sweetened, pounded and molded into a cake, often stuffed with bean paste) and plum jelly with roasted green tea are light finishes to an elegant repast.

The price of the omakase dinner varies, but a recent menu was $60 per person for food, plus $30 for an optional sake pairing, not including tax and gratuity. By all means, go for the pairing. Just make sure you pair that with a taxi to get home.

A not-quite-urban vibe lives at Volt (228 N. Market St., Frederick, Md.; 301/696-8658; $121 per person, not including wine pairings, tax or gratuity), as would be expected in downtown Frederick, Md., roughly a 40-minute drive from the Beltway, but well worth the trip.

Bryan Voltaggio, the quieter of the two brothers who catapulted themselves to fame during Bravo’s Top Chef last year, silently works among a determined staff of 20, cranking out an array of pleasures while eight lucky guests peer out from a winding countertop that puts the toiling cooks on diplay. Table21 is casual, relaxed and unstuffy. Its food is straightforward and dependent on the integrity of ingredients, even when enhanced, sometimes superfluously, by requisite foams, powders, oils and spritzes from nitrous-powered canisters.

The 21-course adventure begins playfully with chips and dip: crispy prosciutto rounds and potato foam. Then a celery macaroon hides a dollop of foie gras mousse and an opa tartare with soy, ginger and wasabi roe. Lobster gnocchi with sunchoke soup and fennel is breathtaking, the dumplings bright red and delicate. Goat cheese ravioli with maiitake mushrooms are silken and fresh—this from a decided goat-cheese non-fan.

Voltaggio’s homage to things seasonal is foremost in his mind. Soft-shell crab with English peas and kumquat make me dance a little dance in my mind. Arctic char, seared to hold its heat, plays nicely with cuttlefish cavatelli. The sweetbread doughnut doesn’t wow me, but Tuscarora beets with crunchy garnet-colored beet batons bring me back around.

Voltaggio treats small-farm-raised meat respectfully—whether it’s pork belly with calypso beans, Hudson Valley foie gras with Seckel pear and pistachio, Border Springs lamb with caponata, or Pineland beef with farro risotto (nutty and delicious) and morels.

There may be a slight tendency to give in to gimmick over goodness; strawberry noodle are just weird and perform a hate crime on a splendid pistachio gelato. Dulce de leche goat cheesecake with apple sorbet and caramel “dirt” set things right, even if the bet is hedged by chocolate squiggles, macaroons and lemon poppyseed muffins packed up as a next-morning snack. But, in my care, it’s not like these morsels will survive the drive back to town.

I’d love to be able to say my gentle prodding may have had something to do with chef Scott Drewno’s decision to offer the so-called Family-Style Chinese Banquet inaugurated last summer at The Source (575 Pennsylvania Ave., NW; 202/637-6100; $55 per person, food only, exclusive of tax and gratuity). If it’s true, you owe me big time when you head to Puck’s restaurant in the Newseum Building at 6th and Pennsylvania, NW.

It’s a good idea to go with a group of people—say, six—because there’s so much food, you really have to share the wealth. The first course is a hot-and-sour soup with a poached-shrimp wonton and garlic flowers. Then you’re treated to a dumpling-lover’s dream: the “6 Way” house-made dim sum tasting, featuring lobster spring rolls, crystal chive dumplings, pork belly dumplings with black vinegar and chili oil, Szechuan dumplings, wild mushroom dumplings and sea scallop sui mai with lobster curry emulsion.

Next, it’s soft-shell crab dusted with rice flour and deep-fried, served with Szechuan chili sauce, black bean dust and crisp shards of garlic followed by a duet of starches: Shanghai noodles with hoisin and five-spice braised short ribs, yellow curry and baby bok choy and Lapsang sausage fried-rice with pork belly, vegetables and scallions.

Perhaps gilding the lily a bit (not that I object), there’s a hot pot that includes a lion’s-head pork meatball (actually, more the size of a softball), resting in broth with red-cooked pork, rice cakes and napa cabbage. And the six-way house-made dim sum (pictured)? Oh, my.

The feast ends with a variety of ice creams and sorbets (strawberry rose, espresso chai, blueberry pomegranate) and some desserts, such as a coconut panna cotta with fresh berries. At $65 per person for the food, this meal is a treat and a steal. (The promotion runs through Sept. 1.) You could opt for the chef’s seven-course tasting menu with sake and wine pairing for $200 per person, but that won’t necessarily translate into a compensatory surge of pleasure.

At Dinner at the Pass at Westend Bistro (1190 22nd St., NW; 202/974-4900; westendbistrodc.com; a la carte, about $100 per person, all inclusive), chef de cuisine Joe Palma takes a completely different approach to providing a tour of what he and his acolytes are all about.

The name stems from the fact that all finished dishes pass the chef’s final muster before delivery. There, two places are set for onlookers to watch what’s going on in the kitchen in relative insider privacy while Palma and his sous-chef, Adam Barnett, converse amiably and make suggestions about what you should have for dinner.

Always a good way to start: an icy plate of Malpeque and St. Simon oysters on the half-shell and a glass of sparkling rosé. Deciding what’s next is fairly difficult because so many temptations are on full display. Fresh, ribbony tagliatelle with cream, bacon and fried egg? Or perhaps a roasted chicken with perfectly rendered crisp and crunchy skin? Maybe a whole skate wing splayed majestically across the width of a large oval plate and atop artichokes, fennel and olives?

Richly marbled, darkly aged rib-eye steaks fly out of the pass throughout the evening, as do cornmeal-crusted soft-shell crabs perched on roasted asparagus and drizzled with lemon fonduta. We opt for what Palma calls BBQ lamb, which is actually belly pieces forged together and cooked sous-vide to buttery tenderness before being pan-seared and drizzled with mustard sauce and accompanied by a salad of compressed watermelon and its pickled rind.

My go-to dish, just to make myself feel like I’m not going completely overboard, is the poached salmon with horseradish broth and baby radishes. It’s delicate and avoids the tendency of underpoaching, but then again, master poissonier Eric Ripert’s name is on the door, so who should expect anything less?

I pass up dessert, but our hosts send us on our way with a box of freshly baked, still-warm cookies. There are only a couple of seats at The Pass, so reserve your space ahead of time, and enjoy the show.