Darko Zagar

Chef-owner Jeff Black has another hit on his hands with Pearl Dive Oyster Palace.

5 Restaurants to Make You Forget Resolutions

I know this is the time of year for resolutions that usually involve going to the gym, cleansing, cutting back the carbs, and other forms of torture and deprivation. But I’m just not down with that. My waistline might whisper, “Salads! Vegetables! Fruit!” but my brain screams, “Steaks! Burgers! Oysters!”

If you’re wondering who won that battle, read on.

Talk about finding a pearl in an oyster! Chefs Jeff and Barbara Black, who brought us BlackSalt, Addie’s, Black Market Bistro and Black’s Bar and Kitchen, ventured into the heart of D.C. this past fall to open the latest in a string of hits, this time on 14th Street.

Pearl Dive Oyster Palace (1612 14th St., NW; 202/986-8778; $75 per person, all inclusive) snares you even before you walk in its door. A bar opens up to the street, where impulse slurpers can down a few bivalves on the way to Whole Foods. (I’ve done this.) By all means, though, step inside the 78-seat restaurant for the full experience, but be prepared to wait. Pearl Dive doesn’t take reservations, and this place is a hot ticket.

The Blacks spared no expense to outfit their new baby, having wisely bought the building. I call it shacky chic: lots of whitewashing (rafters, floorboards, wainscoting), exposed brick and stripped plaster to imbue a sea-worn effect, plus aluminum-edged wood plank tables, nautical lighting and gewgaws, including hanging sculptures fashioned from anchor chains.

The vibe is bustling, and the crowd is well-heeled and diverse; Pearl Dive is already a fave of the neighborhood’s old and new guard, who mingle easily with trendies, Hill staffers and singles on the town.

The first sign of good things to come from the kitchen is that the tables are outfitted with three kinds of hot sauce (Frank’s, Crystal, Tabasco). Oysters are the order of the day (and night) here, and in any ilk they are terrific. Start with ice-cold, raw, on-the-half-shell Dragon Creeks, Skookums, Malpeques or Belons (they offer four sauces to match different favor profiles). From there, migrate to the cooked variety: grilled bacon-wrapped angels on horseback are weep-worthy; Tchoupitoulas with oyster confit, crab, tasso and corn cream are rich and flavor-packed.

Next stop: gumbo. (Have you caught on to the New Orleans influence?) I’m partial to the oyster, shrimp and crab version jazzed up with andouille sausage, even if I prefer my gumbo a little darker and less floury. I haven’t tried the braised duck and oyster gumbo yet, but it intrigues me.

Other menu items are divided into fried seafood and not-fried entrees. The packed oyster po’ boy with cayenne aioli is tempting, but the fried catfish sandwich with fried egg (this is a trend you see all over the place these days), Benton’s bacon, lettuce, tomato and remoulade (the C.E.B.L.T.) is a real tour de force. For non-seafood eaters (what are you doing here?), duck confit, sausage and lentils or a blue cheese hanger steak will satisfy. Barbecued shrimp are finger-lickin’ buttery; what you don’t lick off, you can sop up with the garlic toast that comes with them.

Pearl Dive’s baked goods are worth noting. The cornbread is mercifully authentic, but the layered, delicate, wonderfully salty Parker House rolls are magical. Overindulge and keep that up right through dessert. I suggest the boozy, chocolaty, walnutty derby pie or its first cousin, the chewy, bourbony pecan pie.

After dinner, check out Black Jack, the upstairs bar that manages to combine a saloon with a hip cocktail lounge (courtesy of Wilder Brothers-designed libations), a bocce ball court, and a cafe with a separate bar menu of pizzas, sandwiches and snack items, such as pork belly nachos. You can partake in oysters up there, and if the looks on some of the guys’ faces as they cruise the ladies are any indication, many do.

When a buddy of mine had me join him at Acqua al 2 (212 7th St., SE; 202/525-4375; acquaal2dc.com; $95 per person, all inclusive) last summer, I never even crossed the threshold. We sat on the charming outdoor patio and ordered pasta and a salad, and I never gave the place another thought. Too bad. A visit in the fall revealed the error of my ways.

This hot spot among Capitol Hill dwellers (Acqua is just across the street from Eastern Market) is the kind of trattoria one rarely finds in Washington anymore: one with homey, unpretentious cooking, a narrow dining room with sienna-colored walls, cherry-stained tables free of tablecloths, and servers who remember familiar faces warmly. In place of corny caricatures of local notables or gaudy murals of maps of Italy (well, there was a Ponte Vecchio sighting), check out the plates that honored guests (Rahm Emanuel, Anna Paquin, Wynton Marsalis) are asked to decorate to be displayed as artwork.

Acqua al 2 comes about its authentic feel naturally; the restaurant is a duplicate of an eponymous establishment in Florence, where co-owners, Washington natives and boyhood pals Ralph Lee and soccer-player-turned-cook Ari Gejdenson had been living. They opened a diner, then Gejdenson met the owner of Acqua al 2, who became the nascent cook’s culinary mentor. In 2010, the duo brought the concept to D.C.

To take full advantage of the menu, go for an assaggio (tasting) of salads, pastas, steaks, desserts or cheeses. The antipasto of Italian cured meats and cheeses, hand-rolled strozzapreti of ricotta cheese and spinach, and refreshing if not ubiquitous radicchio and fennel salad make lovely starters. Or just make a beeline to one of the pastas, such as fusilli lunghi with mascarpone and mushrooms.

Don’t fill up, though, because people are lured back by the wonderful steaks. The most popular is the oddest-sounding: a filet with blueberry sauce, which is actually a gastrique, so it only whispers sweetness. New York strip comes with a credible green peppercorn sauce or grilled and sliced with porcini mushrooms.

Those offerings are certainly fine, but I say when in D.C., do as the Florentines do: Opt for the massive 50-ounce Bistecca alla Fiorentina ($75), a dazzling porterhouse sliced tableside that easily feeds four. Throw in contorni of rosemary-touched roasted potatoes and garlicky sautéed spinach, a bottle of Brunello Mastrojanni ($120) and some tiramisu (it’s actually worth ordering here), and you’ll have made a splendid evening for yourself.

In Washington, there are two ways to ensure that your restaurant won’t fly: put it on the second floor, or try to segue into a nightclub in the after-dinner hours. But with Lost Society (2001 14th St., NW; 202/618-8868; lostsociety-dc.com; $94 per person, all inclusive), nightclub impresarios and owners Rich Vasey (Policy) and David Karim (Josephine) have dispelled both notions.

Billed as a boutique steakhouse, Lost Society is heavier on the former than the latter, a go-to place more for spike-heeled beauties and their prospective dates than for die-hard food types. Sean Penn picked a fight with a photographer here last summer; I don’t think he was here for the roasted bone marrow.

The dining room/lounge is basically a square with a four-sided bar in the center, but there is nothing square about Lost Society. On one side of the space, roomy booths overlook the action on U Street via ceiling-high windows. Black walls mingle with exposed brick, high-top tables, leather armchairs, tufted bar stools, purple velvet Victorian davenports, paisley hassocks and curlicue chandeliers with drippy crystals. The alcove opposite U Street sports a row of deuces under a scalloped wall swathed with Beardsley-esque Gibson Girl wallpaper.

The chef, Joseph Evans, worked at Smith and Wollensky for a few years and could benefit from a bit more polish and attention to detail. His menu includes some of the things you’d expect at a steakhouse, such as oysters on the half-shell and wedge salad with Maytag dressing and bacon. An attempt to gussy up shrimp cocktail by fashioning horizontally halved slices of shrimp and stacking them concentrically with lemon supremes on a pool of cocktail sauce came off as affectation. Cubes of tuna tartare dressed with sesame oil were nicely cold and tasty, but came with stale taro chips.

The steaks come from grass-fed, grain-finished, certified Midwestern Angus. The bone-in rib eye is perfectly cooked and oozes with über-rich bone-marrow parsley butter. My dining companion ordered the filet with peppercorn butter, which turned out to be the night’s winner. 

Chef Jeff Tunks and his partners, Gus DiMillo and David Wizenberg, the team behind Passion Food Hospitality, know a thing or seven about opening restaurants, having blazed trails with DC Coast, Acadiana, Ceiba, TenPenh, Passion Fish and now  District Commons (2200 Pennsylvania Ave., NW; 202/587-6258; districtcommonsdc.com; $80 per person, all inclusive) and Burger, Tap and Shake (same address, 202/408-0201).

It’s as if the savvy trio sat down with pads and pencils, shrewdly catalogued every current American food and restaurant design trend and divided them up between the cavernous 21st-century tavern (District Commons) and the fast-food eatery (BTS) that occupy the ground floor of a gleaming Foggy Bottom office building overlooking Washington Circle and K and 23rd streets. Both businesses are on, and in, the money.

First up, District Commons. So much is on view in this 180-seat expanse that you don’t know where to look first. Words like “sweeping,” “vast,” “panoramic” and “architectural” immediately come to mind.

Survey the lay of the land from the restaurant’s entry, where you can easily see the bar area with TVs hanging from the ceiling and stacked, glass-door refrigerators holding the clever “99 bottles of beer on the wall” display, the shining open kitchen and raw bar, a pizza oven, a fire-engine-red Berkel slicer, the long swath of buffed tables striped with oak and walnut, and the creamy gray banquettes that take full advantage of street tableaux on display through floor-to-ceiling vitrines wrapping the dining room.

The details are worth noting: the red accents sprinkled throughout the room (candleholders, bar stools, wainscoting and wall panels here and there); the requisite concrete/exposed ductwork relegated to accents by buttresses of rich, lightly stained oak that contrast the darkly stained floor; ’60s-inspired geometrics (squared chairs; wide, ring-like chandeliers; hexagon-printed panels of breezy, ceiling-length organza curtains used to break up the room’s breadth); a mural of images from Washington’s halcyon days.

Tunks’ menu caters to the all-things-for-all-people desires we Americans manifest, and he fulfills them splendidly. So you can start with selections from the raw bar or one of the steaming Le Creuset pots of mussels in red (Thai curry), white (lemon and cream) or blue (blue cheese and Benton’s bacon).

Or perhaps some charcuterie (pig boards of biscuits and American hams, such as Benton’s, la Quercia and Mangalitsa) or sundry crisped, cracker-like flatbreads dotted with the likes of bacon, smoked salmon, prosciutto and goat cheese. I love the one with lamb sausage, roasted eggplant, feta cheese and olives. Deviled eggs, pimento cheese, chili, and macaroni and cheese make appearances, as do a short-rib burger, a pot pie (vegetarian) and a nod to the pretzel craze in the form of a warm, salted baguette.

For entrees, the pork rack chop with ham, mozzarella and a johnnycake is nicely brined and juicy; the shrimp ’n’ grits are as delightful as you’d expect from the owners of Acadiana.

Let’s see. Anything missing? Oh, yes, the off-hours special. At 10 p.m. (9 p.m. on Sundays), a clanging dinner bell indicates that the $12 family meal lounge offering is on. Thursday’s Thai bento box honors their recently closed TenPenh property, and other nights feature trends they almost missed: meatloaf, chicken-fried steak, empanadas, Sunday fried chicken.

But wait! There’s more: cocktails made with beer (hoptails), sundaes (rocky road), floats (root beer), funnel cake and, you guessed it, apple pie.

The kicker: They make all their own ice creams in-house in a $22,000 machine.

And speaking of ice cream, here’s the scoop on Burger, Tap and Shake, accessible either through a rear entrance via District Commons or from Washington Circle. They take those ice creams and make thick-as-mud shakes from them (the BTS, with Butterfingers, Twix and Snickers, is as slap-your-momma good as it sounds) and shaketails, such as the Evil Empire: vanilla vodka and ice cream plus coffee liqueur.

The space is a concrete-and-glass wedge looking out on the Circle—aluminum chairs and bar stools, pressed-wood tables, industrial filament-bulb light fixtures. The menu pays lip service to vegetarians and no-red-meaters with a chicken burger and falafel, but make no mistake, the star of the show is the 6-ounce burger (30-day-aged beef chuck and brisket) char-griddled and nestled on a perfectly sized, in-house-baked, buttered and toasted bun.

The house burger comes with lettuce, tomato, raw onion, house-made pickles, American cheese and Thousand Island-y sauce. It’s pure heaven, even if the burger could stand to be 8 ounces instead of 6, just to stand up to everything else going on inside that bun.

What I adore about BTS is that the kitchen gets every component right: the bun, the meat and the fries. Even the sweet potato fries and onion rings are crispy without being leaden or batter-challenged. You’ve got to love a place that puts Sriracha on all the tables. I used my paper-lined aluminum tray as a palette, mixing dabs of Sriracha, ketchup and mayo as my whim desired with each bite.