ILLUSTRATION BY EDWIN FOTHERINGHAM
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(Continued from Page 27)
tasty spinach, provide a delicious reason to go aground. (Too bad there’s but a single dauphine potato gracing the entree.) That said, what also endears
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PLANNING A WEDDING?
Wedding Planner 2010
Girasole to me is its many specials, which are described by the servers. Amazingly, none of the staff reads off notes — no small feat when there typically are a dozen specials to talk up. Veering from the standing script
might reward diners with floppy ravioli stuffed with chunks of tender lamb, cloaked in a dusky yellow curry sauce and sprinkled with golden raisins. Or tube-shaped, tomato- sauced cannelloni hiding soft ground veal in their centers. If trout is on the spoken menu, go fish. You might get lucky, as I did recently, with a skin-on sauteed trout splayed on its plate with crisp green beans and a bite of boiled potato. A dusting of crushed pistachios and splashes of lemon-butter sauce embellish the fish. The food at Girasole is not, for
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the most part, the sort that brings conversation to a halt. (A mitt- size lamb shank, for instance, was outclassed by its accompanying pappardelle.) Yet most of it quietly impresses. Patierno has been cooking for about 40 of his 58 years, most notably at the late Tiberio in Washington, which food lovers of a certain vintage might remember as a destination back in the 1980s. The chef also put in time at the long-ago Le Pavillon and La Bagatelle, kitchen duty that reveals itself most noticeably on his impressive dessert tray. Plum tart with tufts of unsweetened whipped cream is the most European. Fluffy passion fruit brulee is the most elegant. Chocolate fanciers should seek out an indulgent wedge of gianduja torte. If the cuisine doesn’t necessarily
trumpet Virginia, other than its use of local ingredients, the wine does. Girasole’s list offers a dozen pours from the state by the glass, including a 2007 sauvignon blanc ($9), refreshing with grapefruit notes, from Linden Vineyards and a deep ruby-colored 2003 Norton ($7) from Chrysalis. (Norton is an impressive grape native to Virginia.) Walking through an archway and onto the stone patio en route to a
Ask Tom
“Why should I care if fries are hand-cut?” asks Debra Roth of Falls Church City. “If cutting with a knife vs. machine affects french-fry taste, I can’t imagine why. Or do you and others mean that the fries were cut in the restaurant right before cooking when saying fries were ‘hand-cut’?’’ I threw out the question to Kyle Bailey, the Washington chef whose french fries, double-cooked in canola oil, I like to splurge on at Birch & Barley. His tool of choice at the Logan Circle restaurant is a small press that accepts only one spud at a time and can be adjusted to create fries in different sizes. “It’s the only way to go,” he says of the small- batch, (more or less) “hand-cut” product. Bailey says more than good taste is involved in freshly made fries. Unlike the commercial variety, they involve more skill and demonstrate “a level of commitment to the product.”
Send your thoughts, wishes and, yes, even gripes to
asktom@washpost.com.
reservation, I’m tempted to stay put outside. But the interior, wrapped in windows and handsome in honey- colored heart pine, is designed to pull the outdoors in. The main dining room (there’s also a lounge nearby and space upstairs) is cheery with sprays of fresh flowers and panels depicting rolling hills, painted, as it turns out, by the chef ’s brother, artist Robert Patierno. After my last meal, I learned that
the chef’s wife, Lydia, is his business partner and that the couple own another, older restaurant in Manassas called Panino. But the most important message I walked away with was this: A guy needs to stop and smell the garlic sometimes.
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