PHOTOGRAPH BY SCOTT SUCHMAN
Tom Sietsema Dining
★ ★ (Good)
Carmine’s 425 Seventh St. NW. 202-737- 7770.
carminesnyc. com.
Open: Sunday through Thursday 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., Friday and Saturday 11 a.m. to midnight. Major credit cards accepted. Valet parking $10 at dinner.
MeTrO: Gallery Place-Chinatown and Archives.
priCeS: Lunch appetizers $13- $18, pasta and entree salads $12-$17; dinner appetizers $10.50- $26.50, entrees $19.50-$34.50.
SOund CheCk: 86 decibels/ extremely loud.
The big CaTCh
To be considered for an oil portrait on the wall, says Alicart Group chief executive Jeff Bank, subjects have to be “famous, Italian and dead.”
to sprinkle their introductions with yield signs. “The dishes are served family-style,” they say. One appetizer or salad is plenty for three or four to share, they tell groups that size. “We’re happy to wrap up leftovers,” they conclude, leaving you to contemplate one of the outsize menus posted throughout the place. Trends have no home on
Carmine’s spreads across 20,000 square feet.
Carmine’s barrels T
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tomsietsema.
the list, which runs to all the usual spaghetti-house favorites. Baked clams and stuffed artichokes? Check. Lasagna and chicken parmigiana? But of course. There’s shrimp marinara for the seafood lover and prime rib offered as a Saturday night special. Cooked just the way you ask, the last is served in thick slabs as part of an edible landscape bordered by a field of very good whipped potatoes and a forest of garlicky broccoli rabe. It’s bodacious. Where to start? The signature
into Penn Quarter Italian restaurant thinks big — in many ways
he woman at the table next to mine at Carmine’s gasps when her lunch is set before her. I know the sound well, having heard it before — made it before — in this brash new Italian restaurant in Penn Quarter. The only
reason I know my neighbor hasn’t been served tennis balls on top of spaghetti is because the orbs are red with tomato sauce. Later, I discover that the beef-and-veal meatballs are also tender,
and veined with basil and Romano cheese: pleasing, in other words. And that’s the biggest surprise at the colossal Carmine’s, which
didn’t so much sail as barrel into town when it opened in 20,000 square feet of space in August. Despite its size (nearly 700 seats) and its parentage (it’s part of a New York chain owned by the Alicart Group), the restaurant succeeds where I thought it would fail by serving food that really and truly smacks of an Italian grandmother’s kitchen. Make that a couple dozen Italian grandmothers’ kitchens. The first lady is unlikely to use Carmine’s as a stage for her anti-
obesity campaign. I’ve never seen a single plate of food here that couldn’t serve a herd of diners, which explains why the waiters tend
28 The WashingTon PosT Magazine | OctOber 24, 2010
salad is an abundance of chopped lettuce, cheese, peppers and sausage, everything tossed with a vinegar dressing that gives the garden a nice zing. Carmine’s does well by chicken wings, too. Meaty and juicy, the flock is more herby (with rosemary) than spicy, and it comes with accouterments of blue cheese and sliced fennel instead of the expected celery. Lighter (sort of) is the fried zucchini, an Everest of tempura- like vegetable that my small posse manages to whittle down to something closer to the Blue Ridge. The only reason we stop tackling the cayenne-spiked mountain is that we know there is more big food heading our way, including rigatoni “country style.” The pasta is one of my favorites at Carmine’s, in part because the rigatoni retains some bite, and in part because the bowl also fits in soft white beans, crumbly fennel- spiced sausage, roasted garlic, browned broccoli florets and a butter-enriched sauce: enough
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