1789 Restaurant, Georgetown, D.C.

About a year ago, local chef Nathan Beauchamp took the reins of Georgetown's historic 1789 Restaurant (which just happens to be across the street from the infamous staircase made famous in the movie, The Exorcist), succeeding the internationally-known Ris Lacoste upon her retirement. Lacoste had quite a following (she was the one chef selected to cook for Julia Child's 90th birthday party) and over the years made 1789 into what was probably the best restaurant in the District of Columbia; Beauchamp thus has had big shoes to fill, and local culinary circles have watched closely for changes in 1789 and its food.

I've been meaning to get back to 1789 to try the new Beauchamp menus and see how things had changed, if at all. 1789 is now owned by the Clyde's Restaurant Group, so theoretically, a change of chefs should make little to no difference in a "store's" operations. Finally, I got around to going again earlier tonight, accompanied by this past summer's office intern, Drew, who's a senior at Georgetown University (which sort of surrounds the restaurant).

There was a bit of a crowd in the tiny entrance when we arrived, but the hostess espied us and knew of our reservation, so we were fairly quickly escorted upstairs to our table in the Wickets Room. After the past several restaurants where I've been placed at tightly-packed, tiny, two-top tables, 1789 felt positively spacious, as we had a nice four-top table in the corner of the room.

After struggling between either the parsnip soup or the escargot, Drew ended up choosing the steak tartare for his first course. It was a nice presentation. The beef was coarsely chopped and topped with a tiny, raw, quail egg yolk; pieces of grilled flatbread tented the beef. On the other end of the rectangular plate was a little salad of pickled red onions and tiny sprouts, plus a small pile of fried capers.



I started with the Maryland crab salad, a nice mound of crab meat bound together with just a tiny amount of mayonnaise and topped with some excellent, bright yellow, char roe caviar. Like the steak tartare, my salad was covered, only with a couple of pieces of heavily poppy seeded lavosh crackers. A little diced avocado and some thinly sliced radishes balanced the plate. With the crab, I drank a 2005 Domaine Le Peu de la Moriette Vouvray from the Loire region of France. It was full-bodied and fruity, going quite well with the natural sweetness of the crab.



Drew had no problem at all selecting his main course, and I think nothing else was under his serious consideration: he wanted the roasted venison. It came with white asparagus, chestnuts, and spinach with a bit of current sauce dripped across the plate, plus a little side of white macaroni and cheese in tiny black skillet. He thought the venison was good and properly prepared (I thought it was a rather small piece for the price), though he did note that it wasn't the best he'd ever had. With his venison he drank a glass of Teldeschi Merlot, 2004, from California.





I couldn't decide whether to get the sea bass, the monkfish, or the sturgeon, and finally decided upon the monkfish, more based upon the accompanying foods in the preparation (less incongruous "fusion"). The monkfish had been roasted, then the two pieces were layed atop a bed of halved Brussels sprouts, apples, and onions, with a couple of very thin, flash-fried slices of ham as a garnish. The flavors were excellent, though I found the fish to be ever so slightly overcooked and surprisingly (for monkfish) dry and plain. On the recommendation of the waiter, I had a glass of Domaine Rion Bourgogne 2005 French burgundy; it wasn't the best wine pairing, as I thought it a little too aggressively tannic to be matched with fish.



The waiter brought us each large dessert menus. One page was devoted to desserts, one to dessert wines, and one to brandies, cordials, and spirits. Drew had the golden chocolate dôme, a flourless chocolate sponge cake filled with a rich chocolate mousse and accompanied by coffee ice cream. The dôme had a little tiny bit of real, edible, gold leaf on top as a garnish (given the name of the dessert, I was disappointed that the dôme wasn't totally covered in gold).



In lieu of sweets, I picked the cheese course. The plate included five cheese, Red Hawk (California triple cream, cow's milk), Pleasant Ridge Reserve (Wisconsin cow's milk), Montgomery's Cheddar (Somerset, England; cow, slight bluing), Chapelle (Maryland,cow, white mold), and Bailey Hazen Blue (Vermont). My favorite was the Red Hawk, a smooth, soft cheese with a reddish orange rind, and I could have eaten it all night. The rest were unremarkable, and I was rather disappointed with the Bailey Hazen, a Stilton-esque cheese of some renown, which I found bland. The cheeses came with thin slices of toasted raisin bread, a raspberry purée, and some candied almonds.



After dinner we lingered over glasses of Remy Martin V.S.O.P. cognac.

On the whole, 1789 is still an excellent restaurant. It is my opinion, though, that the food quality has slipped just a little bit. More significantly, the quality of the service has deteriorated over the past year, with the staff not being that inobtrustive, well-oiled machine of years past. Comparing tonight to my previous visits, the magical sparkle just wasn't there. That doesn't mean that 1789 still isn't an great experience; even with tonight's shortcomings, it's still a better restaurant than the vast majority of District restaurants, and I would have no problem eating here again soon.