Bistro Bis, Washington, D.C.

The January Restaurant Week begins today and Robert and I decided to kick it off with a lunch on Capitol Hill at Bistro Bis. Bistro Bis, located in the Hotel George, is owned and operated by the same group responsible for one of my favorite restaurants, Vidalia.

Bistro Bis is a very clean, contemporary-looking restaurant with light woods, a vaulted ceiling, and a glass wall separating the kitchen from the dining room to give diners a little glimpse into cooking operations. Another glass wall covers the two-story tall wine cellar, and magnums and jeroboams of champagne grace the fireplace mantel on the opposite side of the room.

As is traditional with Restaurant Week, each participating restaurant offers a three-course prix fixe menu priced at $20.07 for lunch and $30.07 for dinner. Given Washington restaurant prices, this really is a great bargain, and it allows people to try the better establishments that ordinarily would be out of their financial reach. As do several other restaurants in town, Bistro Bis offers their entire menu for Restaurant Week, but certain luxury items have a small upcharge.

And speaking of upcharge, Robert started his meal with an upcharge item, the steak tartare Atilla. I found it an interesting and non-traditional presentation for steak tartare. The seasoned, chopped meat appeared in hamburger patty shape in the center of a thin, rectangular plate, along with a salad on one end and house-made potato chips on the other. Dots of a spicy aioli decorated the edges of the plate. Course-ground country mustard and a container of cornichon pickles were served on the side. And Robert's opinion? He profered, "I thought the steak tartare was rather rare." Har, har.



Meanwhile, I had the onion soup Les Halles, a version of the classic French onion soup. It was okay. I was a little disappointed, though to find two pieces of onion skin that I had to remove from my mouth. It wasn't a particularly outstanding or memorable soup, but it was serviceable.



Our main courses were significantly more spectacular. Robert chose the chicken à la ancienne, and he raved about it. Now, the menu said chicken breast, but I thought it looked like a trimmed leg quarter to me, yet I forgot to ask him about that....sometimes it's hard to tell from appearances with brown sauces on the meat. The chicken was braised with button mushrooms, pearl onions, and spinach all resting on a bed of soft polenta. It smelled very good.



Being conscious of my recent slight weight gain, I selected the trout salad lyonnaise, and what arrived wasn't at all what I had expected! The salad itself was a large bed of slightly bitter frisée with tiny little potatoes, hard boiled egg, halved grape tomatoes, pickled red onions, and some thin bits of crispy, fried ham or bacon. Atop all of this salad rested an entire well-seasoned, pan-fried trout. And to think I'd pondered getting the escalope of salmon—I got more fish with the trout! The salad was delicious, though I daresay it didn't do my diet any good at all.



There was quite a lengthy dessert menu, though many of them were various kinds of crème brulées and such. Robert picked the gâteau opera, a classic layered cake with chocolate cake, mocha buttercream, and hazelnut frangipane, all frosted in chocolate ganache.



I had a fantastic apple tart. They took a decorated round of puff pastry and topped it with fresh, caramelized apples; some calvados-scented crème frâiche with a sprig of mint occupied a special mound on the side.



And, thus, we had a very auspicious start to this year's Restaurant Week.