Filomena Ristorante, Georgetown, D.C.

Now, for a week, I've been trying to get Ian to agree on a restaurant for his birthday dinner last night, making all kinds of suggestions for places to which he had not already been. Yet, he kept coming back to the same old place, which is not a bad place, mind you, but it's a place we've already been to multiple times. Well, it was his birthday, not mine, so I finally acquiesced to taking him to Filomena Ristorante in Georgetown.

It was a very pleasant evening at Filomena. The little pasta grandmother was up in the window making cavatini when we got there. It wasn't crowded, so even though we were early, we were immediately seated. And, unlike all of my previous visits when the restaurant was jam packed and the noise levels at the top of the decibel range, it was a calm, quiet night, and we could actually hear ourselves talk!

Ian started with the Italian chicken and pasta soup and opted to have his grown-up chicken noodle soup served in a bread bowl.



I looked at the side order offerings instead of appetizers and selected a trio of mushrooms mixed and sautéed together, and it ended up being a lovely first course size. With the first course, Ian got a glass of Vallarom Chardonnay 2004 and I got the Bottega Vinaia, "Trentino" Pinot Grigio 2006, though we ended up trading after Ian sampled both.



For his main course, Ian ordered the pasta special del giorno, pollo e pesto. This was a rigatoni dish in a pesto cream sauce with slices of chicken breast, garnished with cherry tomato halves and parmesano cheese freshly grated tableside. It was a very large serving, so Ian ended up taking half of it home in a doggy bag.



Continuing my non-traditionality, I ordered the appetizer arancini with a side order of rapini for my main course. Arancini are these wonderful golf ball-sized rice balls stuffed with mozzarella and bolognese meat sauce, then rolled in bread crumbs and deep fried, and accompanied by a marinara sauce. The rapini—"known" in the U.S. as "broccoli rabe"—was sautéed with garlic and olive oil and was delicious. Incidentally, it is not botanically related to broccoli at all, but is related to turnips. With our main courses, we each had glasses of Ruffino "Aziano" Chianti Classico 2005.



For dessert, Ian selected the strawberry cheesecake as his "birthday cake." Our waiter brought it with a sparkler in it (thankfully, this isn't a restaurant that drags over the entire wait staff to "sing" to the birthday boy). Ian took half of it home, too. Filomena's always serves complimentary Sambuca (anise liqueur) and amaretto (almond liqueur) at the end of the meal, so we didn't order a dessert wine. Ian tried the Sambuca with the traditional three coffee beans in his snifter, but, like me, he's not a fan of anise or licorice flavor. We then drifted to the amaretto and its nutty sweetness.



As always, the food was delicious and well prepared and the service was friendly and efficient. Filomena's is one of the top two or three Italian restaurants in D.C.

There was a table full of priests sitting next to us, and on our way out of the restaurant, they chatted with us a bit and gave Ian a birthday blessing.