Elephant and Castle Pub and Restaurant, Washington, D.C.

After our big afternoon playing tourist downtown Saturday, Robert and I were hungry. He didn't want to get something at the Cherry Blossom Festival and then stand around and gnaw on it, he wanted some place where he could actually sit down and eat. So, we were across the street from some Pennsylvania Avenue restaurants and went to one of the ones that had immediate seating. So long as we sat indoors and not on the patio outside, that made our early dinner location Elephant and Castle Pub and Restaurant.

One of about two dozen restaurants in a chain located mainly on the two national coasts and in Canada, Elephant and Castle is an upper mid-range theme restaurant in the British pub mold. They feature a number of U.K. beers on tap and have several Americanized British food choices, plus standard American bar-restaurant foods with a British theme. Decor is clubby but bright and open, with a preponderance of cricket prints throughout.

Robert ordered from the "pub classics" page, selecting a stuffed Yorkshire pudding with roast beef, caramelized onions, and gravy, served with mashed potatoes and green beans. He found it surprisingly good. He washed it down with a pint of Pilsner Urquell.



I had the Guinness meatloaf from the "dinner entrees" page. The plate consisted of two slices of meatloaf that had Guinness-spiked braised vegetables (carrots, onion, etc.) chopped and mixed in with the ground meat, then sauced with a mildly spiced barbecue sauce (I was expecting gravy, or at least that British classic, "brown sauce,"—think A-1 steak sauce, but with a tomato, date, and tamarind flavor) and a few cooked mushrooms, with a little ramekin of barbecue sauce on the side, plus a couple of scoops of some tasty garlic mashed potatoes with red skins and some green beans. I liked the meatloaf, though I think maybe the chopped vegetables could have been cooked a little longer.



For dessert, Robert had a lovely looking apple-berry crisp with vanilla ice cream. While what he was served was very good, he reported that there was no "crisp" to it, and he couldn't identify any kind of crust.



I had the bread pudding with golden raisins and a lightly Irish whiskey-spiked hard sauce. The piece I was served was huge—easily big enough for two servings—and tasted okay, but I thought it lacked any flavor outside of the raisins and the sauce. I also probably would have made it a little more custardy, especially since this is a "British" place.