Il Mulino New York, Washington, D.C.

A few of the participating Restaurant Week establishments opt to extend their special menus for an extra week, some through the end of the month, so that gives us the chance to go a few more places this go round. One of the extending restaurants this time is Il Mulino New York, and Joel and I managed to get reservations last week for lunch there today.

Il Mulino—"the mill" in Italian—is a small, exclusive, international chain, concentrating on contemporary Italian-American-themed fine dining. It's a formal, white tablecloth kind of place (the waiters even carry table crumbers with them) with professional career waiters, a nice low noise level, and it definitely caters to the expense account crowd.

Joel started off with a glass of the house cabernet sauvignon. Interestingly, the single glasses are $10 at dinner, but only $7.50 at lunch. I perused the wine list. I got through the first page of Americanized by-the-glass things and flipped to the bottles of Italian reds.

As I looked at the prices, my first thought was, "Is this in lire?" but then I realized that the numbers were too small since the old lire were running about 1,000 to the dollar, and Italy's using euros now, anyway. They had $1,000 bottles of wine on the menu, and quite a few in the $700, $800 range. I saw a $3,000 bottle, too, but, it was actually a jeroboam (equivalent to four normal bottles). Afraid to order anything, I stuck with water for the meal.

As soon as we placed our food orders, an assistant brought us a basket of breads—including some excellent olive bread and some country wheat—and a plate of marinated eggplant, which I believe was intended as a spread on the bread. Eggplant is one of my food allergies I actually have to avoid, so I left it all to Joel to taste and consume. He said it was good, with the eggplant marinated in olive oil.

Our first courses arrived. Joel got the prosciutto è melone, both of us expecting it to be thin Italian ham slices wrapped around pieces of honeydew melon. Instead, he got a plate with many thin slices of the ham, all surrounding a little bowl with honeydew melon balls, blackberries, and raspberries. He liked the ham with the honeydew, but he commented that the prosciutto just didn't go well with the berries.


I'd started to order that same appetizer, but to be different, I got the calamari fritti. I thought it was good. It came wrapped up in a white cloth napkin with a cheesecloth-wrapped lemon half on top and a little bowl of delicious, warm, spicy, marinara sauce for dipping. The squid was cut into rings and lightly breaded, and they'd been cooked expertly. Twas quite a large serving, too—it would be good for two people to split at a larger lunch.


For his main course, Joel ordered the pasta primavera, expecting something very simple in the way of spaghetti and a fresh red sauce, but he ended up with a big, beautiful bowl of pasta topped by a plethora of just-al dente cooked fresh vegetables with mushrooms and raw tomatoes, all in very light olive oil and melted butter. When he emailed me after lunch, he wrote, "Exceptional pasta."


I got the pollo fra diabolo, or "chicken in the style of the devil." This was a nice meal of tender chicken chunks braised in a tomato-based sauce with onions and peppers, and the spicy "devil" was provided by a huge amount of Italian sausage chunks in the dish. In fact, there was more sausage than chicken! While I didn't need it, I was a little bit surprised that the chicken didn't come with any pasta, and we were both surprised that the waiters weren't going around to the tables offering grated parmesan cheese for the dishes.


For dessert, I ordered the tiramisu and Joel ordered the chocolate cake, but the waiter took it upon himself without asking first to bring us a big dessert sampler plate to share that included the tiramisu and chocolate cake, plus Italian ricotta cheesecake, coffee-scented mascarpone cheese and cream, thick zabaglione, and a couple of pirouettes, all drizzled in chocolate and lightly dusted with powdered sugar. I suppose that was fine, and Joel really liked the variety, but I would have appreciated being asked first. I didn't like the chocolate cake, as it was too dense. The tiramisu was standard. I thought the ricotta cheesecake was good. The mascarpone cream was just the stuff used in making tiramisu, so that wasn't a big deal. I really liked the zabaglione, which had a nice alcohol tingle to it.


After dessert, Joel had a double espresso (into which he dumped the entire pitcher of milk allegedly to "cool it off") and I had an espresso macchiato. I like their coffee roast, which is strong and rich without being unduly bitter.



So, that was our Il Mulino experience. It was a pleasant lunch with excellent food and top-notch, professional service. One thing I did notice is that you can get the Restaurant Week-type menu there year-round, though they charge $22.95 for it instead of the $20.08 R.W. price—still a good deal, though. The place is definitely on the "recommended" list.