Butterfield 9, Washington, D.C.

After staying late at the office tonight to get caught up, Leo called and wanted to go to dinner. We started to walk down to Old Ebbitt Grill, but as usual, there was a huge line of people (mostly cocktailers) trying to get in an we weren't in the mood to wait. So, we walked around the block and walked in to Butterfield 9, a place I'd been with Tony last January but Leo had never been. We got a nice banquette corner with both a view of the restaurant and the sidewalk outside. At the table next to us were a doting man and a bored looking woman we later heard were there celebrating their anniversary (poor guy), and a few tables over was a gaggle of young women who obviously needed no more wine.

I started with a celery root and potato chowder that included some tiny clams and vegetable greens. Then I had the grilled pork chops with tempura squash blossoms and flavorful bits of fried pancetta with a slightly sweet current-cumin sauce. The squash blossoms were a little on the large side and seemed a little flaccid. The pork chops were thick and juicy, cooked to just a little beyond medium rare—had we not been in a nice restaurant, I would have been tempted to gnaw the bone! For dessert I had the blackberry shortbread. It was a brief little thing with a lot of unmet potential. They'd taken a piece of shortbread, split it, topped the bottom half with a dollop of lemon-scented crème patisserie, then arranged four blackberries in a square on the crème and then one blackberry on either side of the shortbread to rest on the overflow and flank the shortbread, then topped it with the top half of the shortbread. Lovely idea, but where were the blackberries? Back in Oklahoma, six blackberries would barely make a garnish!

Leo started with an appetizer of diver scallops, grilled and crusted with coriander, and artfully arranged on the plate with flash-fried strips of various root vegetables and some pea sprouts. It was sauced with a red chili and lemon grass emulsion. Next he had the barbequed eel and halibut. Using a Japanese theme, there was a thick brown miso glaze on the eel, and the meats were accompanied by some rutabaga slices fried and then glazed with honey; a wild herb salad was also on his plate. He washed all this down with a couple of glasses of Domaine Bernier chardonnay. For dessert, he saw my little blackberry shortbread and decided to order himself a dessert sampler plate for two. I love his diet! The sampler included a little tiny version of the blackberry shortbread along with a miniature ramekin of crème brulee, a warm apple tart, some vanilla ice cream, a triangle of "chocolate cloud" (sort of a mousse cake), a fresh strawberry on an almond pineapple mousse, and a warm ginger snap.

The food Wednesday night was all delicious and very pretty. Too bad I didn't have my camera. The only problem with the evening was the service. Our waiter was dismal. What highlighted his lapses even more was the fact that the waiter at the next table was excellent, helpful, and solicitious to his tables. The waiter we were assigned seldom came by the table; he made no recommendations or suggestions for the meal; we had to ask twice for water refills; our table was never crumbed; our bread was never refilled; my dessert had been brought out shortly after the main courses only to be taken away by another waiter (I think they had the wrong table), then when my actual dessert arrived, I had to sit there looking at it for fifteen minutes before the waiter came to take Leo's dessert order; we had to wait inordinately long times both to receive our check and then to have the waiter come pick up the credit card and process it. I also noticed that the next table had two visits from the owner and one visit from the manager during the course of the evening; we had none.

I feel sorry for the chef. No matter how wonderful the food from the kitchen, patrons will soon tire of surly service and high prices in the very competitive D.C. restaurant market. We can only hope that this was a very off night for Butterfield 9.