Circle Bistro, Washington, D.C.

Last Friday evening after the all-Finnish concert with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center previously mentioned, Robert, Kevin, and I walked up to Washington Circle to have a post-concert supper at the French-themed Circle Bistro at the One Washington Circle Hotel.

This place has always been somewhat of an enigma to me. I've popped in several times over the years for a quick brunch or a quick meal, and it's never been much more than a bland hotel restaurant to me—never bad food, just not anything exciting (their $13 hamburger is always dry and mediocre, though). What confounds me, however, is the fact that Circle Bistro is often listed as one of the top restaurants in the District. In fact, just this past January, Washingtonian magazine placed Circle Bistro on its list of the 100 Best Restaurants in metropolitan area....and not at 98 or 99, but all the way up at number 31! What are they eating that I'm not? What am I missing? The only thing I can figure is that it gets its lofty rating because of the political and marketing power of the hotel's owner, the George Washington University. Yet, even that is a mystery, because GWU also owns the nearby GWU Inn and the River Inn, where in-house restaurants Notti Bianche (a much, much better place with Italian food) is only rated number 86, and Dish (a much better place with "creative" American food) isn't rated at all.

Robert and Kevin were needing to catch the Metro home, so we chose Circle Bistro because of its proximity to a Metro stop. I had no objection, since I'm still trying to figure out why it's number 31. I still don't know.

The main dining room was full, so we were seated at a long, narrow table in the bar with tall stools. Kevin had cranberry juice, Robert a huge bottle of sparkling water, and I tried the house cabernet sauvignon.



For dinner, Kevin selected the brook trout meunière with dauphine potatoes and green beans almondine. He said it was good, though nothing "memorable." I thought the head-on, gutted trout looked rather too "anatomical" to be appetizing.



Robert had the roast breast of Long Island duckling with a sweet potato-apple mousseline and chopped Brussels sprouts. It was rare and the bloody juices rather stained the plate, I thought, but the duck itself looked and smelled very good; Robert liked it.



I chose the route of two appetizers for my dinner, starting with goat cheese fritters on beet salad that was actually quite good with a nice mix of flavors and textures, and then having a duck confit on cassoulet that was a bit disappointing, but still edible and flavorful; I thought the confit a little limp and the beans in the cassoulet were undercooked.




For dessert, Kevin abstained, Robert had a deck-of-cards sized piece of pear tart with vanilla ice cream and I had a tiny "artistic" presentation of mediocre carrot cake and ice cream with an unpalatable smear of apple-cinnamon mixture. Now, I don't mind tiny little morsels of food (instead of, for example, the enormous slice of ten layer carrot cake large enough to feed four), but I'm looking for exquisite bites that leave me wishing for more; this particular dessert left me feeling, "Okay, I've tried it, what else do they have?"




Thus was our supper: filling, but still somewhat shy of the stellar #31 rating the bistro somehow gets.