For 2008, Washingtonian Magazine rated Citronelle the best restaurant in Washington DC. There are a lot of places to eat in a city as big as our capitol, so you can imagine what an honor it would be to get this rating. We had to go and see what all the hype was about, so a few of us headed into Georgetown for a night of French fine dining. One of the really cool things about Citronelle is that some of the food is made to look like one food, but made with another. I’ll get more into that when I go over what we go to show you what I mean.

We were originally going to get the promenade gourmande, which is a preset menu. We decided against it because if you do promenade gourmande, everybody on the table has to do it…and we wanted to have more of a selection. Here’s a selection of some of the stuff that we got throughout the night:

We all started off with a pre-appetizer (amuse bouche) to get the pallet ready. From left to right we have quayle egg, salmon, and a chicken lollipop:

For my appetizer I had the lobster “begula” pasta. This is one of the foods that are meant to look like something else. It’s mean to look like caviar, but in reality it’s actually pasta balls covered with ink squid, with lobster underneath. This was to die for.

Stephanie got the escargot, which had a great presentation:

Andrew’s appetizer was another one of those look-a-like foods. He had the “egg symphony”, which was four different plates meant to look like a variety of eggs, but were something else. For example on the bottom left it was actually slices of mozzerela with cheddar on top of it:

For my entree I had the lamb:

CD and Marcel had the chateaubriand, the presentation was absolutely amazing:

For dessert I had the chocolate soufflet:

Andrew had the breakfast sampler dessert…another look-a-like food:

Rather than explain everything, here’s a little video explaining:

Here’s a shot of all of us afterwards, I’m the guy in the font between the two girls:

Citronelle isn’t for the faint of hard. Dinner for the 6 of us including 2 bottles of wine and a bottle of champagne was about $1,600. It was quite an experience in fine french cuisine. There was an obvious amount of effort spent in the presentation, and it showed. If you are looking for a very nice dinner, you can’t go wrong with Citronelle.

Citronelle
3000 M St. NW
Washington, DC
Georgetown
T: (202)625-2150
Wheelchair Accessible: Yes
Kid Friendly: No
Cuisines: French, Modern
Price Range: Very Expensive

I’ve been to a good amount of higher end well known steakhouses in the past, but Morton’s was probably the most common one that I had not been. Morton’s is a pretty famous high-end steakhouse, with a ton of locations through the US, and even a few internationally in places like China. I want to say there are at least 7 between my house and Baltimore, which is only a little over an hour away from me!

So I called up a friend, and we headed down to the Tyson’s Corner location. From what I’ve been told, the best comparison is Ruths Chris Steakhouse as they both originate from Chicago. Here’s a few pictures of some of the food:

For an appetizer, my friend and I split shrimp alexander and the bacon wrapped scallops. I’ve actually had a friend cook the shrimp alexander based on a Morton’s cookbook, and I thought his came out better. Regardless, they were still very good here! I had a filet mignon as my entree.

My friend had the ribeye as his entree, and you can see the same appetizers on the left.

For dessert I had the key lime pie. I’m a big key lime pie fan, so if I happen to be at a restaurant and they have it, I have to order a slice. The key lime pie at Morton’s was very good.

My buddy had the hot chocolate cake, which looked excellent, and just oozed out chocolate.

Overall the dinner was great, we had salads, appetizers, sides, entrees, deserts, a couple drinks, and cappuccinos, and the dinner ended up being around $175. Although everything was great, if I had to choose between Morton’s and Ruths Chris, I think I would choose Ruths Chris. You can’t really go wrong with Morton’s though

On Wednesday night a few of us went to dinner at BLT Steak in Washington DC (About a block or so away from the White House). I have to say it was definitely one of the better meals I’ve had in my lifetime, and I got a chance to try Kobe steak for the first time.

Here’s the entrance for BLT Steak:

I’ll just list out everything our table ordered outside of the wine as everything was a la carte. I personally got the NY strip as my entree.

Appetizer

• Caesar Salad
• Grilled double cut bacon

Entrees

• Filet Mignon
• 10oz Japanese Kobe Strip
• Rib Eye
• New York Strip
• Diver Scallops

Sides

• We wanted to order the grilled jumbo shrimp, but it was out
• Blue cheese tator-tots
• Parmesan Gnocchi
• French Fries
• Grilled asparagus
• Poached green beans

Dessert

• Chocolate chestnut sundae
• Crepe Souffle
• Peanut butter chocolate mousse
• Blueberry lemon meringue pie

Here’s a shot of the 10oz Kobe, at $26 an ounce that steak was $260:

You can see the inside here (the top two pieces) and how marbled it is:

CD got the filet mignon:

Steph got the diver scallops:

The desserts were amazing, the peanut butter chocolate mousse may possibly be one of the best I’ve ever had. Here’s the blueberry lemon meringue pie that I got:

The chocolate chestnut sundae looked to die for:

All said and done our check was about $1,000 for the 5 of us (Thanks Andrew!). After dinner we went by the white house to take a quick gander:

It was a great night and dinner…I think I’m still stuffed a day later. I highly recommend going to BLT, they have locations in DC, New York City, San Jua, Dallas, White Plains, Los Angeles, and Miami.