CitiZen of D.C.: Precision Modern Cuisine, with a Heavy Finish

Let’s start with this:

The anniversary dinner at CitiZen cost us $350 for two, including paired wines for us both. This is not a complaint. We spent the money mindfully, without hesitation or coercion. But I hate it when people ooze about world-class food by an award-winning, steamin’ haute chef as if no bill is attached.

It is. Expectations are high. Regrets loom as a possibility.

Few regrets materialized, and expectations were for the most part met.

CitiZen is a five-year-old Washington, D.C. dining room operated by veterans of one of the best-regarded and -awarded restaurants in the nation [The Inn at Little Washington, in Washington, Virginia.]. Chef Eric Ziebold is late of another of the best-regarded and -awarded restaurants in the nation [The French Laundry in Napa, California; not the French Laundry of Fenton, Michigan, about which I have previously written]. He has a James Beard, a load of references placing him on the short list of “hot” chefs and an eye on a Michelin star.

CitiZen served us an extraordinary meal that was creative, even clever. The food was precise, most ingredients were locally sourced and just off the truck. It was vividly memorable, one of the best meals I’ve had.

But it all was inexplicably marred by poor pacing, servers with meaningful details about each dish to convey but frequently not understandable, two desserts too many [!] and, inexplicably, an errant kitchen hand that left several dishes heavy with oil or fat.

The short list of highlights:

• Thin slices of fluke topped with a tomato sorbet, a frozen crimson puree that, when tasted from the same fork as the fish, provided one of the most surprising, invigorating sensations I’ve enjoyed at a restaurant.
• A disc of tenderloin so rare its inside was the color of watermelon. Although I didn’t try, I think I could have eaten it without chewing. It was ladled over with a splash of bouillon and accompanied by filaments of sweet tender onion the texture of Vietnamese vermicelli.
• Four pungent selections from the cheese trolley, chosen in concert with our dining hostess [“waitress” would be the wrong word]. They were accompanied by shot glasses of three different beers. One, a thick black beer called Old Raspustin, is brewed in Napa Valley.
• A dessert of fig layered with sweet cream cheese and delicate squares of pastry. Only after a few tastes did I realize I was eating an arch, high-end, winky-winky [but delicious] fig newton, a memorable finishing stroke of imagination from the kitchen.
• The wines were expertly paired, and of the sort I rarely know how to buy or drink. I can’t recall the details because, well, we were drinking them. But I know we were served among many other things a Portugese multi-varietal that was the predecessor of a Port later served with dessert. [Not only were the wines paired with the food, the wines were paired with the proper stemware.]

All right, to the grease: It slid onto the plate throughout the meal. Orbs of garlicky mashed potatoes were heavy from a pointless roll in the oil. The focaccia was damp. The lamb steak was enswirled by an unctuous sauce.

And–disaster!–an ice cream with peanut butter “infusion” appeared with two rolls of creamy chocolate paste that were utterly wrecked with phyllo wraps as greasy as any egg roll from a cheap Chinese carry-out.

I’d recommend CitiZen for whenever a truly special celebration while in the region, any traveling foodist indulgence where one throws wallet to the wind, or an opportunity when a rich and generous lawyer friend picks up the tab.

But don’t get that ice-cream-and-chocolate dessert. What a shame to end such an inspired and well-contsructed meal on such a heavy, joyless note.

2GoNow: Real Resources from Real People

Yelp You can never really tell with wisdom-of-the-crowd rating services, but Yelp has 68 reviews of CitiZen with an average rating of 4.5. Quite a few comments in the “best meal I’ve ever had” category.

Blog A smart, unfawning blog entry from Boston Dreams and Michelin Stars by Lance Martin, an amateur chef who runs marathons and has enthusiasm for both sports.

Online confessional Chef Grant Achatz of Chicago’s Alinea, a former French Laundry colleague of now-CitiZen chef Eric Ziebold, writes in the Atlantic online about the friends’ earlier adventures of re-inventing classic cuisines. He refers to Ziebold onlyonce as a kind of schoolboy partner in foodie mischief. But his article provides a good perspective on the game Ziebold is playing. Also check out the well-informed comments at the end of the piece for more highbrow ruminations on “new fusion” cuisine.

A 2007 review, with guileless on-the-plate digital photos of the dishes served, from the blog Veal Cheeks

Interview Washington Business Journal interview with Ziebold in 2006.