PRICE:
Frommer's Very Highly Recommended

And now for something completely different. At the Park Hyatt Washington hotel's Blue Duck Tavern, award-winning executive chef Brian McBride presides over its open kitchen. Forget any preconceptions of "open kitchen." Here, no walls separate the cooking area from the dining room. McBride and his crew dance in and around counters, the wood-burning oven, and the immense Molteni commercial oven range in full view. Designer Tony Chi, who transformed the look of the entire hotel in 2006, also molded this light-filled space, which mixes modern American materials, like stainless steel and polished glass, with classic features, like dark oak and blue burlap. McBride does the same in his cuisine, choosing the freshest produce, meats, and seafood from local and regional artisans and purveyors. He uses a combination of traditional and state-of-the-art cooking methods and equipment to prepare exquisite, one-of-a-kind dishes right in front of you. The menu identifies the farm or other source of the prime ingredients for each dish. Then it's up to you to choose from three columns of categories that cover nearly every food grouping, from soup and salad, to meat and charcuterie, to fish and shellfish. Among the home runs so far are the baked Rhode Island clams with smoked bacon, peppers, and garlic; the galantine of duck and mushrooms with cherry preserve; jumbo lump crab cakes with rémoulade sauce; and the barbecued casserole of rice beans. The house-made steak fries are in a class of their own, so be sure to order those. And absolutely save room for dessert, like the chocolate cake flamed in bourbon, accompanied by a scoop of ice cream that you'll see hand-cranked minutes before it's delivered to your table. The wine list features 60 American wines and 300 from around the world. The Blue Duck Tavern was the only D.C. restaurant to make Conde Nast Traveler's 2007 "Hot List" of the world's 95 top restaurants and came in at #12 on Washingtonian magazine's 2008 list of top 100 D.C. restaurants.

Copyright: Excerpted from Frommer's Washington, D.C. 2009, (c) 2008, Wiley Publishing, Inc.

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