One by one, we’re running through the 50 restaurants that made the cut on this year’s Young & Hungry Dining Guide. If you have visited the day’s featured restaurant, let us know what you think. If you’re planning to visit for the first time, tell us about your meal when you return.

If I were ever to compile a list of the District’s most creative chefs, the ones who strive for unusual flavor combinations or push their ingredients in unusual directions, I would put the Oval Room ’s Tony Conte right near the top. How inventive is Conte? In the past, he’s paired a beet salad with passion-fruit gelee and veal slices with a Parmesan sauce and menthol purée. His latest menu features butter-poached lobster lounging in a shallow pool of young coconut milk, which itself is bobbing with peach and wasabi pearls. Sometimes this is all too much, and Conte is just overmanipulating his dishes to his (and my) detriment. I’d point to that lobster as a fine example. The shellfish in my recent order was poached to a downy consistency, but its accompanying liquid was far too sweet for my palate, the result, it seems, of Conte’s line cooks not adding enough wasabi pearls for balance. But here’s the thing: Conte fascinates me, even when he doesn’t always please me. When he hits the mark, though, few chefs in town can touch him. Period. His roast chicken with barbecue consommé—that’s right, consommé—and smoked mushroom is a knockout. So is his appetizer of foie gras brûlé, a small cap of caramelized terrine perched on toasted brioche and served with Meyer lemon and lavender. The thing is so good, I’d run through a gantlet of angry animal protectionists to eat it.

The  Oval Room, 800 Connecticut Ave. NW, (202) 463-8700

Morou: Hit him with your best question

Given the apparently precarious nature of our local dining scene, we should all jump at the chance to poke and prod at one of the area’s premier chefs, Morou Ouattara, who recently told the Washingtonian’s Todd Kliman that he’ll be pulling the plug on Farrah Olivia in Old Town on April 29.

And now we have the chance: Ouattara will be hosting today’s 11 a.m. edition of Grill Warren at Northern Virginia magazine.

Not that Y&H is asking you to do his work, but here’s what I’d want to know, if I got a chance to grill Morou:

Read More “Want to Know About Morou Ouattara’s Future? Ask Him on ‘Grill Warren’ Right Now” »