Pasta Mia is either the most authentic outpost of Italian cooking in D.C. or the most overrated. Opinions diverged dramatically over the red-sauce house, which is no doubt part of the reason why hundreds and hundreds of you were attracted to Y&H's take-down of the Adams Morgan institution. The item was, by far, the most [...]
Pasta Mia has built its considerable reputation on preparing dishes to order and preparing customers to accept the red-sauce house's many limitations. Among them: cash only, no reservations, no substitutions, no bar, no seating until the full party arrives, and no wines by the glass other than the cheap house vino. Restaurants with significantly better pedigrees wish to God they could [...]
Growing up, the majority of my Happy Meal–free restaurant experiences centered on a constellation of Bethesda restaurants: O’Donnell’s, a few Chinese places, Benihana, and Pines of Rome. Ordering from the big menu meant navigating among old people in golf slacks, getting stung by the misdirection of the free bread (don’t pick the hunk with the [...]
Jim had been planning this thing—or "ting" as he had come to call it—for nearly a month. It started out as a simple birthday dinner for our friend Lou, he of the award-winning holiday cookie recipe. It practically turned into a quest to replicate the entire menu from the late, lamented A.V. Ristoranto. The immovable [...]
