Johnny's Half Shell

Chef Ann Cashion and restaurant namesake John Fulchino have worked hard to address the problems that come with their new Capitol Hill space, which is five times larger than their old Dupont Circle location. The owners have even tried to remake the cavernous spot into the spittin’ image of the comfy old Johnny’s. But space and location are unruly children; they don’t always behave as you want them to. So while the new place features many of the same elements as the old—the marble bar, the expanses of wood, the tile floors—the reconstituted Johnny’s now exudes the kind of gavel-pounding authority more associated with its domed next-door neighbor. The restaurant’s newfound air of authority places the burden on the kitchen to keep the place grounded, and Cashion and her expanded staff gamely take up the challenge, turning out (for the most part) the honest, deceptively simple seafood that made the original such a draw. The chef’s old standbys do most of the heavy lifting: a pair of Maryland crab cakes, fried or broiled, which let the sweet meat do the talking; a lunchtime po’ boy stuffed with otherworldly fried oysters, at once crispy and tender; and a razor-thin fillet of rainbow trout, grilled to perfection and drizzled with a delicate dill-butter sauce. But the kitchen too frequently shows signs of being asleep at the grill—or oven. A Baltimore hot dog arrives blackened on one side and tomato-red on the other. A filet of dry-aged beef, tasting of pepper and char, has clearly been seared too long on the hot side of the grill, and the royal trumpet mushrooms on an otherwise sweet and flaky Alaskan halibut have been oven-roasted to the point of dehydration. These missteps from Cashion’s usually meticulous kitchen serve as reminders that expansionist dreams often come with harsh realities, namely a lack of consistency and quality. Cashion and Fulchino may toil day and night to maintain the cozy seaside spirit of their old place, but their efforts are in vain. That Johnny’s is gone forever, swallowed whole by this new, glistening whale.
—Tim Carman, December 22, 2006