AOL’s CityGuide has posted their 2005 all around “Best Restaurants”, broken down by category. It’s worth a quick read, especially as they encompass the whole D.C. metropolitan area, and I found a number of restaurants listed that I’d never heard about.
However, I’ve got to comment on a couple of the findings, including:
- Best All-Around Restaurant: Lebanese Taverna – Now, I’m a huge fan of Lebanese Taverna; the food is some of the best in the city. But the restaurant came in as the best “overall” restaurant, beating out restaurants that have ambrosia-quality food, such as Citronelle and Galileo. The category itself is probably to blame, however, as it doesn’t account for price range.
- Best Breakfast: Bob and Edith’s Diner – I haven’t eaten here, but I’ve heard it’s amazing, so no arguments. However, The Original Pancake House on Rockville Pike came in #2, and their breakfasts are mediocre at best. And they certainly don’t come even close to the breakfasts at the Broadway Diner.
- Best Chinese: Meiwah – Oh, come on. Meiwah is fine, but it isn’t Chinese for your true Chinese-food lover. Even the ever-venerable Full Kee ranked only 6th, and Gaithersburg’s banquet-hall-sized Dim Sum house New Fortune came in 8th. The amazing Chinatown Express didn’t get a mention, nor did Rockville’s fantastic Joe’s Noodle House. Clearly, these people don’t know good Chinese.
- Best Takeout: Five Guys – Alright, they got this one right. Best fast-food burgers in a 100 mile radius, no questions asked. Although I’m less sure it should rank first for Best Burger all around. It’s hard to compare a fast food burger with a juicy, slow cooked restaurant burger.
The categories were: All-Around; Breakfast; Brunch; Burgers; Cheap Eats; Chinese; Coffeehouses; Comfort Food; Family-Friendly; Healthy Dining; italian; Late-Night Dining; Mexian; Outdoor Dining; Pizza; Romantic; Seafood; Steak Houses; and Takeout.
Let us know what you think in the comments section. If you’ve got other suggestions that AOL CityGuide missed, let us know – we’re always looking for new places to try!
(Link via AOL’s Notebook: Washington, D.C.)
3 Responses
Bob and Edith’s? It’s cool to go there at 4AM and meet the weirdos, but the food is just standard diner fare. Good, but not exactly revolutionary. That’s all I want for breakfast usually, but it seems like a strange thing to have a competition over.
Five Guys is great, but my personal favorite for takeout is Crisp N Juicy in Arlington.
The Diner for brunch? Yes, they serve it, but the food there is just minimally glorified and maximally overpriced diner fare. The drinks do tend to be strong though.
Cheap eats: Ben’s is awesome, but the menu is, I think, rather limited for this kind of prize. A+J’s should be much higher on the list, and an Ethiopian place needs to be there as well: Harabe (while technically Eritrean) is dirt cheap and really good.
Chinese: Notably missing is A+J’s (my pick for hands down best in region), as well as Chinatown Express (another facorite of mine), and Seven Seas, which is excellent.
Comfort food: never been to Georgia Browns, but this is otherwise Ben’s territory.
Healthy: Bossa’s food is underwhelming and the service is reliably the worst in town. Why is it on the list? I’ve not been in a decade or so, but I’ve heard from more than a few that Nora has gotten fairly boring of late. Health bar is mediocre at best. Pesce is very good, although I’m not sure about ‘health food.’
Italian: something beat Galileo and it’s not Obelisk. Puh-leez. And where’s Anna Maria’s?
Mexican: Start with the obvious: Lauriol Plaza is and has always been overpriced, low-quality crap, inexplicably adored by the Post. Mixtec is phenominal, and only barely makes the cut.
Pizza: to my mind, there are only two pizza places in DC. Both made the list, but should have been one and two (respectively): Vace and 2Amys. 2Amys so exceeds its ancestor, Paradiso, it’s kinda embarrassing.
Cheap Drinks: How Polly Esther’s can be on any “best of” list besides “best place to tell people you don’t like to go when they visit DC,” I will never know.
Sushi: Cafe Asia is good, but the sushi has never been the highlight of their menu. And my real favourite isn’t on the list at all: Tako Grill in Bethesda (you’d be amazed!).
I suppose I shouldn’t be annoyed that the suburban restaurants were thrown in. Most of the AOLers are probably out in the ‘burbs.
Zayatina is fantastic but how badly are you eating if mezza is health food?
If McCormick and Schmick and Phillips are the two best places to eat seafood in DC then I’d rather lick the storm drains at Maine ave. The fish is always overcooked underflavored and god forbid you order shellfish. How do they even compare to the fish market?
and out of morbid curiosity why is only the ‘burban Murky mentioned and Sparky’s barely hanging onto the list? Who was voting on this list that Love Cafe was a worse coffeehouse than Jolt N Bolt? I demand names!
But all is forgiven because they liked Jimmy T’s.