to round out our "restaurant week" cavin and i decided to have an extravagant lunch (and by extravagant i mean spend close to $100 and take a 2 hour lunch on a weekday) at restaurant kolumbia. about a month ago we walked by the place on the way to my doctor's appointment, and i was like, 'oh, so this is where restaurant kolumbia is!' so armed with that knowledge, and the fact that it is brought up quite frequently on dr with positive reviews, we decided to give it a try.

when we walked in, i was surprised by the layout. from the outside i didn't believe that the building went that far back, but it did. we were greeted by the sole hostess who had to go back and forth from the front of the house to the dining area, seating people while other patrons waited by the hostess stand.

the view from the hostess stand is a long hallway, which emptied into what seemed like a well lit main dining room. along the sides of the long hallway were wine caves, as well as a 10-14 seat bar, with 2-top boothes opposite the bar. looked very cozy. on the walk to the restaurant, we decided though, that our first outing would be to sit in the dining room, and save the bar lunch for another time. (i should mention that restaurant kolumbia has $9 lunches at the bar, which from what i've heard, is a steal.)

upon entering the dining room, the first thing i noticed was the openness of the entire room. the ceiling opened up to some sort of dome, with artwork lit up and lights hanging from above. (for me, it was reminiscent of caesar's in atlantic city, with the domed sky above you, making you feel like you were actually outside.) the fact that the tables were very spaced apart also contributed to the sense of openness.

we were seated in a booth and each started with a glass of chardonnay. warm bread was presented to us, along with some sort of eggplant puree which was a pleasant addition to the butter. i was hungry (what's new) so we started off with appetizers. i ordered the daily soup, which was a duo of mushroom and potato, with a spinach (?) flan on top. i wasn't the biggest fan of the flan, but the soup was great. the mushroom provided an earthy flavor to the salty, creamy potato. cavin got the samboussek, spiced chicken in a crispy rolled pastry (think long pencil) and shallot remoulade. the filling was quite spiced, and while it was tasty, it was a little bit dry.

it took me a while to decide what to order, but once my food came out, i knew i had hit a winner. the truffled parsnip pierogi with parmesan mousse, brown butter and raisins was probably one of the better pasta dishes i've had in a while. the filling was light and airy, and the scent of the truffle oil mixed in with the browned butter sauce kept bringing my nose to the plate to smell (and then taste, of course) over and over again. the raisins were quite interesting, and were a nice complement to the sweetness of the truffle oil.

cavin's grilled squid over polenta was served with rapini (broccoli raab) and black olives. the piece i tasted was delicious, if not a little on the salty side (perhaps due to the olives). i don't really order polenta, but my standard now is the 3 cheese polenta at dino i had last week. kolumbia's polenta was just general. i've seen polenta cooked before, and i think sometimes it gets harder the longer it sits out (i could be wrong). so i think the polenta was indeed sitting out and/or it was cooked a bit of time ago, because cavin's polenta had a stiff crust on top, indicative of what i just mentioned.

i should also mention that we also ordered a side of 'best on k french fries' to see how good they were (well, i just really like french fries) and they were fantastic. they were in the belgium frites style, and were crispy on the outside, yet delicately potato-y on the inside (if that even makes any sense). had they been doused with a little bit of truffle oil, i would have been in heaven. while i cannot vouch for the fries being the best on k street, you can be definitely assured that cavin and i will be making a trip back for these bad boys.

as we were enjoying our meal, something unexpected happened which caused me to lose my appetite a little. because we were sitting in a booth, our table was up against a wall. as i was looking around, i spotted a BUG, about 1" long (similar to a roach, but not exactly - it did have a hard shell and antennae) crawling on the wall, walking down towards the table. i informed cavin and he used his napkin to try to steer it clear from the table, so he could eventually push it to the floor.

maybe you don't know this, but i don't like bugs. this is serious. i really don't like them AT ALL. i'm not a big proponent of killing them (though, flies and mosquitos i don't care - they are nasty), but i still just don't like them.

so i was fine with cavin's idea to push it to the floor. but the darned thing wouldn't make up it's mind. it kept walking back up to the picture that was hanging from the wall, then it would walk back down towards the table, then it started crawling towards cavin's coat. the whole thing was upsetting to me, as i couldn't eat my food without having to check the wall every few seconds to make sure we hadn't lost track of our friend.

this must have went on for at least 5 minutes, because who i can only suspect was the manager, walked over to our table and said, 'i'm so sorry! do you want to move to another table?' at the same exact time she walked up, i noticed cavin was fooling around underneath the table with his napkin. i told the gm it's fine, we don't need another table (at this point, we had like 1/4 of our meal left and i didn't want to have to relocate). cavin agrees, and at this point, i'm still wondering where the bug is - i can only assume that cavin has brushed our friend onto the floor because it was no longer on the wall.

the gm is still standing there, and is finally like, 'well, let me at least give you a clean one.' hunh? a clean what? apparently cavin has squashed our poor friend at the same exact moment the gm walked over to our table. they traded napkins and then we finished our meal.

we did not get dessert because we were really full, plus we had already been there for like 1.5 hours. i do have to admit that even though we ordered a lot of food and we are slow eaters, there were long delays in getting our food. had it not taken so long to get our appetizers, and then our mains, we would have been out of there in an hour or so. plus, the whole bug debacle didn't help matters either.

all in all, i thought it was a fantastic meal. the restaurant wasn't crowded at all so we'll have to add it to our 'places to go for lunch'. (i don't know if it was too cold for people to go out or what. but even when we walked out, there were only 2 patrons at the bar.)

hopefully next time, their fumigating (which the waiter explained happened the day before) will have worked and all the bugs will be long gone.

restaurant kolumbia
1801 k street nw
washington, dc 20006
202.331.5551

Labels: chaos, french fries, restaurant, seafood