3/31/2023 0 Comments The cave bar rescueThe spinach-artichoke dip is good, the mumbo wings are fine, the steak-au-jus sandwich is inedibly salty, and the fish part of the fish and chips doesn’t quite flake the way one might expect (a sous-vide symptom, perhaps?). Hm, our local leaders are spending a Thursday morning at the DC franchise of a reality-tv restaurant? Baffling-but perhaps a good sign for the food. A deputy mayor and a couple of council members plan to go in her place, alongside Taffer himself, who is literally rolling out a red carpet in front of the restaurant. Oh, there’s a ribbon cutting? Yes, and Mayor Bowser was slated to attend, but regrettably she’s busy. “Umm, maybe two years ago?” The story is from 2017.īefore our food arrives, a suited publicist descends on our table and reminds us of the ribbon cutting ceremony tomorrow. My friend notes that our colleague actually wrote a story about the emerging mini-clothespins-on-cocktails trend. “Was that recent?” I ask. Another drink has a dehydrated orange slice clipped with a tiny wood clothespin to its rim. My blue drink tastes like Gatorade topped with a ginger egg white foam. ![]() Here’s an example: the drinks allegedly “employ some of the most advanced mixology techniques while staying on-trend and introducing photo-worthy cocktails that taste even better than they look.” Not true. Sorry to be petty, but I want to point out that Taffer’s is not what the press release promised. ![]() I bring this up because Taffer’s Tasters is basically Liquor Treating without the party, and I eye it warily all night. The last time I threw up from drinking was in college, after a Halloween party called “Liquor Treating” in which the student residents of a rundown apartment building invited friends to go door-to-door, sampling a different saccharine liquid in each unit. So I choose the “Taffer’s Tasters,” a flight of four popular drinks, one of which turns out to be blue. When my dinner companion arrives, we peruse the drink menu, a bewildering thicket of sugar (a “cotton candy garnish,” “toasted marshmallow vodka,” “Browned Butter Rye Whiskey”) that all looks so awful that I literally cannot decide. I’m told that the cuisine at Taffer’s is almost all sous-vide-a fancy French technique that’s essentially putting food in a plastic bag and cooking it in a bath of hot water. The vibe is less “Old-World tavern” than “HGTV man-cave meets mid-tier hotel lobby”: exposed brick, little brass lamps, and flat-screen TVs. A member of “the market” who is ready to be excited. The host leads me into the sunken dining room, past serpentine booths upholstered with oriental rugs. ![]() Well, here I am: a consumer of DC food and drink. ![]() In the (many) press releases my colleagues received, the tavern is described as an “innovative restaurant concept” “ designed with traditional Old – World taverns in mind,” featuring “outstanding signature drinks, mouth-watering savory food, excellent customer service, and the highest safety standards in the industry.” Jon Taffer personally promises to “excite the market” in the “vibrant culinary destination” that is DC. I’m there for a Wednesday night media preview, a free meal that the tavern’s Hollywood-style publicity machine has been hyping for weeks. This unnerving portrait set the mood for my evening at the new DC location of Taffer’s Tavern, which opened next to Capital One Arena on Thursday.
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