Category Archives: Georgetown

Paper Moon

Posted on by Hungry in DC

Location: Georgetown

Price: $$$

Rating: 3 out of 5

Summary: A great deal without sacrificing classic Italian flavors

Paper Moon is a popular Georgetown restaurant tucked on a side street off of the main drag down M St NW. The warm summer weather opens up the front of the restaurant and its seating seems to spill out, reminiscent to open air eateries in some European neighborhoods. Its flavors are also familiar to those of the old world, the menu drawing upon classic recipes in the usual presentation. Paper Moon really offers nothing new or surprising beyond the great deal you get for the meal you pay for. For better or worse, it’s worth noting that we know of no one who has had to make a reservation in order to be seated when arriving. With good food, casual atmosphere and reasonable prices, Paper Moon offers an answer to that Italian hunger you have without making you feel like you just shelled out for a trip to Italy.

Our first order was a simple Caesar salad, a mix of iceberg lettuce, light salad dressing, cheese and croutons. The lettuce was crisp and the Caesar dressing light. What more can you say?

The second dish was one of the featured specials, Pollo Saltimbocca, chicken breast sautéed in white wine, prosciutto and herb sage. The chicken breast was pounded, forfeiting much of the tenderness of a whole breast. Likely this was necessary so the poultry could cook through quickly while wrapped in prosciutto. Some restaurants that use this technique produce an overly salty taste, but Paper Moon manages to break that trend. The butter and white wine sauce gives the plate a much needed savory finish, bringing out flavor from the chicken that even itself can’t provide on its own. The cooked prosciutto also adds more body to the dish, the Italian ham dried as a result of the cooking and bringing a welcomed taste to the whole dish. The accompanying vegetables were the perfect balance between soft and firm.

Next was Linguine with Salmon, an appropriately named dish that contained pieces of smoked salmon with linguini in creamy tomato vodka sauce. Although some may question the choice of using smoked salmon (it just didn’t match up right with the other flavors of the dish as other salmon may have), the vodka sauce absorbs every positive aspect of the fish and makes it its own. Even though the consistency is thick, it doesn’t weigh down the taste of the linguine and the integrity of the light pieces of salmon. This is simply one of the better vodka sauces we have had in DC and makes this dish alone a reason to return to Paper Moon.

Our final dish was their Tiramisu, lady fingers soaked in coffee, layered on whipped cream and topped with an espresso and cinnamon sprinkle. Our waiter boasted that the desert was homemade and tasting it gave us no reason to doubt him. Despite the large amount of cream and pastry, the desert is surprisingly light, making it the perfect finish to a meal where we already had leftovers. We’ve had better versions of this classic Italian desert, but the texture and flavors of this tiramisu was a perfect complement to the meal we enjoyed. While other Italian places force your stomach to its limits with a heavy pastry, this seemed more to be rounding out the whole dinner.

Is Paper Moon the best Italian we’ve had in DC? No, but it doesn’t have to be in order to be a great meal. Plenty of flavor and variety of dishes presents a quality meal without a gut punch to your purse, especially with a planned Living Social discount ($20 for $40). A reasonably priced menu that still give you robust, classic Italian dishes are what make this restaurant worth coming back to.

Filomena Ristorante

Posted on by Hungry in DC

Location: Georgetown

Price: $$$$

Rating: 4 out of 5

Summary: Authentic Italian flavors and generosity come standard

I’ve never been to Italy, but I can only hope it’s like Filomena Ristorante. In full disclosure, I’ve been to this restaurant many times before in many different environments. Whether it’s quality family time, impressing a girl’s parents with your impeccable taste in cuisine or as a late night dinner on the fly, this place has never let me down. Although it is by no means perfect, it sticks to the traditional Italian cuisine and does it well.

Filomena could easily be passed over, positioned on a side street of downtown Georgetown in a basement location. The moment you walk in, you see to the right of a descending staircase an older Italian woman hand rolling gnocchi or pasta, leaving you to wonder what you’ve been missing out on. Everything, from the sauce to the pasta to the large desert selection, is made fresh in house. That may explain why the house is always so crowded which often leaves you with a tight, Tetris-like space to sit in. Yet, the wait staff still finds a way to consistently make it to your table with to check up on you.

For anti-pasta, we selected “Calamari alla Sicily”, the typical calamari paired with the usual marinara sauce. Although the marinara accurately reflected the quality ingredients and care of the kitchen (a good start for any Italian restaurant), the calamari was rather pedestrian with a tough consistency, leaving me with regret at not ordering the “Arancini” rice balls. This may be a harsh criticism since I have only once had what I can call well made calamari (The Caucus Room). However, the usual portion of bread that is given to every patron has to be some of the best I have had.

My entrée was the “Costoletta di vitello ala parmigiana”, a 20 ounce Veal Chop, thinly pounded, crisply breaded and pan fried. It is topped with their marinara sauce, melted mozzarella and parmesan Cheese and accompanied with rigatoni pasta. As you can expect from a bone-in chop of that size, the veal rightly sat on its own plate. Tender and full of flavor, the breading complemented the meat instead of masking it, as often is the case with pounded and breaded meat. Even the overly al dente pasta couldn’t detract from the masterpiece of meat I was able to sample. I say sample because well over half of my meal was left over. As stated earlier, portions are generous and expect to leave with to-go boxes.

With the conclusion of every meal at Filomena, your server brings what can only be summarized as the best restaurant tradition: two large crystal containers, one filled with amaretto and the other with sambuca, and small glass of coffee beans. These are free for the diner to taste complimentary of the house (until they politely indicate you’ve sampled enough roughly fifteen minutes later). Some establishments have generous servers that offer the occasional free drink to diners. At Filomena, that generosity comes standard.

If you’ve somehow avoided passing out from the sheer intake of pasta and delicious fare, there is still the desert portion of the meal. After convincing my dinner companion that we could handle the extra burden, we ordered a piece of their Coco Choco cake and Strawberry Cheesecake. The cheesecake was some of the best I have ever had. The chocolate cake and coconut-cream layered goliath had all the right flavors (think Mounds bar), but was simply the wrong selectiongiven the heavy and rich textures.

If you’re looking to impress or simply have a great Italian dinner, Filomena is your choice. Although some imperfections keep this restaurant from attaining immortal glory, it comes damn close to being one of the best restaurants in DC. The long catalog of famous names imprinted on every menu’s cover speaks to the rich history and prized reputation of the establishment. Filomena Ristorante stands out as one of the best traditional Italian restaurants in Washington and will likely be visited by this author for years to come.