Obelisk

Description:

• Obelisk is the most consistently excellent restaurant in the city. Service and food are simply the best. In this pleasantly spare room that seats only 36, the walls are decorated with 19th-century French botanical prints and Italian lithographs. Here, owner Peter Pastan and chef Jerry Corso present small fixed-price menus of sophisticated Italian cuisine using the freshest-possible ingredients. Each night, diners are offered two or three choices for each of five courses. Dinner might begin with an antipasti misti of zucchini fritters, deep-fried risotto croquettes, and garbanzo beans with tuna in olive oil; followed by sweetbread and porcini ravioli with sage butter; and then an artfully arranged dish of grilled stuffed quail and duck sausage with spinach, or black bass with peppers, fennel and green sauce . . . or whatever the chef has been inspired to create. A cheese course is next, and the meal concludes with dessert, perhaps pear spice cake, rose-petal panna cotta, or some other heavenly concoction. Divine breads and desserts are all baked in-house. Pastan's carefully crafted wine list represents varied regions of Italy, as well as California vintages. The fixed-price menu is a good value, but the cost of wine and coffees can easily double the price per person.

• © Frommer's 2013

Awards:

The Washingtonian

•  Top 100 Restaurant 2008
•  Top 100 Restaurant 2009

Frommer's

•  Very Highly Recommended 2009