"100 Very Best Restaurants"
Washingtonian

Now that the challenges of getting Equinox built, opened, and off to a successful start are 18 months behind him, chef Todd Gray is concentrating on defining his culinary style. The gratifying result is a frequently changing menu of technically precise, refreshingly uncomplicated dishes. Gray is not unaware of the foreign-flavor-of-the-month club that entralls many Modern American cooks - Moroccan, Persian, and Indian spices seem currently in flavor on local American menus - he just chooses not to join it.

On his current menus, Gray restricts most of the dishes to just three or four components: a main ingredient, its sauce, and one or two garnishes meant to contrast with or complement the meat, poultry, or seafood. A pan roasted filet of striped bass, for example, is presented on a background of bouillabaisse jus, garnished with saffron-tinted potatoes, and decorated with a thin slice of toasted baguette spread with garlic-flavored mayonnaise. Gray's simple compositions of sharply focused primal flavours achieve an unexpected level of sophistication. His approach also has a more rural quality about it than does any other local version of Modern American cooking. Its unaffected, comforting quality - a maple-glazed roasted quail perched on an oniony potato latke; chestnut soup garnished with slices of S. Wallace Edwards & Sons wonderful smoked sausage: a loin of lamb garnished with Swiss chard and small ravioli stuffed with a puree of white beans - make it easy to imagine that you are sitting not in a restaurant a few blocks from the White House but in an undiscovered country inn, where a talented chef is cooking wonderful dishes from local produce.

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