100 Very Best Restaurants
Washingtonian, from the January 2002 issue.

The Finest Dining in Virginia, Maryland, and the District.

Read the review of Equinox from the 100 Very Best Restaurants article.

For Washington restaurants, a year that began with inaugural festivities and fully booked tables ended with uncertainty. Business travel, important to many downtown DC restaurants, was down after September 11. Tourism also was down, and Washingtonians seemed to be eating out less often as the pleasures of home looked more comforting.

It was, nevertheless, a year of significant restaurant openings. Cesare Lanfranconi, formerly at Galileo, opened Tosca in downtown DC, but the most interesting openings were in the Virginia suburbs. In Tysons Corner, chef Bob Kinkead, who owns the four-star Kinkead's in DC's Foggy Bottom, opened Colvin Run Tavern. The Ritz-Carlton hotel in Tysons Corner remodeled its restaurant, renamed it Maestro, and brought in chef Fabio Trabocchi. In Alexandria, chef Susan McCreight Lindeborg reopened the Majestic Cafe, an Old Town landmark that had been vacant for two decades. Of these three openings, two are Italian and the third serves American comfort food.

Asian food continues to be popular. Amma Vegetarian Kitchen joins its pricier relation, Heritage India, on the list. The addition of Eat First and Lei Garden, both in DC's Chinatown, bodes well for that area. The Asian influence continues in other restaurants. In his review of Vidalia, Robert Shoffner talks about chef Peter Smith's incorporation of Asian elements his Modern Southern cooking.

Successful restaurants continue to clone themselves, opening second and third locations. Jaleo has opened a branch in Bethesda. Cafe Deluxe is now in Bethesda and Tysons Corner, where Neisha Thai also has a new location.

This year Michel Richard Citronelle joins the ranks of four-star winners. Robert Wiedmaier's Belgian-influenced French cooking at Marcel's earns a third star, as does the Belgian restaurant Le Mannequin Pis in Olney.

Several restaurants„the Vigorelli and Red Tomato„have closed. Others have had brushes with health-department inspectors. And some have been left behind by the continuing improvement in the quality of area restaurants.

Award winners have been selected on the basis of meals eaten in the past 12 months. Each restaurant has been compared with others of the same type and level of ambition. Restaurants are rated according to how well they fulfill their promise of good cooking, value, service, and ambience.

Restaurants are rated as good (one star), very good (two stars), superior (three stars), or outstanding (four stars). Establishments with three or four stars are designated Blue Ribbon Award winners. Four-star restaurants are among the best of their kind in the country.

The cost of dinner for two„including three courses or a fixed-price menu, a moderately priced bottle of wine or other suitable beverage, plus tax and a 15-percent tip„is the basis for this scale: $50 or less for two people is inexpensive; $51 to $100 is moderate; $101 to $175 is expensive; more than $175 is very expensive. This assumes that the meal for two is dinner and that it is enough of an occasion to include alcoholic beverages, which can increase a bill significantly. Restaurants in DC were selected by Robert Shoffner and Thomas Head, in Maryland by David Dorsen, and in Virginia by Cynthia Hacinli and Thomas Head.

Read the review of Equinox from the 100 Very Best Restaurants article.

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