Location Index
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Uncle Orson's Restaurant Guide
The Restaurant
at the Ritz-Carlton
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es, I know what you think about hotel restaurants, and in most cases you're right (but wait till I do my Nashville restaurant page). In this case, however, the service is perfect (attentive and welcoming without being either chummy, snooty, or intrusive), and the experience only gets better from there. You pay by the course at this restaurant, and they don't care which courses you get; next time I'll probably skip the entree, not because it wasn't good but because I couldn't stop eating the perfect "oak leaf salad," which I ordered without dressing because the copious amounts of Roquefort cheese in it were dressing enough for me. The soup, a creamy corn-and-chicken, was as good as the soups at the prelapsarian Paolo's used to be, with the added bonus of a tiny but memorable lobster cake in the middle of the soup platter. (And speaking of service, they willingly allowed me to choose the garnish from one soup to go with another. They really do want to give you the meal you want instead of the one the chef has determined will be better for you.)
I intend to go back to this one often. It's expensive, but not extravagantly so. But from the parking garage it is an adventure to actually find the restaurant. You can barely find the hotel lobby! Here's a hint: Take the parking garage elevator to the highest floor it goes to. That's where the restaurant is, though there's not a sign or clue that this is the case. Then go through the labyrinth of corridors until you find something that looks like a hotel lobby and ask someone to point you on from there. If you come to something that looks like a shopping mall, it is the shopping mall and you've taken a wrong turn. Go back. Do not pass go.
Go early or midweek and you probably won't need a reservation; and they really are willing to let you come casually dressed, though you may find yourself the only one not in a coat and tie. You will often find yourself sitting a table away from money and power, so you can overhear how pathetically banal their conversations can be, which is always more interesting than one's own pathetically banal conversation.
703-917-5498
At Tyson's Corner II Mall, just off route 123 at the beltway. Drive around to the back of the mall and pull into the Ritz-Carlton turnaround. Before you get to the hotel entrance, you can take a right turn into the parking garage, which is free in the evenings. (Tyson's Corner II is the mall with Macy's. If you're at the mall with movie theaters or Lord & Taylor or Hecht's, you're at Tyson's Corner I. You have to cross busy highway 123, but there it will be in all its pretentious glory, the really expensive mall. But you want to know this location because it's also where you'll find Legal Seafood.)