Restaurant Eve

I was always interested to visit a petit restaurant called "Restaurant Eve" in Alexandria, VA. Recently I was checking the nominees for James Beard Foundation Awards and I was glad to see Bryan Voltaggio from "Volt" and Cathal Armstrong from "Restaurant Eve" on the list for "Best Chef:Mid-Atlantic". I visited "Volt" back in January and need to revisit for Table 21 soon. Well, that will be another blog post later on. I've heard lots of good things about "Restaurant Eve" so I decided to make a visit and taste chef's creations.

Chef Cathal Armstrong is a Dublin native who is inspired by his parent's passion for food and began to develop his own culinary skills at an early age in Ireland. He always thought of fresh ingredients, usually growing his own fruits and vegetables from his garden. He also developed an appreciation of gastronomy, which I could tell from his wonderful dishes.

The Restaurant is in oldtown Alexandria, near busy section of King St. It's close to the waterfront so it's nice to take a walk for couple blocks and enjoy the view after the meal.


The restaurant has two distinct dining experiences, "The Chef's Tasting Room" and "The Bistro". "The Chef's Tasting Room" is Chef Armstrong's culinary showcase where he features, a five, seven , and nice course tasting menu. "The Bistro" is less formal than the Tasting room and it has its own entrees. Nine course menu has one more dessert and one extra palate cleanser so I decided that it is better to get seven course menu. The seven course menu is very much like Omakase. There is no definite list of menu but chef uses his imagination and creates his own dishes, using that day's fresh ingredients. So it is own of kind meal, which I very much appreciated and was very excited to try.

They had this dishes in the tasting room tables that are beautiful to look at. The designs are all different and they are made by an Italian dish maker. Very unique!

Tasting Room

The Bistro

Trio of canapes - foie gras with fig jame, salmon mousse, deviled quail egg with caviar.
Foie gras was well infused with fig jam. Salmon mousse is very smooth. I wanted this for my bagels every morning instead of using salmon cream cheese. Deviled quail egg with caviar was just okay for me. I can make this at home and touch it with caviar.

Tempura eel served in an eel sauce.
This was good. The outer layer was very crunch without being soaked by eel sauce. Soft eel inside and crunch outside layer was perfectly balance together.

Strawberry sorbet served over a lemongrass & champagne jelly
Very good flavor. It was good for a palate cleanser.

Sashimi of bigeye tuna with green almonds, grilled almond emulsion, argan oil.
This is where Chef Armstrong's gastronomy came in. I never though of tasting bigeye tuna with almond argan oil. Almond sauce brought out tuna flavor from within(bigeye tuna has more fat thus making it more flavorful) and argan oil added a nice aroma to the aftertaste.

Sashimi of yellowfin tuna with a citrus emulsion, citrus salt, compressed ginger.
Another brilliant idea of using compressed ginger to tuna. Yellowfin tuna has a mild taste that using an ingredients like ginger and citrus will intensify the mild taste and bring out more flavor from the fish. This was a very good idea.

Bread.
Very very good. I felt like I was in a cafe in Paris and biting into a good loaf of bread. Outer layer is just crunch enough to not cut inside your mouth and inner part was very soft.

Virginia asparagus with baby white asparagus panna cotta, asparagus ice cream, bliss elixir.
It was interesting to taste asparagus ice cream. It went very well with panna cotta. Asparagus was cooked perfectly: soft throughout the inside and moist. I can turn into a vegetarian if I can duplicate this all the time.

Baby asparagus with poached quail egg.
A steamed version of soft asparagus.

Espellette crusted(panko bread flavored with chili flake) skate wing with sunchokes and garli-almond cream.
Oh boy! This was the best dish for me during the dinner. I've never had a skate quite like this dish. At first, I thought this was more like crab meat than skate. It broke into pieces like crab meat and very moist without being dry. Crusted bread was just enough without being killing the skate and chili flakes gave little kick to the taste buds. Garlic-almond cream also went well with bring out the flavor of skate. I was craving for this dish the very next day!

Pan roasted skate served over fresh chickpeas, spring onions and sea beans with an oyster vinaigrette.
Another excellent dish with well balanced vegetables. It was interesting to use an oyster vinaigrette which it brought sea-flavor to pan roasted skate.

Crisp veal sweetbreads with spring onions, sunflower puree and veal glace.
My second favorite of the night. Veal Sweetbread is battered just enough with condiments without being salty. Sunflower puree added a delicately mild taste to the dish.

Crisp veal sweetbreads with preserved Meyer lemon risotto, fresh garbanzo beans, veal glace.
Lemon risotto was cooked al dente and citrus flavor intensified the tasted of sweetbread.

Loin of Broken Arrow Ranch venison with baby carrots, spring onions and truffle au jus.
This dish was good but I wish there are few changes. First, the knife at the table was not a good enough to cut though the meat. Second, the meat could've been little bit more tender through tendering process before cooking it. Other than these two, the meat was cooked to medium rare, which I like on meats, and truffle au jus added good flavor.

Set of crumb scrapers.
While waiting for the next meal, I started a conversation with my waiter and we talked about different crumb scrapers at different restaurants. And then he brought out antique set of crumb scrapers at the restaurant. It was interesting to see different types and also there are collectors out there for these.

"Pipe Dreams Ash log" ( goat cheese from Pipe Dreams Farm, Pennsylvania) with bourbon cherry compote and almond-tellicherry pepper tuile.
The cheese is wrapped with ashes from burnt logs thus it has distinct look and flavor. Te bourbon cherry compote added just enough sweetness and crunch almond-tellichery ppper tuile added another characteristic to the dish.

"Bayley Hazen" (cow milk blue cheese from Jasper Hill Farm, Vermont) with deconstructed percan pie & nutmeg cream.
I wasn't sure what ched's intention was on this dish. Maybe his Irish background played a role in this dish but the blue cheese was quite strong and it over-killed other flavors.

Eclair filled with a mousse of cardamom, coffee and caramel.
Small bite size pre-dessert sweeter. Eclair was baked well with wonderful flavor of coffee, hints of caramel and creamy mousse upon first bite.

Bananas Foster - bananas cooked in rum served with a charred cinnamon stick, bananas Milanese(crisp layers between bananas cream), cinnamon ice cream.
Warm rum add sweetness to bananas without adding lots of sugar and it had a nice flavor of cinnamon. Banana cream was very cream without being too sweet. Cinnamon ice cream was very interesting as well. I thought it would be more sweeter side of cinnamon but it reminded me the spiciness of cinnamon. An interesting idea of blending bananas and cinnamon.

Strawberry Shortcake - shortcake filled with strawberries served with strawberry buttercream, tarragon sauce & whipped cream.
For me, this dessert was too plain. Shortcake itself was flavorful and baked well but there was just too much strawberry-ness and nothing striking.

Finale dessert tower: Birthday & orange macarons, white chocolate and nut candies, lemon tartlets, arlets.
Well I shouldn't expect anything of macarons unless if they are from Laduree. White chocolate and nut candies are somewhat usual as one might expect from Christmas dessert gifts. Lemon tartlets are good but average. However, arlets were very good. They are almost like a battered, sweetened jumbo size cornflakes.

So I finished my meal with coffee. It was good coffee and I loved it even more when they served me with natural sugar crystals and a piece of cookie. I think using natural sugar crystal makes coffee more flavorful. Also it's more healthy too.

Overall, the dining experience was very enjoyably and the dishes were fantastic and tasteful. I see why they have received Four out of Four Stars from the Washington Post and nominated for James Beard Foundation Award. The ingredients were very fresh and well balanced. I would definitely want to come back again, perhaps bring a date next time.

The Tasting room opens Monday through Saturday between 5:30pm~9:30pm. It's little difficult to make a reservation for the weekend so give yourself plenty of time for weekend reservation. The Bistro dinner opens Monday through Saturday between 5:30pm~10pm. There is strict dress code: It is advisable for gentlemen to wear jackets and ladies to dress in fine garments for dinner.