Elizabeth's Gone Raw - A Delicious Culinary Experience
Earlier this week, a friend of mine and I decided to go to a fancy restaurant in Downtown DC and do their tasting menu. We’re both foodies and what’s the point of living in a major city if you don’t, at least occasionally, take advantage of that fact. We’d planned it about a month ago and we were in for their new winter menu.
The restaurant, Elizabeth’s Gone Raw, is an all vegan restaurant and catering company in DC. They are only open a couple days a week (Thursday – Saturday) and my friend and I figured Thursday would be the most fun. The restaurant only has a tasting menu, which we enjoyed with the suggested wine pairing. The total meal ended up being eight dishes of varying sizes accompanied by eight different drinks. The beverages were mostly wine, but there was also a sparkling sake and an ale woven in there.
First, let me say – this place did not miss. Every single one of the dishes we had was so good. Most tasting menus have one, maybe two dishes that are misses but every single one here was good. The lowest I’d give any course is an 8 out of 10. Second, do not let the vegan title scare you off or make you think that I’m grading on a curve here. This is hands down delicious food involving some really impressive molecular/creative gastronomy aspects.
I’m not going to go through every single dish and wine here but here are the highlights of the meal and the few, but extant, dislikes I had from the meal.
Top Dishes:
Amuse Bouche: An Edisto bean crisp bowl with parsnip cream and mole negro.
Ok so this was fantastic. The cream was so fluffy and delicious (and who knew you could do that to parsnips) and the mole underneath gave it the slight depth it needed. It also went very well with the beverage it was served with, which was a sparkling sake.
Bread Course: Yucca crisp with fava butter and gremolata.
Rather than have a breadbasket at any point with the meal, they had a “bread” course right after the amuse bouche. The “bread” was shredded yucca pressed into a crisp/really big cracker and served with fava bean butter and gremolata. The gremolata was just fine, the closest thing this place had to a miss, but the fava bean butter was seriously delicious. It also wasn’t too much. I’ve learned that bread baskets are dangerous in these situations but this was the right amount to exist as a course.
Course 5: Rutabaga Gratin with shaved truffle, lime-truffle pearls and sunchoke crisps.
This was the best dish of the night (admittedly by a hair since everything was great, but still). It was so delicious in every aspect. The gratin, the pearls, the jus it was served in, the little crips - everything was an A+. If I could, I’d go back to get a just that dish and a glass of wine.
Top Wine: Dry sparkling Brut from the Jura region of France
The was my absolute favorite wine of the night. It was an excellent sparkling wine with specifically honey crisp apple notes. Which is delightful by itself, and made even more perfect by the fact it was paired with the dessert course, a pear and apple tart with mousse and sorbet. The wine notes matched the apple in dessert in a very harmonious way, making it an ideal wine and food pairing.
Dislikes
No place or meal is perfect. As my therapist once told me, “Perfection is bullshit.” So, there were a couple things that I was not a fan of.
My main issue with the meal was the way the sommelier presented the wines before each dish. Rather than giving us each drink with an explanation, he took us on something he referred to as a trip through winter wonderland. Which mean that he basically told us a story, with a different little progression with each meal. We started by going sledding and then ended up at a farmer’s market and then met up with grumpy Mr. Johnson … etc. etc. It was honestly rather annoying.
I love wine, I’m an amateur sommelier too, the bits where he told us about the wines and how they were going to interact with the various dishes was great, I enjoyed that. But I didn’t need that woven into a story.
The only thing I consumed that I can said I actually disliked was the Hokkaido Melon Ale that was served about half-way though the meal. It was a Japanese melon ale that tasted like drinking a cantaloupe. Or Midori. Ironically this was the sommelier’s favorite of the meal. I’m sure it has a place but for me it was no. Just no.
Conclusion
If you’re in the DC area and have money to spend on an amazing meal, go here. Doesn’t matter if you are vegan, vegetarian, or eat meat (I am a vegetarian and my friend is a pescetarian), the food is excellent. And if you don’t want to go full on tasting menu, they do have a bar downstairs that has a small selection of dishes and a large selection of drinks. I highly doubt I’ll do the whole experience again (unless I magically acquire a great deal of money) but I would like to go back and check out the bar. After my wallet recovers. 9.5/10.
