At a time when so many restaurant meals still begin with a server asking "sparkling or still?" the Smith earns an immediate pat on the back. Waiters simply show up with free flasks of house-filtered bubbly and flat water, leaving them on the table so customers can help themselves.
An American brasserie with four branches in New York, the Smith follows McCormick and Schmick’s in Penn Quarter. It’s an expansive, jarringly loud dining room with a something-for-everyone menu — a good thing given the restaurant’s proximity to Verizon Center.
Lookswise, what’s not subway tile or a globe light seems to be a mirror or too-small table. A gaggle of hosts greet you when you stroll through the door. I’ve never dropped by that the place hasn’t felt like rush hour on the Metro: hip to hip.
Eyes are pulled to the bar, a Candy Land for grown-ups with hundreds of illuminated bottles of sauce on the wall and chalkboard menus plugging drinks arranged under one-word headings, including “bubbly,” “boozy” and “spicy.” True to its name, Touch of Evil packs a punch with rye, Aperol, grapefruit juice and (pow!) habanero syrup. A good sop for the booze — crisp flatbread festooned with sliced potatoes, crumbled bacon and soft leeks — arrives on a wooden paddle and is easily shared.
There’s little you won’t recognize on the menu, built around crowd-pleasers such as chicken potpie, shortribs and shrimp pasta. But the kitchen sees to it that those and other entrees come with something that sets them apart from the pack: a flat cheese biscuit to cover the potpie, a chile-lime crema to ignite the beef and crumbled garlic bread to dust the seafood pasta, tinted black with squid ink. Crab tots, a draw among the opening acts, are basically one-bite crab cakes, each perched on a swipe of Alabama white sauce. Rich.
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Every night touts a special. Saturday’s paella is no match for the classic served at the nearby Jaleo, I’m compelled to report. And at lunch, the fried chicken sandwich offers nice heat but not sufficient crunch.
The sleeper at Smith is a meatless bibimbap, a jazzy bowl of pearly rice strewn with wilted spinach, mushrooms and kimchi, and topped with a sunny egg. Close your eyes and you could be eating bibimbap in Annandale, the heart of Korean dining in the Washington area.
Bravo for the s’mores, campfire classics staged in little glass jars, but boo to the lemon tart with its yellow layer of what could double as rubber.
The name? It refers to “makers,” as in barsmiths and cooksmiths, says founder and managing partner Jeffrey Lefcourt. Expertise and making people happy, he says, are part of the restaurant group’s core values.
The Smith is mixed, but it aims to please. Just cover your ears when you eat.
901 F St. NW. 202-868-4900. thesmithrestaurant.com. Entrees, $14 to $44.
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