1799 at The Clifton — Restaurant in Virginia

Second Valentines Day event for my wife and me (yes correct grammar). We were also here for the restaurant week meal a couple of weeks before. The food was good, but we did not care for where we were seated then. We were blessed with one of the best seats in the house this 2024 Valentines Day…which is also our anniversary, which they recognized nicely.

For people not familiar with this place, the chef is French trained, it is a very different cuisine if you are not familiar with it. Often very rich but subtle on spices and sometimes complex and always artful plating.

This year the food was an improvement over last year, but the time to be served the 5 courses was almost excruciating. If we could afford many drinks and bottles of wine, and stayed at the Clifton so we could stagger to our accommodations, that would be fine, but the wine and drinks here are confiscatory priced for the average person. The $75 bottle of wine we ordered (one of the least expensive available) was gone by the third course and that was sipping slowly. As it did in 2023, it took 2-1/2 hours from seating to leaving. My rear-end was sore from sitting…I should have taken a walk halfway through.

On to the food:

1st course: I had the Olde Salt Oysters. Never had anything like it. They were tasty, “interesting” and complex, but don’t recall tasting the actual oyster. There was so much going on and slightly sweet. Hard to wrap my head around sweet with oysters, but I’m not versed in French fine dining. My wife had the lobster bisque. It was good but room temperature, not hot at all and the blood orange supremes in it were certainly unusual. She kept thinking they were going to be pieces of lobster. Not.

2nd course: (we both had the same thing going forward) Gulf Prawns and Grits. Good, very rich, “interesting”. They lightly coated and deep fried the prawn heads/bodies and had them at the edge of the bowl. Looking around, this confused others as well. Recalling that people in other cultures eat shrimp shell and all; I took a bite. The shells are not for me. My wife didn’t even consider it. It was the heads. She’s not eating that.

3rd course: Shallow Poached Striped Bass We’re not sure we’ve ever had bass before. I always thought of bass as a sport fishing fish rather than a fish people eat much. Turns out in the hands of Chef Matthew, it is an outstanding fish. It was cooked to perfection…JUST barely beyond slightly raw. I would have loved a pinch of salt over it.

4th course: Slow Roasted Lamb Shoulder Outstanding. Again, we are accustomed to more seasonings, but the lamb was excellent. This was the dish we decided to take some home because the service is so slow. By the time we got to this course, our stomach had told our minds we were full…done with dinner. Upon reheating at home, a little salt and pepper and a side of smashed roasted potatoes made an excellent leftover for another dinner.

5th course: Chocolate Crème Brulé Good flavor but the crème was a bit grainy. Not sure how that happens. I make crème Brulé at home, and it is never grainy. I’ve never made a chocolate version though.

All in all it was a good service for $110 each…a special occasion of something we never do otherwise. We are not sure we will do it again. Not because of the $110 each. The service time was just too long (not the server’s fault, I think it is a small kitchen and they can only cook, plate and expedite so many plates at a time) and we like wine or cocktails with dinner and anything alcohol here is outrageously expensive.

With one bottle of wine and a 25% tip we spent over $400. Average people cannot fully understand and appreciate the cuisine here. I kept a menu beside me and even shared it with the couple next to us so we could reference what we were supposed to be tasting. It was helpful.

I had to remove my first review (2023 Valentines Day). Not enough characters allowed to keep it all. There were a few more misses with the food for us then, but the service was outstanding. Excruciatingly slow but you really feel the upscale sense...

Mom and I went to The 1799 for Chef Matthew’s special Easter curated 3-course meal. Mom described it as simply “wonderful”. I’ve found myself considering it a great example of how enjoyable “casual elegance” can be. From the moment you arrive at The Clifton, you find that their ability to achieve that perfect balance between “sophistication” and “relaxation” is at the heart of the venue’s charm. It's about finery being presented in a genuinely warm, friendly, inviting way. It's like being greeted after a long journey, shown to a cozy library where you can relax and warm yourself by the fire, while being excitedly told "Wait until you see what we have prepared for you today! We really hope you'll like it!" Everybody that we interacted with were very warm and enthusiastic. Cue the “Be Our Guest!” music.

Having, on a prior work-related occasion, witnessed how exceptional even the lowly "burger and fries" produced in Chef Matthew's kitchen are, the one thing I had learned was “to relax … and to trust”. I was not aware of what the menu options would be at the time I made our reservations, but I was already excited about whatever it might be because of that innate trust and, being a holiday meal, I knew everything would be even more special than usual. That whatever was presented before us, we were not going to be disappointed.

Not only was everything that Mom and I ordered amazing, but it also disproved the notion that "fine dining" means you must leave the table hungry afterwards. While I would certainly love to have any of the choices again on another occasion, so it left me wanting more in that sense, it was obvious even by the time we officially got to the first course that nobody was leaving that table anything but happily full. There is a very logical nature to the menu options in each category. Mom ordered the oysters on-a-half-shell and shrimp with grits courses and the portion sizes were perfectly suited for her. I ordered the smoked salmon waffles and leg of lamb courses and the portion sizes were perfectly suited for me. Both of us got exactly what we wanted and got exactly as much food overall as we wanted. The fact this was so easy to achieve is yet another demonstration of Chef Matthew's expertise in achieving a wonderfully balanced experience for a variety of people and appetites.

The same could be said about the staff's demonstration of time management. While time management may not be an exciting trait to be complimented on, we considered it another key aspect of the relaxing nature of the overall experience. The reservation instructions clearly stated to be early at least 10 minutes beforehand and that a 2-person seating would be allocated a 90-minute duration (4-person would be 120-minutes). Perfectly reasonable on both fronts. But what was truly remarkable was that, there was never a sense of time being constrained or limited. Mom and I could just casually talk, and the selections were brought out at a nice, relaxed but also very natural pace. Dessert arrived an hour after we were first seated and, once we had left the building and I checked on the time, we had to laugh how it was exactly when that 90-minutes was up. Things were impeccably timed without us ever having to worry about the time ourselves. A very impressive feat all by itself.

Overall, the entire visit was a wonderful experience, and I could not have imagined any other venue having achieved "casual elegance" so perfectly. Nor anybody else but Chef Matthew and his staff being able to show how wonderful smoked salmon and waffles can be. Weeks later I'm still marveling at such a creation and look forward to whenever I might be able to...

My girlfriend took me to 1799 at the Clifton to try to cap off a wonderful birthday weekend with an Easter brunch, but what we found was certainly not a “brunch” (you’ll find out why the apostrophes in a second). First of all, my girlfriend was told that the Prix Fix menu would be available 10 days prior to the “brunch”, however after several phone calls to the restaurant, the staff were unable to give her the menu ever, even the DAY BEFORE the “brunch”. I’ve never dined at a restaurant that did not have a set menu in advance, however even this lack of preparation didn’t dissuade us from attending - trying to give the staff & chefs the benefit of the doubt. We looked at the regular brunch menu & assumed (wrong move) that this “brunch” would be in line with that. Nope. Now I wish we didn’t. When we got to the restaurant, I can certainly tell the aesthetics were the selling point - beautiful setting. However, when we sat down it became apparent that the only “brunch” aspect of this menu happened to be the Eggs Benedict (and mimosa). The only Easter aspect of the “brunch” was all the lettuce that came with our lackluster Eggs Benedict - I certainly felt like a rabbit eating all of it directly after the salad course. The rest of the menu was more geared towards a dinner at a experimental kitchen in TriBeCa, instead of a beautiful, historic inn in the mountains of Virginia. Now, if we were prepared to consume menu items like this, we wouldn’t have had an issue with it, however this was definitely not the “brunch” vibes we were going for. Service was okay and slightly awkward - honestly on par with a local Applebee’s, and not as attentive as a High-End restaurant should be. We didn’t even get a refill on our waters until after the check arrived. Don’t think we’d be back any time soon - and certainly will NOT be recommending this “brunch” to any...