The Dabney — Restaurant in Washington

Review from 2022:

We recently returned to The Dabney and were pleased to know the food and experience were still spot on.

The tables were spaced out nicely to provide guests a comfortable dining experience. Pandemic or not, I hope they keep the layout; it allows for conversations in an otherwise loud restaurant.

The food was spectacular. Every dish on their prix fixe menu had a lot of wonderful flavors.

The staff was friendly and attentive. While it was a busy night, we never felt ignored or unattended.

Overall, it was a great experience.

Review from circa 2019:

It’s not that easy to get a resy at The Dabney, so when a 19:30 slot on a Friday opened up, I snatched it immediately. I’ve been to this restaurant several times, and enjoyed my food and drinks every time.

This review is for my most recent visit. We had an interesting interaction with another guest, and the staff handled it well.

When we arrived at the restaurant, I noticed there were three open seats at the bar. I requested to be seated there in lieu of our two-top near the kitchen. The hostess was friendly and said it was okay for us to take the two seats. During the course of the evening, one seat opened on either side of us.

We were on our third course when a woman walked up to us and began over-explaining in a slow, deliberate manner, that there was a seat to my right and a seat to my friend’s left, and that she wanted to be able to eat with her friend.

This is how it went down:

This woman said, “Excuse me. There’s a seat to your right and there’s a seat over there to the left. I want to be able to eat together with my friend. Could you please move?”

While I’m not generally opposed to moving around at a bar area during my meal, this time it was off-putting, for a few reasons.

First: I did not expect a restaurant like The Dabney would allow their guests’ dining experience to be disrupted simply to get more seating at the bar.

Second: this woman had a superiority in her temperament as if we should oblige at her command. She could’ve made it less hostile by simply saying, “Excuse me. Would it be too much trouble for you and your friend to slide over one seat? Take your time, of course.” There was no need to over explain.

Third: I think the hostess should’ve been the one to handle the request. It would’ve made it less awkward for all the guests involved.

So, what did we do? I politely but firmly said that we would be fine moving after I finished the last few bites of my meal. The woman was taken aback that we didn’t just get up and move.

Clearly the bar and restaurant staff saw and heard what happened. The bar staff apologized that we had to move and thanked us for doing so. When it came around to dessert, the staff served us our first and second choices for desserts, and comped the second one.

Overall, and not taking into account the recent interaction with the other guests, I love The Dabney. The food is always spot-on. There is enough variety in the menu that one will want to order everything on it! :-) The ingredients are seasonal and fresh, and the flavors will make you want to say, “Mmmm,” or “Wow,” or “This is delicious,” every time you take a bite.

This restaurant makes my top 10 list of best restaurants in D.C. Try it out! You will not be...

We went to The Dabney last night to celebrate our anniversary, and unfortunately the evening was disappointing largely due to their service.

For starters, we walked in and the two people at the hostess stand saw us, continued their personal conversation, and then greeted us 1-2 minutes later. Bizarre for a Michelin Star restaurant

After we were seated, no one came over to our table for at least 15 minutes. We didn’t have any food at our table for 30 minutes. FYI- the snacks are to be eaten with your hands. However, the warm towels came to our table 2 minutes after our snacks. Also the cocktails we ordered arrived after our snacks. The hush puppy was great. The nearly frozen scallop had little taste and was challenging to eat without a utensil.

Our main server came over to start my wine pairing for the courses section explaining that the crudo would be coming up next. Except sike- the next plate was an anniversary present from the kitchen that arrived without side plates. The fried catfish slider was one of the best plates of the evening- tons of flavor and texture! However, it took the head chef (or the gentlemen leading the kitchen) to notice we were passing the plate back and forth to bring us over two side plates so we didn’t leave crumbs all over our table.

Then the crudo did arrive and our server made a comment like, “I was wondering when that was going to arrive.” The lack of communication between staff is a problem. The crudo was by far the best dish of the evening- fresh, local fish with some very fun, creative flavors that pulled off a winter crudo.

Afterwards, the oyster pie was the last really amazing bite of the evening. I’m not sure what happened with the main course- it seems like someone tried to elevate the traditional thanksgiving meal. The pork was nearly half fat, the ham looked and tasted like deli meat, and the stuffing was burnt. The two desserts were just okay. The palate cleanser had a nice apple rose in terms of presentation. The paw paw cheesecake was barely edible, and our main server didn’t say anything when he saw a barely eaten dish going back to the kitchen.

Overall, the atmosphere of The Dabney was the best part of the night. Being seated by the kitchen and the hearth fire was lovely. However, our main server was out to lunch and really did not do anything to elevate our experience. He also asked us three times if we had any allergies and asked us if we were celebrating anything special (the anniversary card at our table should have been a signal to him). The sommelier was very good but again there’s a lack of communication. Twice, she walked over to pour my next glass and then realized she had to clear my old wine glass and bring over silverware. Also as we left, we had to ask two employees to find my coat that we checked as no one was at the hostess stand. We also did not receive our menu, wine tasting, or postcards as promised at the beginning of our meal. Unfortunately, the overall experience was a huge disappointment due to these issues. I have never taken the time to thoroughly write a negative review before, however we spent over $900 on an overall mediocre meal with...

I came to DC over the summer for some sightseeing and some general celebration of my birthday. I ranked all of the restaurants in town using an algorithm/decision-making-tree that I came up with. And The Dabney popped up as one of the premier must-go places. So I made my reservations and showed up on time and got seated in the very beautiful main dining area.

We had the perfect view of the open kitchen right next us, so we got to watch the well-oiled machine the entire time. So many tables going through course after course, a guy with a dry erase board keeping track of all the moving pieces, all the meats seemingly being cooked with only wood and fire. Really great stuff.

And the service? Come on. We had multiple people that waited on us, each being their own cog in the machine of the service presentation. We never wanted for anything. And the conversation was very pleasant and seemed authentic. Right down to the very end of the night to when one of the hosts checked on us to see how we were getting back in the pouring rain.

So anyway, I can't talk about all of the courses served in the well orchestrated show that we went through, but I will give some thoughts and notes.

I love how this place, and many other places, are highlighting and celebrating local ingredients. Where our food comes from is very cool to know, and I'm glad that they are supporting local, small businesses rather than buying a pack of 1,000 frozen oysters from another country.

The second snack of the night really hit that point with lamb from the Shenandoah area stuffed into a mint leaf that came from Kentucky. Very nice.

I also liked how the courses got progressively bigger in size, from the snacks to the actual courses, to the main event.

Fried squash blossom. Enough said. There's no vessel more fun to eat something from.

One of the courses had us take a fried corn tortilla and smash it to make our own tortilla chips to eat the rest of the dish with. That was fun!

And of course, the main event. From a local farm, we got Autumn Olive Farm Pork served in a few different ways. It was all laid out to us at once and then we got free range of the feast. The Sorghum Butter they gave us for that Cornbread was insane out of this world delicious. And the Scrapple they put that Caviar on top of? Wow. It was all just so fun and delicious.

We finished off with three dessert courses, all good.

I feel like I've said a lot, but also a lot of nothing. The bottom line is that the place is very good. They select high quality, local ingredients, and present them in a beautiful, delicious way. The only thing is that a place like this needs to send you home with some post-dinner munchies. That's all that was missing. Not sure if I'll ever be back, but will certainly recommend this place to everyone I know who...