Mirabelle (Washington, D.C.)

Hey!  What’s up?  Did you miss me?  If you didn’t say yes, I’m pretty sure we aren’t friends, so at least act like you miss me for the time being.  It’s been a while since I’ve reviewed a restaurant, but don’t worry, I have a lot of good things in store for you all.  I feel like I’ve reviewed all of the Washington, D.C. restaurants that I wanted to, but more and more keep coming on my radar with further research.  I’ll keep this review short and simple.

Mirabelle, which is located a couple of blocks away from the white house (does the white house really deserve to be capitalized?), is a French restaurant that has a beautiful interior and fair menu prices for its classification in dining.  The interior of this restaurant can be classified as being inviting and sophisticated.  It’s the type of place where you’d want to wear a blazer (not tennis shoes and a polo like I was wearing… How embarrassing).

During my visit to Mirabelle I was able to try four dishes.  Bacon and Eggs, Turbot, Duck Breast, and Bison were the items that were ordered.  I’ll start this review with the Bacon and Eggs.  No, not actual bacon and eggs, more like Smoked Belly, Goose Egg Ravioli, and Spring Peas.  The Goose Egg Ravioli was the wild card in this dish.  It had a weird, dense flavor, but was light and creamy.  The smoke belly wasn’t salty like I thought it’d be, but it had a smoky flavor with it.  The ravioli was cooked perfectly where it wasn’t too hard or too soft.  The spring peas was more of an after thought in this dish, but did provide a nice earthy taste to the overall dish to go with the smoky flavor of the Smoked Belly.

The second dish of the night, which was my favorite, was the Turbot.  This was my first time having turbot and I can honestly say that this is one of the lightest pieces of fish I’ve ever tasted.  It was cooked perfectly.   A perfect sear on the skin and the most flaky in the middle.  It was surrounded by Celtuce, buckwheat and wakame.  Celtuce can be classified as a chinese lettuce, asparagus lettuce, or a celery lettuce.  It has a bland taste and has to be mixed in with other ingredients for it to stand out.  The buckwheat and wakame, which is an edible seaweed, worked very well with the buttery sauce that the fish was surrounded by.  If I ever have the opportunity to order Turbot again, then I’ll probably always compare it to the one I had at Mirabelle.

 

The third dish I had was the Bison Filet.  Bison is a meat that’s compared to beef but slightly sweet and more tender.  This shit that I hadn’t was the exact opposite of that description.  It was tough, bitter, and flavorless.  Think of your middle school’s Salisbury steak, that was better than this piece of meat that I had. The dish came with Spinach subric, poivrade, and ramps.  The sides of the dish didn’t make up for the bland flavor of the meat.  This was one of the most disappointing dish I’ve had.  In life.

Wait, I lied.  The Bison wasn’t the most disappointing dish.  The Duck Breast was.  It was my last dish of the night.  It consisted of a port wine puree, braised endive, and juniper sauce.  The Duck Breast which I thought would’ve been cooked at a medium temperature, seemed as though they were prepared well done.  This was some of the toughest duck I’ve ever had.  The endive was bitter and disgusting.  Sorry, there were no other adjectives I could describe to convey my dissatisfaction for this dish.  The sauce was too sweet and the Duck was possibly the most horrific Duck I’ve ever tasted.  That’s sad, because Duck is one of my favorite items to get at a French restaurant.

Overall, this restaurant is a pass.  I expected more attention to detail with the dishes that I ordered and none was given.

OVERALL RATING : MAY I SPEAK TO THE CAPTAIN