My friends know that I often refer to 14th Street as "My Strip." They also know that I'm referring only to the stretch between U and P Northwest, but oh, what a wonderful stretch it is.
Today I'm highlighting Posto, a smart Italian restaurant that happens to sit right on said strip. Posto is just north of P, on the east side of 14th. You could easily walk by and not notice it. The exterior is all white and pale green and it kind of blends into the block. I'm not sure if they get many "Oh, let's go to that flashy place!" customers because of this fact, but they seem to do pretty well nonetheless.
I'd heard about Posto from friends--an often far better source than any formal review. They had gone for dinner and given a good report. Excellent service. Well-executed specials. Worth going back.
As it happens, my friends were pretty dead-on in their review. I went a couple of weeks ago for dinner and came away with that warm feeling good restaurants tend to produce. You may have to wait for a table--especially if you plan to eat after 6 pm--so do yourself a huge favor and take a seat at the bar and relax. If you're lucky, Sherman will be working and he'll talk your ear off but in a good way.
The menu at Posto is essentially broken into reasonably priced cheeses and antipasti, salads and light seafood dishes, pastas, pizzas, and heartier proteins. This provides an opportunity to structure the size and scope of your meal, but if you're like me, it also presents a challenging exercise in restraint. I wanted one of everything. But I settled on the grilled octopus salad with potatoes and chickpeas to start. That turned out to be a good idea. The octopus was charred on the outside but tender within. That's the main success of the dish, in my opinion, but it also had a perfectly balanced vinaigrette and the frisee was not too hard to untangle.
When your waiter comes by to talk about specials, pay close attention. The night I was there, it was pan-roasted chicken stuffed with mushrooms and sausage and napped with black olive sauce. I'm sorry, but does that not sound almost too good to be true? The dish could easily have arrived dry and salty, but it was moist and carefully seasoned. The creamy bed of mashed potatoes underneath didn't last long under my fork's invasion--they were so full of butter and just lumpy enough. YUMMY.
This was my first and only trip to Posto. I'll need to go back for further reporting, but this is what Restaurant Wednesdays are all about: Find a place you like, give us a couple of reasons (and dishes) why, and hope people will go there. When you head over to Posto, tell Sherman I said hi, ok?
Photo from Posto's website
2 comments:
Since I live in your strip (but I don't strip in public!) I went to Posto a couple of weeks ago with a friend who was visiting from Rome. That's a tall order, since all roads lead to Rome, after all. Fortunately, this road led to gustatory pleasure. Although the wait was a big long on a Saturday night (they don't take reservations; I guess they're too good for that), we were seated at a nice table and the service throughout was mostly good. (It was a bit distracting fending off the busboys who wanted to fill our sparkling-water glasses with tap water, since the waiter removed the sparkling-water bottle from the table once it was emptied.)
First courses were delish: a house salad that was nicely dressed (much like my Roman dinnermate), and the creamy polenta with spicy merguez sausage. Second courses were hit and miss. Hit: pan-seared salmon perfectly cooked and seared. Miss: the pheasant ragu with tagliatelle was too tomatoey and more peasant than pheasant. Then came dessert. A pear something-or-other mille-feuille (really, by that point I was distracted and already full) was gulped down by the Roman; disappointing "dessert special" chocolate truffles languished on the plate, with little taste and about as much appeal as yesterday's mashed potatoes. (The waiter forced me to make a decision; I guess he was distracted and full by that point too. I would have been better off at AKCK, or whatever the pretentious name of the chocolatier just up the block likes to call itself, though they do have delicious and fresh truffles.)
Overall, it was a good night out, and not too terribly expensive.
P.S. Thanks for adding me to your blog roll!
Thanks for the report, WBTS! I ended up going back to Posto the other day, so now I have a bit of a follow-up review, too.
My friend and I sat at the bar for two reasons: 1) Sherman was working and I wanted to hang out with him because he's cool. 2) I didn't feel like waiting for the table. Eating at the bar was fun, but I wish they'd get new stools. The ones they have now are really hard and uncomfortable.
Anyway, the food was again really good. We started with a couple meats and cheeses. The highlight was a new-for-me cheese called Armentizia. I'll be blogging about it soon. The house-made foccacia is addictive--it's soft and warm and simply seasoned with olive oil, salt, and fresh rosemary. It's yum. Equally yum is the scallop tartare with mint. It's a sophisticated dish with pristine seafood. The tagliatelle with goat ragout was satisfying, but the tartare was better. Everybody needs to try Posto.
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