Then there’s L’Avant-Garde in Georgetown, whose chef hails from France. Born in Brittany, Gilles Epié skilled beneath a few of his nation’s most revered cooks — Roger Jaloux, the longtime chef de delicacies for the legendary Paul Bocuse; Alain Senderens, one other founding father of nouvelle delicacies — and obtained a Michelin star for his work at Le Pavillon des Princes in Paris when he was simply 22.

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Since then, he’s cooked in Los Angeles, notably at L’Orangerie; Paris; and Miami. He’s no stranger to Washington, having been coaxed right here by the late, nice Jean-Louis Palladin to work on the Watergate Resort shortly after arriving in the USA in 1993 “with two suitcases and no papers,” Epié says. Six months in, the West Coast known as.

“He doesn’t should show himself,” says proprietor Fady Saba, who recruited Epié, 63, with a mission in thoughts: “We wish to have enjoyable” whereas additionally making a restaurant that transports diners to Paris.

L’Avant-Garde wastes zero time spiriting patrons throughout the pond. For starters, the menu is obtainable in French in addition to English. The senior workers look like straight out of central casting, Gallic division. If the butter or fish whisks you again to some fancy dinner you recall from Europe, it is perhaps as a result of Epié sources each from France.

Saba put $3 million into the restaurant, and it reveals, beginning with a door that requires some muscle to open and persevering with with a low-ceilinged bar and eating rooms that seem like no different within the metropolis. Ribs of wooden stretch throughout the partitions. Gold domed lights illuminate the luxe, semicircular cubicles, and a crackling hearth within the heart of the motion additional warms what as soon as housed The Guards, in its heyday a magnet for celebrities and members of the restaurant business. Save for the zinc bar, L’Avant-Garde is freed from French restaurant stereotypes. And all the pieces you contact reveals thought. Discover the marble coaster to your cocktail?

The great appears to be like lengthen to the meals. If bread is connected to a dish, signal on. My first style of Epié’s cooking was slightly globe of puff pastry atop a maritime “bouillabaisse” of John Dory and different fish, a soup that features tender macaroni and a rouille teasing with harissa. Epié says the presentation was impressed by a decadent Paul Bocuse signature, la soup aux truffles, or truffle soup capped with puff pastry.

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The restaurant’s duck foie gras beignet, alternatively, is an Epié authentic. Just a little kitchen magic produces an orb with a shell, produced from a beer batter, that crisps within the fryer and breaks open to disclose each strong and liquid foie gras. Within the firm of a port wine discount spooned on high, the shiny first course is a live performance of candy, salty and crunchy notes that some diners will discover irresistible.

In Washington simply seven months now, Epié likes what he sees, principally well-educated individuals who wish to eat. “They don’t care” in Miami, he says, and as a lot as he likes Los Angeles, it’s “too fashionable.” The chef’s liberal use of foie gras in Washington appears to be a response to earlier American audiences that prevented the controversial luxurious, both by regulation or distaste. An appetizer of mustard-lit celery root rémoulade is all however obscured by a skinny sheet of duck foie gras, flippantly seasoned with salt that crackles, then melts, just like the delicacy, on the tongue. Branzino topped with a puck of foie gras is a hyperlink to Epié’s early years in the USA, when he seen what number of American menus listed surf-and-turf combos.

Even among the lighter appetizers exude an exciting richness. Butter-textured Scottish salmon blossoms in a marinade of bay leaf, juniper and shaved uncooked onion. Served as a single thick slice, the orange-colored fish is flanked on one aspect by cash of boiled potatoes enlivened with tomato French dressing. The luxurious first course is a dressier model of a dish “my mom used to do,” solely with herring, says the chef.

Epié oversees a kitchen crew of a dozen, the vast majority of whom are contemporary to the enterprise. Two months earlier than L’Avant-Garde opened in December, Epié says, he held cooking courses for the newbies, beginning with dressing and sauce fundamentals.

A diner can style the coaching within the roast rooster, primarily based on a contemporary Pennsylvania chook the chef compares favorably to what he loves in France. Textbook-perfect, it picks up taste from herbes de Provence and fennel and arrives with french fries whose golden hue is the results of twice-frying the potatoes in clarified butter. Sharing ought to qualify you for sainthood.

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Good cooks are good editors; they know what to play up and what to attenuate. A fillet of John Dory, slowly cooked in butter, comes with a sauce of flippantly sweetened lemon juice and olive oil and a dusting of lime leaf zest. However the sparklers are used with a restraint that allows you to style — and admire — the wild-caught fish.

“Purchase the perfect elements, and 80 p.c of the job is finished,” says Epié. His risotto is memorable with Arborio rice, stained from the cooking water he makes use of to melt porcini mushrooms from France, and completed with earthy truffle butter and Parmigiano-Reggiano. (At L’Avant-Garde, cream is reserved for desserts. Milk is deployed to prepare dinner, say, the leeks for a chunk of cod.)

A number of the menu is meals you may need seen earlier than. Little of the cooking elsewhere compares to Epié’s.

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Samantha McCrimmon was recruited from the luxurious Magee Homestead in Saratoga, Wyo., to be the sommelier right here. Enlist her assist, and you must, and put together to be seduced by her French-leaning assortment and the keenness with which she describes no matter alternative you’ve made. Simply bear in mind to supply a value vary in case you’re disinclined to faucet into your 401(okay). There are many bottles priced effectively into the triple digits. Once I challenged McCrimmon to provide a fairly reasonably priced and distinctive wine that would bridge rooster, fish and meat dishes, the Rhône fancier shortly named the 2020 Domaine des Hauts Châssis, Les Galets, Crozes-Hermitage, out there for $90 a bottle. L’Avant-Garde provides corkage for $50 per bottle and, uncommon for lots of institutions, doesn’t restrict the variety of bottles a diner can convey to the restaurant.

Already some of the necessary eating places to set sail this 12 months, L’Avant-Garde just isn’t with out flaws. My first try to order beef cheeks discovered my server returning to the desk with a tragic face. “The chef isn’t happy with the standard,” he informed me earlier than rhapsodizing concerning the chateaubriand, so I bit. Moments later, the waiter reappeared to tell me that the meat cheeks have been in truth simply fantastic. Say what? I ought to have gone with the chateaubriand, as a result of the meat cheeks, whereas expectantly tender and enriched with pork stomach, got here with a discount that appeared to be equal elements wine and salt. The entree — ordering it, consuming it — was memorable for all of the improper causes. And whereas I loved the hearth present with the baba au rhum, the confection was so boozy, it was higher fitted to a glass than a plate.

The workers virtually insists you order the raspberry macaron. Heed their counsel, then swoon on the sight of jewel-like crimson fruit ringing whipped mascarpone in a sublime “sandwich” constructed with chewy macarons, white as snow. The sweetness of the structure is stored in examine with lemon juice in a pool of raspberry sauce. The kitchen additionally serves a beautiful bittersweet chocolate souffle and a Roquefort terrine, veined with apricots and walnuts and held along with the assistance of butter in addition to the pungent blue cheese — my type of mosaic.

Visits to New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles prior to now six months reconfirm my perception that Washington surpasses these well-liked meals locations in the case of all method of fantastic eating. The arrival of L’Avant-Garde raises the sport for the French competitors and burnishes the constellation of stars.

2915 M St. NW. 202-652-1855. lavantgardedc.com. Open for indoor eating 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. Tuesday by way of Saturday. Costs: Appetizers $27 to $49, primary programs $43 to $62. Sound examine: 70 decibels/Dialog is straightforward. Accessibility: The steps, slender entrance and heavy door discourage wheelchair use. Pandemic protocols: Workers usually are not required to be masked or vaccinated.