Blue 44

I don't want to be too negative but my first visit to the new restaurant on Connecticut was not promising. The new family restaurant that moved in after two mediocre Mexican restaurants failed in this location, certainly brightened up the place with some nice cosmetic changes. But it's still a small place with lots of tables crowded together. And, while a family restaurant presumably is great for families, the noise and running around of unruly kids is not always pleasant for the rest of us.

In the end, though, a restaurant is judged by its food, and I found the food in this first foray decidedly mediocre. I ordered a "Pittsburgh style" cheesesteak sandwich which was not very good. I don't really know whether Pittsburghers make a bad sandwich or whether this was just a poor version of it, but I suspect the latter. The meat was not freshly cooked but warmed up and the addition of fries to the sandwich as well as on the side may be authentic but it means there's less meat on the sandwich. The fries may have been "hand-cut" as advertised, but I got odds and ends of small fries that also did not seem to be particularly fresh.

Andrea ordered a Caesar salad which she said did not do any of the things that can make a Caesar salad good -- tasty dressing, crisp croutons, etc. I found the Romaine lettuce surprisingly pale and not very fresh tasting. She had to order an extra portion of dressing, but it is a common failing of entree salads not to have enough dressing.

The place was packed because the rich Chevy Chase market is under-served by neighborhood restaurants. It may survive on that basis alone. I will go back and give the place the burger test. If it fails that test, I don't rule out going there for convenience but I doubt it will be very often.

While no one can expect a neighborhood restaurant in DC to match a trendy West Hollywood eatery, we couldn't help noticing that we paid the same for a really great meal at BLD in LA as for this ho-hum offering at Blue 44.

Update: I realized looking back I never blogged about Jake's, the other new neighborhood restaurant on Connecticut. I've been there twice, sat at the bar, ordered a hamburger each time. Nothing special, but OK. I think it will be like Clyde's or Chadwick's -- a place where it's safe to go for a beer and burger but not much else.

Update 2: While I'm at it, I may as well include the comment I made about Terasol on the Chevy Chase listserv. I'm probably too hard on these neighborhood restaurants, but I think the problem here is the same as it was in Princeton -- you have a wealthy, captive audience so you don't have to be that good to stay in business. There were not any really good restaurants in Princeton, either.

On March 15, I wrote:

I'm glad that other people who have had an unsatisfactory experience at Terasol are also weighing in. Our first dinner there could at best be described as mediocre, but friends who like it persuaded us to give it a second chance, and the second time the food was even worse. There will be no third time for us.

It's good to have neighborhood restaurants, but they will survive and flourish only if they provide good food at a reasonable price-quality relationship. Sometimes, as when the Mexican restaurant closed recently, some people seem to suggest that we should support these local establishments because they are local. That's not the way it works for any other local store, which earns its support by providing quality goods or services. Restaurants are no exception to that rule.