“What’s your favorite restaurant?”
It’s a question I get at least once every week, typically from strangers who assume there’s one place I’d eat at again and again if my job didn’t involve watching over hundreds of places.
“Favorite restaurant for what?” I sometimes respond. Because there are different places I love for a quick lunch or a celebratory dinner, restaurants I gravitate to for date night vs. showing off to visitors — a distinction I addressed in my most recent annual fall dining guide. The FAQ is also hard to answer because my favorites change with the season, my mood and whoever is tagging along.
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Dining with Tom Sietsema
I’m Tom, the food critic for The Post since 2000. I review restaurants in the Washington region every week, and every month I round up my current favorites. Twice a year I curate a special dining guide: In the fall I write about dozens of top picks, and in the spring I spotlight new restaurants.
I love hearing from readers: Email me at tom.sietsema@washpost.com, join my weekly online chat (Wednesdays at 11 a.m.), and click the Follow button on my author page to keep up with everything I write.
Essential reading:
- A food critic’s week: Eating highs and lows, with workouts in between
- Fall 2023 Dining Guide
- Spring 2023 Dining Guide
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Right this minute, though, the place I’m most smitten by unfolds in a former Greek diner in the Virginia suburbs. Named for the street it’s on in Vienna, the Maple Room is brought to you by real estate developer Christos Sarantis and his wife, Effie, who also own four casual SouvlakiBar establishments in the area. Locals will recognize the facade as that of the Amphora Restaurant, which closed after more than four decades in 2021.
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Are you tired of extra fees in restaurants? The Maple Room charges you for what you ate and drank, plus tax — period.
Do you miss getting a basket of bread when you sit? Once you place your order here, servers let you know they’ll “get the bread going.”
If you ask a question, informed answers follow quickly. “Fifty-seven days,” a cheerful hostess responded when I inquired how long the place had been open on my first visit in February. The pork chop, a detail Christos Sarantis asked chef Cameron Cousin to include on the American menu, is described in such vivid detail, it’s as if servers had a hidden earpiece and Cousin was whispering the recipe to them at the table.
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If you eat pork, don’t pass up the chance to slice into the thick grilled chop, marinated in fresh herbs and a trace of maple syrup. “It calls to your childhood,” says Cousin, a New Jersey native who came from the late food hall Assembly in Rosslyn. I can relate, although Mom served the applesauce straight rather than in the adorable hollows of the fruit, as Cousin does.
This is a menu a lot of people can agree to like.
Traditionalists might spring for oysters under a carpet of creamy spinach, lit with dried chiles, and airy breadcrumbs, zapped with lemon and lime zest, that don’t mask the taste of the seafood. Or a bowl of French onion soup whose deep flavor comes from veal and duck stocks. Speaking of duck, it gets featured as a main course, meaty confit paired with creamy white beans and green splotches of gremolata to brighten what’s otherwise beige.
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The servers’ polish extends to their dress: white shirt, apron and tie — smart uniforms to match Cousin’s solid cooking. Cubes of slow-roasted pork belly, glossy with Korean barbecue sauce, line up next to a neat hedge of fresh coleslaw, and tender ricotta gnocchi come scattered with fleshy mushrooms. The kitchen deploys just enough truffle oil to evoke the earth in the dumplings, plus shards of baked parmesan for some crackle. I’d prefer the kitchen to leave the head on the grilled “whole” branzino, but the main course is an otherwise satisfying plate that includes crisp bok choy and a delicate coconut curry. “We want to try things,” the chef says of his eclectic menu.
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So will diners. Listening to the specials, you might change your mind about your order. Wednesday is Wellington night, and Sunday is a chance to slice into prime rib. (Note to self: Book ’em both.) Whenever the swordfish “tomahawk” is mentioned, take the plunge. The entree features a supreme cut of swordfish referred to as the collar, from behind the head, on a bed of braised kale bulked up with lardons — a little howdy to the South. Fish collars are the offal of the ocean, among the tastiest parts of the fish, thanks in part to the bone that keeps them moist.
The owners, area residents for 45 years, have hospitality in their blood. Christos’s father ran the Ascot in the District, and Effie’s dad was behind Steve’s Diner in Alexandria (both closed). The general manager, the dapper and ever-present Gordon Leigh, has decades of experience behind him, including at Davio’s Northern Italian Steakhouse in Reston, the Atlanta-based Liberty House Restaurant Corporation and Capital Grille in McLean. Indeed, he watches over his new roost as if it were a fancy steakhouse, which to an extent it is. The menu embraces several cuts of beef and succulent, inches-thick lamb chops served with mint jelly.
The dining room is warm and inviting, decorated with semicircular green booths, ribs of wood across the ceiling and half-moon windows, the sort of place that’s as good for date night as a business meal as a family reunion. A (louder) lounge to the side calls to solo acts and friends’ night out.
Ultimately, the Maple Room demonstrates why a lot of suburbanites prefer to eat closer to home than deal with the challenges of hot spots in the District. Both the Maple Room and Le Diplomate serve a memorable roast chicken, for example. But if I lived anywhere close to the former, I’d spring for the brined beauty, presented with potatoes enriched with sour cream and a slender carafe of lemony jus, at the equally buzzy Virginia restaurant, which opens an hour earlier for dinner. (How trendy. As Axios reported last year, 5 p.m. is no longer the preserve of the senior set.)
Adjustments in a few dishes would improve them. Whoever minds the pasta station needs to pull the tagliatelle out of the water before it goes mushy. Its meatless Bolognese topping, made from seitan and minced vegetables, is good and deserves a firmer mattress. And salmon tartare is oddly staged with avocado puree on chewy fried cubes of rice, the result of which tastes like a day-old sushi roll. Chocolate mousse cake resembles something you’d get at a banquet, but the apple tart is a flaky, not-too-sweet pleasure topped with vanilla ice cream and streaked with caramel sauce.
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My point is, the hits outnumber the misses — and there’s no going home hungry. The Maple Room doesn’t do doll-size portions.
People go to restaurants not just for the food, service and ambiance — vital as they are — but also for the convenience.
Did I mention the Maple Room has a parking lot? When it comes to driving traffic, the newcomer checks all the right boxes.
The Maple Room
377 Maple Ave. W., Vienna. 703-223-5534. mapleroomrestaurant.com. Open for indoor and outdoor dining (weather permitting) 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday and Sunday, 4 p.m. to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Prices: Appetizers $14 to $22, main courses $28 to $65 (for a pound of prime rib-eye). Sound check: 73 decibels. Accessibility: Wheelchair users can enter via a ramp at the back door; ADA-compliant restrooms.
