Red Sage

Red Sage is a popular restaurant in DC, both much praised and maligned, the latter by people who think it overexposed and overhyped. I was excited to give it a whirl though. It's no fair for everyone else to get a chance to pontificate while I stay on the sidelines.

I can't say I was blown away by the cuisine. I equally can't say I was entirely dissapointed, though. Buffalo style shrimp was an unexpected sort of appetizer, exactly the sort of nosh I like; I wonder though about the bed of aioli they were sitting on, since all that seemed to do was turn the once crispy shrimp throughly soggy. One of my dining partners was right, though - the mussels we shared as an appetizer weren't only cooked in an entirely insipid sauce (and in any case, mussels are an inappropriate appetizer to share, given the need for bread sopping) but the shellfish themselves were less fresh then they could have been. Nor was the air of insipidity entirely dispelled by the main courses. My tuna was throughly fresh, and quivering red as I like it, but I was surprised to hear the waiter steer one of my friends away from the daily swordfish special and towards pecan crusted chicken breast, which not only sounded and tasted banal but was apparently cut from a chicken of truly monstrous proportions. Surely swordfish would have been better?

The dessert did manage to redeem the kitchen quite a bit. Indeed, I've been building up quite a library of sticky toffee puddings, and Red Sage's offering, topped with a quality caramel ice cream and chocolate shavings wouldn't be out of place in the upper reaches of my internal league table. On the whole, I see Red Sage as a perfectly acceptable place for a business lunch that's unlikely to go wrong- but not much more.