DC Coast - Revisit

Cheesehead and I went to DC Coast last August for Restaurant Week, and weren't really impressed. I'm hesitant to judge a restaurant solely from a RW experience, but it irks me so much when restaurants treat customers like cattle that week that the impression tends to stick. But, this week I had out of town people, and DC Coast had gotten a new chef since my last visit so I decided to give it another chance.

After some pretty mundane rolls, we started with some oysters, fois gras, and shrimp/risotto fritters. The oysters were large, plump, and fresh tasting. This was the first time I'd ordered fois gras and NOT had it whipped into a mousse, DC Coast presents merely a slab of the fatty liver with a side of some roasted apples and an apple mousse - a presentation that I thought worked really well and highlighted the rich liver. The fritters were crispy with a small shrimp inside - they were ok but I think there's only so much you can do with fritters.

My main course were the crab cakes with a creamy mustard sauce and cole slaw. The crab cakes were relatively small, and honestly not that great. There were multiple bites where I had bits of shell, and they tasted more of filler than crab (despite it being obvious there wasn't a whole lot of filler here) - for $29 I'd hoped they would use fresh crab. The cole slaw tasted out of a jug-o-slaw, and because it was on the bottom of the plate, it was very warm - seems like some creative plating could have fixed this problem.

Everyone else at the table enjoyed their entrees - two had the filet of beef, and one had a very lightly seared tuna. For dessert I had a pretty decent apple upside down cake, the chocolate tort and sorbets seemed to be hits as well.

My biggest complaint of the evening was the service. After waiting a considerable time for the waiter to show up, he refused to put our apps in at the same time we ordered wine. He also refused a request to ask if the kitchen could prepare the tuna sashimi style, aka just plate it raw. We were just asking him to ask, didn't seem an unreasonable request. Finally, I tried to order sides and was strongly advised not to by the waiter, as "all of the dishes come composed with their own sides". Ok... I'm torn on this one, because I would have appreciated had the dishes really come composed with their own sides. But my little dollop of hot coleslaw under two undersized crab cakes was underwhelming. That, and I just really wanted the hericot vert.

All in all, DC Coast was much better food on the second visit and worth a try, but service still seems to be a weak point.