Corduroy

Corduroy is one of those restaurants that I heard about fairly often back when I was living in DC. I guess it used to be located in some out of the way, hard to find spot, so, being a bit off the map, it was never one of the first places I would think of when I wanted to go out for a nice dinner. Since I've left DC, Corduroy has moved into a new location. Although, being located next to the convention center, it still isn't in a place that you would normally go for an evening out in DC. That said, this place is a good destination in itself. The menu is a bit pricey, and the dining room is fairly formal (if you don't have a jacket, please, at least wear a tie), but the food is top notch. I thought it was just as good, if not better, than any of the big name restaurants Abby and I ate at earlier in the summer in New York. More importantly, though, Abby's friend, Natsu, recently married the chef and owner of the restaurant, so we just had to check the place out.

I'm never quite sure how to describe restaurants that, while high end, don't really fall into a well defined category (i.e. French, Italian, seafood, etc.) I guess I would say that this is classically prepared food that uses local, seasonal ingredients. There's nothing cutting edge here. Just great ingredients that are treated really well. The flavors were really clean and I liked the presentation.

For the starter, I had a salad of goat cheese, roasted beets and carrots.
Abby started with lobster tail.
I ordered crispy fluke with warm potato salad for the main course while Abby had Muscovy duck with fig sauce.