Good morning! Hope you’re having a lovely Wednesday. Last night I was lucky enough to be invited to the press preview of a new restaurant in Crystal City, Memphis. The opening has been delayed a couple of times due to construction issues but it was looking pretty spiffy last night and should certainly be ready for the public opening at the start of December. So let’s talk about the food!

To start, I had the mixed green salad, topped with spiced pecans, sun dried tomatoes, croutons and warm goat cheese.

I LOVE warm goat cheese salads and the tang of their balsamic dressing was perfect to cut the cheese’s creamy richness. There was a lot going on here for a starter though and I think this could have been improved with one of two less elements on the plate.

For our mains, my table ordered four and shared around. We had baby back ribs, grilled shrimp, barbeque salmon and prime rib. For sides, baked beans and grilled zucchini.

The ribs and shrimp were nicely prepared and very flavorful. The prime rib was also good. The salmon howerver was very undercooked and so we all chose not to eat it. I really enjoyed the beans and the flavor but not the flimsy texture of the zucchini.

And for dessert, a warm blondie with vanilla ice cream and a caramel swirl.

And of course, you can’t really go wrong with one of those!

It was a lovely evening out and I always really enjoy meeting other DC-area food writers (some very interesting people attend these things!). I think this will be a really fun spot for happy hours and with a few menu and service tweaks, about as close to Memphis as we’re going to get up here in our very East Coast city . We’ve got plenty of great food but I think DC can use always use somewhere a little more casual and fun.

So I shall see you again soon!