Jose Andres' American Eats review
So I want to preface this by saying I am a huge fan of Jose Andres and the Bethesda Jaleo was my favorite restaurant and we would go weekly or biweekly when we lived near there.
But sadly, American Eats misses the mark. Sure, it's a popup, but it's still pretty pricey, and the flavors are off. We started with the bread bowl with 3 pieces of bread and blackberry butter (butter in blackberry sauce, and I couldn't taste the blackberry) for $6. Then I had the she crab soup, which was tepid, greyish brown soup loaded with so much salt that you couldn't taste the crab. This was not worth $11.
The fried chicken that my friend had were tender and the homemade ketchup that accompanied it was quite good. The highlight of the meal was the pickled watermelon salad with crabcakes. I thought the flavors played off of each other nicely, even without eating the bleu cheese that came crumbled over the watermelon.
For dessert, we split the pineapple upside down cake, which was solid, not life changing. I can't say that I wuold rush to go back since the bill was quite high for what we ordered, and I wound up with indigestion right afterward. Leaving that aside, most of the food was unexceptional. The service was good, if stilted. I've been to popups that are better run and tastier. Not sure why Andres closed Cafe Atlantico to open up this experiment.
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Cafe Atlantico
405 8th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20004
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ClevelandDave
Aug 5, 2011 12:25 PM
I could not disagree more.... though with pop ups consistency could be an issue.
There have already been a number of threads on this topic, and I must admit it was not what I expected-- America Easts is not wonderful traditional examples of Amerian food but Andres' take on it that has been updated with his style.
See the review/discussion:
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monkeyrotica
Aug 5, 2011 11:30 AM
Did you try the $16 PBJ Uncrustable with foie gras? I hear it's the best in the city.
