Addie’s

I’ve eaten both lunch and dinner at Addie’s, and boy is it good. First, I love the space — a little old house of the type that used to line Rockville Pike before they all got torn down to make way for office buildings. It’s just charming, and makes for an intimate experience, but can also mean a wait before you’re seated.

The food is uniformly well-prepared and nicely presented. Think new American bistro with an emphasis on seafood. A typical example is the shrimp and linguine. The shrimp are perfectly cooked in plenty of butter and shallots, with just a bit of spinach, and served with perfectly cooked noodles.

Desserts are often inovative and always tasty. There is a short, well-thought out wine list. Even the coffee is good.

Addie’s continues to shine brightly in the gloom of mid-Pike dining. As ebeth says, the shrimp and linguine are a benchmark, simple and delicious, but the menu remains full of excellent choices in all departments. I didn’t get a chance to retest their prowess with cooked fish because they cleverly ran an end-around by offering up a delicious yellowfin tuna, served very rare, beautifully seasoned with a light sesame crust. Seared scallops in a lobster sauce were tender and juicy, and cooked to perfection, neither undercooked nor the slightest bit tough. The sauce itself kept me dredging things through it, despite what Miss Manners recommends.

If you’re interested in trying the daily specials (and you should be), dine early. They were sold out of the turbot well before 7pm that night.

[original review 2002-12-03 follows] Run by the family that brought you Black’s Bar and Grill, Addie’s is an interesting study in contrasts. Located in what is basically a house wedged between a commercial district of Rockville Pike, and the Georgetown Preparatory School, Addie’s dining room is an intimate affair, with perhaps only about 9 tables in a space small enough to maintain an outstanding level of service without feeling cramped. It bears no real resemblence to the paneled splendor of Black’s Bethesda dining room.

As one should expect of Black’s, the meats were excellent. The fish was pretty good too, but left more room for improvement than the meats. Incidentally, the chef will recommend a level of doneness appropriate to each choice of meat...you can have it as you like, but it doesn’t make much sense to argue with the experts in this instance.

-dave

Ah, tasty. Ebeth’s butternut squash soup with creme fraiche was so compelling that I kept stealing some until I thought she’d slap me. My seafood stew with rice in saffron broth was so flavourful that I nearly had every last drop. Also, the seafood had not been overcooked [not always easy to accomplish, in a stew], so the squid and shrimp were as tender as the tuna. And we discovered the secret to Dave’s delicous shrimp fettucine in chicken stock was butter and garlic. Lots of butter and garlic. mmmmmmm.

Set in a rambling old house, it’s an intimate dining experience. Well it was until someone brought in a badly behaved child. Is nothing sacred? In today’s society, I guess so. People, I don’t mind if you bring your children out to restaurants. I only mind if they infringe on my enjoyment of the meal. Running around, playing with toys, drumming of heels, or loud refusals to heed authority are NOT appropriate behaviour. Grrrr.