Poste Brasserie

Last night, I dined at Poste Brasserie in DC. I accidentally left my phone (and camera) at home so no pictures of this restaurant. I'll have to rely on words.

Overall, I'd give Poste's efforts an A-. We were dining with a sizable group so we were lucky to be put into our own private room. I say lucky because the bar there was hopping so the main dining room was quite noisy.

The first course I had was a housemade charcuterie board. Yummy. Fresh, flavorful, spicy, everything you want fresh housemade sausage to be. There were 4 slices on the board; fennel salami, porchetta, besaola, and coppa. 3 were amazingly good. The 4th was sort of like an olive loaf. The taste of the meat was fine, but I'm not a big olive person, so that got left uneaten.

My next course was the celeriac soup. The presentation was nice, if a bit overdone these days--they served it in a highball glass. Very frothy at the top. The soup was very flavorful and complex. Would have been good on its own. But what raised this above ordinary was the pieces of shrimp and smoked bacon in the soup. Awesome! Of course, anything with bacon is better, but the smoky flavor of this bacon went well with the celeriac soup.

For entree, I went with the Grilled Pineland Farms Flatiron Steak. It was nicely flavored with a Bordelaise sauce, of which I am a great fan. So it would have been hard to mess this up. I asked for my steak cooked to a warm pink center. It was a little rarer than that, so grilled just perfectly. The Bordelaise sauce was made to a perfect consistency. A strong effort overall.

The steak was served with some "boulangerie potatoes." I had a taste of these (quite good) but concentrated mainly on the side order of Macaroni and Cheese which we were all splititng among us. Apologies to my dining companions, but I think I hogged the Mac & Cheese.

I love macaroni and cheese. Ever since I was a little kid, I've been eating M&C like its in limited supply and I've got to finish it all before someone else does. I'm a big fan of Kraft Mac&Cheese actually. I run into some restaurants (or people) that try to do their own homemade mac & cheese but only two times has that been really enjoyable, where I wanted more. Last night was the second of those two times.

The M&C at Poste Brasserie is obviously made with good quality, fresh cheese. Some time is put into the creation of a creamy, thick sauce that had a hint of sharpness to it. My guess would be some sherry. Light on the bread crumbs atop the serving dish. I would go back there just for the Mac & Cheese. I thought it was that well-made and tasty.

Btw, the other return-to-me mac&cheese was made my by friend, the Canadian Michelle Hill who makes this odd dish she calls mac & cheese but is kind of franco-american spaghetti o's like. She claims she can only get the right noodles and cheese in Canada. But for all its oddities, its DAMN DELICIOUS and I hope she gets back to canada soon so I can get some more of it!

That's it for now.