Northern Virginia Restaurant Week roars into town March 20-27, which means you’ll have plenty of excuses to break from your usual dinner (or lunch-at-your-desk) rut and dine out. Here’s a sampler of what’s cooking around town.
Bistro 360
Embark on a tasting tour of flavors from around the globe. Bistro 360 offers three-course, prix-fixe menus for lunch ($20.17) and dinner ($35.17) including appetizers such as she crab soup, Thai vegetable spring rolls and deviled eggs; and entreés like Asian-style short ribs or crab cakes (the lunch versions are sandwiches), lamb ragu and shrimp and grits. For dessert, go for peach crumble or the flourless chocolate cake.
Hula Girl Bar & Grill
Feel like an island escape? The Hawaiian-themed restaurant’s lunch ($22.17) and dinner ($35.17) specials include such as ahi poke, kalua pork, teriyaki (chicken, steak or tofu), wood-grilled shrimp, doughnuts and haupia, a coconut-based dessert. You may not be on the beach in Maui, but you can pretend.
La Cote D’Or Café
For classic French bistro fare, how about a leisurely lunch ($22.17) of onion soup gratin, salad Nicoise, quiche or coq au vin, followed by bread pudding with vanilla sauce? Or perhaps the homemade paté with cornichons and balsamic onion compote, seafood crepes in champagne-cream sauce and apple tart for dessert? The expanded dinner menu ($35.17 for three courses) presents additional choices including escargots in puff pastry, chicken cordon bleu, and a cheese platter with apple-champagne jam, peach and tomato compote, pickled cantaloupe, walnuts and raisins.
Lebanese Taverna
The two-course lunch menu ($16.17) includes savory delights such as pumpkin kibbeh (stuffed pumpkin fritters with spinach, bulghur, pine nuts and almonds), lentil soup and a shawarma platter with hommus, fattoush and rice. The three-course dinner lineup ($35.17) brings starters such as fried calamari with fried lemons; roasted beets with arugula, orange, feta, pine nuts and pomegranate; or camel wings (chicken wings with garlic, lemon and cilantro); plus entreés ranging from shrimp kabobs to mouzat (slow cooked lamb shank with artichokes, potato and tomato); and any choice from the dessert menu.
The Liberty Tavern
This week, the Clarendon tavern offers a three-course dinner menu ($35.17) with dishes such as beets with goat cheese; crispy lamb ribs; chicken and grilled Italian sausage with polenta and seafood en brodo (salmon and shellfish in a tomato broth). And for dessert? A frozen chocolate bar featuring blood-orange sherbet and salted caramel corn, or margarita pie with graham-cracker crust, lime gelée and salted whipped cream.