Restaurant Review: Neutral Ground Bar + Kitchen

I’m not often intrigued by every food item on a menu. But I was on my first visit to Neutral Ground Bar + Kitchen, the full-service restaurant chef David Guas opened in McLean in June. 

One starter in particular grabbed my attention because it transported me back to trips to New Orleans with my father, who loved the chargrilled oysters at Acme Oyster House and Drago’s. For his version, Guas roasts six wild-caught Chesapeake bivalves with lemony garlic butter in the 700-degree wood-fired oven that was left behind by the building’s previous tenant, a pizzeria. Lightly poached during their pass through the fire, the oysters arrived crusted with golden brown Parmesan cheese. I added a few dashes of Crystal hot sauce, slurped them down and sopped up the garlicky liquid with French bread from the Crescent City’s Leidenheimer Baking Co. 

Resisting the urge to order a second helping, I downed my glass of Boxwood rosé and tried the Pink Palm, a house-made frosé bumped up with vodka, strawberry, basil and lime. 

The next dish to arrive was pimento cheese—a fan favorite that Guas has carried over from his beloved Bayou Bakery in Arlington. Here, the Southern staple is made even dreamier by its accompanying saltines, which are dredged in clarified butter, sprinkled with everything seasoning and re-baked for schmearing. 

Neutral Ground is, in many ways, a reflection of the Guas family’s life story. The chef, 49, is a first-generation Cuban American whose father fled Castro’s regime as a teenager with his family in 1959. Guas and his wife, public relations executive Simone Rathlé, hail from New Orleans, where both worked at that city’s prestigious Windsor Court hotel—he as a pastry chef and she doing PR—although not concurrently. They met in Washington, D.C., in 1998, when Windsor Court’s executive chef, Jeff Tunks, offered Guas a job at a restaurant he was opening in the District called DC Coast (for which Rathlé was doing the PR). 

They married a year later and eventually raised two sons, Kemp and Spencer, in a neighborhood six minutes from the stretch of Old Dominion Drive that is now home to Neutral Ground.  

Guas’ career flourished in the DMV. He helped DC Coast’s parent company—Passion Food Hospitality—launch other restaurants, wrote two cookbooks (Dam Good Sweet in 2009 and Grill Nation in 2015), had a 12-episode run hosting American Grilled on the Travel Channel and, in 2010, opened Bayou Bakery in Courthouse.

For years, neighbors and friends beseeched him to open a straightforward, unfussy American bar and grill in McLean. With the pandemic behind him and empty-nester-hood before him, he finally felt the timing was right. The 4,000-square-foot former Assaggi Osteria space, which seats 100 inside with a 14-seat bar, fit the bill with plenty of parking, outdoor seating for 20, and that workhorse woodburning oven. 

The restaurant’s name was chosen with intention. It references the chef’s current home outside the nation’s capital, where fraught political conversations are the norm, as well as his Louisiana hometown, where, in the mid-19th century, the green space median on Canal Street that separated rival French Creole and Anglo-American neighborhoods was referred to as “neutral ground.”

Guas puts the wood-fired oven he inherited to good use. Fueling it with a combination of oak and applewood, he roasts the red peppers for his pimento cheese in it, and—drawing inspiration from a viral TikTok recipe by Baked by Melissa—chars cabbage wedges that are then shredded to fashion a salad with Parisian cucumbers and a yogurt-based green goddess dressing packed with serrano chilies and fresh herbs. 

A scored, salted whole branzino hits the oven until its skin is crackling, its flesh perfectly cooked in the center. The fish is joined by a potato-cauliflower purée, an orangey olive tapenade and a pile of mizuna from Arlington’s Fresh Impact Farms. 

A thick, 12-ounce brined and fire-roasted Duroc pork chop is smoky, char-kissed and divinely tender, served with mustard sauce and apple-fennel slaw. 

Even dessert takes a turn in that oven. Smoked mandarin orange segments in burnt orange caramel adorn a flourless chocolate cake layered with crunchy praline and enrobed in a shiny dark chocolate glaze. 

Starting with a bowl of crispy fried shoestring Vidalia onions is de rigueur at Neutral Ground. They’re delectable even without their buttermilk-dill ranch dressing. With it, they’re otherworldly. 

Mushroom fans (like me) will love the spinach salad dressed with a simple balsamic vinaigrette and rife with a mélange of roasted and charred oyster, baby portabella and shiitake mushrooms, accented with Parmesan shavings. 

Guas has wisely resurrected a winning appetizer from his DC Coast days—a fine tartare of cubed ahi tuna tossed with coconut milk, serrano chilies, lime juice, cilantro and fish sauce and offered with wonton crackers.

Entrées also shine at Neutral Ground. The menu touts tender quail, double-fried, Korean-style, for extra crunch, as “gbd” (golden brown and delicious). That’s truth in advertising. With its sweet-and-sour gochujang glaze, it’s literally finger-licking good, although resorting to that cleanup tactic isn’t necessary. The dish is delivered with napkin service—extra rolled-up cotton dinner napkins and hand wipes stamped with the American flag. 

Thoughtful details like this abound. Each table is outfitted with a silverware tray so that if a server fails to replace utensils after a course, diners can do it themselves. Smart.

Two other mains also get napkin service. A smashburger made with two 3.5-ounce Shenandoah Randall Lineback beef patties from Virginia has all the fixings (American cheese, house-made pickles, shaved Vidalia onions, yellow mustard and ketchup on a potato bun) and is as delightfully messy as it sounds. So are the New Orleans-style barbecue shrimp, which are griddled head-on, in-the-shell, and served with a Worcestershire, butter and lemon-based sauce for dunking. 

D.C.-based //3877 designed the restaurant space, but Rathlé masterminded the fixtures and finishes. It’s a bright and airy spot with a tropical vibe—a nod to Guas’ Cuban and Louisiana roots—with a little Palm Springs, Lilly Pulitzer and a dash of Golden Girls thrown in. Think blond wood flooring, palmetto leaves, rattan pendants, cane panels and boldly patterned Spoonflower wallpaper in shades of grassy green, sunset orange and hot pink. 

I’d prefer the lighting a little lower, the mellow music a little louder and some additional soundproofing, but these are minor quibbles. 

Guas is a pastry chef, so don’t pass up dessert, be it his perfect rendition of creme brulee, a lemon icebox tart with blistered strawberries, or a baked meringue pavlova spiked with black pepper and topped with stewed blueberries and tarragon-lime whipped cream. Any choice guarantees a lasting impression that is anything but neutral.

What to Drink

Neutral Ground offers 13 signature cocktails ($12 to $15), two of which are zero proof. Among the spirited offerings are the Neutral Ground (pineapple rum, dry vermouth, Curaçao, grenadine and blackstrap bitters); the Sunset Spritz (Aperol, amaro, orange juice, lemon juice, sparkling wine); and the Peychaud’s Original (rye, Herbsaint liqueur, demerara sugar, Peychaud’s bitters). 

The well-curated wine list numbers 35 selections, including three zero-proof options and one orange wine, in addition to the usual reds, whites, bubblies and rosés. Wines range from $42 to $159 per bottle, with 16 available by the glass ($10 to $20). There are also four wines ($8 to $16) and four beers ($7 to $9) on tap.

Neutral Ground Bar + Kitchen

6641 Old Dominion Drive, McLean
703-992-9095

Hours
Tuesday through Thursday from 4 to 9 p.m.
Friday and Saturday from 4 to 10 p.m.

Parking
There is a very large parking lot behind the restaurant.

Prices
Snacks: $7 to $9
Salads and appetizers: $12 to $22
Entrées: $20 to $48
Desserts: $11 to $13