As the name might suggest Graffiato serves Italian/Mediterranean-inspired dishes and pizzas. Keeping with the tradition of his tenure at Zaytinya, Isabella’s menu offers smaller, tapas-like dishes, which contrast wonderfully with the healthy-sized, wood oven roasted pizzas. Any of these dishes can be ordered a la carte (they recommend about three plates per person). Or, diners can order a tasting menu, in which Isabella picks dishes from the menu and serves them in a pleasing order. Either way you order, all the dishes are meant to be shared family-style. As we were starving (and had two starving kids who love bread), we ordered the bread basket a la carte, and then opted for the tasting menu.
Before I get to the food, a brief rant. We had two kids in our party of 6. We were eating at 5:30pm, out of respect for other diners. We show up and say we will need two high chairs, only to be informed that they only had two high chairs for the entire restaurant, and that one was being used by another party. The hostess actually said “honestly, we’ve never even thought that we’d have more than two kids come to our restaurant, so we never even ordered more than two high chairs.” Really? You’re right across from the Verizon Center, home of many athletic events that are attended by children every day. Plus, you’re near tons of hotels in downtown DC—which is a hub for tourists who bring their kids to visit! Two high chairs? That’s it? I get that some higher end restaurants might not have any (I doubt French Laundry has any), but this ain’t the Laundry here. The inside décor is industrial, it has a nice loud din, and the restaurant plays rock music over the speakers. Kids attending this place might not be such a crazy thought. Not a lot of foresight here by the folks at Graffiato. I’m sure you parents out there get my drift. OK. Rant over. On to the food. Here goes.
To start, we were brought the bread basket. I know what you’re thinking: “You’re going to discuss the bread basket?” Well, yes. The bread basket was interesting not for its bread (he served three types of bread: polenta, focaccia, and raisin nut breads), but for what accompanied the bread. As a condiments guy, I’m sensitive to these things. Instead of coming with butter, the breads came with a side of fresh ricotta cheese and another side of olive oil jam. I was excited about the ricotta cheese and dubious about the olive oil jam. I should have felt the other way around. The cheese was clearly fresh, with a creamy texture that you’d hope from ricotta. There was, however, something amok with the cheese. It tasted like cheese and something else. Finally, I pinpointed it—lime zest. The zest gave the cheese a brightness it didn’t need, while shattering the creaminess of the flavor in the process. I think everyone agreed with my assessment of the ricotta, as it stayed largely untouched. Even Amelia—a rising star in the cheese lover world—didn’t want to touch the stuff. The olive oil jam, on the other hand, was gastronomic cooking at its finest. It had the greenish hue of a Spanish olive picked off the tree, but the texture of a compound butter. In fact, calling it a butter is probably more accurate as the jam was not jam-like at all. Nevertheless, the flavor was pure, power-packed olive oil, with a hint of salt and savory tied in. I couldn’t get enough.
When I was done stuffing my face with focaccia and olive oil butter—er, jam—the servers brought the first set of dishes for the tasting menu. First out, came his twist on the Caprese salad: a plate of hand-stretched, fresh buffala mozzarella and heirloom tomatoes. Along with this dish came a red beet salad with citrus, and a plate of spiced pistachios. The winner of this grouping was the Caprese salad. The mozzarella, apparently hand-stretched that day, was unbelievably creamy. It had such a wonderful consistency, with a long velvety finish. The heirloom tomatoes also provided a nice brightness and acidity to the dish. The beet salad was nice, but I feel like I’ve had this salad before because, well, I have had it at other restaurants. It was tasty for sure, but it wasn’t anything super new. The pistachios were, in a word, interesting. They were spiced with something none of us could figure out. And our waiter was not the best at describing things to us—side note: he may have been stoned, or at least it seemed that way. The best approximation Wes and I could come up with for the spice on the pistachios was a homemade Old Bay seasoning. Meh.
After those dishes were taken away, the next series of dishes to arrive contained a plate of three separate cuts of shaved ham, a green salad with apply, radish and mint, and a Caesar salad with cream cheese croutons. OK. Let’s start with the cream cheese croutons because I know that’s what you want me to start with. This was one of the super winning things Chef Isabella did all night. I don’t know how to describe it, except to say that the crouton was not made of bread. Rather, it was a small quenelle of cream cheese that somehow had a crunchy exterior, but when bitten into, melted into a warm ooze of cream cheese. It was sheer genius. I would never have thought to mix the flavors of cream cheese into a Caesar salad (which also was fantastic in its own right, by the way), but I stand and applaud Chef Isabella’s vision. The green salad, by contrast, was nothing really to write home about. A salad. On a plate. With apples. And the vinaigrette tasted an awful lot like red onions to me, which I wasn’t a huge fan of. Finally, the ham plate. The chef has a number of options of ham on his menu. He picked for us a trio of Benton’s smoked country ham (from America, dammit!); traditional prosciutto di parma; culatello (the secret muscle inside the prosciutto muscle that is aged longer than prosciutto), which all came with a light drizzle of a sweet flavored olive oil. Each cut was very good, but I’d rank the culatello my favorite, followed by the prosciutto, then the Benton’s. It had the right amount of smokiness combined with sweetness and creaminess of the fat that almost made it melt in my mouth.
Next, the servers brought a duo of wood oven fired pizzas. First, came the countryman pizza, which is a pizza with black truffle paste and fontina cheese. For this pizza, the server took it piping hot out of the oven and brought it to the table. While the pizza was still scalding, our server took a duck egg and cracked it over the top of the pizza and spread it around the top, letting it cook on the hot pizza. The result was a truly decadent pizza. The woodsy flavor of the black truffle, combined with the tang of the fontina cheese and the delicate and soothing duck egg yolk was like a heart attach waiting to happen. As a fan of runny eggs, I was in heaven! Almost too much so, in fact—we all quickly realized that the countryman pizza was so rich in flavor that we felt like we couldn’t eat more than one piece in a sitting! Add to this fact that the server brought us another pizza while we were eating this, and we had to save the rest of the countryman pizza for later so we could focus on our next conquest: the Jersey shore pizza. This pizza was, quite simply, one of the best pizzas I’ve ever had. And, unlike the countryman, I could have eaten about 30 of these pizzas without any problem. The Jersey shore comes with fried calamari, tomato, provolone, and cherry pepper aioli. The calamari, by itself, was some of the best fried calamari I’ve ever had. The breading was light, but very well seasoned with oregano. Drizzled over top of the entire pizza was the cherry pepper aioli, which was brilliant. It had the bright orange-pink color of the spicy tuna sauce you might have in a sushi restaurant—a color that says “beware, this is going to bite back.” And it did. The flavors in the sauce were as bright as its color. The spice of the cherry pepper popped and danced on the tip of the tongue, while a lingering sweetness of the mayo cooled you mid-bite, only to be hit again with another wonderful wave of the pepper at the end. I didn’t think a mayonnaise-based spicy sauce would work with the acidity of the tomato and the piquant provolone, but it did. The sauce—and the chef—blew me away with this one.
With the pizzas out of the way, the final set of savory dishes made their way to the table. It was a quintet of dishes: chicken thighs in pepperoni sauce and roasted peeled baby roma tomatoes; octopus with grilled chickpeas and flash fried artichokes; roasted potato gnocchi with braised pork and burrata cheese; sweet corn agnolotti with chanterelle mushrooms and pine nuts; and pork ribs with Sicilian oregano and coriander yogurt. These dishes were hit and miss, which was sad, particularly after hitting such highs with the pizzas. I was excited to see he picked the chicken thigh/pepperoni sauce dish because we had watched him make the same dish on Top Chef All-Stars and watched Gayle Simmons gush about it (in fact, this dish apparently nearly won him the entire thing). Maybe it was the hype of the show (damn you, Gayle Simmons), but the dish sadly didn’t live up to its billing. To be sure, the chicken thighs were cooked to perfection. The meat fell off the bone, there was a nice crust on the skin of the chicken, and the thighs were well seasoned. And, the pepperoni sauce was very interesting. It tasted exactly like what you would think—pepperoni—which was a cool, outside-the-box sauce to serve with braised chicken. Nevertheless, there was something muted about the dish. I wanted to be blown away by the pepperoni sauce. I wanted it to ooze pepperoni. The flavors just didn’t pop as much as I had hoped they would. All I got was snap and crackle. Similarly, the gnocchi dish and oregano pork rib dish, both of which sound great on the menu, were too one-note for me. The gnocchi was almost too soft which, when mixed with the braised pork and burrata cheese, created a dish that had a soft consistency. There was no crunch, nothing to break it up. Add to this the fact that the flavor of the braised pork was clearly watered down, and this was not a dish to write home about. As for the oregano pork ribs, they were cooked to perfection—the meat slid off the bone with ease. But the Sicilian oregano was muted as well. And the coriander yogurt was overpowered by the addition of too much lemon zest. On the upside, the remaining two dishes were fantastic. The sweet corn agnolotti dish was bursting with corn flavor. The roasted pine nuts provided a sweet crunch to round out the dish. The grilled octopus dish was equally winning. Normally, when I’ve had octopus, it has been cooked too long—making it chewy—or under-seasoned, or both. Here, Chef Isabella somehow managed to get a wonderful salty crust on the octopus, giving the octopus a wonderful sea-like flavor, while simultaneously making sure the octopus didn’t become a chewy mess on a plate. The flash-fried artichokes (a side dish that has been cropping up more and more lately) were a smoky, citrusy, and delicious accompaniment.
Finally, after all of that food, we were served dessert. Three courses: pistachio gelato; nutella cookies—homemade hazelnut cookies with nutella filling, topped with a like sprinkle of sea salt; and a chocolate tart with olive oil and sea salt gelato (Amelia’s favorite!). Usually, I am disappointed at the desserts I’ve had while dining out. After a lovely meal, I am rarely overwhelmed when it comes to dessert. Thankfully, Graffiato didn’t fall into that trend. The pistachio gelato was regarded by all of us as the best gelato we had ever eaten. It was light but decadent, and bursting with pistachio flavor. The nutella cookies, made by Chef Isabella’s wife, also were a masterstroke. The sea salt on top of the sweet hazelnut, with the creamy goodness of everyone’s favorite hazelnut spread in between, was to die for. Finally, the chocolate tart was, as Wes put it, “the best possible, upscale version of a Jell-o pudding pie ever.” He was right. The dark chocolate was rich and sweet, but thankfully not overly so. The olive oil added a wonderful sultry nuttiness to the dish, which was unexpected, but welcome. And the sea salt gelato was an unexpected crowd pleaser. Somehow, Chef Isabella managed to combine the refreshing and piquant notes of sea salt with a creamy gelato to create a simultaneously sweet and slightly savory dessert side dish. Married with the chocolate, it was perfect. Even alone, it was lovely. In fact, Amelia liked it so much she ate nearly all of the gelato herself! Definitely a fantastic way to end a night of dining with friends.
Some of you may be wondering what we had to drink while eating all that food. Apparently, Graffiato is one of only a handful of restaurants in the United States to offer prosecco on tap, so we each had two glasses of that. (Apparently, prosecco on tap is all the rage in Europe, but over here it’s still in its infancy). The prosecco was a nice selection for all of the food we had. Unlike other bottles of prosecco we have had, this prosecco was not too sweet. It was the prosecco equivalent of a blanc-de-blancs. It had good notes of citrus (meyer lemon, hints of grapefruit toward the finish), and a nice clean finish.
All in all, this was a meal with some significant highs, and some obvious misses (including the high chair episode). Nevertheless, I was very impressed with a vast majority of the dishes. And I would definitely go back to order those pizzas, the high note dishes, and try some of the other dishes I didn’t get to try.
My rating: 8.3 out of 10.
(Here are some photos of the pepperoni chicken thighs, the gnocchi, the on-tap prosecco, and Sarah, Diena, Colin, and Amelia with Chef Isabella. Enjoy!)
Great review Paul! I'll have to put this on the list of places Alan and I would like to try when we're down your way. The pizzas in particular have me very excited to have a meal there.
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