Then there’s L’Avant-Garde in Georgetown, whose chef hails from France. Born in Brittany, Gilles Epié trained under some of his country’s most revered chefs — Roger Jaloux, the longtime chef de cuisine for the legendary Paul Bocuse; Alain Senderens, another founding father of nouvelle cuisine — and received a Michelin star for his work at Le Pavillon des Princes in Paris when he was just 22.
Since then, he’s cooked in Los Angeles, notably at L’Orangerie; Paris; and Miami. He’s no stranger to Washington, having been coaxed here by the late, great Jean-Louis Palladin to work at the Watergate Hotel shortly after arriving in the United States in 1993 “with two suitcases and no papers,” Epié says. Six months in, the West Coast called.
“He doesn’t have to prove himself,” says owner Fady Saba, who recruited Epié, 63, with a mission in mind: “We want to have fun” while also creating a restaurant that transports diners to Paris.
L’Avant-Garde wastes zero time spiriting patrons across the pond. For starters, the menu is offered in French as well as English. The senior staff appear to be straight out of central casting, Gallic division. If the butter or fish whisks you back to some fancy dinner you recall from Europe, it might be because Epié sources both from France.
Saba put $3 million into the restaurant, and it shows, starting with a door that requires some muscle to open and continuing with a low-ceilinged bar and dining rooms that look like no other in the city. Ribs of wood stretch across the walls. Gold domed lights illuminate the luxe, semicircular booths, and a crackling fire in the center of the action further warms what once housed The Guards, in its heyday a magnet for celebrities and members of the restaurant industry. Save for the zinc bar, L’Avant-Garde is free of French restaurant stereotypes. And everything you touch shows thought. Notice the marble coaster for your cocktail?
The good looks extend to the food. If bread is attached to a dish, sign on. My first taste of Epié’s cooking was a little globe of puff pastry atop a maritime “bouillabaisse” of John Dory and other fish, a soup that includes tender macaroni and a rouille teasing with harissa. Epié says the presentation was inspired by a decadent Paul Bocuse signature, la soup aux truffles, or truffle soup capped with puff pastry.
The restaurant’s duck foie gras beignet, on the other hand, is an Epié original. A little kitchen magic produces an orb with a shell, made from a beer batter, that crisps in the fryer and breaks open to reveal both solid and liquid foie gras. In the company of a port wine reduction spooned on top, the glossy first course is a concert of sweet, salty and crunchy notes that some diners will find irresistible.
In Washington just seven months now, Epié likes what he sees, principally well-educated people who like to eat. “They don’t care” in Miami, he says, and as much as he likes Los Angeles, it’s “too trendy.” The chef’s liberal use of foie gras in Washington seems to be a reaction to previous American audiences that avoided the controversial luxury, either by law or distaste. An appetizer of mustard-lit celery root rémoulade is all but obscured by a thin sheet of duck foie gras, lightly seasoned with salt that crackles, then melts, like the delicacy, on the tongue. Branzino topped with a puck of foie gras is a link to Epié’s early years in the United States, when he noticed how many American menus listed surf-and-turf combinations.
Even some of the lighter appetizers exude a thrilling richness. Butter-textured Scottish salmon blossoms in a marinade of bay leaf, juniper and shaved raw onion. Served as a single thick slice, the orange-colored fish is flanked on one side by coins of boiled potatoes enlivened with tomato vinaigrette. The sumptuous first course is a dressier version of a dish “my mother used to do,” only with herring, says the chef.
Epié oversees a kitchen crew of a dozen, the majority of whom are fresh to the business. Two months before L’Avant-Garde opened in December, Epié says, he held cooking classes for the newbies, starting with dressing and sauce basics.
A diner can taste the training in the roast chicken, based on a fresh Pennsylvania bird the chef compares favorably to what he loves in France. Textbook-perfect, it picks up flavor from herbes de Provence and fennel and arrives with french fries whose golden hue is the result of twice-frying the potatoes in clarified butter. Sharing should qualify you for sainthood.
Good chefs are good editors; they know what to play up and what to minimize. A fillet of John Dory, slowly cooked in butter, comes with a sauce of lightly sweetened lemon juice and olive oil and a dusting of lime leaf zest. But the sparklers are used with a restraint that lets you taste — and appreciate — the wild-caught fish.
“Buy the best ingredients, and 80 percent of the job is done,” says Epié. His risotto is memorable with Arborio rice, stained from the cooking water he uses to soften porcini mushrooms from France, and finished with earthy truffle butter and Parmigiano-Reggiano. (At L’Avant-Garde, cream is reserved for desserts. Milk is deployed to cook, say, the leeks for a piece of cod.)
Some of the menu is food you might have seen before. Little of the cooking elsewhere compares to Epié’s.
Samantha McCrimmon was recruited from the posh Magee Homestead in Saratoga, Wyo., to be the sommelier here. Enlist her help, and you should, and prepare to be seduced by her French-leaning collection and the enthusiasm with which she describes whatever choice you’ve made. Just remember to offer a price range if you’re disinclined to tap into your 401(k). There are lots of bottles priced well into the triple digits. When I challenged McCrimmon to produce a reasonably affordable and distinctive wine that could bridge chicken, fish and meat dishes, the Rhône fancier quickly named the 2020 Domaine des Hauts Châssis, Les Galets, Crozes-Hermitage, available for $90 a bottle. L’Avant-Garde offers corkage for $50 per bottle and, unusual for a lot of establishments, doesn’t limit the number of bottles a diner can bring to the restaurant.
Already one of the most important restaurants to set sail this year, L’Avant-Garde is not without flaws. My first attempt to order beef cheeks found my server returning to the table with a sad face. “The chef isn’t pleased with the quality,” he told me before rhapsodizing about the chateaubriand, so I bit. Moments later, the waiter reappeared to inform me that the beef cheeks were in fact just fine. Say what? I should have gone with the chateaubriand, because the beef cheeks, while expectantly tender and enriched with pork belly, came with a reduction that seemed to be equal parts wine and salt. The entree — ordering it, eating it — was memorable for all the wrong reasons. And while I enjoyed the fire show with the baba au rhum, the confection was so boozy, it was better suited for a glass than a plate.
The staff practically insists you order the raspberry macaron. Heed their counsel, then swoon at the sight of jewel-like red fruit ringing whipped mascarpone in an elegant “sandwich” constructed with chewy macarons, white as snow. The sweetness of the architecture is kept in check with lemon juice in a pool of raspberry sauce. The kitchen also serves a lovely bittersweet chocolate souffle and a Roquefort terrine, veined with apricots and walnuts and held together with the help of butter as well as the pungent blue cheese — my kind of mosaic.
Visits to New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles in the past six months reconfirm my belief that Washington surpasses those popular food destinations when it comes to all manner of fine dining. The arrival of L’Avant-Garde raises the game for the French competition and burnishes the constellation of stars.
2915 M St. NW. 202-652-1855. lavantgardedc.com. Open for indoor dining 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. Prices: Appetizers $27 to $49, main courses $43 to $62. Sound check: 70 decibels/Conversation is easy. Accessibility: The steps, narrow entrance and heavy door discourage wheelchair use. Pandemic protocols: Staff are not required to be masked or vaccinated.
