100 Best Restaurants, 2006

Washingtonian Magazine

The real value of this sleek and hugely successful fish emporium? It's many things to many people. Start with the fish market, where pristine if pricey seafood glistens on ice (and where, if you ask, they'll even clean those white South Carolina shrimp for you). Or head to the convivial raw bar for a plate of boutique oysters, a bowl of steamy clam chowder brimming with tender clams and cockles, and a Champagne cocktail. Or go for the full monty - a meal built around seafood in the stylish dining room, where a loyal Palisades and Georgetown following nods its approval.

A dinner might be a simple as a plate of fried Ipswich clams with romesco  for dipping or Prince Edward Island mussels steeped with Dijon cream and fines herbes. More elaborate is a fragrant Provençal seafood stew perfumed with saffron and spinach, or whole branzino with organic dandelion greens, sunchokes, and preserved-lemon salsa verde...

DC Modern Luxury

July/August 2006

Salt Of The Sea Close you eyes at BlackSalt and let your taste buds take you back to the beach

Mussels are the forgotten shellfish. Neither glamorous like lobster nor exotic like diver scallops, the are sold rather inexpensively in three pound sacks at supermarkets for a quick and easy dinner at home. In restaurants, mussels are often an afterthought: improperly stored, sloppily cleaned and clumsily cooked.

Not at BlackSalt. The mussels here come from Casca Bay in Maine, and they are farmed by the Bouchot method, which uses poles instead of ropes to attract their prey and results in smaller, plumper shellfish. Chef Joseph Zumpano treats them with respect, cooking them so that the juicy meat pulls away from the shell as it opens. He dresses them for travel, too, with variations from Brussels (steamed in Chimay ale), Spain(saffron, romesco and chorizo), Chile (tomato, chickpeas, olives and cumin) or Thailand ( coconut milk, kaffir lime, ginger, red chili and basil), as well as a traditional marinere preparation. You could order a bowl of mussels each night of the work week and never get bored.

Which explains much of the appeal of BlackSalt, in the Palisades neighborhood of Northwest DC. You can forage here, enjoying a "small plate" of braised octopus or as many grilled sardines as you please for a snack on the way home or to a party. You con slurp raw oysters or revel in gloriously fried Ipswich clams that taste as though thy were snug in the sands of the Massachusetts North Shore just hours earlier. So good you can almost ignore the delicious curried aioli and peppery Spanish romesco sauces the come alongside. A bowl of mussels makes a light dinner, or a hearty seafood stew (there are three variations) a more substantial one...

In Palisades, the Blacks did good research on their affluent, well-traveled neighbors, and they've created a restaurant where retired Foreign Service officers, television news correspondents or Georgetown University surgeons on professors can sample flavors from around the world, perhaps reliving some past journeys. It's close enough to Chain Bridge to be a draw for McLean socialites, and right on MacArthur Boulevard to attract Bethesdans heading home or wine lovers stocking up at Addy Bassin's wine store next door. The lunch menu includes a delicious, modernized pan bagnat that will leave you unable to utter the words "tuna sandwich" ever again, and Sunday brunch is a recent addition. The front of the house is a fish market, where neighbors who did not call ahead for a reservation can purchase a tuna filet or swordfish steak to cook at home. The market does not seem to be busy, and the space could be put to better use with more tables for the restaurant. And no wonder-with cooking this skillful in the kitchen at BlackSalt, the tempation is to stay...

The Hill

June 8, 2006

FOOD AND DRINK

BlackSalt: Piscatorial perfection in the Palisades

By: Albert  Eisele

In a city replete with top-notch seafood restaurants - think Kinkead's, Oceanaire, McCormick & Schmick's, Legal Sea Foods, Pesce, Acadianna - and discriminating diners who  demand the best from Neptune's locker, Jeff and Barbara Black must have known they had their work cut out for them when they opened BlackSalt in December 2004.

Fortunately, they  enjoyed two advantages that practically guaranteed success: Experience and Location.

The Blacks - hence the name BlackSalt - earned their maritime culinary credentials with three popular seafood  restaurants in Maryland - Black's Bar & Kitchen in Bethesda, Black Market Bistro in Garrett Park and Addie's in Rockville - before setting sail for the District's upscale but restaurant-challanged Palisades neighborhood. (Word to the wise: observe the 25-mph speed limit on MacArthur Boulevard: the cameras are watching.)

Located in a converted drugstore midway between Ann Hand's eponymous jewelry emporium and MacArthur Wine and Liquor, BlackSalt, unlike its D.C. rivals, is both a retail shop with a dazzling array of fresh fish, shrimp, crustaceans and bivalves for sale and a granite-and-stainless-steel bar and sit-down restaurant offering seafood that ranks with the best in the city.

The menu, which Head Chef Joseph Zumpano changes almost daily according to what local fishmongers are peddling, ranges across the global spectrum.

Naturally, the Chesapeake  Bay  and other American regions ate well-represented in the form of oysters on the half-shell or fried in a cornmeal crust, New England clam chowder and a soft-shell blue crab "BLT" and entrees like Maine diver scallops, Carolina Red Grouper, Key West yellowtail snapper and Alaska's Copper River sockeye salmon. But diners can also sample what the rest of the world's waters have to offer as well: Osetra fish roe from Uruguay, Japanese Hamachi sashimi, grilled Mediterranean sardines, Caribbean conch chowder, tuna from the Atlantic and pacific and seafood stews from France and Peru. The latter dubbed parazuela, is an exotic combination of roasted half-lobster, mussels, squid, purple potatoes, cilantro, avocado and chorizo-coconut broth ($29).

I've tried many of the above since my first visit in March 2005 and in several return visits and can attest to the high quality of most. The robust clam chowder can hold its own with any from Boston or Bar Harbor. Chock full of Ipswich clams, cockles and smoked bacon, and fortified with silky leek cream, it's well worth the $13 tab. The Uruguayan version of caviar is priced according to market, which means if you have to ask, you can't afford it.

The complex menu is divided among raw selections, small plates, appetizers and main courses. Two appetizers not to be missed are Icelandic Arctic char, a delicate cousin of salmon served with honey mushrooms, garden peas and the springtime delicacy, fiddlehead ferns ($15), and Atlantic blue-fin toro, bathed in truffle balsamic vinegar and accompanied by arugula and strawberry sorbet ($14). The sorbet terminally trendy, but it works.

For the truly hungry and adventurous, BlackSalt has a 12 - course, $84 tasting menu, but that was beyond my capacity and expense account.

The small plates include braised baby octopus with tomato, garlic and parsley ($5) and the aforementioned grilled Mediterranean sardines ($4 each). As good as both are, they're left standing on the gangplank by fat Gulf shrimp wrapped in thin-sliced Serrano ham ($3 each). I ordered three at dinner last week - or rather late Friday afternoon, as the only reservation available when I called three days earlier was a 5:30 p.m. The shrimp are a match made in shellfish heaven.

But the stars of the meal - and maybe this is why they are featured on BlackSalt's business cards - were the mussels from Casco Bay, Maine, that my wife ordered. There are five varieties, all $12 - Thai, Chilean, Spanish, classic Brussels and Addie's, which my wife, who knows her mussels, chose.

She thought she was getting an appetizer, but it could easily have been a whole meal. At least two dozen on the plump creatures, cooked with shallots, garlic, tomato and lemon, were set before her while I finished my Serrano-wrapped shrimp and tucked into a salad of Roquefort, toasted walnuts and roasted peas ($9). She couldn't finish them, so I gallantly offered to help her, and understood why she said they were the best  mussels she'd ever encountered.

I ordered a half-bottle of a favorite California chardonnay, Clos Du Val. At $20 it's one of the least expensive choices on the restaurant's extensive wine list, which includes some 20 wines by the glass, available in 4- and 7-ounce portions.

For entrees, we both chose fish from Alaska: the Copper River salmon for me and the Alaska halibut for her (both $29). The blood-red salmon was cooked medium, as requested, and came with morel mushrooms, surgically sliced yellow spring squash and pancetta vinaigrette, while her halibut was cooked to snowy white perfection and served with asparagus, tiny enoki mushrooms and mustard Crème Fraîche. Both dishes ranked with the best seafood this side of Baltimore, New Orleans or San Francisco.

Pastry Chef Susan Wallace's desserts, especially the Key-lime pie and trio of vanilla-orange, chocolate-hazelnut and coffee Crème Brûlée that I enjoyed in previous visits, are simply sensational, but we'd already eaten so well that we passed.

A word on  ambience and service: The low-ceilinged restaurant tends to be a bit noisy when full, but the decibel level is manageable, while the lighting from the bar and retail section  does little to conceal signs of the ravages of age. But the service, from a warm greeting and prompt seating by the maitre d' to careful attention by our personable waiter, Moses, whose lilting accent comes from Barbados and Jamaica, was flawless, with used silverware and soiled napkins promptly replaced and water glasses frequently refilled.

My only regret was that I didn't order the Atlantic skate-wing appetizer, just to see what Chef Zumpano's lobster-knuckle spaetzle is like.

Washingtonian Magazine
April 2005