Obelisk, as fine as ever!

It has been fifteen or so years since we ate at Obelisk. We'd continued to hear good things about the small Dupont Circle restaurant, on P Street, NW, but had never quite had the occasion to go. That changed this weekend with the arrival of friends from New York who had eaten there 11 years ago and wanted to retry Peter Pastan's fine Italian cuisine.

The restaurant certainly lived up to every expectation.

As a prix fixe restaurant there are minimal choices for the mains, pastas and desserts with the house making your decisions for cheeses and antipasti. Whether you make the choice or the house chooses, all are excellent.

For starters the server delivers a series of five antipasti, ours were creamy mozzarella-like cheese, followed by toast with chopped tomato, a swordfish taste, a roll of various meats sliced wafer thin, and crab with green beans. Coupled with our hosts' choice of a Temerezano (spelling?) white, the evening began beautifully.

Our pastas were excellent. Ben and I both had fettucine with sea urchin, while our visitors enjoyed gortole with lamb ragù. The ragù bettered my own version. The sea urchin sauce was lovely. We enjoyed our first red with this course, a Dolcetto, which was beautifully full, almost too full, to go with the meal.

The mains offered included sea bass, which Ben had, a thick pork chop, which I had, and our hosts had guinea hen. All were wonderful. The chop, in particular, was luscious and nicely pink.

The restaurant then follows with a small plate of three cheeses, all exquisite and dessert, which in our case was raspberry and fig tart.

Our third wine was an lovely, lighter, Barbera d'Alba, which we really enjoyed.

There is no fault to find with Obelisk. It continues to be as wonderful as it has been for many years, 20 to our knowledge!