Last night, I met up with some friends and new acquaintances at Bar Pilar, a narrow space in the U Street Corridor of Washington, D.C., that frankly, I didn't even know served anything more than your average bar food and beer. I was so wrong!
When you come into Bar Pilar, seat yourself (if you can find the room). We arrived at a little after 6:30 and snagged one of the last tables. To drink, I started with Bonarda, a red 2006 wine from Argentina. It is a dark, dry red with a hint of acidity. My favorite red is a Shiraz, so I guess there's just something with me and Argentine wine.
Bar Pilar, save for one entree on the menu, does small plate dishes, so our table opted to get two each and share (ranges from $6-$10 each). We ordered crispy duck confit, broccoli sauteed in a brown butter and herbs, a lamb dog (think hot dog, but with lamb!), lemony grilled prawns, veal sweetbreads served over risotto, kohlrabi, a braised assortment of wild mushrooms and leaks, and spiny lobster tail. If it isn't already obvious, this isn't your typical bar food.
The broccoli was standard but good, with one diner observing that the brown butter herbs took on and almost cheesy flavor. The prawns were delicious, and I ate my first inside-the-head-of-the-prawn meat/organs, which were actually delicious. If this were an SAT analogy, it'd be black olives are to kalamata olives as prawn tail is to prawn head. It's just like ramping up the flavors tenfold, so if you don't like seafood, you really won't like the prawn head. But if you do, it's so tender and filled with briny deliciousness.
The mushrooms were actually good (I'm normally not a huge fan). The morels were thick and meaty, but I preferred the flavors of the sulfur tuft-looking mushrooms, which were sort of simultaneously sweet and umami.
The dish that I thought was the weakest was the sweetbreads. I've never had them before, but scooped up without the risotto, they largely lacked flavor. Sort of a disappointment since I've heard so much about how good sweetbreads are. With the risotto, they were also mushroomy and salty. Otherwise, it was just like your typical fried food with a slightly different texture than meat.
The duck confit was pretty good, with a perfectly crunchy outside yet a still well-cooked inside. The only draw back was we had to send our initial duck back because it had possibly the largest array of hairs I've ever seen on a restaurant dish. Glad one of my fellow diners figured that out before it ended up in my mouth!
The spiny lobster was interesting, with a flavor more exotic than your typical clawed lobster.
The kohlrabi is something I'd never even heard of until I saw it on the menu last night. Similar in presentation to cut and roasted potatoes, the veggie was starchy like a potato, but had a lingering vegetable flavor sort of similar to broccoli or cabbage but much milder.
The stand out dish of the night for me was the lamb dog. Served just like a hot dog, on a bun with sides of mustard and diced onion, the initial flavors of the lamb are subdued but then hit you like a train at the end when coupled with all those distinctly sausage spices. Not to mention, the way this dish is presented makes it the perfect one-off dish for late-night bar snackers. I really cannot recommend it any higher.
For dessert, our group opted for the black pepper and fig pie and the pear tart tartin, both served with scoops of vanilla bean ice cream. The pear tart was safe compared to the fig pie, and served as a perfectly sweet end to our meal. The black pepper and figs though was a challenge for your mouth. Served in a presentation that looks more like a muffin than a pie, the first bite of the dessert took me by total surprise. The pepper and the fig went together, but my tongue was just completely taken by how foreign the taste was. Though by the second and third scoop, I was a full-on black pepper with figs convert. It might take you a few tries to really love it, but I think a lot of the truly most flavorful and complex foods are like that.
In all, Bar Pilar was well above my expectations of your typical nighttime fare. Just make sure your duck is served crispy and not hairy.
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