Viridian Set to Open Any Day
Watch for the new restaurant from Perry's owner Saied Azali to open this weekend, permits permitting. Viridian, located at 1515 14th St. NW, will focus on simple and seasonal food with plenty of options for vegetarians and vegans, according to information posted on donrockwell.com.
Viridian will be open for breakfast and lunch, in addition to dinner, which is great news for the neighborhood.
Read more about the new spot in this previous Metrocurean post.
Viridian will be open for breakfast and lunch, in addition to dinner, which is great news for the neighborhood.
Read more about the new spot in this previous Metrocurean post.
Comments
To the reader who's heading to the soft opening, we eagerly await your report. Thanks!
"Our food will be simple and seasonal. The idea is to gather the best ingredients possible and to present them in a straight forward manner and let them speak for themselves. There is meat fish and chicken on the menu but we are extremely vegetarian friendly and a vegan will have lots of choices available to them. We will be serving breakfast, lunch and dinner. We are cooking and baking everything in house. We have searched out the best produce, coffee...that we could find."
SPACE – the venue is, as it appears from the street, quite nice: it is simple and modern, yet warm (oddly and as an aside, they had as a centerpiece they had a bowl of potatoes, but it seemed to work). Unlike some of the predictions blogged by others, it is not a very noisy space, as we were able to enjoy a conversation at our table undisturbed. The bar area looks like it would be a fun place at which to wait for a table or to grab a drink awaiting a show at the Studio Theater. My only complaint (not to be annoying) is that the bathrooms are somewhat hard to find and take you away from the ambience of the rest of the space by leading you through a fire door and down a fluorescent lit hallway.
FOOD – the food was ok but not great. The menu is simple and offers interesting side dishes, salads, and starters, but none of it really popped with flavor or seemed to compliment the other menu items. It seems that there is somewhat of an identity crisis in what Veridian seeks to be, as some items were quite simple while others were pretty aggressive.
SERVICE – Hopefully it will improve (and the purpose of a soft opening is to work out the kinks), but I have to mention that the service was poor. Our soups and salads came out after our entrees. We were missing several side dishes that we’d ordered. Plates were removed before people from our party were finished. And so on.
We shared the "poached eggs" (Veridian's version of eggs Benedict), the "Belgium waffles" [sic], and a side of smoked bacon. The eggs were overcooked (solid) and accompanied by oily and mushy home fried potatoes. The waffles were soggy and the type found at any greasy spoon -- not Belgian in any way. The bacon was severly overcooked, about 40% charred black. Our first French-press coffee was weak and not nearly hot enough (a second order was a little better). The bloody marys were made with V8 juice (we saw a stockpile of cans behind the bar) -- something a real mary should never be made with. At half the price, the meal would have been bad, but with $12 entrees, we were pretty disgusted.
I'll never return to Veridian when a far superior brunch can be had at the numerous restaurants within the vicinity. Readers would do themselves a favor to skip this place and eat at St. Ex (a few blocks up on 14th St.) or Merkado (around the corner on P St.).