I love opening nights, and not just when it comes to the theater. When a restaurant opens its doors for the first time, there’s a mood created which no longer exists later on once the unfamiliar rhythms settle into a perfected routine. Both staff and customers are filled with excitement and wonder, and as they’re both experiencing the venue for the first time, maybe even a tickle of uncertainty as well.

Will it all come together? Will confidence be rewarded? At the outset, you can never be sure. But one always begins filled with hope.

Which is why, when Aaron Silverman announced that Pineapple and Pearls—his spinoff from Rose’s Luxury—was going to open in April, I knew Irene and I had to be there. After all, Bon Appétit had judged Rose’s Luxury to be 2014’s best new restaurant in America, so Pineapple and Pearls promised to be something quite special.

And it was.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Pineapple and Pearls opened its first phase—a coffee shop serving amazing sandwiches and sweet rolls—on February 12. Though I wasn’t able to get there for its opening day, I was able to pop in exactly one week later, when I was in D.C. to record an episode of my Eating the Fantastic podcast, and I checked out the entire menu.

To experience the coffee shop, all I needed to do was show up. But to get a table for the fine dining component, I had to work my Internet magic the moment reservations opened. Luckily, I was able to grab a table for the first seating on the first night.

And so, at 5:01 p.m. on Thursday, April 7, we arrived at Pineapple and Pearls—me wearing a pineapple, Irene wearing the pearls—and were immediately handed mint juleps. (Sans alcohol, of course, for we had chosen the non-alcoholic pairings, as we always do.)

Once we were led to our table, I peered over to the kitchen and spotted what felt like a historic moment which cried out to be captured—head chef Scott Muns and chef/owner Aaron Silverman conferring as service began. (more…)

Early Friday morning, I headed into D.C. to record the second episode of my new podcast Eating the Fantastic, which seemed a perfect opportunity to check out Pineapple and Pearls, a cafe which opened its doors exactly one week earlier. It’s the latest restaurant from Rose’s Luxury chef Aaron Silverman, and will soon include a high-end, full-service restaurant of the same name—one which, unlike Rose’s, will allow reservations. Yay!

Because getting into D.C. for me involves taking one of a limited number of possible MARC trains out of Martinsburg at a completely mind-numbing hour, I arrived at Pineapple and Pearls exactly one minute before its 8:00 a.m. opening. But once that minute passed, and I could hear the sounds of reveille from the Marine barracks across the street, the door opened, and I learned what was for breakfast that morning.

I’d already decided I was going to order the entire menu, for a number of reasons.

One—I’ve told you before how amazing Rose’s Luxury is, right? How could I not order it all?

Second—restaurants often dispense with some of their initial menu offerings once they gauge which are selling and which are not, and I wanted to check them all out before any were removed.

But don’t worry—though I did order the whole menu, I didn’t actually eat the whole menu! That, after all, is what friends and relatives are for. (In this instance, my son, whom I’d be meeting later that day.) (more…)

Back when Bon Appétit named Rose’s Luxury the Best New Restaurant in America 2014, the writer of the piece stated that “Rose’s isn’t just in the restaurant business; it’s in the making-people-happy business,” while Chef and owner Aaron Silverman was quoted as saying, “I just want to make people happy.”

Last night, when Irene and I dropped by to celebrate our 39th anniversary, Silverman and his staff met and exceeded that goal.

That isn’t the easiest of feats for a place that takes no reservations, yet remains so popular most customers wait at least a couple of hours to be seated. We’d arrived at 3:05 to make sure we could be part of the first seating at 5:00, and by the time the doors opened, the line stretched behind us down the block, took a right turn, and then vanished into an alley.

But people are willing to put up with it because the food and the service are that good. Whatever weariness we felt from our long wait vanished before the smiles of the enthusiastic staff, and from what we found waiting for us when we got to our table. (more…)

When it came time to choose where I’d eat during the recent World Fantasy Convention—and you know me, I hate to waste a meal on a hotel restaurant—my number one choice was Rose’s Luxury, judged by Bon Appétit as 2014’s best new restaurant in America. Getting the chance to eat there represented a different sort of challenge than most popular restaurants I’ve been to, which have involved using my Internet-fu to snag a table the instant reservations for the date I needed became available online.

Rose’s Luxury, however, doesn’t take reservations. Which results in the kind of wait one Yelp reviewer recently experienced: “We waited in line approximately 1h45m before putting our name down. After that was another 2h30m wait to get a table.” And another, who waited even longer: “I waited about 5 hours for a table on a Saturday night, starting from lining up outside at 4:30 to being seated around 10:00pm.”

There seemed to be only one way to avoid that kind of wait—arrive around 90 minutes before the restaurant opens, guaranteeing you’ll be part of the first seating. That will keep wait time to a minimum. I was up for standing outside the restaurant before it opened—hey, I had no problem getting to Franklin BBQ three hours before it opened, so 90 minutes was nothing to me—but would I find others foodies at WFC who’d think the experience worth the wait?

I did!

Here I am with Rajan Khanna, Jenn Reese, Liz Argall, Greg van Eekhout, and Barry Goldblatt after we’d ordered and eaten EVERY FREAKING DISH on the menu that night.

But let’s go back in time, and see how the night began … (more…)