Location Index
| Restaurant Guide Location Index |
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About this Restaurant Guide |
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Greensboro, NC |
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Washington DC |
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Spain |
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France |
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Uncle Orson's Restaurant Guide
Paolo's
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asually elegant, Paolo's comes the closest I've seen on the east coast to capturing the feel of a California restaurant. Unfortunately, it's impossible to duplicate the taste ... but they don't miss by much. The salads are spot on, a mix of greens, nicely dressed, with extras that make you want to kiss the salad chef. The pasta entrees are almost always wonderful, and never less than good. In fact, when I'm in the DC area and want pasta, I really don't think of going anywhere else.
Used to be the soups were the best things on the menu, but not in the last couple of years, and for a while they were into the raw fish trend — you know, where you think you've ordered cooked salmon but it comes nastily translucent and about at human body temperature. (If we want sushi, folks, we'll go to a restaurant that admits that's what they're selling.) But after a couple of real disappointments, we've found that quality is back where it belongs once again. Except the soup.
Why did we keep going back, even during the bad times? Partly for the ambience, partly for the memory of the best days, partly because sometimes we didn't feel like waiting an hour and a half for a table at the Rio Grande Cafe ... but mostly for the amazing breadsticks and chopped-olive dip. I don't even like olives, but I love this dip, and the breadsticks are mild and soft and warm from the oven. I just can't get enough of them — literally. And the breadsticks and olive dip don't ever come out even, so you need more breadsticks to use up the dip, or more dip to use up the breadsticks. It never ends. This is why I'm not thin.
If it's a warm day with a light breeze, eat on the patio. Same lovely menu, the sound of the fountain, the sight of people strolling by almost as if it were a real downtown (it's the Reston Town Centre — see the review of Rio Grande Cafe). You need the breeze, though, because "outdoor" means "smoking section" in this part of the country. It's a shame when the smokers get the exclusive use of the great outdoors. But when the cigarette smoke just hangs there in the sultry Potomac Valley air, you might as well be eating paper napkins for all the taste you'll get out of the food. (Why smokers bother to eat out I'll never know. For all they can tell about the taste of the food, they might as well be eating Lean Cuisine. Why they can't wait to smoke until after they've left the restaurant — including the outdoor areas of the restaurant — is because manners in America are dead, having been replaced by inadequate and unenforceable laws.)
703-318-8920
Reston Town Center, Reston VA. From Route 7 take Reston Parkway (or Baron Cameron and then turn left on Reston Parkway); from the Dulles toll road, take the Reston Parkway exit and go right (if you're coming from the DC direction). Plenty of parking and there are two covered garages if the weather stinks.