Lew H.
Yelp
Butterworth's is a great place that I can highly recommend. The food is great (really great - not just good) and the service is outstanding!
We wanted a new place for dinner and Butterworth's came up. Man, are we glad that we found this place!
We could only get a reservation for 9:15 pm and, when we arrived, the place was ROCKING!!! So active and lively and busy! Our table was not ready when we arrived so the very friendly and capable host/owner (Brent) seated us in the waiting area AND provided us with free drinks while we waited!!! OMG - that has never happened to us before anywhere!!! A good sign of good things to come in my book.
We waited half an hour for our table and, during that time, various staff members stopped by to see how we were doing, to see if we wanted anything else, etc. They even offered us some tables that we did not want (near the cold front door for example) and they were very good at saying it was fine for us to wait. When our table finally was ready, it was a corner booth in the back - the BEST table in the entire dining room according to Brent. I agreed!
So, let me take a minute to talk about the service at Butterworth's. Everyone we talked to was friendly and knowledgeable and willing to take time to have a conversation with us. And it seemed genuine! I am not sure how Brent has been able to gather a group of people so good at their jobs - but these are truly people who understand the hospitality business and they take it seriously! Accolades to the entire staff including owner and managers! The service at Butterworth's was top notch. A real reason to return all by itself!
Now the food. So, the dining room is an eclectic mix of brick walls, mis-matched furniture, vintage elegance - but nothing high brow. The ambiance is friendly, chatty - loud even - casual and bistro-like - just as advertised. However, the quality of food OVER-delivered given the dining room. Each dish was excellent. Our appetizer was a scallop dish that was inventive, fresh, different and delicious! On the small side perhaps but it really left an excellent impression. And, given what our main course was, we were quite haeppy that it was small. What it lacked in size, however, it MORE than made up in flavor and impact!
Now the main course. We ordered a big old ribeye steak (with the emphasis on big). We shared it, thank God, since the cholesterol level in that meat would have made my physician very unhappy! The steak was prepared just as we like - medium rare. The ribeye was perfect - chewy in that way that good beef should be. The bernaise sauce came in a charming cut glass bowl with a cute little cut glass cover on it. So cute! The fried potatoes (pomme frites) were the best I have ever had - and there was a whole mound of them! The course also came with a side salad of baby carrots that included the carrot greens, fennel, onions and all sort of other salad stuff. The beautiful vinegar-y dressing was a perfect foil to the robust and luxurious steak. We gobbled up the entire dish - steak, pomme frites, bernaise and salad - all of it!!! And we did not even feel guilty (just full).
For dessert, we had the beignets which were small enough to finish. Powdered sugar and cinnamon pillows of fried dough to fall in love with! The coffee too was really good.
I rarely walk away from a new dining experience where I think all the stars were aligned. But, here at Butterworth's, it happened. As we were putting on our coats, Brent came over to ask me how he had done. Where in DC does that ever happen? And I think that he genuinely wanted to know too (whether that's true or not, only Brent knows).
All in all, Butterworth's is a great casual dining room that has a SUPER PROFESSIONAL AND FRIENDLY STAFF and some SURPRISINGLY GREAT FOOD!!!
I recommend Butterworth's to one and all.