Sally’s Middle Name is a farm to table restaurant located on H street in D.C. Let’s start with the area, it’s right near Ben’s Chili Bowl on H street. The area is rapidly gentrifying which is good and bad depending on who you talk to. One thing that you will immediately notice is that the parking situation is a bit of a nightmare. There is only street parking and it can get real challenging.
Their claim to fame is that everything in the restaurant is sourced locally from nearby farms, as someone who can really appreciate fine ingredients I applaud them for making the effort to source locally in their restaurant. While it has become easier in the past decade to source locally, it’s always exponentially easier to source from suppliers with national accounts. The menu at Sally’s is primarily small plates with a wide range of options for you to choose from, I’d say that there really is no theme to the menu. Rather it seems whatever the chef is interested in making that’s what is on there.
When you walk in what immediately strikes you is the size of the restaurant. It’s small. Although that doesn’t mean it’s cramped, the spacing is appropriate, but the kitchen essentially shares a space with the bar and the dining room on the main level supports about ten tables (figure a 4 top). We walked in on a Saturday night, with a change of plans our party size had ballooned to 8 people which is really pushing it for the space at Sally’s. But much to my delight, the folks at Sally’s were very accommodating and after a little bit of a wait to get enough seating to open up they were able to seat us.
Once we were seated we reviewed the menu and the waitress quickly reminded us that each item on the menu is meant to be shared, but that it’s really only enough for two people to share. The prices vary, some things are reasonable and some are a little expensive. Basically the larger your entree, the more pricey. There’s no real rhyme or reason to the theme of their menu, it’s a little all over the place. With that important information in tow we ordered practically everything on the menu and began to see what this place was all about.
We started with the bread(yes you have to pay for it here) it was a high quality rye with an excellent bake on it. From there we had the catfish which is fried liked fish and chips and served with a tartar sauce. It was really good, catfish tends to be oily so that’s the only drawback. The batter was well seasoned and it had a great crunch to it. From there we ordered the fingerling potatoes, only one word does these justice, delicious. The fluffy interior was counterbalanced by the perfect flakey yet crunchy exterior, the only miss was the sauces that are served with it as they have some sort of fish stock base which wasn’t very pleasant. Staying in the root vegetable family we then ordered the turnip green curry, which was panned by the table as a overall dud. I’d say a milder root vegetable would’ve served as a better dance partner for a green curry, the bitterness of a turnip really throws off the pleasant flavor of a green curry.
Staying in the vegetable family, a series of salads were ordered as mushroom & pea shoot salads were brought to the table (two separate salads). Neither were necessarily bad, but I wouldn’t really order them again either, the mushroom salad was served chilled and topped with some pickled onions. With our vegetable array finally completed, we moved to the more heartier portion of the menu (did I mention we literally ordered damn near everything on this menu?!)
The gnocchi bolognese with pig head ragu joined the fray and it immediately became the star of the evening. The gnocchi was delicately crafted with each morsel of tiny potato dumpling resembling a lump of heaven rather than a lump of starch. The bolognese sauce that accompanied it was flavorful with a deep base that complimented the gnocchi perfectly.
From gnocchi we moved to chicken thighs which I adored (while others at the table were not as jubilant, the reason being they left in the bone), these thighs were flavored with a Asian subcontinent flavoring with notes of cumin, coriander, and chili. The chicken was incredibly juicy and the skin left crispy on top made it an even more mouthwatering experience for me. Like Noah’s Ark we had one of every animal, so next up was the steaks which I wasn’t crazy about, not that it was poorly prepared it just was standard steak with a rye rissoto that I felt wasn’t really as appealing as some other variations they could have done with the steak (especially such a cut).
The final dish of the evening (not including the desserts) was the lamb shank goulash, it was incredible and easily my favorite dish on the menu. This tasted just like something you would get at your grandma’s house, the lamb shank being melt in your mouth tender. The seasoning was just right as there was just enough paprika to go with the other savory notes being employed in this dish. The spaetzle that was served with it soaked up the sauce perfectly and the entire dish just left you wanting more as you licked the plate because it was that good.
The evening came to an end with a dessert order that I feel missed the mark just a touch. They tout a strawberry donut that really resembles a funnel cake or beignet than a donut, with that said it was still enjoyable (as it’s hard to ruin a dessert). The other dessert ordered was the apple crisp which I enjoyed but others did not, the mainculprit for this split opinion was the usage of fenugreek in the dish which led some to say that it tasted like a savory sausage than an apple crisp. I would say that fenugreek is an acquired taste and that it can indeed have an almost maple syrup-esque flavor to it. With all that being said, they would’ve been better served to use some more traditional spices in there.
Overall Sally’s Middle Name puts forth a good effort in trying to do things the right way. While every dish on the menu is not a hit, I would say that the talent of the kitchen shines through in many of the dishes that I noted above. Sally’s is definitely a place I would visit again.
Final Grade: B+
Parking: Non-existent, ride share there if you can.
Service: Friendly and Attentive.
Pricing: a little on the high side, but not unreasonable for D.C. prices.
Food: High quality with dishes like the goulash being my favorite.
