Review 2010 Fall Dining Guide By Tom Sietsema Sunday, October 17, 2010 A confession: I'm not crazy about beer. That's one reason I'm so passionate about Birch & Barley in general and Greg Engert in particular: They make it impossible for you to stay cool to their 500-plus-bottle expertise. When the sudsmeister comes to the table and gives his spiel about, say, Scottish ale aged in whisky barrels, his enthusiasm rubs off. Husband-and-wife chefs Kyle Bailey and Tiffany MacIsaac (he focuses on savories; she concentrates on sweets) follow suit by finessing what it means to be a tavern. It would be easy for a diner to fill up on the bread board and its amazing pretzel rolls, but pace yourself. You'll want to save space for Bailey's risotto teased with chorizo, lemony house-made tagliatelle with mussels, succulent duck with nutty wild rice or his signature brat burger. The food might sound simple, but it's all quite refined; the only flaw I found in my last meal was a heavy hand with salt here and there. Note to MacIsaac: Thanks for fitting pie into the plan (blackberry with sour-cream ice cream recently). The pastry maven's lemon meringue tart with a scoop of kiwi sorbet and a base of tapioca is an intriguing blend of textures; a sampler of her confections, including a cashew-rich "Snickers" and moist "Hostess cupcake," channels the kid in a lot of us. Birch & Barley's wheat-colored environs are as clever as the cooking. From the vantage of a plus-size booth, an "organ" of copper pipes used for draft orders resembles a forest. Topped off with an upstairs bar named ChurchKey, Birch & Barley is the first foray into Washington for the Virginia-based Neighborhood Restaurant Group. Here's hoping it goes forth and multiplies.
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