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Review content:
Restaurant Review At Martin's, a Family's Fine Old Recipes By Nancy Lewis Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, March 30, 2006 Martin's Tavern opened at Wisconsin and N streets NW the day after Prohibition ended in 1933, and since then it has been Georgetown's open secret as the best place for traditional American fare. The trendiest dishes on the menu are artichoke and Taleggio fritters, buffalo burgers and grilled tuna salad. Otherwise the lunch and dinner menus are chock-full of standards such as liver and onions, meatloaf, Salisbury steak, pot roast, crab cakes, and corned beef and cabbage. Yet these old favorites don't taste stodgy or dated; they are as timeless and comforting as your best family recipes. The dishes are basically Martin family classics. The original owners were William S. Martin, an Irish immigrant, and his son, William G. Martin, a Hall of Fame athlete at Georgetown University. Current owners William A. "Billy" Martin Jr. and his wife, Gina, are the fourth generation of Martins at the helm. Billy Martin, who started behind the bar in 1982, is the chef, though the kitchen staff members, who have been at the restaurant for an average of 14 years (one has been there for 28 years), know the recipes well. Martin's, housed in a squat two-story building with small paned windows that line its facades, looks like an anachronism in the midst of chic boutiques and antiques stores. The main dining room is a mix of hard wooden booths, clothed tables and an 18-seat mahogany bar that stretches the length of one side. On most nights, Martin's is filled to capacity. About half of the people who eat at the restaurant are regulars, and there is a long list of famous ones. John F. Kennedy used to eat in the little half-booth, known as the rumble seat, just inside the front door when he was a bachelor congressman and later a senator living two blocks away on N Street NW. He proposed to Jackie in booth No. 3. Richard Nixon favored booth No. 2. Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson and Alger Hiss were regulars, too. And though the history is intriguing, the food and camaraderie are the reasons Martin's has been packing them in for more than seven decades. On a recent night, with the two televisions over the bar showing NCAA tournament games (thankfully, silently), Martin's had the feel of a private gathering of nations. Spanish was the language of the businessmen in the booth behind us, a Scottish brogue accented the talk at the table to our side, and across the room another group conversed in French. Most were tucking into crab or steak. Petite crab cakes, perfect golden balls of lump and backfin crab, are a good way to begin any meal at Martin's. There is no filler, just enough binder to hold them together, and a refreshing orange-accented mayonnaise in which to dip them. Another excellent starter is a cup of New England clam chowder, thick and creamy, with chunks of potatoes and clams. Oysters on the half shell are plump and briny, served simply with lemon and cocktail sauce. Our main courses that evening -- mixed seafood Norfolk and sauteed liver and onions -- took me back to the 1960s, before restaurant offerings became so diverse. The sauteed seafood includes big lumps of lobster, lump crab, large shrimp and pieces of orange roughy, delicately cooked to their prime. Two large, tender pieces of calf's liver were golden brown on the outside and luscious on the inside and topped with long-cooked rings of onions and thick slices of applewood-smoked bacon. Other standards receive the same fine touch. At some restaurants, a plate of corned beef and cabbage can be an overcooked mess; at Martin's it's a generous pile of not-too-lean brisket paired with a bright green wedge of steamed cabbage, slender carrots and boiled red potatoes. The eggs Benedict are served with salty slivers of good Virginia country ham, rather than the usual bland Canadian bacon. The beef is steakhouse worthy and cooked to order. Brunch, served every day, is available until 4 p.m. For dessert, bread pudding is the signature dish, dense and rich but not too sweet, even after it's drenched with a homemade bourbon butterscotch sauce. One of the best things about Martin's is that there are so many choices, you could eat there once a week and never tire of the food. Some people do just that; manager Matthew Snee said he can often name six of every 10 guests in the room on Sunday nights.
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