Palomino (Downtown)

I will be the first to admit that this review will be quite different from the others. But then, this restaurant experience was quite different from the others.

This was my first time dining at Palomino, and as your dedicated tour guide, I would be amiss if I said that I will be excited to go there again.

I hate to just come right out and say it, but in the interest of saving time I suppose I will: the service at Palomino was...well, shall we say, less than stellar. In fact, I've had better service at truck stops and all night diners.

I was definitely not impressed.

The food was...fine. Nothing better, nothing worse, just fine. Our appetizer choice was clams in a simple lemon butter broth. I found them a bit dry, but other than that, nothing to write home about. We split a salad that advertised itself as "mixed greens with bacon and bleu cheese, along with toasted hazelnuts." What appeared at our table was shredded lettuce that looked like something one might find on a sub sandwich, with bacon bits and miniscule bits of bleu cheese. Toasted hazelnuts? I believe I found one in the whole thing.

My entree choice was roasted chicken, served with garlic mashed potatoes and a small portion of sauteed green beans. The chicken was...forgettable, at best. I couldn't help but think it was something that I could've made in my own oven at home. The potatoes were delicious as were the green beans, but I remember thinking that I wanted more of both.

My dining companion chose a house special for his dinner: the paella. The presentation was slightly impressive, as the entree came to the table still in its individual frying pan. I had a few tastes and thought it to be rather bland. Paella is a very traditional Spanish dish, usually teeming with flavors of saffron and onion and garlic as well as various seafood, but this paella was boring and flat, and, dare I say it?

The rice was hard. Undercooked, perhaps?

The best portion of the entire meal was the bottle of wine that my companion and I shared: a delightfully lush viognier from Terra Blanca, right here in Washington. The server was of little assistance to us in choosing the wine, but that turned out to be just fine with us, in the end.

At the end of the evening, our tab came to just around $110. Normally, very reasonable for a nice dinner, complete with a bottle of wine, and an appetizer. But when one considers how disappointed we both were with everything about said dinner, it seemed like a ridiculous amount.

To sum it up:
Food:B
Service:D-
Atmosphere:C
Value:C

Will I go back? Perhaps, to sit in the bar for happy hour or something along those lines, but will I go back for dinner? Probably not, I'm sad to say. I believe I've had my first and only experience at Palomino.