Reds Table review: Chef driven but family owned, making Reston proud

When I ask if the chicken-of-the-woods mushrooms in a scallop special are related to the more familiar hen of the woods, our waitress checks with the kitchen and quickly assures me they are two different species. What’s more, she adds, the chicken ’shrooms — named for their poultry-like taste and texture — were wild specimens that a forager sold to chef Adam Stein, who built a dish with them.

Locally foraged ingredients incorporated into a special? It sounds like the work of Rene Redzepi at Noma or even Jeremiah Langhorne at the forthcoming Dabney in Shaw. What it doesn't sound like is a dish you would find in a suburban shopping center where the denizens are often content to shovel down Subway hoagies with a Starbucks caramel macchiato chaser.

Then again, Red's Table is not your typical suburban restaurant.

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Launched in early September in the South Lakes Village Center, Red’s Table brings the locavore movement to Reston, the self-contained planned community whose vision of modern life apparently did not include local agriculture. The restaurant is a family affair, owned by three brothers (Matthew, Patrick and Ryan Tracy), their parents (Thomas Tracy and Christine Baker) and a cousin, John Jarecki. Together, the clan decided to open a chef-driven restaurant in the old Lakeside Inn space, nestled among the South Lakes storefronts where the Tracy brothers once cruised, looking for burgers, girls, trouble or, likely, all of the above.

As the primary faces of Red's Table, the siblings are South Reston proud. On the restaurant's Web site, the brothers list the schools, from elementary to high school, from which they graduated. This year, the South Lakes High School paper trumpeted the project, suggesting that alumni involvement would give Red's Table "Seahawk flavor," a reference to the school's mascot. This unabashed homerism gives the place a sweet, pep-squad fervor, as if it were a homecoming float, not a restaurant.

But it's clear that the owners mean business. Two pastry chefs bake not just desserts, but sweet, cakey honey-rye biscuits, glossy buns that hold your hamburger patty in place, and every other bread on the menus. All 13 draft beers (and one cider) hail from Virginia, Maryland or the District, covering breweries from Roseland, Va., to Baltimore. Some spirits come from local distilleries, too, a fact that so delights the staff they may tell you the story behind Washington's Green Hat Gin. Twice.

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Such enthusiasm is understandable among the savvy, eager-to-please staff (who seemed to peg me as a critic the moment I walked in). Red’s Table is spreading the local-seasonal gospel in a market that has traditionally marked the seasons with a change of wardrobe, not menus. The servers must work twice as hard compared with, say, those on 14th Street who don’t have to painstakingly explain why draft beers run $7 or why a burger costs $14. I suspect D.C. restaurant managers will be passing out business cards here before day’s end.

Stein, who doubles as chef at Jarecki's Light Horse in Old Town Alexandria, has upped his game at Red's Table, where the menus lean heavy on fish, shellfish and beef. The sea creatures aren't always pulled from nearby waters, unless your definition of local extends north to Cape Cod and south to the Gulf of Mexico, but they're sustainable. And traceable back to their original sources (as are the other proteins).

Your brain may feast on ethical sourcing, but your palate cares about only one thing: Is the food tasty at this farmhouse-meets-warehouse-meets-boathouse space with views of Lake Thoreau? Mostly yes. Decidedly yes in some cases. Sometimes yes with a caveat. And on one rare occasion, a fork-dropping, entree-ending no.

But before I break down the categories, let me say that Stein clearly knows his audience: His menus speak with a common-man language, revving up your appetite with such bite-and-belch pleasures as chicken wings, hushpuppies, fried catfish, steaks and other plates with easy access to the American heart. Yet the chef finds ways to take these prosaic comforts and stretch their preparations enough to entice diners onto unfamiliar turf. It happens time and again, whether Stein pairs his buttermilk fried chicken with a black garlic miso aioli or uses a good, dry-aged beef grind in his burger.

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That black garlic miso aioli looks innocuous as it zigzags across the bird, but it lends the dish a sweet, deeply savory quality absent from most fried chickens. The dry-aged burger blend, courtesy of Roseda Beef of Monkton, Md., adds a mineral funk to Stein's minimalist sandwich, built with only beef, American cheese, grilled onions, pickles and bun. It needs nothing else.

The kitchen puts a hard char on the cider-glazed chicken breast, caramelizing the exterior while leaving the interior super succulent. The East Coast-style cioppino, with its trawler boat full of fresh seafood, is ignited with rouille, a pepper-charged sauce associated with Provençal bouillabaisse. It’s a clever cross-continental collusion.

Stein takes more risks on the appetizer side, some that pay off better than others. The beef tartare withstands a land-and-sea assault from a briny uni topping and a chorizo aioli, a challenge that results in harmony, not warfare. The kitchen deftly ducks any accusation of 1990s trend-mongering by pairing fried calamari and cherry peppers with juicy linguica sausage and a smoky tomato sauce. Such shotgun pairings don’t always pan out, particularly with a pumpkin mornay with coddled egg, a rich attempt at a fondue sauce that needs further refining (and more pumpkin flavor). The arctic char crudo could use fewer accents, or a less potent one, given that the fried garlic dominates.

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Some problems were basic kitchen breakdowns: a pork chop so overcooked it bordered on juiceless, or an underbaked apple streusel pie with a flabby bottom crust and stiff filling. The only return-to-sender dish I encountered was bucatini, brimming with pasta, clams, anchovies, olives and crushed red pepper. Its dominant characteristics were salt, heat, grit, salt and salt.

To assemble a meal that represents the strengths of Red’s Table, inquire about specials (the scallop dish with the pickled chicken-of-the-woods mushrooms proved a hit) and then investigate any dish that borders on cliche. Like the wedge salad, lifted into another realm with a yogurt-based blue cheese dressing. Or chocolate torte with ice cream that riffs on the flavors of an Irish coffee. Or a cheeseburger that supplies more concentrated funk than most wet-aged steaks back in the big city.

With Red’s Table, Reston has a reason to stay near home and eat.

2 stars

Location:11150 South Lakes Dr., Reston, Va. 571-375-7755. www.redstableva.com.

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Open:11 a.m. to midnight Monday-Saturday, and 10 a.m. to midnight Sunday.

Prices:Lunch appetizers $4 to $15, lunch sandwiches and entrees $12 to $18, dinner appetizers $4 to $15, dinner entrees $14 to $29.

Sound check:66 decibels / Conversation is easy.

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