Poste Modern Brasserie

Poste Moderne Brasserie is a gem of a restaurant. An impressive176–seat restaurant, bar and outside courtyard, you enter Poste through the old carriageway portal for the original sorting room of the 1841 General Post Office. The 16–foot cast-iron ceilings and skylights from the original post office have been restored and, with the other decor, provide some of the best restaurant ambiance I've seen in a long time. The menu is full of unqiue, healty items for breakfast, brunch, lunch or dinner. There is a simple bar menu or a more complex dinner listing but you woudn't go wrong with either one. I was truly impressed with the Basil Lemontini - the BEST drink I've ever had. Seriously. The bartender mixed it right in front of me and even poured me a second glass full from the rest of the shaker! 2 drinks for one?? I don't care, it was delicious. This restaurant is part of the Hotel Monaco, and is across the street from the MCI/Verizon center. Catching a game or concert there? Eat here first. I would really like to come back here for a full meal and also to sample their wine list. If you are looking for a special meal for a date or just a nice way to end a hectic day at the office, you must check out Poste. more

I was really looking forward to going to Poste because of all the wonderful things I'd heard. I was pretty disappointed. The service was great. Our waiter was incredibly knowledgeable and helpful. The setup was also great, with plenty of indoor and outdoor seating, and I loved that you could see into the kitchen. The food was what I did not like, however. They combined things I would not have expected and I'm not sure they work together (like rabbit and pasta with bacon; or fish and mashed potatoes with capers). They didn't work for my palette, at least, which I'll admit is not really that refined or sophisticated. more

I went to Poste for brunch. It's the restaurant at the Hotel Monaco in DC. I hadn't been there before, and they begin brunch service early -- I didn't feel like waiting until 11am for most other options to open. The food was good, the service was not. Nobody was roof or aloof, everyone was just consistently clueless. A bread basket and butter was presented to the table, but no butter knife or bread plates were provided. I asked for bread plates. Using a steak knife on butter is a small sacrifice, but actually pretty difficult if you're trying to spread something evenly. It's good that I asked for the bread plates, because I was sharing an appetizer and no separate plates were brought to the table to facilitate the sharing. After the first course, my waitress helpfully removed my silverware. Unfortunately she didn't bring replacements. I also had to ask her to remove the dirty juice glasses that were set on the table when I arrived. (One of the three jams on the table was open and partially used, but I didn't mention this or the scratched coffee mugs.) My water was never refilled, towards the very end of the meal I finally asked for more. On and off during the meal the bartender could be seen climbing on the bar to reach bottles in order to clean and polish them. Couldn't that be done before or after service? Once we had finished our entrees, the waitress brought our check. We asked whether they offered dessert? And she took away our check and brought new menus. No, she wasn't trying to get rid of us. I wasn't commenting on all of these deficiencies during our meal, we were more than pleasant! It just never occurred to her that at 11:45 am we might want dessert after brunch. Bad for the restaurant (it reduces average bill amounts) and bad for patrons (it's hardly anticipatory service, and if she's unsure if we'll want something she might do better to ask). For a 'nice' restaurant, it was a little odd to have the dessert dishes stamped "Crate and Barrel" ... I guess it shouldn't surprise me that the floor manager was wearing a tank top... more