Brightwood Bistro, Good Luck!

As you may be aware, the Wards that make up the District of Columbia all have a unique flavor and atmosphere.  What is also unique, and mostly disappointing, due to uneven development, the NW quandrant of the city has almost all of the restaurants with a few districts scattered around Capitol Hill.  Therefore, whenever a restaurant opens up in what had previously been an area without, there is always a small amount of buzz (consider Rustik in Ward 4 and the new Rays the Steaks East River).  Remembering said buzz about the Brightwood Bistro at Georgia and Missouri, I picked up a Whats the Deal coupon for it and finally got around to using it on Thursday night. 

We drove up several miles from Mt. P to the Brightwood Bistro.  From the outside, the building looks brand new in a neighborhood of maintained, but aged.  We walked up to the door and saw the entire restaurant completely empty aside from the staff and the band. Yes, a band.  Normally, an empty restaurant at 8 PM on Thursday would be a no go for me, due to the coupon, we figured why not and headed in.  We were seated by a jazz band doing a rather loud soundcheck that we thought must be for a future night, given the emptiness of the restaurant.  But alas, they played, the whole time (some pretty good motown I might add) very very loudly, to the point that we could not converse. 

Aside from the music, the menu, O the menu.  It looked good, but the prices were totally wild for the neighborhood.  $15 Caesar Salad, $15 Burger, $28 Shrimp and Grists, $14 Chicken and Waffles.  Completely crazy. We would have also left at seeing the menu, if not for the 50% off coupon that we had.  The food that we had was pretty tasty, the burger was not from the freezer, but the sweet potato fries were.  The "wings" were entire jointed wings, served on top of super spicy bbq sauce with crumbles of blue cheese (we are comparing these at a high bar as we had truly amazing wings at Social several weeks earlier) and happened to be the same wings served with the Chicken and Waffles.  We had a "Missouri Milk" cocktail which was strong and punchy and actually, the only thing not wildly over priced at the Bistro. 

All and all, we will never go back.  For $15 for a burger, we could take on a couple more dollars and try the Michel Richard Central burger (have you tried it, is it worth it) or for the entire tab pre-coupon we could even have a delicious meal at one of our downtown favorites, Rasika coupled with the sound/emptiness ratio we were left wondering what the business plan was and if the Brightwood Bistro would ever be around to come back to.....