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Very Best Restaurants: Le Lion D'or

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Le Lion D'or ****
Washington, $$$

For his work at three local restaurantsRive Gauche, Jean-Pierre, and Le Lion d'OrJean-Pierre Goyenvalle was celebrated as the only national-class chef in the Washington of the mid-1970s, a place that gastronome Waverly Root wrote off as "a culinary backwater."

When Julia Child first started to have guest chefs on her PBS series, there was Goyenvalle, demonstrating his orange souffle. A self-effacing chef of the old school, he is an anachronism in today's world of culinary self-promotion.

Despite being a perennial top-ten restaurant in the Zagat Guide, Le Lion d'Or is more appreciated by visitors than by locals, but the goodness of Goyenvalle's classical French cuisine remains undiminished. Among the dishes that endure are a cream soup of morel mushrooms that arrives at table as a bowl of intense, mushroom-flavored foam; a foie grasstudded duck sausage sauced with Port; a hot pate of quail in puff pastry; pigeon with braised cabbage; tenderloin of lamb in a stock reduction scented with fresh thyme; and a whole fish, stuffed with a tiny dice of aromatic vegetables and baked in a flaky pastry crust.

Le Lion D'or , 1150 Connecticut Ave. (entrance near 18th and M streets) NW, Washington; 202-296-7972. Open Monday through Saturday for dinner. MapIt!

QUALITY: ****Excellent; *** Superior; **Very Good; * Good
PRICE RANGE: $$$= Very Expensive; $$ Expensive; $=Moderate; ¢=Inexpensive

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