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Very Best Restaurants: Le Vieux Logis

Very Best Listing | Very Best by Cuisine | Very Best by Location

Le Vieux Logis *
Bethesda , $$

After many years with a succession of French chefs, this very French-looking restaurant has hired Trent Conry, an American-born and -trained chef, whose experience includes a stint at the Occidental restaurant. The talented Conry has put together some impressive dishes, but many are diminished by an excess of ingredients and textures.

Good beginnings have included the medley of wild mushrooms served with fine puff pastry on a bed of spinach with a Madeira-and-herb sauce, and a vegetarian tartlet of zucchini, tomatoes, eggplant, and mozzarella with a roasted-red-pepper puree. Warm sea scallops with Bermuda onion had too many cracked mustard seeds.

Among the main courses, a double pork chop topped with a roasted cumin sauce and medallions of veal served with fresh apples, wild mushrooms, and a Calvados sauce were excellent. Two fish, the salmon encrusted with pumpkin seeds and the sauteed filet of halibut, were perfectly cooked but did not benefit from a sprinkling of deep-fried salsify slivers. Nor did they need a mixture of rice, mashed potatoes, and cabbage as an accompaniment. Calf's liver, ordered medium-rare, was served medium-well-done. The accompanying raspberry sauce was not sweet, but the garnish of fresh raspberries was both sweet and unnecessary, once again too much of good things.

House-made dessertsincluding fruit tarts, blueberry bread pudding, and a crunchy dacquoiseare excellent.

Le Vieux Logis , 7925 Old Georgetown Rd., Bethesda ; 301-652-6816. Open Monday through Friday for lunch and dinner, Saturday and Sunday for dinner. MapIt!

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

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