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Very Best Restaurants: Vidalia

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Vidalia ****
Washington, $$

If you're on a diet and don't wish to strayor if you want to finish your main course and have room left for a wedge of the irresistible lemon chess pieask your waiter at Vidalia not to bring the bread basket. The feathery cornbread textured with kernels of creamed corn may be the best restaurant biscuits in the country, and squares of pan bread topped with caramelized onions are wonderful too: One taste leads to another taste spread with the accompanying Vidalia onion jam. Before you know it, the basket is clean and you're ordering another.

Chef Jeffrey Buben draws his inspiration from the cooking traditions of the eastern seaboard and the South, updating his creations with Modern American cooking techniques. Yet he has sense enough to know that his training at the Culinary Institute of America sometimes can't improve on tradition: The cornbread and the lemon chess pie are made according to recipes supplied by his wife Sally's grandmother.

Some of the specialtiesthey change seasonallythat place Vidalia in a class with the country's best Modern American restaurants are the roasted whole Vidalia onion, creamy grits topped with shrimp, roasted onion soup with spoon bread, seared monkfish with braised cabbage, pan-roasted sweetbreads with Swiss chard and a potato cake, beef brisket braised in local apple cider, and calf's liver with ham-seasoned mixed greens and a turnip gratin.

Vidalia , 1990 M St. NW, Washington; 202-659-1990. Open Monday through Friday for lunch, Monday through Saturday for dinner. MapIt!

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

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