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eight years ago as one of Esquire magazine’s best 100 new American restaurants to its ranking this year by Zaggat, a national restaurant survey, as Washington, D.C.’s top dining establishment in all categories, the food served at The Inn at Little Washington has garnered rave after rave.
The upstairs rooms were added in 1984, and they won the same fulsome praise. “Each room in the inn is furnished in the style of a grand Victorian English country house . .. No detail has been overlooked,” said Tim Mulligan in Virginia, A History & Guide.
An “Architectural Digest’s dream of a garret,” wrote Charlottsville historian William Tazewell in The New York Times, describing his stay at The Inn. “The bed was in a loft, there was a separate sitting room, enough closet space for an oil magnate buying out Harrods, and a bathroom designed for a sultan with sybaritic tastes. ”
The staff now numbers 44, up considerably from opening days when Mr. O’Connell, Mr. Lynch, and a 14-year-old kitchen boy ran the place. “We had a long telephone cord and I took reservations at the stove while I stirred the sauces,” the chef recalled.
And from the rambling old building that once housed a garage downstairs and a basketball court on the second floor, the town of Washington got about $40,000 in restaurant tax revenue in the past 12 months, almost enough U> cover its entire annual budget.
With the telephone ringing as often as once a minute, and requests for dinner reservations running as high as 3,000 for a Saturday night in peak season, success seems assured for The Inn at Little Washington. But the high expectations of their patrons bring a new challenge, according to the chef. He recently sent his 24-year-old assistant, Terrance Braxton, to England for two weeks to work in the kitchens of two Relais & Chateaux properties and a fine London restaurant. And when Mr. O’Connell and Mr. Lynch take their annual vacation, they go to Europe to eat at all the three-star restaurants, looking for culinary inspiration.
Whether inspired by peers or by his own imagination, Mr. O’Connell
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