I didn't realize that Range is inside this weird hybrid mall/hotel inside the Chevy Chase Pavillion. It's literally across the way from an H&M inside a mall. While it's definitely in a ritzy/yuppie part of town, the actual physical location is kind of hidden and hard to find because of its interior location. The restaurant is pretty huge with several open kitchen stations that each specialize in different cuisines. The waitress was one of the most well spoken/refined wait staff that I've experienced in the MD/DC area. They are very well trained here. The whole concept and vibe of the place just blew my mind because it's not what I've come to expect in a restaurant when I come home. The menu here is all American tapas style (SIGH) and the waitress advised us to order about 3 plates per person. I really don't mind tapas, family style sharing but what really irritates me is when a restaurant has that concept but still charges entree prices for these small plates. So I digress.
Everything on the menu sounded really good, but instead of ordering 9 dishes, we opted to go for 3 larger sized plates, 2 smaller plates and a bread basked hoping that would fill us up: lobster mac and cheese ($18), scallops ($21), grilled octopus ($18), wild salmon crudo ($12), country pork and squab terrine ($16) and the cheddar and jalapeno biscuits ($4). I thought this was enough food but our waitress was really pushing us to order more food, but since we had already ordered cocktails and I wanted dessert too, I didn't really want to have a $200 lunch bill and drew a line in the sand with our ordering. The dishes come out as they are ready, so we got the biscuits first and they were delicious. They was fluffy, soft and with the right hint of heat from the jalapeno. But what really made it addictive was the pepper jelly that came with it. Luckily for my waist line there was only 1 biscuit per person, but I could have easily eaten the entire basked myself. Next came the country pork and squab terrine with a fantastic homemade dijon mustard. Despite my penchant for adventurous eating, I will say that terrine still kind of freaks me out, mostly because of its texture. But honestly, this one was pretty damn good. It has that slightly funky chopped and then binded together look and feel with a layer of cold jelly. But it just all worked together and I really enjoyed it with the mustard. Next came the wild salmon which is basically 3 thinly sliced smoked pieces of salmon (similar to lox) topped with a potato-shallot tot. It was a nice piece of salmon but honestly I think I'm biased and have had much better smoked salmon in NYC for less money. Then came the lobster mac and cheese. I mean, how in the world can you go wrong with a dish like this? For $18, it was a pretty small portion but taste wise it was huge. It was made with a rigati pasta with a hint of old bay seasoning and several large chunks of delicious lobster with a very light cheese sauce. You would think a dish like this would be super heavy but it was actually pretty light for a pasta. Again, I could have eaten this entire dish by myself instead of sharing it with the table. Then we waited a bit for the next two dishes to come out. I will take this moment to call out the cocktails here. They are all hand crafted, single batched cocktails and they were definitely PDT caliber. Even my mom got in on the cocktail action with the What's with all the tattoos? (how apropos) drink and I ended up drinking the entire thing because it was so fantastic. After a bit the scallop and grilled octopus dishes came out. The scallop dish came with only 2 scallops (so they were $10.50 each!) but I will say that they were two very large scallops that we were able to cut up into 3 pieces. They were served with a sweet and sour eggplant quinoa and a very strong miso paste. The scallops themselves were cooked to perfection, not too dry and with the right amount of ever so slight rareness inside. I just wished there were more than 2 of them. The octopus dish was also a winner. This dish was the hefty-ist of them all with 4 medium sized pieces. Octopus is so easy to mess up and make super chewy and gross but this was just right and very tender. It almost didn't taste like octopus texture-wise and it might even be one of the best octopus dishes I've had in a while.
At this point, I was full but not overly full, so I wanted to see what the dessert cart was all about. The waitress wheels over this cart with a bunch of chocolate petite fours, cookies, brownies, rich krispy treats, and cupcakes (kind of seemed a bit low brow for such a high concept place). For all the overpricedness (is that even a word?!) the desserts were pretty cheap ranging from $2-4. We got the apricot cupcake and a chocolate cookie brownie. The cupcake was light and fluffy and it tasted amazing with the fresh piece of apricot on top of it. The cookie brownie was exactly how it sounds - a heavy decadent piece of soft brownie like dessert in a cookie formation.
All in all, I was super impressed with the level of service, quality of food and presentation here. It rivals any restaurant in NYC I've been to and honestly doesn't seem like any hotel/mall restaurant I've ever been to. My only gripe for not giving it a 4.5 Fork rating was the fact that the prices were a bit too high for what we got, I wasn't overly impressed with the salmon dish, and the sizes were a bit too small. Total bill: $172 with tax, tip and cocktails for 3 people.
Photo Credit: Yelp
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