Last weekend I attended a brunch at Dino that was organized by the lovely Sylvie (ThriftyDCCook). Sylvie was able to bring together about 50 local food bloggers and we took up almost the entire second floor of Dino in Cleveland Park. Our community of local D.C. food bloggers might not be huge, but I must say that it is a tight-knit and active group that really enjoys each other’s company. One other thing we really enjoy: Twitter. Apparently Dino was trending on Twitter for an entire 7 minutes during the brunch in the midst of all of the Egypt coverage. We are quite the tweeting crew. Good food must be shared with others, it’s just hard to keep it in.
The brunch menu at Dino is much bigger than I expected, and not what you typically see at an Italian restaurant. While they still offer some staples such as their pastas, meatballs, or their Tuscan ribollita, they also have created many dishes that are ”morning friendly” which include the breakfast bread pudding, french toast with cherry vanilla maple syrup, and ham and eggs. The menu is set at three selections for $25 and allows you to pick either a starter or a half pasta as your first course, a brunch plate, full pasta, or secondi as your second course, and finally a dessert or a cocktail as your third. It’s a great deal for a lot of food, and it doesn’t hurt that almost everything is pretty damn good as well.
I felt like since I was in an Italian restaurant that I needed to order something authentic so I had the meatballs for my first course. They were good… although I had pure envy of my friend Meg and others who ordered the burrata. Apparently the cheese is shipped in twice a week from Italy and it was served with a red pepper roasted tomato spread and a kalamata olive spread. There are few words to describe how good fresh burrata cheese is, so I won’t try to do it other than say it was amazing.
I was very pleased with my main course which was the eggs benedict Italian style over grilled ciabata with poached Hare’s Valley eggs from Pennsylvania, proscuitto, and covered in a orange and rosemary scented butter. The citrus flavors in the butter sauce made the dish, and it also made the perfect dip for my side of Tuscan roasted potatoes. It was heavy and creamy, so I could not finish the entire thing, but it balanced out the saltiness of the proscuitto and was such a satisfying brunch item that went perfectly with my delightful bellini. The other popular item that I had the chance to try was the breakfast bread pudding. It was served in a baking dish with sausage, challah, eggs and cream, roasted chanterelles, rapini and kale, and grana and pecorino cheeses. This was one intensely decadent dish, but just from the few bites I was able to snag I could tell it was made with some serious love and care.
Owner Dean Gold kindly sent out some delicious snacks from the kitchen- one of my favorites being the scallops wrapped in pancetta with duck liver which was unique and worth the bite. We had a lovely afternoon at Dino and I had a great time getting to chat with some of my fellow local food bloggers and having the chance to enjoy the food together. Hopefully we can do it again soon, and maybe we can cause an even bigger trend on Twitter next time.
Dino
3435 Connecticut Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20008
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Such a fun brunch!!! We should all do this more often
Having dinner at Dino tonight actually (twice in one week… I know).
Would love to do it again soon at another place, and that’s great that you are having dinner there tonight! Enjoy.