Patrick O’Connell ‘No. 1’
The headline in yesterday’s [Oct. 11] Washington Post speaks for itself: “Tom Sietsema’s Top 10 Restaurants: Inn at Little Washington is No. 1.”
The stellar review is part of the leading newspaper’s 2017 Fall Dining Guide Top 10 restaurants.
“Stop me if you’ve heard this before,” the influential restaurant critic writes, “but there’s a place 90 minutes or so from ‘The Swamp’ that started out as a gas station and morphed into a dining attraction whose chef has been hailed as the pope of American cuisine. Yesterday’s food news? Hardly.
“If anything, the sumptuous Inn at Little Washington by chef/author/ entertainer Patrick O’Connell excels at exceeding guests’ expectations from year to year,” Sietsema continues, and “staying overnight reveals the Inn to be just as adept at lodging as at feeding guests.”
And then this tremendous crowning:
“Did I mention the Inn is poised to turn 40 next year? Do you know of any other dining destination in the world that old, that delicious, that fun and that life-affirming? I didn’t think so. A round of applause, then, for the greatest showman of them all. You’re No. 1, Mr. O’Connell.”