Guest post by Brian
Last Saturday the weather was really amazing, perfect weather for the new Capitol Hill visitor’s center to open along with a Prop. 8 protest on the mall – so a couple friends and I decided to head over to Old Town and hit up Vermillion for brunch. Vermillion is an old haunt of mine, back from the days when I worked a block away and it was the official bar of Frank Luntz employees and the unofficial satellite office…
But anyway back to brunch. The atmosphere was soft and slightly loungy – the nice way it is during day but without any crowd or line to get in. Meandering over to the bar to meet the one friend who had preceded two of us in getting there, I noticed most of the tables were empty and that college football was nicely displayed on their screens (unfortunately my Hokies had already lost on the Thursday night game). The bloody mary’s were not amazing but not bad – two olives separated by a lime wedge on top.
Unfortunately, the menu had been recently updated and the steak benedict one friend was looking forward to eating again was no longer on the menu. The slightly soured disposition due to the Benedictine banishment immediately vanished with the appearance of a butternut squash soup one of us had ordered as an appetizer. The menu’s description also included york apple, crushed amaretti cookies & pumpkin seed oil in its ingredients but I was more concerned with its consistency which was as perfect as I had seen for a squash soup.
For entries we tried the 3 farm eggs, the monte cristo sandwich, and chef’s “scrapple.” I had the chef’s “scrapple” myself – partially out of curiosity over the necessity of quotation marks around scrapple in their menu. I of course asked about it first before ordering and was told that it was a non-standard scrapple – looser than normal I was told – and which it was. Its consistency closer to slightly runny, underneath two eggs (I had them scrambled), and above two slices of sourdough – I thought it was rather good. And I will admit, about halfway through I abandoned my fork to create an ad hoc sandwich with the two pieces of toast resulting in an all in all win.
Both the 3 egg dish and monte cristo were fairly standard fair – not bad but not particularly amazing. Although I will note this: the monte cristo did have adequate basil on it. Skimping on sufficient full basil leaves to cover the sandwich is a sin in my book – and one that Vermiliion need not pay penance. The meal overall nice and you can check the brunch menu here on Vermillion’s website. Hopefully in the future my friend’s steak benedict will make a reappearance – but in the meantime the menu, while not expansive, is decent and the experience more dependent on your company than cuisine.
