$300 gift card
"Mt Pleasant Date Night - Murch Alum Restaurant
One of Washington's most fawned-over pizza places, 2Amys spun off a new restaurant in the city's hip Mount Pleasant neighborhood. Bar del Monte is steered by pizzaiolo Peter Pastan's son, Oliver Pastan, and the father-son duo specializes in unpretentious, perfectly executed Italian food. - Food and Wine Magazine
Top 40 Restaurant - Washington Post
""Little tweaks make this Italian small-plates source in Mount Pleasant even more likable than when it set sail last year. You can ease into dinner with a drink, for instance. The batch cocktails include an ace Negroni and a salty-with-olive martini. Need to wait for one of the 40 or so seats? The no-reservations storefront from chef-owner Oliver Pastan offers a lovely rear patio with bench seating and a garden of basil, oregano, sungold tomatoes and fig trees.
The harvest from the outdoor amenity finds itself on many of the plates that leave the small open kitchen. Take summer's sublime gazpacho, fragrant with basil, bold with dried chiles and served with (nice touch) grilled-to-order croutons sliced from house-baked country bread.
Bar Del Monte is where you'll find one of the city's most sublime fritto mistos, a heap of onion rings, juicy cod cheeks and shishito peppers in a barely-there golden batter in late summer. (The toss changes with the season.) Anything with lamb or offal - or both - is awesome, as are the thin, leopard-spotted pizzas based on red wheat milled on-site. (The owner is the son of pizza maestro Peter Pastan of 2 Amys fame. Chip off the block and all that, down to his serious appreciation of Italian wine.) The kind and easy service and light-filled setting - cool marble tables, walls in brick or white paint, a small bar - summon a neighborhood draw in San Francisco, which I once called home, or Rome, where Oliver Pastan spent a year working in restaurants."" - Tom Siestma, Washington Post"
