Tonic Mt. Pleasant - Upstairs

Tonic happens to be located incredibly close to my apartment, so I return again and again. As much as I like good food, I like being lazy even more. Would I rather eat good food than frequent Tonic? Yes. Would I rather cook my own food than frequent Tonic? Eh, that's a tough one. And so here I am, again, wondering why exactly I'm here again. The location. Right.

Brunching upstairs at Tonic feels like being the last man on Earth. Where is everyone? It's disconcerting, this emptiness, so much so that even when presented with something perfectly acceptable (the coffee is fine, for example), you second guess it. As in, what does everyone else know that I don't? Then again, everyone else is waiting in line outside The Diner, not too far away. Which calls this whole equation into question, since The Diner is pretty good, but obviously not wait outside in line good.

More to the point, Tonic's brunch suffers from the usual DC dining black eye: outlandishly incompetent and downright befuddled service. I'm not sure you can factually refer to whatever shenanigans are going on at Tonic as "service," but in true DC fashion the entire staff appears to belabor under an insufferable rush that doesn't actually exist. That is, you get the service of a stupendously busy restaurant at a restaurant that isn't actually busy. I like to call this The DC Touch. And so, you take your seat in a vastly empty dining room (at our most recent visit, 3 of the 20 or so tables were occupied). And you sit. And then you sit some more. And then some woman who may or may not be your waitress wanders over, visibly startled to find you seated there. And then you exchange glances. And then, moments later, it dawns on her that you're there for brunch. And then she disappears. And then you sit there some more, wondering if you should complain, but not having the foggiest idea who you might complain to. There's no order. The usual dining tropes are absent (as is the ambiance, but that's another story), the norms of the restaurant experience having been ditched in favor of some ad hoc approximation of same. It's like dining at a 3 year old's tea party, except you're paying.

Eventually, twenty to thirty minutes later, you get some coffee. One cup and that's it. Remember: this is brunch. This isn't some dive bar where the dusty pot in the corner hasn't been used in six years and might actually be inoperable. One measly cut of coffee. Saturday brunch. Inexcusable.

And the food? Well, the food actually ain't bad, if a tad overpriced. The Eggs Mediterranean was satisfying, fresh and looked rather attractive sitting there on the plate (I forgot my camera). I probably took my life in my hands ordering hollandaise sauce in a bar, but that's my problem, not Tonic's. My companion ate some sort of dirigible-like breakfast burrito which went a long way towards explaining why the West gets a bad rap in developing areas of the world. I think she liked it, but what tastes bad under a ginormous dollop of sour cream?

Tonic's food is totally acceptable. What's missing is the atmosphere, and the understanding that brunch is an experience as much (if not more) than it is a meal. Brunch is a social event and often a decadent one at that. Brunch is all about the scene and the conversation and the company. At Tonic, brunch is all about sitting in an atmosphere-less, mostly empty room, trying to stifle the encroaching edges of ennui.

To Begin...

I knew relocating to Washington, DC, from New York City would have its drawbacks. Those are far too numerous to list here (perhaps I'll start another blog). Looking back, however, I'm shocked to realize how little thought I gave to the impending dread of the Washington, DC, food scene, if one can even call it a scene. Would I not have moved had the state of DC dining occurred to me? Well, yeah, I probably still would have. My relocation took place for personal reasons, reasons which transcended more prosaic concerns like career, social life, joy of living, ambition and etc. Still, it comes as a shock to the system, this lack of good food. Perhaps I'm spoiled. New York is arguably, after all, the culinary capital of the world (it's either New York or Paris, I suppose). And I'm sensitive, trust me, to this blog not spiraling into a dreaded New York vs. DC comparison, for that is not the point. My point isn't that the DC food scene doesn't measure up to New York's (what does?), but that the DC food scene doesn't measure up to LA's, or Boston's, or Austin's, or Seattle's, or Philadelphia's, or, while we're at it, the small town in southern New Jersey's where I grew up. This is the worst food I've ever had anywhere, hands down. And it's expensive! And nobody seems to care! What gives?

A few rules before we begin our culinary misadventures:

1. I am concerned exclusively with dining inside the Washington, DC, city limits. Whether or not there's good dining in Maryland or Virginia, I could care less (actually, I know that there is; I've enjoyed a few good meals in each). Counting bordering states as evidence that DC has good food is a flimsy, though popular, argument. Does North Jersey have a great food scene because it's possible to drive from there to Manhattan? I'd say no.

2. It's important to take into account the local opinion, where pertinent. If I read one more glowing City Paper review of food I'd consider barely edible, I'm going to shoot myself, or at least stop reading the City Paper. Similarly, we will take into account places that DC folk believe to offer good food, contrary to all available evidence.

3. The full dining experience counts. I have never, in all my life, encountered atrocious, incompetent service like I've seen regularly on display in this city. This problem is pervasive, to the point that medium-level service sticks out like the pearly gates of Heaven. Likewise, poor hours (why is nothing open late?), a slow kitchen (45 minutes to cook a hamburger), inability to handle a normal Saturday night rush (Domku, I'm talking to you), too few servers (Tonic, take note)...all is fair game.

4. OK, this might seem arbitrary, but I'm going to thoroughly ignore the high-end DC dining scene. I've heard from various sources it's quite good, but it's not the kind of thing I'm interested in. Why? Two reasons. First, for the right amount of money, you can get anything, anywhere. In other words, the wealthy live well no matter where they live. Second, however good DC fine dining might be, I'm guessing it still pales dramatically when compared to fine dining in more metropolitan cities. Do I know this for certain? No, I can't afford a $500 meal at Per Se or Masa or wherever else. But I think it stands to reason. Let's just say that for a ton of money, you can no doubt find a decent meal in DC. But so what?

Alright. Let's start eating!