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In today’s review… we’ll cover a New Orleans themed Southern brunch spot that has a tasty menu, but seems to have forgotten its manners.

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The Ratings

Our simple & honest checklist covers a restaurant’s key ingredients:
Ambiance, Service, and Food.

5/10

Milk & Honey now boasts 11 different locations across the DMV. The 10th location that opened in early 2023 was the Wharf spot we decided to review. Neighbors with Makers Union (Review #4), Milk & Honey is apart of the Wharf expansion’s growing list of eateries and is situated off of Maine Avenue (i.e. no views of the water). The restaurant atmosphere is average: your typical middle of the road brunch spot. Not too shabby, but nothing that will blow you away.

0/10

Zilch. You read that correctly. Zero. Okay, where do we begin?

First and foremost, any type of service would probably score a 1/10. However, Milk & Honey quite literally turned us away in the most confusing and astonishing way. Picture this: a group of enthusiastically hungry brunch adventurers excited for some comforting southern food make our way to the restaurant. Upon our arrival, we ask the host for a table. The host proceeds to tell us that he cannot offer us a table until we (yes, “we” not him — you read that correctly) first check the online reservation system to see if any spots were open.

Emotion #1: Confusion. As we look around the 3-quarters empty restaurant, we ask the host where we could find said reservation system as he awkwardly stares at us. He then directs us to the Milk & Honey website and has us clicking through all of the site’s links to no avail… there is no reservation button. In the meantime, we find the Resy link for the restaurant which doesn’t have any timeslots open for the next 2 hours… yet, the restaurant was pretty much empty and there weren’t any other people waiting to be seated. Given what appears to be an abundance of open tables, but no time-slots available online, we politely ask if there is any chance we could snag a table, but the host’s response queues the next emotion.

Emotion #2: Astonishment. The host replies that he may be able to seat us in 30 minutes, an hour, or maybe not even at all — and that if we would like to give that a try, we could stand… outside. Hmmm. So, we’ll just leave then? “Bye and thanks for coming,” gleefully says the host. Yup, that just happened.

Okay, you now may be asking yourself, how did Le Petit Gourmand write up a review without eating at the restaurant? Well, this experience took place on our second attempt to dine here. Therefore, we fortunately already had notes from our first round… and then actually went a third (but really only, second) time to make sure we could write a complete review.

Long story short: the service wasn’t great the other two times either. During one visit, the waitress spilled a cappuccino and didn’t bother taking it back to clean the cup and refill it… she simply brought a roll of paper towels to soak up the table drowning in coffee. Anyway, we thought the service was a fluke the first time around and wanted to give the restaurant another shot… yikes.

Note: for reference, if we removed the second attempt to dine here, our ratings would probably have been around a 3/10 — but come on, if you turn your customers away like that… zero. Plus, FYI, the bar is first-come first-serve.

7/10

Milk & Honey serves tasty New Orleans themed southern brunch foods that are plated to look good on camera. While the menu has a good spattering of traditional southern cuisine, we’d recommend, for your appetizer, the Honey Old Bay Wings, crispy wings that are pretty decent — and, for your main entrée, either the House Rubbed Ribeye w/ Eggs or the Chicken & Biscoff Waffles. The former is a thin, but nicely charred ribeye steak served on top of two sunny-side up eggs and a bed of potatoes. The latter is a biscoff cookie infused waffle splendor. The chicken is tender and juicy. And the maple syrup is light and adds to the yumminess of each bite. While the prices are on the slightly steeper side, the portions are generous and you’ll be left satisfied.

Reservation & Menu:

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