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In today’s review… we’ll cover Gordon Ramsay’s latest franchise addition, the famous Hell’s Kitchen located on the DC Wharf waterfront.

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The Ratings

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

8.5/10

Gordon Ramsay’s newest franchise addition, the famous Hell’s Kitchen, comes to the DC Wharf waterfront. One of the few Wharf restaurants that stretches out over the water, Hell’s Kitchen snatched up prime real estate and built a stunning restaurant that truly replicates Gordon’s TV series chef kitchen. While the restaurant’s first floor has some dining tables, a bar, and a lounge/waiting area, the best part of the experience is upstairs, where guests can sit either on the blue or red side of the restaurant — to mimic the show’s two competing teams. Heads up: if you want to overlook the waterfront, you’ll need to be on the blue side, but regardless, the ambiance is great with a stunning decor. Nevertheless, the restaurant is another classic Gordon eatery and with that comes some of the excessive marketing (think: electronic screens playing recordings of Gordon welcoming you to the restaurant). So, if you can get past the fact that dining at Hell’s Kitchen is the elegant foodie version of going to Disney World, you’ll have a fantastic time.

6.5/10

While Hell’s Kitchen boasts, for the most part, a well trained and attentive waitstaff, the hosts and the associated initial guest experience could use a refresh. For instance, the hosts failed to greet entering guests on multiple occasions and seemed to almost dismiss others. While we initially thought the lack of care from the hosts was due to the newness of the restaurant in the DC scene, over time and a handful of visits we’ve realized that that isn’t the issue. The impression we get is that the hosts display a slight haughtiness as if to suggest that guests should be happy they have a reservation at the restaurant in the first place. We get it, Hell’s Kitchen is cool and all, but toning the arrogance down one notch would do a lot of good.

9/10

You expect consistent quality and it will be delivered to you time and time again. Hell’s Kitchen is remarkably good at reliably producing a delicious and predictable meal. If you want to make sure your dishes comes out exactly as you remembered them during your last experience, Hell’s Kitchen is the place for you.

When it comes to the menu, you have two options… and there is no turning back. You take the blue pill and the story ends, or you take the red pill to stay in Wonderland… whoops wrong reference (although a Matrix-themed molecular gastronomy concept would be interesting).

Hell’s Kitchen offers a lunch and dinner prix fixe menu — both featuring Gordon’s famous Beef Wellington as the second course and Sticky Toffee Pudding as the third course. Yet, diners can also select dishes from the fantastic à la carte menu.

For appetizers, we recommend the Seared Foie Gras, the Pan-Seared Scallops, and the Lobster Risotto — in that order. Yummy, yummy, yummy.

For your entrées, we would be fooling you if we didn’t recommend the celebrated Beef Wellington — although we’d prefer if the dish had more glazed root vegetables (of a larger variety too) and less potato purée. Then again, the spotlight is on the Wellington and it’s consistently good. Furthermore, you can’t go wrong with the Chicken Scallopini or the two steak options.

Lastly, the desserts are tempting, but boy are they hefty and filling. We do not want to know how many calories are in that Sticky Toffee Pudding…

Reservation & Menu: