Chef David Guas is in the kitchen. Publicist Simone Rathlé dressed the place. Crowds descended the moment the lights went on at the couple’s joint project in McLean, a community with lots of money but not a lot of quality restaurants.
The menu nods to the chef’s Southern roots but doesn’t dwell on them. Pimento cheese and barbecue shrimp are outnumbered by broadly American dishes, many of which take advantage of the oven Guas inherited from the previous Italian occupant. Every course contains a whiff of smoke.