4) Spring Peas – mixed grain porridge, chicken of the woods, basil 🫛🌾🍄

Porridge of Carolina Gold Rice, millet, and sorghum cooked in a mushroom stock. Topped with Sugar Snap and English peas from @karma.farm and @farmfireside. One of my favorite courses of the Vernal tasting menu 😍😘🥰
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The plant-based wunderkind named @oysteroysterdc is more than just a very popular local restaurant in the Shaw neighborhood. It's also one of DC's best-value tasting menus at its current price point. By now, I know what's coming each time I dine here. Still, I am perpetually delighted by returning favorites—the craveable bread and marigold “butter”, for instance—even as I discover new surprises in the seasonal offerings. It might be their vegetarian rendition of "XO" sauce, as concentrated and as addictive as the original, early sweet peas promising the arrival of summer produce, or a savory porridge that could double as a hearty breakfast. If only I could have willed myself to save a portion when eating the final Spring menu, but my discipline collapsed after the first delicious spoonful 🤤

I always leave Oyster Oyster perhaps happier than I arrive, feeling not only satiated and refreshed but equally renewed by what vegetable-forward cooking can achieve. This is a restaurant that knows its identity and lives according to its virtues of locality, sustainability, and seasonality. They exercise their values in how they procure and prepare their food. Along the way, they've made converts as comfortable as long-term devotees of plant-focused cuisine. That is more than just progress. It’s measurable success. To me, this restaurant has become one of the most important dining establishments in the US 👏

The perfect way to run any restaurant likely does not exist. But Oyster Oyster demonstrates there can be at least one right way. It's a journey based on clear intentions, practiced beliefs, environmentally respectful processes, and policies that uphold the dignity of all who come through its doors—for plants, for fungi, and for staff and guests alike ❤️
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@michelinguide for 2022: 🌟 Less