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When my drink comes, I’m gazing down at the five-acre Boeing campus in Crystal City. My appetizer arrives not long after much of official Washington — the Washington Monument, Washington National Cathedral — reveals itself in the distance. Ahead of my entree, first the Pentagon and then the Air Force Memorial in Arlington, Va., come into focus.
What sounds like extreme table hopping, or a chopper’s-eye view of the region, is actually dinner at the Skydome on the 15th floor of the DoubleTree by Hilton hotel in Crystal City. Closed during the pandemic, the only restaurant in the region with a revolving dining room reopened last October with the mission of serving food on par with the scenery. Introduced in 1972, the high-in-the-sky attraction has worn multiple hats over the decades. Along with feeding people, the space has let them dance, laugh and sing in its roles as nightclub, karaoke bar and comedy club. I ascended to the Skydome a couple of times recently, after the hotel acquired a new food and beverage director and a new executive chef in late June.
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End of carouselI almost didn’t go back after my first taste of the place. There was nothing nice to say about the dry pork chop, which couldn’t be salvaged even after a dip in the accompanying honey and roasted garlic sauce, or a one-note side dish of creamed spinach doing a great imitation of glue. Thank goodness for the panorama. Otherwise, my parting impression of the restaurant would have been a key lime tart where every aspect of the dessert smacked of having emerged from a can or a tub.
The lone dish to stand out on my maiden spin was a delicious special of ahi tuna nachos whipped up by chef Chris Murry, 34, a D.C. native: diced raw fish combined with avocado, cilantro and wasabi, garnished with threads of nori and scooped up with airy fried wontons. Suffice it to say, there’s a reason critics return to scenes of (food) crimes. Return visits allow for in-depth investigation — in my case, eating more of a menu — and sometimes a change of heart.
Skydome launched with a tapas menu but has since switched to serving larger plates, too. “People wanted dinner, not to make another stop,” says food and beverage director Ben Lihn. The food is prepared in a kitchen on the floor below the restaurant and travels in hot boxes via elevator to reach the Skydome, an obvious challenge for the staff. Temperature was never an issue with the starters, including hummus shot through with green curry — a thick and creamy round of pureed chickpeas accessorized with toasted almonds and pistachios — and the baby iceberg salad, presented as a tall construction with corn, radishes, bacon and roasted tomatoes tucked into the cool green ruffles. Chicken wings manage to arrive warm to the touch in a pleasant red pepper jelly glaze. All crowd-pleasers, they’re all good. (Experience has taught me that early arrivals get their food in timelier fashion than later seatings.)
The surprise hit, however, is grilled octopus, a contemporary fashion and another dish that Murry, who has spent most of his career with Marriott International, should keep on the menu he inherited from the previous chef. The tender seafood is coiled on a hash of potatoes, chorizo and corn that gets a nice assist from dots of sunny yellow aji amarillo aioli. The appetizer tastes like something you’d find at someplace trendy. Diners can wash back the octopus with another vogue — a drink trailed by smoke — by requesting Evening Thyme, sprung from bourbon, maraschino liqueur, a touch of honey and cherry bitters.
Unfortunately, much of the rest of the food on the menu tastes as if it were prepared in a different — lesser — kitchen.
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Gnocchi, dense as lead, is paired with shrimp, minimal evidence of the promised asparagus and a vapid tomato sauce, a combination that tastes straight out of the frozen food section of a supermarket you don’t frequent. While it was nice to see a meatless patty as a burger option, slipped in a pretzel bun, the Impossible disk, affixed to vegan cheese, was basically a salt mine. As for the butter-sauced salmon and roast chicken, you’ve been to banquets before, right? Neither entree is offensive, but neither is going to have you thinking about it when you put down your fork.
The main course everyone rallied around at my last meal was the hamburger, crusty where you want it to be, juicy where you expect it to be, and nicely served by a tender bun and thick-cut, candied bacon. The french fries show up in a fancy gold cone that can’t hide the fact they’re not worth finishing. (There are decent frozen potatoes in the market; these are not them.)
If you were to eat only appetizers here, you might be inclined to return when visitors come to Washington, then kill two birds with one stone by (1) feeding your posse and (2) showing them around town with the mere push of an elevator button.
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The Skydome, whose edge is stationary and whose dining area completes a revolution every 45 minutes, aims to attract a local audience. On my visits, half the crowd appeared to be dressed for prom or date night and half looked as if they wandered over from a baseball game, or from their hotel room. A small wooden dance floor in the center of the circle is occupied by a couple of wine carts. The rest of the space is filled with silver chairs and shiny wood tables, each affixed with a number on its side to guide servers to the right spot — and, no doubt, diners who may have excused themselves for a few minutes and return to find their perch “moved.” (Or their bags. I still feel bad about having to interrupt a twosome to retrieve my briefcase from near their entwined feet.)
The views aren’t all postcard material, by the way. As the Skydome turns, diners also take in the traffic on the 14th Street Bridge, which makes them feel happy to be parked where they are, not on concrete. The vista further captures neighboring tall residences, where my party debated interior design skills across several stories and watched someone smoke a joint on his balcony. If the Hitchcock classic “Rear Window” were remade, a table at the Skydome would make an intriguing camera position. Part of every revolution also includes a pass past the stationary foyer and tiny bar; my table got so close to the latter, I could read patrons’ pants labels.
Restaurants in the sky tend to be special for one thing — the scenery — but there are notable exceptions, including the elegant Jules Verne within the Eiffel Tower in Paris. No one expects great food in a revolving restaurant in a mid-tier hotel, but ... why not? Why can’t a business make it their business to offer something interesting and delicious to accompany the star of the show? The new team delivers with Act 1, but to win a more appreciative audience, the second half of the script needs rewriting. The chef says he’s working on some ideas of his own. Hurry, Murry, hurry!
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Something tells me the man behind the ahi tuna nachos has the skill to take Skydome up, up and away. I’ll be watching.
Skydome
300 Army Navy Dr., Arlington. 703-416-3862. hilton.com. Open for indoor dining 5 to 10 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. Prices: appetizers $12 to $26, main courses $25 to $58. Sound check: 77 decibels/Must speak with raised voice. Accessibility: The rotating floor is briefly stopped to accommodate wheelchair users; ADA-compliant restrooms are on the 14th floor of the hotel.
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