A taste of Altair DC

All right, love it. All right, so a new dining destination is putting a creative spin on new American cuisine. Altair DC draws inspiration from the four ancient elements, I love this, earth, air, fire, and water. I tried to catch myself and not say earth, wind, and fire. But Tammy Vondon, food and beverage director, is joining us as well as the executive chef, KB Ingram, both here to give us a taste of what's on the menu. Welcome, guys, and congratulations. Thank you, we're very excited to be here. Thank you for having us. Of course. So I love that you say the spin on American cuisine. Tell us about the experience and what anyone can expect by going to Altair. So first and foremost, we're inspired by the four elements, just like you said. Every aspect of our menu relates to those four primal elements. So Chef has prepared some beautiful entree items like our filet that has a beautiful roquefort crust. That comes, you know, completely from our wood fire grill. Everything starts with fresh fire, like the honey nut squash. It has primal things from the earth, squash, molasses, brown butter. So you're going to associate with those flavors. Pan-seared scallops that are beautifully prepared, fresh, with a little bit of celery root puree, crispy leeks, and our apple pound cake. That's not really elemental, but we like to think of it as celestial because, you know, dessert. you should always have a heavenly note uh cocktail program as well every aspect of our cocktail program will relate to the elements we have a beautiful uh coffee uh basically manhattan with the banana cordial and we finish with uh smoked coffee which is beautiful uh this cocktail over here is our passion fruit uh cocktail okay reminiscent of the air elements It's basically a take on a daiquiri. It has both rum, a little bit of a Codigo Reposado tequila, and then we finish it off with this beautiful cloud of vanilla cotton candy. Wow. And that's served table side. And then for the earth element, a brown butter and a wild mushroom, old-fashioned, with a porcini chip. Wild mushroom old-fashioned? Yup. I was making sure, did I hear that right? Yeah, wild mushroom. You know, like everything when people think of cocktails, they think of sweet, you know, maybe sour, tart, all that. The concept is so fascinating to me, how you take all of these elements. And then, Chef, how much more challenging or rather creative do you have to be when it comes to helping to bring some of these dishes and ideas to life? It's a little bit challenging, but that's what we're here for, to make everything happen. Yeah. Okay. Do you have a favorite of these? Because I'm going to try them, and I know you're going to make some cocktails. Do you have a favorite of this that I should try first? Just try the scallops. Okay, I will go in for the scallops, all for the sea. I love everything. And the way it's plated is very beautiful as well. Thank you. I think there's a lot of art that goes into not just creating the dishes, getting the flavors right, but making the presentation because that makes somebody who walks in feel extra special to me on that. So we'll go in for the scallops. When it does come to working into the neighborhood, what is it that you're looking for when you're taking a restaurant like this into where it's located? Well, we all know that D.C. is a very happening town. You have political think tanks. You have people on the hill working, young professionals. And while we're located in a hotel, we also have a lot of transplants and travelers. We wanted a space that will allow everyone to kind of just stop, take a moment from their busy schedule, and enjoy good food with friends. A lot of our dishes are built to be shareable. Cocktails are fun and convivial. We want you to forget about your stressful day. You enter that dining room. We have a beautiful atrium, which is the primary dining room in our terrace, with glass ceilings. You can kind of look up at the night sky. I don't know if you know Altair is one of the brightest star up, and it makes up the Summer Triangle constellation. You look like you were going to make a cocktail, so you can finish explaining. Of course, yeah. So why don't we start off with an air cocktail. So let's talk about a lot of our cocktails are served table side just because, you know, bring that experience to the table. So this is the passion fruit I mentioned earlier. And with the rum, a little bit of guava, lime juice, passion fruit. And then as you serve it table side. How fun is that? It's almost like the cloud is melting away. Is that like a piece of cotton candy? Yeah. Okay. Vanilla flavored cotton candy too? Okay. Yeah. Yeah, and then table side, I'm going to go right on to the next one. This one, while I smoked a little bit earlier, the more smoke, the better. This is a presentation for me. Always, always. It is for me as well. It automatically makes it taste better and smell better. Everything's going to be better when it looks great. Where are you guys located? And we'll come back to you on the other side of the break. We're on 333 G Street, northwest Washington, D.C. Okay, awesome. Located inside the Arlo Hotel. Okay. I'm going to keep eating. I just forgot the drink's coming, too. We're back with you right after this.