Judging Restaurants – Filomena

Filomena is located at 1063 Wisconsin Ave, NW. Their Web site says:

“JoAnna transported some of her mother’s furniture to the restaurant and set up a dining room (our Filomena Kitchen) that looked similar to Mother Filomena’s dining rooms over the years, dominated by the large heavy oak table, carved matching chairs and a large intricate sculpted Murano glass grape chandelier.

JoAnna also brought tons of her Mother’s antiques and knick-knacks to give the restaurant her Mother’s style. The music chosen for the restaurant was the type of Italian street songs Antimo liked to play on the Concertina in his youth or listened to because they reminded him of his boyhood home in Abruzzi, Italy.

Filomena, whose family also originated from the Abruzzi region of Italy, was a great cook. She had grown up learning very traditional Italian cooking, but found that sometimes it was very difficult to find many of the traditional ingredients. Being very creative, Filomena adapted many of her recipes to use what was available to her. Many of the original items that JoAnna chose to put on her menu were inspired by Mother Filomena’s simple, yet creative cuisine, as well as those wonderful old world traditional recipes—some that were prepared for the daily meal, for Sunday dinner, or when company called, or for specific holidays.”

You can see their menus here. For the fans – any must order items?