What $900 Actually Gets You at The Inn at Little Washington
My twenty-year-old self would have called this an insane amount of money for dinner, and she would not have been entirely wrong.
The popcorn comes in a carnival bag. Truffle oil, Parmigiano Reggiano, shaved black truffle on top, and it lands on the table like a dare. Forty-six years into this, they are still messing with you.
I turned thirty and decided the way to mark it was a restaurant. Not a trip, not a party. A room, a table, and a bill I would feel. I grew up in Asia eating extremely well for almost nothing, and I grew up watching Bourdain and Chef's Table and filing these places away as someday. Someday arrived on a Tuesday in a rented car.
The Restaurant
The Inn at Little Washington sits in Washington, Virginia, a town of a few hundred people about ninety minutes west of DC and an hour from Dulles. The drive is rolling hills, cows, green that goes on longer than you expect. By the time you park you have already been softened up.
It opened in 1978 in a converted gas station garage. Patrick O'Connell was self-taught, cooking French technique with Virginia ingredients, in a county where that made no sense at all. It made sense eventually. Queen Elizabeth II ate there. So did a long list of people whose names you'd recognize, though the restaurant is far too polite to bring it up.
Inside is jewel-toned walls, chandeliers, antique furniture, flowers everywhere. It should be too much. It isn't, because the whole place is winking at you. I booked the 5 PM seating to see the room in daylight and got there early enough to have it briefly to myself, which felt like being let in on something.
One note on the accolades, since it matters. When I ate there, The Inn held three Michelin stars, which it had carried since 2019. In November 2025, Michelin took one back and moved it to two stars, alongside Alinea and Masa. It remains the longest-tenured Forbes Five Star and AAA Five Diamond restaurant in the world.
The Chefs
Patrick O'Connell never went to culinary school. He went to Catholic University to study drama, dropped out, worked in restaurants around DC, and then went to France, which is where the whole thing actually starts. He came back wanting a country inn. Somewhere refined sitting in the middle of somewhere that isn't.
He got it in 1978, in an abandoned garage in a town of 133 people, opening in a January blizzard with a staff of three. Before that he was running a catering business out of the Blue Ridge with a wood-burning stove and an electric frying pan.
The farm-to-table thing everyone claims now was not a philosophy for him, it was logistics. Nothing but milk got delivered out there. If he wanted produce he had to go knock on a farmer's door. Forty-something years later the Inn has a farmer in residence, seventeen acres, chickens, sheep, goats, a greenhouse, and a chicken coop with a chandelier in it. Which tells you most of what you need to know about the man.
The drama degree never went away. It just moved into the dining room. The mooing cheese cow, the popcorn bag, the servers shaving truffle in white gloves, the dress code that specifies no wet bikinis. This is a theater kid who found a better stage. Robert Mondavi is the one who called him the Pope of American Cuisine, and O'Connell has been stuck with it ever since.
He is eighty now and still the sole proprietor. He never opened a second place, never franchised the name, never did the Vegas thing. One restaurant, one town, one obsession. The job interview reportedly involves making an omelet, and it has to be rolled, not folded.
Cooks who came through that kitchen run their own dining rooms now. One of them described working there as being in a strange theatrical circus every day, and after four hours in the room, I believe him.
The Menu
Two menus. The Gastronaut's Menu, and the vegetarian Good Earth Menu. My boyfriend and I both took the Gastronaut. I added every supplement and the wine pairing.
The progression runs appetizers, an amuse-bouche where you choose between the standard option and a paid upgrade, seafood, a choice of meat, palate cleanser, and then dessert, where you choose between the standard sweet or the cheese cart for an extra charge. We ordered one of each at every fork in the road, because that is the only way to actually review a menu with choices in it.
The Food
The truffle popcorn is the signature and it earns it. Truffle oil, Parmigiano, black truffle shaved over the top, served in a striped bag. I have thought about recreating this at home more than once and I know it would not work.
Then a run of small bites, fast. An oysterwith champagne and passionfruit gelée. A crispy potato stuffed with pimento cheese and topped with chives, which is chips and dip wearing a tuxedo. A cherry belle radish with sea salt and whipped butter. An egg custardlayered back into its own shell, and this one surprised me, much more flavor than a bite that size should carry.
The caviar tomatoarrives topped with tartare sauce and Ossetra. Then warm bread with Comté and French butter to close out the opening.
For the amuse-bouche we took both options. The Tin of Sin is the $62 upgrade, layers of Ossetra caviar, cucumber rillette, and Chesapeake crab salad, with brioche alongside. Briny and creamy and sweet at once, and the brioche does more work than it gets credit for. The Foie Gras Moussewith port wine gelée and local kumquats is the standard option and it is velvety, balanced, no notes. Both came with the Andre Clouet Grande Réserve Champagne, poured by Alejandro. More on the pairings here.
The first seafood course is a tuna and swordfish carpaccio under a wasabi sorbet, with a shrimp chip shaped like a seashell. The sorbet is the whole dish for me. Cold, sharp, and it pulls the raw fish into focus. It came with Chef Patrick's Infinite Summer Tokubetsu Honjozosake, which is a very specific flourish and I liked that they didn't reach for wine there.
Then the bread basket, which arrives mid-meal like an afterthought and absolutely is not one. Miniature baguettes, sourdough, simit, rye. All of it baked that day.
Lobster mousse-stuffed cabbageis the second seafood course, with a French butter sauce and caviar on top. Delicate, and my only complaint is the size. I wanted more of it than I was given, which is either a failure or exactly the intent. The 2022 Lingua Franca AVNI Chardonnay poured against it was crisp enough to cut the butter.
For the meat we split the two options. The Szechuan Pepper-Crusted Venison comes medium rare, tender, with a crust that actually has heat in it, and caramelized endive and lingonberry demi-glace cutting against it.
But the Duck with Foie Gras and Grilled Figs is the dish I'd come back for. Pan-roasted, rich, the skin doing what skin should do. Foie gras, celery root purée, crème brûléed figs, port wine demi-glace. It was the only moment in the meal where I stopped talking. The 2021 Alto Moncayo Garnacha from Spain came with it, the only red of the night, black currant and cocoa and coffee bean.
The Paw Paw Posset is the palate cleanser and it's a small history lesson. Paw paw is a native fruit that tastes like mango and banana had a conversation, and George Washington planted it all over Mount Vernon. A custard, technically. A flex, actually.
Dessert is where the restaurant stops pretending to be serious. "Apparently A Pear" is a cheesecake with a poached pear center on almond cake, spray-painted to look like a pear that is still ripening. It is a magic trick and it also tastes good, which is rarer than it should be.
And then Faira the Cow comes to your table. The cheese cart is a life-sized cow on wheels. Cameron, the cheese expert, served five selections: a Spanish goat's milk, a Torta del Casar sheep's milk, a Virginia cow's milk, anÉpoisses, and a Caveman Bleu from Oregon. Honey, jam, almonds on the side. The 2022 Jorge Ordoñez Muscat poured against them was the smartest pairing of the night.
Here's my one real gripe. The cheese supplement is $32 and it gets you five small slices, and that's it. I assumed the cart in front of me meant I could go back for a second round of whatever I loved. That wasn't an option. When there is a cow's worth of cheese six inches from your elbow, five slices feels like a technicality.
Last course is tempered dark chocolatewith air-popped rice and sea salt. Simple, and after four hours of richness, correct. They send you off with a miniature inn filled with chocolates.
Then the kitchen tour, which is built as an ode to a grand British country house, borrowing from the dairy farm at Windsor Castle. Green tile, brass, warmth. It does not look like a kitchen. It looks like a set, and everyone in it is working like hell.
The Service
Gerson served us. Alejandro poured. Both were warm in a way that never tipped into performance, and neither of them made me feel like I was being handled.
The whole room runs loose. That's the thing nobody tells you about a restaurant at this level. I braced for reverence and got a rolling cow and a bag of popcorn. The staff are having fun and they let you have some too.
The Prices
Our total was $1,454 for two, with one wine pairing and the supplements. A solo diner ordering everything should plan on roughly $900. The Gastronaut's Menu currently runs $388 per person before you add anything. The Tin of Sin is $62. The cheese cart is $32.
If I did it again I would skip the wine pairing. None of the pours moved me, and for that money I'd rather sit down with Alejandro, tell him what I actually like, and build something off the list together. That's not a knock on him. It's a knock on the format.
Who's It For
People for whom food is the splurge category. Some people buy courtside seats. Some people buy watches. If your version of that is a four-hour dinner in a converted garage in a town of 400 people, you already know the answer.
Not for anyone chasing modernist technique or a restaurant that will surprise them with what's possible in 2026. That is not what this is and they have never claimed otherwise.
If you want a taste without the full commitment, Patty O's Café is directly across the street, same chef, same kitchen brain, a fraction of the outlay.
Drive back to DC in the dark, cows invisible on either side of the road, and try to work out whether the cow you're thinking about is the one made of wood.
Notes
Address: 309 Middle St, Washington, VA 22747
Reservations: (540) 675-3800 | theinnatlittlewashington.com
Hours: Dinner service, seatings begin at 5 PM. Days vary seasonally, confirm at booking.
Format:Gastronaut's Menu or vegetarian Good Earth Menu, approximately $388 per person. Supplements available including the Tin of Sin ($62) and the cheese cart ($32). Wine pairing offered.
Accolades:Two Michelin Stars (three from 2019 to 2025), Michelin Green Star (2021, the first awarded in the US), Forbes Five Star, AAA Five Diamond, Wine Spectator Grand Award, six James Beard Foundation awards, Relais & Châteaux
Instagram: @innatlittlewash
About the Author
Kelly Gomez is a creative director who eats well, travels far, and lives with intention. She has sat at tables that required months of planning, flown routes that cross a dozen time zones, and found herself in rooms most people never find. She is precise about what she loves and honest about what falls short.
A WSET Level 2 Wine Certified writer and Advanced Open Water Diver, Kelly covers luxury travel, hotels, fine dining, wineries, diving destinations, and the trips built around them.
Her work reaches a US-based audience of travelers between 25 and 44, with a near-even gender split and a meaningful following.
