Indigo Landing

For mother's day, I took mom to dinner at Indigo Landing, which is right on the water at the marina in Alexandria. I haven't been so impressed with a restaurant in a long, long time. First of all, it's completely gorgeous. Every seat in the house has a water view -- whether you're facing docking sailboats, an expanse of river or planes landing at National, you've got something great to look at.

The service was a little slow, but hey, it was mother's day. That's gonna happen wherever you go. The entire wait staff was incredibly thoughtful, thorough and helpful, so I'm willing to bet things are speedier on any other day. I had a great glass of wine, and my mom got a really great cocktail -- essentially a mojito, but with bourbon instead of rum, and with the addition of raspberries to the mix. Delicious. We knew we were in for a special meal just based on the breadbasket alone. Salty rolls, corn muffins and ham sticks. I don't know how many southerners out there are familiar with cracklin breads, but it was kind of like that. Smokey and delicious, crunchy and crumbly.

We couldn't resist starting off with two of our favorite things -- a basket of fried okra and one of fried oysters. Both were done completely perfectly. As astounding as the entire meal was, the fried okra was probably the highlight. It wasn't overcooked -- you could actually still taste the okra, it wasn't overpowered by the batter. And it was the perfect texture -- crunchy and a little slimey. The fried oysters were letter perfect as well.

For the main course, mom got the rockfish -- served on truffle grits -- which was really great. My meal absolutely blew me away: porch chops (it was an incredible cut of pork) served over bluecheese grits, with some sort of apple/pear compote. No flavor overpowered any other, it was the perfect complementary plate.

Though stuffed to the gills, we knew the dessert menu would be something worth looking into, and we settled on the coconut cake doughnuts served with caramel sauce. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have a heart attack sometime in the next couple hours. But wow, was it worth it.