(December 2007)

By Warren Rojas

Food: 8.3 Ambiance: 7.6 Service: 5.9

Helpful hints for the Bebo staff: Menus are typically appreciated. Empty glasses need refilling. Piping-hot pizzas cannot be cut with plain flatware.

Pardon for opening with this painfully obvious refresher course, but the continually scattershot service at Bebo is particularly hard to stomach for those of us who remain smitten with Roberto Donna’s often brilliant cooking.

To his credit, Donna always appears to be around, whether that means personally supervising a pizza-making lesson/birthday party one weekend, snipping fresh basil for a lunchtime pizza order or catching up with old friends mid-dinner rush. To his detriment, Donna always appears to be around, which means he’s either incapable of correcting the long-standing service issues or he’s become accustomed to the pained looks stamped across so many of his guests’ faces.

Regulars know well enough to pounce on any open bar stools (thanks for always taking care of us, Stephanie). Sit anywhere else and you take your chances.

The food is typically more of a sure thing. Ricotta-filled prosciutto rolls ride in on an ash-stained crust (wood-fired oven adds smoke, character to the dough) topped with sweet tomato sauce and pools of molten mozzarella. A gorgonzola and sweet onion pie performs a perfect balancing act on the tongue. Jumbo pasta tubes are covered in a robust pork ragu (juicy meat just falls to shreds). Meanwhile, rabbit and homemade sausage pop up all across menu.

Best New Gourmet Playground

(March 2007)

By Warren Rojas

Let's hear it for asbestos! That's right-I'm pro-shoddy construction materials. Otherwise, Roberto Donna might never have shuttered D.C.'s award-winning Galileo (under renovations until late 2007) or crossed the river to pursue his latest pet project, Bebo Trattoria.

Granted, the service could still use some fine-tuning. But that doesn't seem to deter the parade of harried government workers who scarf down imaginative small plates at the bar or the longstanding acolytes who gladly come for an audience with the master.

A custom lardo plate delivers chewy homemade bacon, beef tartar (zapped with lemon and olive oil and dusted with fresh pepper and sea salt) and fresh veal sausage (a fatty delight). The piatti unico brings a four-course feast of milky mozzarella propped atop a plump tomato slice, a jumbo meatball steeped in marinara, a noodle roll stuffed with a ricotta-ham-pork ragu (delicious) and an alcohol-soaked shot of creamy chocolate surrounded by crème anglaise (perfect bookend to this Hungry-Man-esque meal). Croquettes of battered bunny are mixed with deep-fried artichokes and scallions (imagine a savory funnel cake) and are accompanied by a pungent citrus mayo.

Meanwhile, a dinosaur egg of a meringue envelops dark chocolate ice cream and crystalline mascarpone within a whipped sugar shell afloat in a lake of hazelnut cream (brilliant closer).