Kith and Kin

This place is sometimes stylized as Kith/Kin, so I’m not sure how to properly write their name. This was my first time going to the Wharf and I was pretty excited. I’ve been looking forward to this. It was nice being on the waterfront and probably would have been even nicer had it not been negative one thousand degrees and already dark when we got there (side note: why do we insist on compounding the misery of winter by switching to standard time and making the evenings even darker? I will rail against this until the day I die). After dinner, I realized, though, that the Wharf is really just Tyson’s Corner East; full of fancy fountains and overpriced makeup stores.

Anyhow, regardless of depressing darkness, Kith and/or Kin and the hotel that houses it are both beautiful and modern looking. We were seated and given one drink menu for the entire table of six. The first page had some delicious-sounding cocktails with some outrageous prices. The next pages listed a sad selection of beers, both bottled and draft, with also outrageous prices. If you’re going to charge nineteen goddamn dollars for a drink, it better be a Long Island iced tea served in a glass as tall as I am. Already Kith/Kin was on notice.

They served us each a tasty coco bread roll, which made me hopeful for things to come, and our server explained the menu, describing their share-plates as being either appetizer-sized or entree-sized. We hedged our bets by ordering five things, two of which were the larger size. If you think that paying $17 for an entree sounds entirely reasonable, get ready to see what kind of hamster-sized food Kith and Kin considers an entree.

The food arrived quickly and for the sake of simplicity I’ll dump all my pictures here:

Top picture: Before I describe anything, I want you to look at the picture and notice the spoon. That was not a large spoon of the serving-utensil variety. That was a normal-sized spoon. Okay, now I can begin. In the top left you will see the tamarind-glazed chicken wings. These had a nice smoky-sweet flavor but I’m not sure what kind of premature infant chicken produced wings this small. In the middle is the brussels sprouts suya. I don’t know exactly what this means, but the sprouts were fried well and tossed with baby onions and a nice, slightly-spicy, tangy sauce. I would go as far as calling it delicious. On the right is the king crab curry that the staff wouldn’t shut up about. It was slightly sweet and coconutty, but it contained approximately 1.5 pieces of crab.

Bottom picture: these are the two “entree” dishes. I don’t get it. Are they for children? They said entree, but these bowls were the size of a bowl you might use to, say, eat ice cream, if you were actually following the guidelines on recommended portion size. The left is lentils. They were bland and I have nothing else to say about them. The right was the oxtail stew. For me, this was probably the best part of dinner and reminded me a lot of braised short rib due to its slow-cooked fattiness. It was a little smoky, a little spicy, and generally good. I should note that I seemed to like this more than everyone else I ate with, who agreed with each other that it was just okay.

Not wanting to waste any more money than we possibly had to, we asked for the check  and they instead brought us dessert menus. They must have confused my being a glutton with being a glutton for punishment, which I am not. We again asked for the check and received it. It was not unreasonable ONLY BECAUSE we were all starving. It was decided that a) this was my worst restaurant selection of all time, and b) we would pick up a pizza on the way home. We had some debate about pizza toppings. It’s hard with six people. Here’s the finished product:

We demolished this pizza like the hyenas demolished Scar at the end of The Lion King. Fun fact: This large three-topping pizza cost less than one cocktail at Kith and Kin!

Price: $40 per person if you want to eat pizza afterward; $??? if you actually want to feel satisfied.

Bottom line: This place was so overpriced and so under-sized that I fear my review didn’t dis it quite enough. If you have a million dollars to blow and just can’t figure out how to spend it most prodigally, I can write you a list of at least ten better places.