A Birthday Pilgrimage to The Inn at Little Washington

For my birthday this year, I went to the Inn at Little Washington. The village is small enough that you wonder if you've taken a wrong turn, and the drive in, through pastures and back roads of the Blue Ridge foothills, is part of the point. By the time you arrive, you've already slowed down.

Patrick O'Connell opened the Inn in 1978, well before anyone was calling a restaurant a "destination." The idea then was the same as the idea now: people would travel for the food, and the place around it should be worth the trip too.

The dining room holds two Michelin stars. The cooking is French in its technique and very much Virginia in its ingredients. There are three tasting menus; we chose the Here and Now, which leans into what's in season. Two courses stayed with me. The first was a pan-seared diver scallop with passionfruit and ginger: bright and warm at the same time, and the scallop itself never got lost. The second was a chartreuse of Savoy cabbage and Maine lobster with caviar beurre blanc, the kind of dish where every bite tastes like it was thought about for a long time. We were also introduced to the Inn's water menu, which was new to us and genuinely fun.

We stayed in the Jacques Pépin room, a premier room with a small balcony that looks down on the street where the Inn's gift shop sits. The fireplace is gas but acts like wood, the bathroom is nearly a second room of its own, with a De'Longhi grinder, a well-stocked minibar, and heated floors. The Kohler toilet, with bidet, massage, and heated seat, is something to talk about. It was hard to leave.

Our room, like every room at the Inn, is dedicated to a chef the kitchen admires, and I loved that touch. Sleeping in the Jacques Pépin room, after a dinner that owes so much to the tradition he helped shape, felt like staying inside the same story we had just eaten our way through.

Breakfast is served in the Conservatory, a glass room full of morning light. The service throughout the Inn is warm and present without hovering. I had the shrimp and grits with lightly scrambled eggs, local bacon, and house-made sausage. My husband asked for buttermilk pancakes instead of the lemon ricotta on the menu, and the kitchen simply made them.

What I left with was the feeling that the Inn at Little Washington has been doing this for a long time and still cares as much as it did at the beginning. That is rarer than two stars.