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 second-guess whether you've missed a turn, and the drive in, through pastures and back roads at the foot of the Blue Ridge, does its own quiet work on you. By the time you arrive, you've already slowed down.

Patrick O'Connell opened the Inn in 1978, long before anyone used the word "destination" to describe a restaurant. The premise hasn't changed: people would drive for the food, and the destination itself should feel worth it.

The dining room, after being a 3 Michelin starred restaurant for many years, now holds two Michelin stars. The technique is French; the ingredients are unmistakably Virginia. There are three tasting menus, and we took the Here and Now, built around whatever the season allows. Two courses have stayed with me since. A pan-seared diver scallop arrived with passionfruit and ginger, the fruit's acidity and the ginger's heat trading off, bite by bite, without ever crowding out the scallop's own sweetness. Then came a chartreuse of Savoy cabbage and Maine lobster with caviar beurre blanc: cabbage leaves wrapped around a mousse of lobster, the caviar popping faintly against the richness of the butter sauce. The flavors were divine. We also went through the Inn's water menu for the first time, which was new to us and more absorbing than I expected a lineup of waters to be.

We stayed in the Jacques Pépin room, a premier room with a small balcony overlooking the street and the Inn's gift shop below. The fireplace runs on gas but throws real heat. The bathroom is nearly its own suite: a De'Longhi grinder, a stocked minibar, heated floors, and a Kohler toilet with a heated seat, bidet, and massage function that we were still discussing over breakfast the next morning.

Every room at the Inn carries the name of a chef the kitchen admires, a touch I loved. Sleeping in the Jacques Pépin room, on the night we'd eaten our way through a menu that owes so much to the classical French technique he championed in America, felt less like a coincidence of room assignment and more like sleeping inside the meal itself.

Breakfast is served in the Conservatory, a glass-walled room that catches the morning light directly. The service throughout the Inn is attentive without ever feeling watched: someone is always nearby, never hovering. I ordered the shrimp and grits, with soft scrambled eggs, local bacon, and house-made sausage. My husband asked for buttermilk pancakes, which weren't on the menu (the lemon ricotta version was), and the kitchen made them anyway, no fuss.

As we drove off, I was left with 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.