A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., (Ivy Inn's) Angelo Vangelopoulos, 44 this month, got his start at the late La Colline on Capitol Hill, where he learned the art of sauce-making. To this day, he still serves veal as he did then, with a morel cream sauce spiked with armagnac. Following a year of cooking in California, the chef returned to Washington and the late Galileo, where whole suckling pigs and lambs were broken down in the restaurant before such deconstruction became fashionable. Galileo is also where Vangelopoulos learned the trick to making gnocchi: Use just enough flour, but not too much, and don’t overwork the dough.
His menu nods to France, waves at Italy and does the South proud. Cue the hanger steak with chasseur sauce; and by all means, check out the chef’s ways with pasta. The Ivy Inn’s shrimp and grits, garnished with a crown of lacy buttermilk onion rings, are every bit as rich as the union at Vidalia in Washington. That trout, stuffed with herbs and cooked with the skin on, gets treated to a succotash that summons the season. Desserts run to old-fashioned crowd-pleasers, among them an intense chocolate pudding and lemon meringue icebox cake....- Washington Post
