Welcome!
Tom here, full-time food enthusiast.
I’m ready to be your guide to the good life — at home, in restaurants, and all over the world.
— Tom Sietsema
Let’s dig in…
The toughest restaurant reservation in the country is at a suburban D.C. dining room on the seventh floor of a mammoth concrete, steel and glass building on what could pass for a college campus. The restaurant’s door, simply marked ADR #2, could be mistaken for that of a cleaning closet.
Inside, diners pay in cash for high-quality meals whipped up by a chef identified only by his first name. The food is priced for worker bees. Soup costs $4 a cup. Did I mention it’s lunch only and no one tips?
Cellphones are forbidden, so forget about recording the meal for posterity. That’s because the only people who can book a table here at one of the most secure compounds in the world are employees of the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia.
Navigating the facility makes accessing the White House and Pentagon feel easy by comparison.
As the first food critic ever admitted to the 50-seat Agency Dining Room, I find myself in covert company on a fall visit, ahead of President Donald Trump’s second term and his buyout offers, which haven’t hit the CIA (yet). My minder with the agency’s Office of Public Affairs, Janelle Neises, has graciously seated me facing a picture window overlooking a gold-and-green carpet of treetops, joined by companions, including public affairs representatives, who know the operation well. Two of them, a man and a woman, previously served as executive chefs here and can be identified only as Jim and Allyson. Another was the former executive assistant to the recently departed director William J. Burns and is known among his colleagues as the in-house “food critic,” a fan of the restaurant’s gumbo. (I spy competition!) The unnamed former food service project manager of the first-floor cafeteria and food concessions is also here, as is Maura Burns, the CIA’s chief operating officer.
I assume any flies on the wall have been vetted or swatted.
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