The Dabney

The smartest thing this hearth-lit Shaw dining room has done over the past year: ditch its tasting-menu-only format. While you can still celebrate with a set five-course menu, we reveled in recent à la carte offerings. A wooden board of cider doughnuts—served with apple butter and whipped foie gras under a cut-glass cloche—looked straight out of a Dutch Master still life. Pastrami-spiced beef belly was made even more luscious by a drizzle of beet bordelaise. And we never leave without at least one catfish slider on a sweet-potato roll, a menu constant since the early days. Expensive to very expensive.