The Blue Door Kitchen & Inn
675 Zachary Taylor Hwy.
Flint Hill, VA 22627
540-675-1700
https://thebluedoorkitchen.com/

American | $$

As you pass through Flint Hill, VA The Blue Door Kitchen & Inn is hard to miss. The inn sits back from the main road in town but is easy to spot. Open for just a few months it has already received top 5.0 ratings on tripadvisor.com and Yelp.com. Seasoned restaurateur Reem Arbid and partner Chef Andrea Pace, formerly at Villa Mozart in Fairfax City, have transformed the old Public House Restaurant into a fine dinning destination.

We started with this wonderful Hummus with bits of beef tenderloin and pita bread. The hummus with tenderloin was different and really wonderful.

Our second appetizer was the Rice balls Milanese with San Marzano tomatoes and basil. These Arancini type rice balls were perfect. Ask for bread to get all of the sauce up.

My wife ordered the Wild rockfish with olive oil mashed potato, braised artichoke heart, cremini mushrooms, in a crustacean sauce. I tasted the fish and found it mildly sweet, flaky, and cooked perfectly.

I asked for Chef Andrea to choose a dish for me and was thankful when this amazing half roasted chicken with root vegetables arrived. This is not something I would order myself. Ordering chicken in a restaurant can be iffy, often it is not done or dry. This roasted chicken was luscious. A wonderfully flavorful moist chicken with crispy skin with a slight crunch to it.

My wife chose the Kalamansi panna cotta with fennel orange ice cream and berries for dessert. I did not taste this dish but could tell from the look on my wife’s face it was something special.

My eyes are always drawn to chocolate on the menu. I ordered the Olive oil chocolate mousse with banana ice cream. The caramelized banana slices were a nice complement to the banana ice cream. The mousse is the centerpiece of the dish and flawless. The balance of chocolate and banana works well.

The food at The Blue Door is phenomenal, Chef Andrea can cook. The key to success will be management and The Blue Door is managed well by Reem Arbid. One challenge to opening a new restaurant is staffing and being in a rural area just makes it harder. I was puzzled watching several walk ins turned away because they were booked up. There was plenty of seating but no one without a reservation was seated. Later I learned from the server they were short staffed in the kitchen. It was clear seating that night would be based on the number of covers chef was comfortable with and not the number of chairs in the dining room. This attention to quality over quantity is not something you see in all restaurants.

They are open Thursday for dinner, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday for lunch and dinner. Call for reservations and treat yourself to something special.