Ech, my cell phone camera sucks.What: Roasted bone marrow ($8)Where: Smith, 332 15th Ave. E., 322-9420. CAPITOL HILLOfficial tasting notes: When I was writing yesterday’s review of Quinn’s Pub on Pike, one of the subsidiary reasons that Scott Staples’ bone-marrow-on-oxtail dish summed up the gastropub concept for me is that I also think — think — Linda Derschang’s also using it to signal that she’s gunning for the gastropub title for Smith, her 15th Ave. pub. In general, I love Linda’s bars, but not for the food. At Smith, with my pints, I’ve had good bar snacks like the beet salad, deviled eggs, and sweet-potato fries with sage mayonnaise. Never bothered with anything more ambitious. Lately — starting about the time that Quinn’s was gearing to open and the word “gastropub” was popping up in all the food sections — I noticed Smith’s menu going more and more hoof-and-mouth, and I’ve been wondering if the cooks were expressing a genuine fondness for British meat cookery or were just going for shock value. Duck tongues appeared for a while but didn’t stay long. (And frankly, if I had a hankering for duck tongues, I’d order them at a good dim sum house, where the chefs would have some actual training in duck-tongue braising.)Buoyed by the deliciousness at Quinn’s, I went back to Smith and ordered the roasted bone marrow. I’ve mostly eaten roasted (veal) bone marrow at French bistros (Cremant serves it occasionally, and I’d recommend the experience). It’s a luxurious indulgence that ranks a few small steps below foie gras on buttered bread. But not a visual one: With a knife, you scoop the greyish, gelatinous marrow out of a cross-section of bone, spread it onto toast like melting butter, and bite in to a gush of meaty fat. There’s no way to make that sound as appealing as it is.The three bones I got at Smith, which came with Triskets, a julienned-celery salad, and tiny spoons, were too damn small. We could barely get the spoons — or even the spoon handles — into the bones, and even though we scraped clean the insides of the bones and turned them upside down in the hopes that more marrow would leak out, we ended up with maybe a couple of teaspoons of the stuff. Plus, the salt in the Triskets whomped what little flavor the marrow had. I admire the effort, but it was a waste of money. (Unless you were just ordering it for the bragging rights.)Consolation prize 1: slices of beef tongue, breaded and pan-fried, and served over braised escarole. Not only fancy but tasty, if you like tongue. Consolation prize 2: After a couple rounds of Maritime’s Jolly Roger Christmas Ale and the disappointment of the bone marrow, I gave up on Smith’s gastropub-worthiness and ordered up a mess of poutine.
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