It's great to have a bar in DC specialized in sherries and cured ham, but Mockingbird Hill also betrays the flaws in a food culture that is far too precious. There's no reason why you should have to spend $40 for a total of 6 ounces of booze and snacks hardly plentiful enough to make your stomach growl.
The sherries were great. Unfortunately, MH doesn't have a website with a menu and I didn't take notes, so this is a bit vague. I started with a glass of fino en rama (meaning from the cask, I was told) that might have been two ounces. It was dry, crisp, with that indefinable "sherry" taste. I then had a flight that included a fino, an oloroso, and a dark, syrupy version described as a dessert wine. The oloroso stole the show for me and I will explore this category further. The serrano ham was good, and the sampler of American hams was excellent. A little plate of three tiny octopuses was fine. The snacks were all shared and the price above only includes my share.
The music, apparently punk rock, was obnoxious, the table uncomfortable, the service about what you'd expect. Barrio gotico it isn't, of course, but one would hope that these efforts to bring slices of European food culture to the U.S. would be to bring some of the comfort and generosity, rather than such carefully measured, overpriced dollops.
A dinner at the nearby Bistro Boheme was much more satisfying, yet even here it was an uncomfortable cross between European comfort and American chic. My braised pork with knoedel and sauerkraut was quite nice, the Pilsner Urquell on draft was great. The server must have been in training but he managed all right.
