Mrs. K's Restaurant Barrel Bar

Brunch Review Been driving by the place literally since I 've been I DC. Because of its placement on the corner of Colesville Rd where it sits, it just never seemed particularly inviting or convenient to stop. Maybe that 's just an excuse and I never had inspiration or incentive to go? Who knows. Turns out they built a parking lot across the street some years back I found out today (not visible from the street). Fast forward to today and a UYE planned by a fellow Yelper. 1:30p reservations and all three of us arrived on time to a packed house. I was excited. Then I saw the food. None of us was impressed. Everything was pretty basic and most everything was cold and dry. The rotation of things like snow crab legs and scrambled eggs was very slow. ONE guy manned the waffle station...cut the prime rib....the baked salmon....and (I guess) was responsible for the omelette station too but ran out of octopus arms? I didn 't feel like waiting for a scramble. The prime rib was as dry as uncooked grits. The biscuits and chicken too. Even the oysters. How you manage to serve a dry oyster is beyond me, but the shells were HUGE with tiny meat inside. Huh? For some reason the home fries were good. They were actually very moist, and flavorful. hand clap for those Saving grace we all got nice on the bottomless mimosas. Brunch is $39.99 $20 for the mimosas. I think I drank about 10 of them determined to compensate myself for the weak food. To drink myself into happiness. The ambiance and garden views here are wonderful. As is the service. Another Yelper discovered a hair in her plate and let them know. Towards the end of our meal almost 2 hours later the manager comes over to apologize and offers our organizer multiple gift certs for free brunch. I think she got at least two and perhaps three. This place is okay. Just okay. They really need to work on their food quality. Can 't believe I missed football games for this. Luckily the conversation was entertaining. 3 stars.

Haven't been to this place in 20+ years and finally made a return. Had a really nice meal outside in the garden area and it's nice that you can make an OpenTable reservation outside. What wasn't nice was another group of people who let their wild, bad-ass children run around the gardens, yelling and screaming. I don't blame the kids because they were having fun, but those parents are straight assholes who almost ruined everyone else's meal. Tried several things on the menu: Cajun BBQ shrimp, apple salad, seafood pasta, bone-in pork chop, and the Smith Island cake. The salad was good with a balsamic dressing, but the shrimp appetizer was incredible. 5 large shrimps cooked perfectly and the sauce was really good. Came with some bread to sop up the remaining sauce. The pasta salad was huge, with a lot of calamari, mussels, shrimp, in a light tomato broth (it was NOT a sauce). Was good, but didn't come anywhere close to how the outstanding pork chop. Perfectly brined and cooked, it came with a great sauce and cheesy grits. Would definitely return for this again. The Smith Island cake was decent, they split the cake in 2 pieces, but only 1 scoop of ice cream. Cake was kinda dry, so it really needed another scoop of chocolate ice cream.

I came here for a lunch celebration with some colleagues from work. The decor inside is OK nothing special. It's an old house. The gardens outside were gorgeous, though. The service was very friendly and courteous, which I appreciated very much. The bread was really good, too! Apart from that, I wasn't really too impressed. I ordered the vegetable pot stickers to start. It was pure dough very little filling and couldn't even make out what veggies were inside. This restaurant has no business serving pot stickers. I ordered the cobb salad for my main and it was OK. Nothing special. Standard cobb salad, pre tossed with the red wine vinaigrette. Overall, for $30, I don't think I'd go back unless some work related function was being hosted there.

Knock off several stars today, which made me a bit sad since I was the one that recommended this place. The service downstairs was off to a good start then our waiter, Oscar, just disappeared. Took forever finding him to get check and had to ask the bartender for the check. The other staff did take our empty plates which was great but never got my water refilled. FYI, they do not honor Yelp 10% off check when you check in anymore. Wish we also were informed the downstairs buffet was not a mirror image of the upstairs buffet. Especially paying $50 per person for Fathers Day. We took a look upstairs before we were done and upstairs had items like salmon, beef brisket, crab meat for omelettes, which the downstairs buffet didn't have and had a better ambiance. Our waiter should have informed us that the upstairs buffet had more selection. Biggest ripoff was when I informed another waitress, not our first, since he disappeared, who gave us our check, they charged for just two child rates 12 and under for $25 each but when I told the lady waitress, that they kids were 3 and 6, she took out one charge, so we paid $25 for two kids. But their website for Fathers Day Brunch clearly states children 6 and under was $5 per child. Talking about misleading patrons. Be warned about eating at downstairs buffet, make sure to go to the upstairs buffet too. And make sure to clearly review your bill!

I planned a UYE brunch here with a few Yelpers. I've been here for a dinner but not brunch. We had reservations through Opentable. We had nice host and hostess seating us. I requested a table near a window because I dont like seating where people constantly pass through. That was a bust. We were seated right by the entrance to the buffet. From a distance the buffet looked good. However, fyi: no sugar coating here) Sunday Brunch Menu: Salad: wilted lettuce. Breads: croissants and biscuits old. Grits: old and cold. The pan was empty and no urgency to refill. Homefries: old Mussels: decent. Belgian waffles: there was a hair! My friend saw it first ; Prime rib: old and dry!! The heat lamp masked the dryness. I love raw oysters and this was a bummer. They definitely used a cheap foodpro type quality. Barely any meat in the huge shells. Shrimp: overcooked and pan was always empty. Crab legs: old, and dry! Plus they were brown!! Red flag!! Bread pudding: definitely not worth trying. Fine pastries they say?! Ha! They were semi frozen. These desserts were the mini desserts you buy from Costco! Nothing fine about them. The website mentions a lot of items but they didnt have 1/2 stuff. The pans constantly ran empty and it took awhile for them to refill. Not cool. The manager came to me and was very apologetic and gave me vouchers to come back for a future visit. I hope they work on their food quality. The set up is shape like a U. Which causes major back ups. It should be set up so people can move on both sides of the tables. Very limited options if youre a vegetarian. For what we got it's not worth the $39.99 2 Stars are for the staff. They do a good job but food not so much.