I'm fond of New Heights. It was one of the few upscale yet relaxed restaurants I could afford when I arrived in Washington from Moscow decades ago. Those were the years when, if you didn't have a bank account to buy your meal for you, the best places to eat were in the 'burbs.

Out in our local Vietnam, Thailand, Latin America and India, dishes were cooked by people who may have been brain surgeons or lawyers back in their homelands. But they also seemed to have absorbed how to cook from the age they were tall enough to use a spoon to stir a pot without bringing it tumbling down on their youthful pates. Those chefs knew what they were doing. Which could not often be said for some of the in-town chefs of the early 90s who despite too-brief kitchen resumes were being financed to open new restaurants as fast as daisies pop through the lawn.

New Heights gave me my first introduction to soft shell crab, a dish I loved for the same reason I used to like biting my fingernails - it was crisp yet required chewing, with a distinct taste of the beach. The dining room was calming and relaxed, presided over with gentle benevolence by Umbi Singh. His Indian background meant that every chef who passed through the kitchen made subtle use of spices and flavorings not usually applied to dishes outside Langley Park. The food was, even then, described as innovative new American cuisine and was always interesting whether produced by John Wabeck (on two separate employments as executive chef), Matthew Clarke, RJ Cooper or any of its other young kitchen blades.

Now Logan Cox is in charge. He's come from South Carolina's Woodlands Inn and Resort in Summerville, where he headed after working at Frank Ruta's Palena in Cleveland Park. I've not been to the Summerville spot. But it seems to me you can tell Ruta's influence in the hand-made pastas with sauces that might surprise and shock your conservative Italian nonna. My Agnolotti were draped with wilted ramps and dressed with chunks of ricotta salata that had a good bite to it - as it should but often doesn't. And there in the sauce was the unexpected but subtle whisper of curry. Porca miseria! It might shock Nonna, but it should explain why I tucked into it before I remembered to take its picture (above). 

He Who Must Sometimes Be Obeyed picked the monkfish and judged it "Predictable". That's the trouble with monkfish. It is predictable unless you're pretty crafty, because it's more about texture than taste. Otherwise why, for instance, would anyone turn this fish into a false meat by wrapping it in pancetta and roasting it with rosemary? There was a time in the UK before the Trades Description Act meant that what something declared it was it had to be, when monkfish stood in for the much more expensive scampi (langoustines) in Scampi & Chips (fries), the main course dish super-popular in mid-market steakhouse chains.

While there's an à la carte menu, we ate from the 3-course prix fixe at an amazingly reasonable $35, with wine pairings extra. We polished off the cornbreads in the basket, ordered big fat fries on the side which came with anchovy mayonnaise, so that even if they didn't go with our mains we had to have them, didn't we. There followed, on HWMSBO's plate, a selection of cheeses, though the waiter was at a loss to explain what they were aside from declaring the Italian pecorino was local. HWMSBO remarked, "Discretion is the better part of valet," which was good, though not appropriate to the incident. I was too full of fat fries to eat more. (I can't believe I just wrote that.)

Chefs may have come and gone from New Heights, but the dining room hasn't changed one wit. It hasn't worn badly, considering. I wonder how many of Washington's ubiquitous wenge wood-and-steel minimalist restaurant interiors won't look dated in well under 20 years' time. And Umbi Singh looks much the same, even after a recent serious illness. But New Heights could do with a younger clientele, to make everyone feel renewed and the dining room more vital.

New Heights. 2317 Calvert St NW, 202 234 4110. Main courses cost from $17 to $28. Prix fixe 3-course menu, $35.