I'll be upfront about this: I love Robert Weidmaier's Tasting Room. It's the kind of place that litters the streets of European capitals - a relaxed environment with style where you can eat simple but well-sourced ingredients cooked without complication. While Ladies Who Lunch in America toy with a Caesar Salad ("Dressing on the side and hold the croutons"), this is where you'd find the French. It's the kind of place women will dress up for, pretending they haven't, yet men can feel comfortable in. 

It's not large - two small simply decorated rooms on either side of the front door that, when you push through, directs your gaze straight to a wood-burning oven. This is where its flatbreads are baked, and whatever else you order, you should certainly eat one of these. A sophisticated relation to the pizza, they're a tablecloth-thin stretch of crispy bread covered in a changing variety of toppings, like good charcuterie with arugula, or shrimps and mussels with - if I remember - tomatoes and feta.

Salads aren't mucked about with - you get good fresh greens and cheek-puckering vinaigrette. Sandwiches are inventive and their bread nicely chewy. I can't speak to the cooked dishes. I wouldn't go there for them. But there's plenty of choice on the blackboard.

A couple of light-lunching friends sharing a flatbread, a salad, and a glass of wine each can come out with enough change to spend in the ferociously expensive shops that line Alexandria's King Street. That's where The Tasting Room is located, just down from Weidmaier's other new venture, the more formal restaurant Brabo. I'd recommend spending any spare cash next door, however, at The Butcher's Block, a proper butcher and delicatessen also owned by Weidmaier. 

The Tasting Room is located at 1600 King St, Alexandria, (Brabo phone) 703 894 3440

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