Ashburn Reviews

Vintage 50
50 Catoctin Circle NE #100
Leesburg VA 20176
Phone: (703) 777-2169

Web Site: vintage50.com

Location: In Leesburg. This is where the Thoroughbreds restaurant was. It is located in an office building, off route 7, behind the shopping center that has the Pier One and the Giant.

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I should start off by saying that I just saw The Next Food Network Star where the judges tested the participants on how descriptive they could be about food. This has made me a bit self-conscious about what I say here. I’m going to try and be more broad in my descriptive terminology.
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My husband and I ate her a week or so ago.

If the service wasn’t so horrible, I would have given this place 4 stars. The food was overall scrumptious. BUT for appetizers and dessert ONLY, we had a 2 and a half hour meal. The waiter kept coming outside to do things but completely ignored our table. Each time we needed something, we had to call him over; for water, for silverware, for dessert, for the beer, for everything. I don’t think our waiter once stopped by to check on us. At one point, when we asked the waiter for more water, he gave us the nastiest stare like he was thinking “cannot you see I’m busy?” It was uncool.

For our visit we sat outside. It was a nice sunny evening. Towards the end of the meal, some live music started. 2 guys and 2 guitars. They played well. The lead one made emotional faces when he sang… he was fun to watch.

Although Vintage 50 has an extensive menu, a lot of the entrees looked complicated and had fancier ingredients then we were ready for that day. Like the short ribs had wild mushrooms on it and the flat iron steak had truffled-mashed potatoes and bitter greens, and the tenderloin has a sesame-chickpea puree. So instead of getting the entrees, we stuck with appetizers. (Now after trying the appetizers and liking them, we will probably dive into trying some of the fancy entrees next time.)

These are the appetizers that we got:
- Chili Pepper Shrimp
- Wings
- Pierogis
- Pretzel Twist
- Grilled Watermelon and Goat Cheese salad

The shrimp was expensive but great. $10. I think there were 4 of them. They straighten and had a crispy outer wrapper. They came with a sweet dipping sauce.

The wings were good. They were breaded and fried - so it was like having mini fried chicken. The wings came with a bbq sauce or a sweet sauce. We got both sauces on the side. Both were tasty but we liked the sweet one better.

Pierogis are half-circle dumplings - sort of like a large ravioli - stuffed with cheese and potatoes. The ones at Vintage 50 came with a very tasty mix of roasted peppers and caramelized onions on top and a sauce that I don’t recall what was in it. The pierogis were warm and sweet.

The pretzel twist came out warm in a basket and was served we 3 kinds of mustard. We enjoyed this one a lot and we will probably get this each time we come to Vintage 50.

As a last minute addition, I added the grilled watermelon and goat cheese salad to our order. I’m glad I did. It was very delightful and unexpected. I thought the cheese would have come out crispy… but actually it came out in a small circle disk with a breading on the outside and warm and mushy on the inside. The combination of just a little bit of that cheese though with the slightly warm watermelon was very appetizing. It was served with just a bit of baby green too. It all just went so well together.

Vintage 50, in addition to being a restaurant is also a brewery, so we also shared one of their “Catoctin Kolsh” beers. It was good and light and refreshing. I would like to try their “Devils Due” beer next time. It has some sugar in it.

Since the appetizers were so good, we decided to try for dessert too. Unfortunately, I cannot rave about the dessert as much… because it was just okay. In addition I cannot stress how LONG it took to get the dessert. It could have easily been 30 to 40 minutes after we asked for it that it came. My husband and I shared the spring sundae and the strawberry shortcake.

The spring sundae was not at all what we expected. There were 3 little brownies with a little bit of ice cream on them. We had the chocolate ice cream on top. The sundae was supposed to come with “assorted fruit sauce” but sadly there was no sauce on our ice cream. Maybe there was some chocolate syrup, I don’t recall. It was pleasant but nothing to write home about.

The strawberry shortcake was even more disappointing. I think some of the strawberries that came on it were frozen (then thawed). The dessert also came with a flavorless meringue cookie which I’m 90% sure that it came from a box. The whole thing was just not good and too expensive for what we got.

The good news is that Vintage 50 serves Gifford’s ice cream - and that is pretty good ice cream. So in the future, I’ll just get a big bowl of that for dessert and skip all this fancy stuff.

Also I should mention that we walked inside to give ourselves a tour of the place… and the inside looks very lovely. It reminds me of Cafe Deluxe in Tysons. Kind of fancy, kind of comfortable, a lot of wood tones, white table cloths.

I’m hoping the service drama was just a fluke. It is so nice to have a restaurant like this where the chef really seem to care about what he is serving.