Washington DC: The Source by Wolfgang Puck (May 2012)

My spouse and I dined at Wolfgang Puck’s The Source at the Newseum Museum in May of 2012. We dined on a Saturday at lunch time, which meant that their Saturday-only dim sum brunch was available. The brunch takes place in the attractive ground-floor bar/lounge area, not upstairs in the dining room nor on the outdoor second-floor patio that overlooks 6th Street and C Street. The dress code reads “casual”, but most people were very nicely dressed. We give them enormous credit for not turning us away; we had just come from a segway tour and were continuing to tour the city afterwards, so we were definitely under-dressed and a bit disheveled, yet they assigned us what we felt was a great table. You have a choice of either 5 items (for $32) or 8 items (for $42). Because we dine out a lot, and often in large expensive cities, we thought the low price of $42 for the 8 items meant that EACH PERSON was supposed to order 8 items. But when we saw the quantity of food provided, and noticed what other tables were ordering, we realized that EACH TABLE generally splits either the 5 items or the 8 items! So we tried a total of 16 different items (there were probably more than 30 items from which to choose), each portion of which was suitable for sharing. (For example, if you ordered the duck buns, you received two, not one.) Although we left quite full, we aren’t sorry for the way that we approached this meal. Every dish sounded fantastic, and we would have loved to try them all! We can’t say enough good things about this meal! Was it authentic Chinese dim sum served by little old ladies pushing steam carts? No, but that wasn’t what we were expecting from Mr. Puck. Was it innovative California-style dim sum presented by professional wait staff? Absolutely!