Why am I doing this?

What’s funny is no one has ever actually asked me this. It just seems a very “Kyley” thing to do. But for the people who don’t know me or my love for to do lists, exploring D.C. and hashtag New Years resolutions, here’s the story.

One day in November 2016 a group of coworkers and I sat around the lunch table. The discussion turned to D.C. restaurants and I realized I didn’t know a single one they brought up. How the hell was I so out of the loop?! I used to live on U street for Pete’s sake!

Above I mentioned my love of hashtag New Years resolutions. My 2016 edition was #ArtsAndElegance where I made a concerted effort to attend more performances (art) and wear lipstick while doing so (elegance). What I found is my friends always wanted to get dinner before the ballet or concert. I realized after the coworker restaurant convo that if I was a little more deliberate about these pre-performance dinners I could probably hit up a lot of the hot spots. The question was how would I decide where to dine?

Enter the Michelin Guide. I knew it had recently been released in D.C. but I hadn’t actually seen it yet. Then I went to my girlfriend Kathy’s baby shower and she had a copy. As I leafed through it I was amazed by how long it was! This wasn’t just the 12 starred restaurants–there were many, many more. I’d found my list!

The last piece was what to call this effort.  If you know me you know I’d be posting about it on social media and if it doesn’t have a hashtag is it even real? We can thank my husband for the final name. He basically said, “If your mission is to go to all the D.C. Michelin Guide restaurants, why not just call it #MissionMichelin?” And thus it was born.

So I hope you enjoy going on this little journey with me. I am definitely an amateur when it comes to restaurant reviews. This has also been an evolution. I didn’t start the releasing my reviews publically until I’d been to 10 of the restaurants so my early descriptions are a little weak. I wrote totally unhelpful, generic notes to myself like “good chicken.” Wow that’s useful! I also started taking pictures of the menu since some places don’t post them online or they change every week. That made going back later to find names of dishes and their ingredients really hard. So bear with me on some of the early posts and know it gets better even by Boqueria (restaurant #3).