Devilishly good
First heard of Tom Cunanan, Genevieve Villamora, and Nick Pimentel's Bad Saint from Bon Appetit Magazine's rave piece back in August of last year, declaring the little cubbyhole the second best new restaurant in America.
Filipino? Second best in the country? Aside from a chauvinistic kneejerk reaction (Only second best?) I was skeptical. Then almost three months later the Washington Post's Tom Sietsema harumphed about the Michelin Guide's inclusion of the eatery as one of D.C.'s nineteen Bib Gourmand restaurants of 2016--places of good value for 'dining off the clock,' or cheap eats. The food critic opined that the Guide's definition of what's cheap isn't the same as ours (basically two courses and dessert or a glass of wine for $40, minus tax and tip). "The place deserves better," he declared, describing the twenty-four seat no-reservations establishment as a "gem, as gracious as it is luscious," and adding "Outside of a home, I doubt if there's better Filipino cooking anywhere in the country." In November the New York Times' Pete Wells wrote "I have now spent roughly twice as many hours standing on the sidewalk outside Bad Saint as I have spent inside eating its Filipino food" which sounded like the prelude to a complaint so I braced myself: turns out he considered the waiting part of the experience.
