The Lamplighter restaurant is located on a corner of a strip small on Jermantown Road in Fairfax, VA. The unpretentious shopping plaza storefront location, with its white table cloth dining room and piano bar is bound to give continental cuisine a good name.

Co-owners Jimmy Kalafatis and Vernon Mike Acre know a thing or two about serving classic European comfort foods. With a lovely white table cloth setting and a pampering wait staff, the Lamplighter presents heavenly Hungarian goulash and beef stroganoff. These dishes will make your grandmother blush with pride.

When you enter the Lamplighter restaurant, you not only encounter a unique cuisine, you also step back in time. The old world cuisine is set in a cozy, ornate, 85-seat restaurant that is complimented by lavish décor, with pre-automobile, century-old paintings that give you the feeling of being in the nineteenth century.

The menu is not without creative moments.  It is the Austrian-Hungarian axis that is most exciting at this restaurant. At the Lamplighter, you will find buttery schnitzel pounded thin and exquisitely breaded stroganoff that is sour cream lover’s fantasy, pungent veal liver grilled with onions. Chops make a fine meal be they French cut pork chops with Cabernet Sauvignon, lamb chops Mediterranean style, or prime rib, herbal scented, roasted, and then charbroiled so that every slab is a wonderful piece of culinary art.

Wiener schnitzel, tender veal cutlet served with capers and lemon are reflective of a particular old charm. Exceptionally tender veal liver is sautéed in white wine and onions and sautéed in white wine and onions and served with mashed potatoes, and fresh vegetables. The crab cakes and their accompanying French fries are also of a great merit.

Tender phyllo dough is wrapped around fresh spinach, artichokes and goat cheese is a riff on Greek spanopita. The glistening salads come with greens and a couple of marvelous calamatos. The stuffed shrimp is made with cilantro hollandaise and the Virginia trout comes with citrus butter.

Match up your favorite wine with your favorite meal. Imagine a wonderful white crisp zinfandel wine with fresh liver. Liver is delicious with some full flavored sweet white wine complimented with soft continental music in the background.

This restaurant is appealing to both AARP crowd and to the those who are youthful yet have a profound taste for the sublime and elegant. As you enter the restaurant, enjoy songs as the romantic “Besame Mucho” by Velazquez with a carafe of white wine that leaves a soft tingle on your tongue. If you want to spend a quite evening in a charming atmosphere, Lamplighter of Fairfax is the place to be.

The Lamplighter
4068 Jermantown Road
Fairfax, VA 22030
(703) 273-9300