Want to eat like a critic? Read on.
The proprietor of Annabelle, La Bise and a few of the finest Indian restaurants on the East Coast acknowledges that his newest manufacturing is one thing of an aberration. “Fine dining is what I enjoy,” says Ashok Bajaj, who entered the fast-casual realm this spring when he opened the 30-seat Bindaas Bowls and Rolls in Penn Quarter. The storefront area turned accessible early in the pandemic, when everybody was doing takeout, and Bajaj noticed it as a possibility to discover a special fashion of hospitality.
His notion of fast-casual mirrors that of Italian empire builder Fabio Trabocchi, one other discerning Washington tastemaker. Arrivals at Bindaas Bowls and Rolls sense they’re in for one thing particular after they see tile flooring, turquoise banquettes and brown leather-based chairs in the eating space and good-looking Le Creuset cookware at the counter the place meals are ordered. Then there’s the star behind the Indian flavors on the menu: chef Vikram Sunderam of Rasika renown, who simply occurred to be in the kitchen of Bindaas Bowls and Rolls on a latest go to.
For the first time, he’s letting prospects combine and match elements to create their very own bowls. I’m content material to select from amongst the “classic” compositions, together with the stellar salmon moilee. The block of fish blazes with roasted Kashmiri chiles. Propped on lemony rice noodles which might be flecked with curry leaves and completed with a ginger-sharpened coconut sauce, the heady salmon makes you imagine you’re consuming in one among Sunderam’s subtle eating rooms. So a lot finesse for slightly below $14! There’s additionally lamb vindaloo, served as meatballs zapped with ginger, garlic and garam masala and organized on fluffy brown rice. The secret to the lamb’s texture? “Nutmeg,” says the chef, who makes use of the spice as a tenderizer.
The kathi rolls, sprung from house-baked whole-wheat roti, featured fillings together with paneer and peppers. Nods to what workplace employees gravitate to in India, Sunderam’s pleasing wraps are served in a slender paper sleeve alongside a glowing tomato salad and vivid mint-cilantro chutney. Worker bees overseas are on to one thing scrumptious.
Wouldn’t you’re keen on some beer or wine with this meals? The grab-and-go serves each, plus cocktails and the anticipated mango lassi.
Bajaj hopes Bindaas Bowls and Rolls, a derivative of his street-food-themed Bindaas eateries, is a gateway for individuals who have but to grace the doorways of his extra upscale Indian restaurants. “We’d love them to become our Rasika guests.”
A message from the proprietor at the entrance doubles as invitation and want fulfilled. The signal reads: “Life is too short for boring food.”
415 Seventh St. NW. 202-290-2278. bindaasbowls.com. Open for indoor eating and takeout. Bowls and rolls, $11 to $13.75.
Introduced eight years in the past as a pop-up starring oysters and booze, interval, the eventual bricks-and-mortar enterprise provides much more to eat. With simply oysters, “people were getting sauced too quick,” says co-owner Dylan Salmon, whose nook seafood joint turned an in a single day magnet in Charm City when it launched in 2016.
“No grit, no pearl,” reads a poster on the wall of the low-ceilinged watering gap in Hampden, 70 seats large in case you embody the patio and bar, the one finish of which gathers bistro seats and an opportunity to look at the shuckers do their factor. An icy platter of briny Wellfleets from Massachusetts revels in consideration. “Oysters are like water balloons,” says Salmon. “Pop them and they lose their body.” The oysters listed below are freed from drill marks (shell bits, too).
The scorching seats are the stools at the crowded bar, staffed by individuals who deal with you want regulars even when it’s your first go to. Of course you need some oysters — there are usually eight varieties from which to decide on — and, this being Baltimore, conventional coddies, typically known as the poor man’s crab desserts: deep-fried balls of mashed cod and potatoes eaten on saltines with a slick of mustard. Every pauper needs to be so lucky.
Salmon was a line cook dinner at Woodberry Kitchen, a element that interprets to easy issues completed nicely and little flights of fancy. Dylan’s french fries with the (terrific) fried catfish are boiled in vinegar, poached and flash-fried simply earlier than they’re piled on the plate. Taste buds respect the three-step course of. A bountiful kale salad matches in Fuji apple, peanuts and miso; tilefish reveals up on saffron-yellow rice freckled with fava beans. As for aspect dishes, inexperienced beans simmered in tomato sauce style as if a Greek grandma had been behind their gentle and tangy enchantment. You’d be a idiot to forgo dessert when the kitchen is providing chocolate cherry the other way up cake with a tuft of real whipped cream. Salmon, who co-owns the place together with his spouse, Irene, a former florist who performs that position for the eating room, doesn’t cook dinner right here until he has to. (The oyster bar is at the moment between head cooks.)
Yes, he thinks his identify is apt, given his job, funnier nonetheless when folks study his first identify is Welsh for “son of the sea.” The man with fish on his thoughts jokes, “I don’t think my parents made the connection.”
3601 Chestnut Ave., Baltimore. 443-759-6595. dylansoyster.com. Open for indoor and out of doors eating. Sandwiches and entrees, $15 to $31.
J. Hollinger’s Waterman’s Chophouse
The most novel attraction isn’t on the menu, however in the eating room: 4 alcove cubicles that permit occupants to regulate each the lighting and the quantity in their cocoons, plus sheer curtains for added privateness. And this in a venue whose entrees common $35.
The identify in the title refers to Jerry Hollinger, whose different Maryland restaurants are the Daily Dish in Silver Spring and the Dish and Dram in Kensington. His third enterprise is his most formidable but and continues one thing of a theme at this location, beforehand house to 2 steakhouses, the Classics and Ray’s the Classics. Hollinger, a Mennonite whose dad and mom operated a grocery retailer in Lancaster, Pa., and who went on to develop into a chef and caterer, concedes that the restaurant’s mile-long identify is a mouthful. Beyond honoring his household’s identify, “Waterman’s Chophouse” makes refined nods to seafood and steak, phrases Hollinger considers outdated.
“Light bites” — steamed mussels, vegetable tempura, housemade spaghetti — are designed for individuals who need one thing larger than an appetizer however smaller than a typical primary course. The star of the lot marries surf and turf: Crisp shrimp toast and caramelized pork stomach share their stage with taste pumps together with kimchi and sweet-mustardy tomato jam, as entertaining as something that may be taking part in throughout the avenue at the AFI Silver Theatre.
The kitchen, seen from the bar, finds John Manolatos in command. You may need tasted his expertise at the much-missed Cashion’s Eat Place in Washington. Here in Silver Spring, he excels at crab desserts served with double-fried french fries, lean however flavorful coulotte glistening with clarified butter, and composed dishes — considerate unions of protein, starch and vegetable — that means you don’t want a aspect dish to spherical out an entree.
The finest surf and turf in Washington? Look to this class act in Silver Spring.
8606 Colesville Rd., Silver Spring, Md. 301-328-0035. jhollingers.com. Open for indoor eating and takeout. Entrees, $19 to $75.
Soft jazz is taking part in when an icy gimlet arrives. “All right now!” says a bow-tied, vest-wrapped server.
He’s referring to my drink, however he may simply as nicely be speaking about the brass-railed, red-bricked restaurant whose partitions body the smiles of scores of politicians, previous and current, and whose borders are inscribed with phrases of knowledge. “Washington is the only city where sound travels faster than light,” declares one string of pearls. I lookup from my sales space to see that Bill Clinton and Trent Lott, or at the least their likenesses, will probably be becoming a member of us for dinner.
Just a few mates laughed after I recommended the long-lived Monocle for dinner. Surprise, shock, then, for them to walk right into a eating room inhabited by youthful Pete Buttigieg varieties and to search out (some) dishes adequate to shine off. I’m speaking lacy onion rings, thick pork chops paired with tacky mashed potatoes, garlic-fragrant clam pasta and cheesecake lightened with pineapple compote.
The crab cake is just too bready, and the rib-eye wants its chile butter for taste. The Monocle jogs my memory that meals isn’t the whole lot. The dapper gent at the door treats us like we’re beloved senators as he ushers us to our alternative of tables, “anywhere you’re comfortable,” he provides. Servers swoop in with smiles, bread, water, suggestions. This is the unusual quiet restaurant that doesn’t really feel like a mausoleum — thus the excellent place to take individuals who need a style of Washington, however nothing too difficult, please.
“Institutions are more powerful than men,” reads one other border in this bastion of civility. Above all, the Monocle is above politics.
107 D St. NE. 202-546-4488. themonocle.com. Open for indoor and out of doors eating. Dinner entrees, $19 to $56.
It opened as Bangkok Golden in 2010 and have become referred to as a Thai restaurant with a secret Laotian menu. So many individuals gravitated to the latter, proprietor Seng Luangrath mixed the cuisines on one listing and rebranded the place Padaek, a nod to the fermented fish sauce used in Laotian cooking, a number of years later.
A style of shredded papaya salad allows you to expertise the variations between Thai and Laotian kitchens. While they appear a lot the identical, the Thai salad is sweeter, the Laotian model extra savory, because of salt and the funk of shrimp and crab paste in the seasoning. A request for “medium” warmth in both delivers a severe punch.
Crispy rice, roasted peanuts, scallions and pink folds of fermented pork make up my favourite dish right here, the fragrant naem khao, eaten with the assist of cool lettuce leaves. An much more interactive dish is golden fried catfish offered with a platter of a goodies — matchsticks of recent ginger, lemongrass, tiny inexperienced eggplants, tremendous rice noodles — for packing in folds of sturdy collard leaves, atypical in Laos however most popular for his or her sturdiness and nice bitterness, Luangrath says of the darkish greens. The mixture of scorching fish, tropical accents and funky packaging goes down like a three-ring circus in your mouth, and it’s all the higher for the pineapple sauce you’ll be able to add to your wraps.
Padaek’s chef, Nyi Nyi Myint, is from Myanmar, and is the ability behind such dishes as the elegant, creamy-with-coconut panang curry, served with an island of crushed nuts and pink chile oil in its bowl.
The tidy storefront appears the identical because it at all times has, with sunny yellow partitions, swatches of material displayed on glass-topped tables and pleasant servers animating the room. The fancy bottle of wine in your neighbor’s desk isn’t from the restaurant’s inventory, however the results of Padaek’s mild corkage payment: $15 to convey your individual grape juice.
6395 Seven Corners Center, Falls Church, Va. 703-533-9480. padaekdc.com. Open for indoor eating, takeout and supply. Entrees, $14 to $19.
Aaron Silverman launched a brand new motto for the reimagined crown jewel in his Washington empire: “Pleasure is as worthy a pursuit as perfection,” the forward-thinking chef needs patrons of Pineapple & Pearls to know.
Much of what transpires over dinner in the eating room, dressed with clouds of colourful balloons and myriad silver-tipped picket rods suspended from the ceiling, speaks to his new imaginative and prescient for tremendous eating.
Once you’re seated, somebody whips up an absinthe cocktail tableside. An early nibble from the open kitchen requires diners to eat beggars’ purses, wealthy with crème fraîche, lemon zest and caviar, from the tops of slender glass plinths — hands-free. At one level, at least the proprietor himself reveals up with an Hermes platter organized with delicate gougeres seasoned like “everything” bagels.
The conventional programs are extra severe, and critically scrumptious. Some, like a savory custard scattered with a forest of mushrooms, look to Japan. Others, together with squab glazed with Guinness and cocoa, channel a grand French restaurant. And the pastas are divine. Hope to come across the Mont Blanc, a riff on the classical European dessert rethought with housemade agnolotti swollen with a stuffing of chestnuts and oats and brightened with sage pesto.
Before you go, you may be introduced a dessert taco impressed by Los Angeles, have your image snapped close to a soft-serve ice cream machine (whose swirls are paired with heat amaretto), sip fabulous wines and chortle at the contents of a goody bag, which embody a “midnight snack” of a designer cheeseburger.
Pricey? Yes. But Pineapple & Pearls is a splurge I’d be prepared to pay for myself, the final take a look at for a restaurant.
715 Eighth St. SE. 202-595-7375. pineappleandpearls.com. Open for indoor eating. Price: $325 per individual, excluding tax, 22 % service cost and drinks.
This Mediterranean restaurant with a Lebanese lilt brims with surprises. For starters, it’s unexpectedly posh given its placement in a shopping mall. And nowhere else however right here in Vienna has a server invited me to “order a few dishes at a time if you want. No rush.”
Then there’s the cooking: 10 completely different herbs and tomatoes dressing up the colourful fattoush and skin-on roasted branzino offered with saffron-colored potatoes and tahini sauce on a plate that appears as if it had been custom-tailored for the fish. “I like the best,” says chef-owner Samer Zeitoun, whose sweat went into making a eating room furnished with lovely blue chairs and mirrors formed like portholes and whose “picky taste” means cooking most dishes to order.
Wherever on the listing you see eggplant or lamb, consider it as a inexperienced mild. Among the spreads, roasted eggplant stands out for being a lot greater than the mashed vegetable, served with Marcona almonds for crunch, dates for sudden sweetness and feta cheese for tang. Ground lamb finds its manner, together with rice and parsley, right into a small boat of zucchini that sails to the desk on a tomato sauce enlightened with lemon juice and strained earlier than serving, resulting in a skinny however brilliant elixir. First amongst equals, although, is the glistening kibbe nayyeh, minced uncooked lamb and cracked wheat coloured by pink peppers, seasoned with mint and basil, and staged as a spherical with scorching pita bread and white rosettes of whipped garlic.
The chef, who can observe his area from a window in the kitchen, will get assist from household. A daughter serves as mistress of ceremonies in the eating room, and his spouse lavishes consideration on the salads and sweets, together with a divine cheesecake whose crust fuses dates and floor pistachios.
Zenola is a small store with an enormous coronary heart. The greatest shock of all: restaurant the place you’ll be able to hear your self assume.
132 Branch Rd. SE, Vienna, Va. 571-407-5203. zenolavienna.com. Open for inside eating and takeout. Main programs, $28 to $65 (combined grill for 2).