Vincent Bradley

Hi Everyone!  Aung asked me to chime in.  If there ends up being a closure it will be in late summer and will result from a gap between a lease ending and a new/or the same space being ready.  A lot of this “news” really isn’t determined.

However, to be clear, there are *no* plans to close Mandalay permanently.

Additionally, Aung has you all covered -  if there does end up being a period where Mandalay Silver Spring is not open for service, you will still be able to get your Burmese salad fix in Georgetown!  Watch for more news about Bandoola Bowls soon ...

https://m.facebook.com/bandoolabowl/

Thanks for the review, Rieux.  We are continuing to perfect the experience.  If possible please stop by for a curry in the downstairs bar, or our 'late brunch' 2pm- 10pm Sundays that just started today (more info at end of post).  I'd like to see if we can duplicate the music issue you experienced - I think I was here that night, and sound is a challenge for us.  We only have one sound system, and we are attempting to use the open ceiling to the 2nd floor to channel the music for both seating areas.

I forwarded your email to the staff so they can see it as well.   I'm sure the head chef would love to talk to you about your Burmese dining experiences, and what you like most about the cuisine.  He loves to hear from people about their experiences with what he loves.

I do hope you will come back sometime soon.  If I can help facilitate a meeting for you, please feel free to email me at questions@mandalaydc.com

I apologize for the late response, it seems I still do not have my alerts set correctly here on donrockwell.com, and, of course, the holidays made me a bit busy.

Have a great evening,  hope to see you soon.

Regarding the brunch program, we are currently offering 3 courses for $20, $2 extra if the red-meat curries are chosen for the curry.  Choices of the courses are from 3 different salads, 3 different fried rice dishes, and 5 different curries, and comes with a burmese iced coffee.  Desserts are an extra $6, a choice of two.  Tonight there is an additional mushroom curry being offered, but this is just for tonight.

The cocktail special is a red-eye, a burmese variation on a Michelada, using the house hot sauce, a house pickled brine, and Singha beer, priced at $8.

On Sundays we also feature all day half priced bottles of wine.

I hope everyone had a great holiday, and a great start to the new year.

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Vincent

questions@mandalaydc.com

First, I tried to go to the bar tonight but it was closed. NEVERMIND, I now see they are closed on Mondays. My bad. I'll try again.

Second, who is "The Christopher"?

it was a bad joke related to "walkin"

We had dinner at Mandalay the Palace this weekend. Overall the meal was quite good--interesting courses and flavorful items.

I will echo the comments earlier about the "main courses"--three dishes arrived together; some hot, some cold. I was unsure--is this one course, two or three? I think spacing these would provide more of an experience in both overall dining and enjoyment of each item.

Service was excellent, attentive and generally helpful. I think the timing was a little too fast--I was expecting a two hour or more experience. We made it to 1:10 by not bothering to get our coats right away.

I had indicated in my reservation that we both like spicy food. In Vincent's follow up, he seemed pleased and said the chef would be happy and look forward to spicing it up. I was surprised that only one dish was spicy--and that was because there was one hot pepper on it, and we were instructed to chop it up if we wanted it to be spicy.

The space is great and the cocktails were imaginative. (We did not do a pairing)

Is it worth $70/head, plus drinks etc? Not sure. Will we go back? Probably not at this price point--but maybe.

Hi Bill!  I will work with the chef to determine why the spice level wasn't what you had hoped, and I'm glad you liked the food and cocktails.  We hope you come back soon.  We are considering a hot pepper evening, perhaps once a month. If you would like to be alerted to when that occurs, please send an email to events@mandalaydc.com

Regarding the three courses coming together, I must reiterate, for us it's a tough call.  For me, I could eat one course at time, reach the end, and feel mildly stuffed, unless it is a particularly starchy slant in the 7 course theme (the vegetarian courses sometimes are starchy even as they are wonderful).

However, many guests that have joined us, like Gadarene mentioned in his post, are filled up much sooner than I.  For them, bringing out the three courses at once allows a tasting of each, while they are the temperature that they ought to be served at, with the option to then pack them to go and enjoy the dessert on a less full stomach.  The number of guests that prefer one or the other is about equal.

I definitely agree the pacing would be better if they were brought out one at a time, and we are trying to figure out how to work that out better, though, again, sometimes our guests actual are fine with faster pacing.   I think this needs to be addressed better as we greet our guests.

Thanks for all the great feedback, sorry I had disappeared for awhile.

For those keeping track, we have some news regarding Palace goings -on.  The downstairs lounge will be having regular half-priced bottles of wine during our Sunday happy hours.

And if it's a particularly blustery day please check out our facebook page (www.facebook.com/themandalaybuilding) to see if head chef Aung is serving up some free boothee hingar (long squash with peppered clear-broth soup) to help everyone stay warm.

Have a great week, everybody.

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Vincent

I was just playing around with the website seeing if somehow I had gotten confused and there was another option and I learned that (1) the website indicates that I am correct, it is $70 and there is no information about the food at all; and (2) there are no reservations available tonight. Is it really fully booked?

Hi Lackadaisi,

There are no reservations for the same day because the menus are drawn up the night before the dining experience, and the ingredients are bought the morning before preparation and service.

It's not that we were fully booked seats wise, but we were fully booked for the amount of service that was reserved in advance.  We can't accept walk-ins (aside from The Christopher, since saying 'no' to him seems risky) for the tasting experience because we only purchase enough food for the reserved seats.

The standard price is $70 for a 7 course chef's choice tasting experience, catered to all individually specified per guest dietary restrictions.

We are having regular, but not regularly scheduled yet, vegetarian discount nights where the vegan 7 courses are $50.  If you'd like to be notified about that, please email events@mandalaydc.com or keep track of our facebook page at www.facebook.com/themandalaybuilding .

Meanwhile, due to demand, we have expanded the menu downstair's Palace Lounge and Bar, which is walk-in only dining, to include curries starting tonight.   The specific items that are present on the menu in The Palace will change daily with the changing of ingredients bought daily for the 7 course tasting reserved seatings.

Today, Tuesday, November 5th, The Palace is offering:

Potato and sweet onion marsala curry,

Pork and cucumber curry

Three chili Ground Pork Curry

Three chili Fried Tofu Curry

Pork cucumber salad

Roasted chicken salad

Long bean salad

Samosa salad

Papaya salad

Spring rolls ( chicken/ bean noodles)

Samosas    ( dice potatoes, onion, curry)

Eggplant wrap with spring roll skin

Pepyoke      ( fried yellow beans with onion on top of flour chip)

Hi Gadarene,  Thanks for the awesome write up.  We need feedback like this, I sent it to all the staff, and they are very grateful to have feedback like this.  I will try to address everything you said below in  colored fonts.

---

Well, that was one of the stranger dining experiences I've had.  With a couple of caveats, we enjoyed ourselves very much.  <----  Obviously, this is the part we like the best, though we will be more focused on the rest.

Let's start with the most positive (and most important) thing: the food was pretty delicious across the board.  Based solely on our meal, I'm not sure there's anything they're doing with the tasting menu format that couldn't also be done just as delightfully with a la carte dishes (about which see more below), but every course had good flavors and textures and there were no misses in the bunch.  I particularly enjoyed the coconut curry soup with egg and crispy noodles, and my girlfriend's favorite was the beef with chive blossoms.  I've never had the privilege of visiting the Silver Spring location, but I would certainly urge DC folk to come and dine in the new digs in Shaw.  We also spent a good amount of time talking with Chef Aung, and he's a great guy who absolutely knows what he's doing in the kitchen.  Mandalay is a great addition to the D.C. food scene, and I hope it sticks.

The space is also very nice (both upstairs and downstairs), and much larger than I was expecting.  My perception here might be slightly skewed, however, because we were literally the only diners our entire time there.  As a result, the empty tables surrounding us may have given the space a decidedly cavernous feel that would translate to warm and homey on a busier night.  Obviously the restaurant has been open for less than a month, but in a D.C. scene where thoroughly mediocre restaurants can pick up buzz from the start and remain "trendy" and in high demand for years, it was disappointing to sit there by ourselves realizing that the ~$200 tab from our meal probably wasn't even covering costs for the night.  Maybe it's because Halloween isn't a typical night to dine out -- Chef Aung was extremely personable and cheerful throughout and definitely made reference to the restaurant being busier on other nights.  Still, I don't think we've ever been the only table in a restaurant of that size before, and I hope that people will start coming with more consistent volume.

- We think we have staying power, and apologize for our still-as-yet slow growth in getting more customers.  On that night we had one other table booked, but they canceled. We are valuing the slow growth, however, and would like people to know there isn't much danger of us not succeeding at staying in the DC food scene. 

This 7 tasting format may end up needing to change, but we see it as something that it will take awhile for people to warm up to,  so, regardless of whether it CAN succeed, it needs a lot more time to tell if it can.  And we are confident we have that time.  We will also be making changes to the ground floor offerings to 'buy it' more time as well, but more on that later in this thread...

The location might play a part in this, as I don't imagine there's anywhere near the kind of foot traffic down 9th Street in that spot that you would get, say, along the strip near the Shaw Metro where Mockingbird Hill and Eat the Rich are, let alone somewhere like 14th Street.  At least not yet.  (I wouldn't be surprised if that neighborhood explodes in the next year or so.)

However, I do also share Don's concerns voiced earlier in this thread about the tasting-menu concept being viable on its own for this space.  I have no experience in the industry except as a dedicated diner, but I do feel that an a la carte menu of Chef Aung's delicious dishes could be successful alongside, or instead of, the $70 tasting menu, and while I greatly admire the market-visit-driven, different-ingredients-and-menu-plan every day ethos that Chef Aung is implementing, the specific dishes last night were distinct enough to stand on their own outside of the tasting menu progression, and I can't help but feel that they could increase their customer base substantially (again, based solely on my one data point from last night) by offering -- and, more importantly, PUBLICIZING -- a la carte selections upstairs as well as down, for those people for whom the idea of a $70 tasting menu is a barrier to entry...or, at least, a barrier to considering Mandalay as a spur of the moment weeknight dining destination.  (Damn, that was a long sentence.)  I know that there are offerings at the bar lounge, as Vincent describes, and maybe I'm being unduly pessimistic about the viability of the concept based solely on an off-night, but it's something to consider.  I'd like to go back, and I'm pretty sure I'd go back more frequently if I knew that I could just go grab some delicious soup and a yummy and piquant mango salad on a whim without making arrangements in advance for a seven-course adventure.

- Our experience so far is we think the tasting concept would work well in this space on its own (we are near to several other venues doing similar things, and our pricing is relatively in the middle of them), but, as I mentioned earlier, that it likely would take too long to get to that success point, on its own. 

At a $70 price point, it will take longer for enough people to try our 7 courses out and to get the word out as to how well we compare with the other tasting menu experiences in DC.  We decided against a lower price point because we didn't want to find out a need to raise the price on our customers later.  IF we stay with a daily changing menu, the expense to produce the tastings may also remain high.  When/If we can determine the tasting price can come down it will, in the meantime we are striving to make sure the experience is definitely worth that much, and so far we've received feedback that it is worth it from the majority of people who have tried it.

We also had difficulty getting our service level to meet the expectations of a 7 course dining experience at that price point, in part simply because finding staff in DC for this kind of service is difficult.  We had resources to do so that were not available to actually work with us until November 1st.  Gadarene, I apologize for that, like Maxwell Smart, we 'missed it by that much'.  Please email me about another visit as soon as you like.  We are still working out the kinks, but we are on the path to being much better at what we do, and business is picking up, slowly.  

To help business pick up, we abandoned the idea of only doing reserved 7 course tastings for the entire building, and opened up the lounge and bar area on the first floor, and tried to see how it can go with just bar food. 

This ultimately has mostly only led to an increased number of people being unhappy that we are not Silver Spring relocated to DC, however, which is mildly frustrating.  We never intended to be that, but once the name 'Mandalay' was associated  to the project unavoidably, there wasn't much we could do about expectations, aside from trying to get the differing word out as well as we can.  But it seems like its not possible to lead 'buzz' to actually be well read and informed. The current 'buzz' at large, outside of here on DonRockwell.com, and outside of the majority of online articles written about us, seems to be moslty a 'buzzkill' on a 7 course tasting experience before people actually give it a chance.  Comparisons to other similar venues really aren't fair assessments unless people really try what we offer, and most of the negative reviews are from people who refused to pay $70.  To me this implies these negative expressions are really from people who just want us to be what they came to expect from Silver Spring, in our new location.

It's true, as many have said, another ala carte restaurant like Mandalay of Silver Spring will succeed,  possibly anywhere in the DC metro area, perhaps with some harm to how well Silver Spring continues to do.  I thought about suggesting to Aung that he offer franchising of his business model to anyone who wants to have another short order style, massive menu, a-la carte ordering, highly popular and very hard-working business in their neighborhood.  It isn't what Aung wants to offer Shaw, however, and he has already done all that being central to the success of Mandalay in Silver Spring.   In Shaw, he wants to offer great food with great service and pursue great interactions with his customers.  He isn't about being hugely profitable, he is about happily creating a great fine dining experience. He's learned it isn't so much less hard-working than the Silver Spring restaurant, but it is far more enjoyable catering to customers this way, for  him.  It gives his effort more purpose, more mindfulness, and allows him to explore and expand his culinary skills.   We think the extra time put into the seven courses makes for a far better dining experience than ala carte at Silver Spring, but that does depend partly on guests who can be happy not ordering exactly what they want, that they have had before many times, and who can trust Aung to make something he knows they will love.

And unlike most if not all tasting experiences in DC, we will accommodate most, if not all, dietary restrictions for each person's 7 course tasting menus.

Getting back to changes we are making, we do want people to stop in and enjoy themselves without needing a reservation, and the 'just bar food' approach did not work out well for that, as many were unhappy with the limited options.  Some even wrote reviews without actually trying the food, and even claiming our salads were romaine lettuce knock-offs.  I checked that one off as amusing as it's a dead-giveaway they didn't order a salad at The Mandalay Building in DC.

Today we are starting up new offerings, and they will be expanded upon in time.  We are working out the balance of offering good, tasty, comfort food in the bar/lounge area that will inspire/invite people to the greater experience of making a reservation for Aung's highly focused 7 course tastings.

Today we are adding 4 different curries, two vegetarian, and two meaty ones.  Details can be found at www.facebook.com/themandalaybuilding

We will probably still be irritating customers that want menus to order what they know they like, as we are still allowing the items we serve on both levels to be determined by what is bought each morning for the reserved seats for the 7 course dining experiences in the evenings.  This is one reason I'm not posting today's menu here- the menu will change frequently if not daily, and the best way to stay on top of it will be through our facebook page, for now. 

I will say pepyoke (sprouted chickpea like beans, in this case fried with onions and served on fresh made chips) will be available in the Palace Lounge and Bar so long as I can have a say in it....  I'm hooked.

Ok, sorry for the digression....

A couple of other assorted notes:

1) I was disappointed to learn that the beverage director whose creations Vincent extolled in his message last week has apparently parted ways with the restaurant.  I found the cocktail pairings from the new bar staff fairly mediocre, with one (a mango-vanilla infusion) being extremely sweet without much depth, and a couple of the others (a champagne cocktail to start, and something with gin, lime juice, and cointreau) to be refreshing but not exceptional.  I'm a self-admitted cocktail snob, though, so others' mileage may vary.

-This is disappointing for us, too.  Basically both Aung and Ryan are very similar, very artistic personalities, and the decision was made to focus on showcasing only the food, at a cost to the bar program in the interim.  It was difficult to manage both the daily changing menus with daily changing, custom tailored, pairings as Ryan was doing, and it was costly for an opening-restaurant strategy.  However, I suggest that while the cocktail pairings will not be as wildly adventurous, they will hopefully be great complements to the meal.  We hope to see Ryan showing off his genius palate and hard-working creativity somewhere else in DC very soon.  The gin, lime juice, and cointreau you mentioned is The Pegu, a cocktail that was created in Burma in the 1920's at the Pegu Club.  We will be working on that recipe to create a version more in style with real Burmese cuisine, and  I hope it complemented the courses at the time reasonably well.  As for cocktail snobbery, we are kin, and email me if you are up for an adventure along those lines in DC.  I also recommend sitting at the bar at The Mandalay Building and seeing what you can get first hand talking to our bartenders.  I'm hopeful you will find much of what you like, and short of that, I'm sure the bartenders want to meet more cocktail snobs like myself.  In fact, I'm sure of it.   I will also let you know when Ryan is slinging his amazing drinks again, as I'm sure I will be visiting wherever that is myself.

2) I was similarly disappointed (although now I find it completely understandable) that the restaurant was no longer offering a complimentary non-alcoholic pairing with the tasting menu courses.  Vincent informed me yesterday that the non-alcoholic pairing was now $15.  I had already planned on getting the cocktail pairing for myself, but I think my girlfriend would have considered doing the non-alcoholic pairing -- except nobody when we were at the restaurant actually alluded to that option or asked her if she was interested in it (or, for that matter, asked her if she wanted an a la carte cocktail, a glass of wine, or any other beverage option), and she was perfectly content in the end with her water and the complimentary tea.

-I'm quite sorry for what sounds like miscommunications on our part.  We had the reservation down as a cocktail pairing to be shared, and it was likely decided the presentation of the cocktail was best left as a single drink.  We had no intention to not offer similar to your guest, we thought it was covered, and we all agree we should have been more on point to politely inquire if there were any changes to the drinks preferences as the courses progressed.  We are very glad she liked the tea, though.  It's our most authentic Burmese drink, made from hand picked and lightly fermented tea leaves imported from Myanmar.

3) The three entree meat dishes (one beef, one chicken, one pork) were all served at the same time, and it turned out to be a bit unwieldy, as my girlfriend and I each ended up with three large portions on two separate plates (four plates total), which cluttered up the small table and made it somewhat difficult to sample each of the dishes easily without stretching over them.  It might have been better for the three dishes to have come out separately allowing us to enjoy each in turn -- or, failing that, served family style to economize on space.

-We appreciate the feedback on this.  Serving each entree one at a time has yielded some guests being unhappy that they fill up before they get a chance to sample all three entrees.  I think in this case you may have had a specially presented noodle dish that looks much nicer on a round plate, and we tried it out that way that night, but for space efficiency from your feedback we are discontinuing the round plates for entree service, and will consider serving the sides of rice 'family style', and only use our square plates for entree service as they are more manageable on the table space.  We are also looking at creating edible dividers/sauce-dams to serve all three entrees on the one long plate for convenience, and fun.

4) Spacing out the service of the entrees would also have made for a more leisurely meal: as it is, we were in and out with brisk efficiency, finishing our seven courses about 75 minutes after sitting down.  This added to the somewhat surreal nature of the experience of dining alone in a large upstairs room.

Thanks for this feedback.  We do need to work on pacing the service, and on taking cues from guests about their ideal pace.  The new staff is more experienced at this, so hopefully this will improve soon.  We are also working out a background 'soundtrack' for the dining experience.  Aung's goal is to make a place where people can relax and let go of the rat race, and really enjoy dining.  Originally he had planned to require all guests check their phones at the door to emphasize the importance of just enjoying the dining experience.

5) Speaking of which, it occurs to me now that since there were no other diners, it would have been nice to have been seated at a table near one of the windows.  Instead, we were put at one of a row of small two-tops near the stairs, staring at a wall.

I love this idea, but it wasn't really well thought out before the room was built, actually.  I will try and come up with some options, since I love the idea, though. There actually current aren't any tables near windows in The Tower space except for the large chef's table, and the booths which are all pointed away from the windows.

Again, overall, we had a very enjoyable experience.  I was very glad to have gotten the chance to meet and chat with Chef Aung, and sorry not to have been able to meet Vincent as well.  I look forward to coming back, and I'd love to have the chance to try the pepyoke that Vincent mentions in his post.

I look forward to us meeting also,  the pepyoke is available in The Palace Lounge and Bar.  I'm still advocating it be our one permanent menu item.

I definitely urge others to give Mandalay a visit themselves.

Tom Sietsema's article explains that the new Mandalay in Shaw has not opened yet because of a lack of servers.  But, what I found interesting is this:

The article goes on to mention that allergies and vegetarans can be accommodated and a menu for neighborhood folks.

A continuing trend of limited or no choice prix fixe menus at Asian restaurants (e.g., Thai Xing, Little Serow, the Maketto pop up)?

Hi Cheezepowder,  I'm still catching up, but wanted to reassure and clarify that the head chef, Aung Myint, at The Mandalay Building in Shaw loves the challenge of catering to dietary restrictions per guest. He makes it a point of personal pride to make sure people never feel 'left out' of a good dining experience.

The reservation form asks for dietary restrictions per guest.

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Vincent

Hi Cheezepowder!

Thanks for the welcome!

The bar lounge, "The Palace", is subject to the whims of the reservations.  At this point with how busy it isn't yet, the restaurant is purchasing ingredients for the reservations in The Tower (7 course tasting prix fixe), and extra, with some staples, to make items for The Palace.

We guarantee some great fried goods with Burmese hot sauce, and two Burmese salads, but the feature ingredients in all could change daily.  There will always be vegan items and meaty items.

I myself am hoping the home-sprouted pepyoke (yellow verdana beans, like a small and very savory chick-pea) on house made tortilla chips will remain a staple. Perhaps I should change my moniker now that I wrote that.

We are planning on offering hot soups as well, when the weather makes them even more desirable.

Drinks wise, the happy hour menu currently features craft cocktails made with house made infusions, and discounted wine and beer.  And we are working on a signature cocktail, currently focused on the only cocktail we found that was invented in Burma, the Pegu.

Come on in, give it a try, and tell us what you think.

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Vincent

Thanks, Gadarene!

Glad to help.   Regarding the follow-up on reservations, one of our staff will be trying to follow up on all reservations well in advance of the day before to make sure all dietary restrictions are adequately communicated.  In this particular scenario, I responded when the re-schedule for the next day arrived.

Head chef Aung Myint prides himself on being able to make meals for restricted diners that make the unrestricted eaters envious.  At 5pm the night before a seating is when he takes all the reservation requests and restrictions and composes the 7 courses per guest.    The next morning he buys all the ingredients, and what he finds while shopping will sometimes alter the plan if he finds an ingredient that he finds particularly inspiring.

Great to e-meet you, and thanks for the introduction to Don Rockwell.com

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Vincent

Hi Everyone,  I'm a new member, my name is Vincent, and I'm helping out with PR and events management at DC's newest location for Burmese cuisine, The Mandalay Building in Shaw at 9th and P Streets NW.   We feature a 7 course tasting menu in "The Tower", and a bar and lounge area on the groud floor, "The Palace".  In the spring we hope to open up asian themed beer garden, "The Grounds".

I've primarily joined in order to answer questions any Don Rockwell.com members may have related to the new restaurant where I am, but I am a native DC area foodie and recent dabbler in the arts and enjoyment of mixology.

Vincent

questions@mandalaydc.com