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Kanishka

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  1. Kanishka
    Answering my own question: no, no elevator. We went to the 8th St location for a Mother's Day lunch and had to carry a rather heavy stroller up a flight of stairs. No big deal, really -- but good to know for next time, as we'll bring our lighter stroller. Which is to say yes, there will likely be a next time. Nooshi 8th St made for a very good (and affordable) Mother's Day lunch. I had the sonomono salad with eel, and the Phuket soup. The latter, chicken and rice noodles in a hot and sour broth, had far more punch than your average Tom Yum. It came with a warning from the waitress regarding heat, and she was right, the soup was very hot, as in warm. As far as spice? Hot, yes, but not "very." Still, it was better than any other Asian soup you can get on 8th St. The eel with the sonomono was well cooked and the cucumber/seaweed salad was lightly dressed, which let the other flavors come through. My +1, the new mom, had pad Thai, which she said was far superior to the mediocre version they serve up at Old Siam down the street. The space is gorgeous -- the top floor in particular, with a very attractive round bar near the large deck. The art is striking as well. We'll be back. (in case you were wondering, our youngest dining companion slept the whole time, which I believe was his Mother's Day present to mom.)
  2. Kanishka
    Anyone know if there's an elevator up to the space?
  3. Kanishka
    Mughlai Paratha! (or "Moghlai Paratha," I guess, transliteration is weird.) One of my favorite Bengali foods and not something I've ever seen on a menu in the U.S. The sauce was likely tamarind based. Basically, it's fried bread stuffed burrito-style with a vegetarian or non-vegetarian mixture. I've usually had it with ground lamb or goat ("keema.") Bengali food is usually not inherently spicy but is then kicked up with small, raw chilies very close to Thai bird peppers. Growing up, my mother thought plain rice with butter and raw chilis made for a perfectly acceptable lunch. Timing kept us from Gharer Khabar today. I'm now resolute on getting there, and getting there soon. Preferably with my parents. Can't wait!
  4. Kanishka
    Nice preview dinner tonight at the Capitol Hill District Taco (comped by DT, reserved via Twitter). The wife had a burrito with pork al pastor, flavorful and tender meat flavored but not overwhelmed by pineapple. I had the ensalada with carnitas, and may have gone a bit overboard on the mestizo salsa and jalapenos (whoops). Good pork though! DT's Penn Ave space is great looking -- I had no idea the old Yes had such high ceilings. The only drawback is that it is *very* loud. Our very young dining companion* forced us to truncate our meal by a bit, or I would have lingered a bit longer. Many thanks to DT for the comp. I'm looking forward to returning for breakfast. *Rocks, I plan on stealing this phrase regularly, if you don't mind.
  5. Kanishka
    My parents became visibly upset -- and ultimately refused to believe me -- when I told them the prevailing practice in Calcutta was now to use the "tui" form with friends and acquaintances (for the French speakers out there, this is a level lower than "tu" -- Sanskrit based languages have three levels of second person pronouns). They last lived in India in 1972; I last lived there in 2010. Paradoxically, moving to the West made my parents more culturally conservative, at least in relation to "home." So somehow this does not surprise me in the least. Makes me mad, sure. Furious even. But it doesn't surprise me.
  6. Kanishka
    What you're describing is classic Bengali-style biryani. DId your dish have a slow cooked potato? Most versions of Bengali biryani I've eaten have had potato in addition to the rice, which always struck me as excessively "carb-y" (though tasty). The regional variations on biryani -- basically an umbrella term for a one-pot dish with meat, vegetables, and spice -- are huge, and the northern and Hyderabadi variations are the only ones I've seen in the U.S. I had a goat biryani in Kerala a few years ago that had pineapple, which was interesting. The Wikipedia article on Biryani is informative, and covers many variations I've never had the pleasure of trying.
  7. Kanishka
    Mind if I ask for more specifics? Just out of curiousity, mostly. For fairly obvious reasons (I'm Indian-American) I've never had a problem there.
  8. Kanishka
    To Ian Cameron G., born March 31, 2013, a five-day old source of extreme sleep deprivation and extreme moments of transcendent joy. I look forward to the day I can share a beer with him, rather than simply drinking a beer in his honor.
  9. Kanishka
    Yay! Now they'll be boring AND corporate!
  10. Kanishka
    In t minus very, very soon, our lovely pair will become a trio, and our newest "+" will probably limit our ability to enjoy awesome meals, slowly and on a whim. So tonight I asked my wife where she wanted dinner, and she replied immediately "Corduroy." Poetic, really: we went there on our second date, back when it was at the Four Points, and have been back regularly between overseas tours. And not only was it a poetic choice, it was also a great one. We went for the bar menu, and started with the beet salad and the cauliflower soup. Second course was the tuna and the duck confit, third course the sorbets and the flourless chocolate cake. I'll spare you a blow-by-blow description because it's unnecessary. The meal was a Corduroy meal, delicate flavors, fantastic ingredients, perfectly prepared. I have not had the pleasure of Cityzen or the other highest-echelon restaurants in DC, but Corduroy is by far the most consistently great fine-dining experience I've enjoyed here. I had the tuna at Corduroy for the first time in 2005. Eight years, two overseas assignments, a marriage, and a child-to-be later, the tuna tasted the exactly the same. Exactly, deliciously, wonderfully the same.
  11. Kanishka
    Far afield for many, but Wisdom also has private booths with curtains that can be pulled. I believe they are first come, first served.
  12. Kanishka
    Third. I liked Ethiopic quite a bit when it first opened, but I think the praise that has been lathered on it has had a negative impact. Coupled with service that is at times glacial, and at best inattentive, I can't recommend it. But Zenebech is awesome.
  13. Kanishka
    The following from ArlNow commenter "moony," regarding the space very recently vacated by Cafe Assorti, merits wider distribution: http://www.arlnow.com/2013/03/15/cafe-assorti-set-to-close/#comment-830200883
  14. Kanishka
    We went to Bandolero for an early dinner tonight, with few-to-no expectations -- we ended up in Georgetown by pure circumstance, indulging an urge to just hop on the next bus we saw. We were there around five (pre-movie, another last minute decision, sense a pattern?) so noise wasn't a big issue. Our dinner was nice. Not amazing, but nice. Price points felt high, particularly for the shrimp cocktail, which was a bit meager for $12, and the beet salad, which featured a pepita "puree" that looked like guacamole and tasted weirdly funky. The mahi-mahi tacos looked like fish sticks wrapped in tortillas but were surprisingly piquant. The leek flavor was missing in the empanada, but it was otherwise well made and rich. The best dish was definitely the suckling pig tacos, though the habanero wasn't evident at all. Your mileage may vary; my sister calls me a "crazy spice cyborg." I don't know that I'd run back to Bandolero, but as a restaurant that had seats and food, at a moment when we needed seats and food, it made us quite happy.
  15. Kanishka
    Here I was waiting for the wife to be able to enjoy wine again before reserving a table. My (very large) loss.
  16. Kanishka
    Hah. Since you asked, distance. Caused less by Saturday night and more by a good playlist, decreasing winds, and sunshine. Also, I believed we dined at the bar next to former Mayor Anthony Williams (he had a cod sandwich). Not sure though -- it could have been a doppelganger.
  17. Kanishka
    Just to confirm: still open, great drinks, bartenders I've met happy to make creative non-alcoholic drinks too (something that has become more important to me of late.) Prices a bit steep, service a bit slow, but still a good -- or more precisely, important -- business for the neighborhood to have. Last time I went (back in January) I believe the food was coming from Pound, but I'm not sure now.
  18. Kanishka
    Have you ever had one of those Sunday mornings where you space out during your morning run and over-do it by, oh, a factor of two? And then you come home to shower and dawdle a bit too long, making you too late for brunch at Le Grenier or Boundary Road? And by then you've waited six hours since eating anything substantive, your head is spinning, your temper is flaring, and you want to stab everyone? If so, I recommend a plate of spicy spaghetti and meatballs at Liberty Tree, which will be your first non-fast food option serving meals as you walk east down H St. Not only will your meal provide a heavy and much-needed dose of carbs, but it will taste delicious too. I'd never considered putting banana peppers on my spaghetti before, but they made a punchy alternative to crushed chili flakes -- I dug the slight bit of sourness from the pickling. Per the bartender, the sauce, pasta, and meatballs were all freshly made, and they certainly tasted like it. The garlic bread was more of an afterthought, and I sopped up the sauce with the pasta. I less ate and more inhaled my "brunch," (it feels very silly to call spaghetti and meatballs "brunch"), so I do have to go back on a less empty stomach for a second, more relaxed meal at some point.
  19. Kanishka
    Third visit to Zenebech last night. Four of us shared a vegetarian platter, nege tibs, and another tibs dish whose name escapes me. We "splurged" and went for teff injera, a whopping $1 upcharge. We quite literally devoured our meal. The nege tibs (dry grilled lamb, with grilled peppers and onions) was the first to go, followed quickly by the always delicious shiro and the collard greens. We cleared them out of teff injera, as our waiter, with a hint of regret, told us. Zenebech is, hands down, our favorite Ethiopian place in DC right now, particularly when I consider the rather mediocre meal we had at Ethiopic recently. And the value is simply unbelievable -- more than enough food for four, plus a few Hakim Stouts, set us back $50. You can spend more money at a food truck. As the evening progressed Zenebech became more and more crowded, something we'd not experienced there before. Service (there's one waiter/food runner) got a bit more harried, and the noise veered towards cacophany around 9 PM. That, and the recently spiffed up menus, suggests the secret is out.
  20. Kanishka
    Hm. Am I alone in thinking the prices are a bit steep?
  21. Kanishka
    We had a terrific dinner tonight at Elephant Jumps -- our first time, facilitated by my parents' generous offer to loan us a car while they are off traveling. Elephant Jumps doesn't look like much when you walk in, but the food, at least on our first try, earns accolades. We started with the grilled shrimp salad and the dumplings. Shrimp salad was served uniquely, six shrimp served in individual soup spoons in a spicy broth of cilantro, red onion, chili, galangal, fish sauce, and x-factors unknown. Sour, spicy, sharp, fantastic. I took to drinking the remaining broth from the soup spoons after I'd finished the shrimp themselves. The dumplings were well made and tasty but the shrimp was decidedly better. For entrees my wife had the aroma chicken with coconut rice and I had the fried tilapia with mango sauce. The chicken was presented as thin boneless slices of chicken in a light curry sauce, served with a sweet chili sauce on the side and a mound of coconut rice. The wife literally devoured this plate, so I only had a few bites, but I was impressed by the general balance of the plate, particularly the addition of the coconut rice. My tilapia was not what I expected but I'm not going to complain. The fish, naked, was some of the best batter-fried fish you may find this side of Whitby (or maybe the Queen Vic). The "mango sauce" was less a sauce and more a spicy salad of green mango, cilantro, and chilis, and poured over the fish made a surprising and terrific combinatiom -- cold crunch and tang from the salad mixed with the fish fried in a warm, crisp batter, fat and vinegar and fish and crunch, cold and warm and (chili) hot.
  22. Kanishka
    Ethiopic.
  23. Kanishka
    I feel terrible that I haven't posted about my last dinner at the Atlas Room this past Saturday. We love the Atlas Room, and go there as frequently as our budget allows. It's safe to say we've never been disappointed by a meal there, and last Saturday was no exception. The menu had changed significantly since our last visit, and we stuck to mostly new dishes. Sadly, my memory has faded a bit so I am blanking on some details. Overall: The Atlas Room doesn't get enough love here. Go! We shared all of our entrees, one vegetarian and three meat/fish. Because of the way the kitchen works, we submitted all our choices at once and let the orders come out as they were ready. First to emerge was a pan-seared fish (A new entree. Dorade? Damn my memory) served with a sauce accented by mushrooms and pomegranate seeds. I'm a bit sad that this was the first dish of the night, as it was hands down the best taste of the night. The tiny bit of crunch from the pomegranate and that little bit of sweetness sent the dish over the top. Second and third were a winter vegetable casserole with port cherries and a chicken "lasagnette" with some dried fruit -- apricot, if memory serves me correctly. The winter casserole was lighter than many of the other winter casseroles Atlas Room has served, and the cherry offset the overall creaminess. Again, the exacty mix of veggies escapes me but this was definitely not your mom's green bean casserole. The chicken lasgnette was good, but not as good as our first two entrees. That's not a knock; if this were at some other restaurant it would have been a standout dish, but next to the casserole and the fish it fell a bit behind. Our final entree, the lamb bolognese (a menu stalwart) was as delicious as usual, and I particularly appreciated the chef's lightness with the salt. The chef at the Atlas Room seems to be doing very interesting things with fruit right now, and with very seasonal ingredients. The drink menu is also totally new, though the bartender assured me that old favorites (like the sazerac) are still available if you want. The Atlas Room is still, by far, the best fine dining option on H St. Nothing else comes close.
  24. Kanishka
    We had dinner at Ambar last night. A thoroughly OK meal, but not worth any accolades greater than OK, in my opinion. I should caveat my feelings by the following: my wife has spent a significant part of her life in the Balkans (peace corps for two years in Bulgaria.) We're headed to the Balkans (again, in my wife's case) this summer for a few years and have had the opportunity to try the local cuisine on a number of occasions. All that to say we know our way around byrek. We had five dishes: shopska salad, cheese pie, the grilled asparagus, the kebab plate, and the veal stew. Of these I would order the stew and the cheese pie again. The cheese pie was not overly salty and the cucumber sauce was very thick and full of flavor. The veal stew was equally flavorful, served in a very rich sauce which the menu said was made with kajmak -- and maybe it was, but we could only taste the stock. The shopska salad was average, and would probably be better in the summer. The kebab plate was also very mediocre: the accompanying fried potato wedges tasted like they were Oreida and the kebabs themselves tasted like breakfast sausage. The grilled peppers were a nice touch but overall it was Applebees level cuisine. Our biggest disappointment was the grilled asparagus. An utter ripoff. Three stalks of asparagus with the aforementioned cucumber sauce, two bits of fried prosciutto, and a couple small chunks of purple potato. For $7!! Service was prompt and well paced. Our server gave us an opening schtick about how the food was from "the 11 countries of the Balkans, tapas style," and when pressed admitted that the "11 countries" did not include Kosovo (a personal pet peeve.) The runners need a bit of training, as they were a bit too enthusiastic to clear plates and wipe down tables while not doing the latter very well. Overall: ok food. Not Balkan in my estimation, at all. Basically a less-good Cava or Cafe 8, with drinks made of raki. (less edited and more re-written! What was I thinking last night?)
  25. Kanishka
    Sadly, the juice folks aren't there on Sunday mornings. And though many of the vendors are artisanal, several are the types of vendors who can have a fridge full of Odwalla (or whatever). For example, Peregrine Espresso. Or Neopol themselves. Almost all the "artisans" had soda. Why not something a bit healthier? I imagine there may be some cost issues involved that as a non-business type I am unaware of.
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