Gadarene

Super Tacos is pretty damn good overall; I enjoy their huaraches and their huitlacoche quesadillas. Tortas aren't as good as nearby Pica Taco, and chilaquiles not as good as Mixtec, but I've never had a truly bad thing on their menu.

Answer: nope, 2 hour wait. Sigh. Dining in DC is so difficult sometimes.

So it sounds like for four people on a Saturday night, we should arrive before 6 pm to be assured of a relatively minimal wait (45 minutes or less) if we don't need to snag the chef's counter seats?

Is the speakeasy still there?

Definitely not the only one.

For a vibrant city we have a marked paucity of decent cocktail places, and this obviously won't help the situation. Hope they're able to relocate during the interim.

Just dropped by Taan for the first time in a long time. Sat at the bar. Funky smell. Saw a small cockroach crawling across the bar in my direction. Not wanting to make a huge fuss, I flicked it away. Bartender came over to take my order, and before I could tell her about it, I saw another small cockroach crawling across the bar in my direction. We both watched it drop somewhere near my stool. I'm now at Sakuramen. Edit: I feel compelled to add that I spent Thanskgiving week in Portland. The restaurants they have there... The prices... The quality of the interesting, interesting food. Sigh.

Welp. Hopefully the michelada recipe doesn't change. Maybe I'll just stick to that on future visits.

Dino will be sadly missed, and I hope it finds a new home as soon as it can. It can and should be one of the most celebrated and patronized restaurants in the city.

This is my favorite thing that I've read so far today.

The cauliflower pizza here is amazing. Wonderful char, just the right amount of sauce, and the pine nuts really bring everything together. I also greatly enjoyed the smoked swordfish belly and shaved fennel appetizer that was one of the nightly specials.

Yeah, I was pretty impressed last night. I was already somewhat full from a stop at the Kapnos bar (which wasn't as great as I remembered it), so I didn't try any of the heartier dishes, but I talked to a few of the staff at the bar last night who were justly proud of the hand-crafted nature of their house michelada mix (which is wonderfully spicy, savory, and lime-y) and of the light crispiness of their chips. They also gave me some sangria to try because they wanted to show me how better they think it is than most other places in town (it was very nice). In addition to the ceviche, which had a great acid bite to it, I had the Diego Salad. It was very tasty, with a large portion, and I didn't finish it only because I felt unexpectedly stuffed.

I'm eating at the bar at Diego right now. The ceviche is delicious, the chips are lovely, the staff is super-friendly, and they have THE BEST DAMN MICHELADA IN TOWN. Highly recommended.

Well, but that's from a hole-in-the-wall carry-out place that probably does almost entirely wholesale business (when my girlfriend asked for a regular roast duck rather than the Peking, the woman told her that the Peking was meatier and "all the restaurants buy this one") in a neighborhood whose food economics and density of Chinese population couldn't be more different from the D.C. area. I wouldn't hold any restaurant around here to that kind of standard in terms of the intersection of affordability and deliciousness.

I was in NYC Chinatown yesterday and bought a whole Peking Duck (sans accoutrements) from one of approximately seven million places in a ten-block radius for $12.50, chopped to order. I look forward to enjoying it tonight at home. I suspect that's not really the thrust of this thread, though.

Well, that was one of the stranger dining experiences I've had. With a couple of caveats, we enjoyed ourselves very much. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 definitely urge others to give Mandalay a visit themselves.

If the level of food at the Shaw location is anywhere up to par with the service I've already received from there, I expect that I will be a repeat customer many times over. Yesterday I booked a table online for me and my girlfriend for the prix fixe dinner next Thursday. I then received a friendly email from Vincent, who's in charge of reservations at Mandalay, thanking me for my booking and asking if we had any dietary restrictions for the chef to take into account.* He also informed me that Mandalay offered a three-glass wine pairing for $22 or a cocktail pairing for $30 (which, in his words, "takes two non-alcoholic mixed drinks that are paired as part of the 7 course tasting experience and 'spikes' them with alcohol, and adds two more cocktails"), and to get a gauge of this latter option I asked him if he could tell me about one or two of the cocktail pairings they had offered in the past. This was his speedy (i.e., within thirty minutes) response: That's truly going above and beyond. Thanks for such a great first impression, Vincent! Sounds like both their food (under Chef Aung) and drink (under beverage director Ryan Bixby) is something to be anticipated. I can't wait until next Thursday. *I suspect you can expect to get this email the day before your reservation. I had originally booked for tonight, but due to a scheduling conflict modified my reservation two minutes later. Vincent was so on top of things that he had emailed me regarding my initial reservation in essentially the time it took for me to reschedule -- and then sent an immediate follow-up email regarding my updated reservation, letting me know that you can inform the chef of dietary restrictions up to 5 pm prior to the date of the reservation, and opt into the cocktail pairing prior to 2 pm of the day you're dining.

Well, I leave for Panama and Colombia tomorrow morning, so my window is closing.

Still haven't heard anything by phone or by email. I went ahead last week and just booked a new reservation on OpenTable, although the time isn't ideal and I would prefer to reschedule.

I called last week and got the voice mail that said they would be calling people with canceled reservations to reschedule, but they haven't called me yet.

Very much! The beets with sherry brown butter vinaigrette and the bucatini were especially delicious.

I wish I'd known about that when I stopped in two days ago.

It was not the case for me. I specifically asked whether I could give him preferred dates, and he said I needed to call over the next two weeks to find out when they had available dates. Sigh.

Me too for my reservation that was supposed to be yesterday. Pretty annoying to have to remember to call back to find out if they've opened their September reservations calendar (and, if they haven't, to have to keep calling back) -- I would have preferred being able to give the person a September date on the phone and have them slot me in there.

Has anyone tried the tasting menu yet?