ju12

OK here it goes: Decor: Super cool. Enough Said. See Washingtonian description above. Service: Above average for a restaurant in its 2nd week. The Female wait staff look great in fancy orange tops, but the male waitstaff where organg long sleeve T-shirt?? They certainly need something more respectable. Good timing for drinks, appetzier, entree and dessert - often a challenge for new places. My one major complaint was that the soup I ordered arrived cold and once I sent it back it didn't arrive much warmer....I made a point to tell the manager so hopefully this will be fixed. They waitstaff is trained well and professional. They even folded our napkins when we went to the bathroom mid-meal. I appreciate little things like that. They also provided new silverware in between our courses and didn't seem put-off when we answered their query of "sparkling or flat" with "tap water please." You also get a solitary sushi roll with smoked salmon before your appetizer and cookies with the check. I nice touch, but this is getting more and more common at good restaurants. Food/drinks: The three drinks we had were excellent, although they better be considering they were $15 each. I had the Tanqueray Tea which tased much like lemon iced-tea but with a gin induced zing was my favorite. The Spicy mango rum drink is very good - much like a bloody marry but wtih mango. The ginger beer/drink was excellent too. Appetizers: Good selection of appetizers. In addition to salads, short ribs, interesting soups, seafood dishes, chicken curry sushi-like rolls, jicama beef salad, etc. We had the Lentil soup with oxtail meet wrapped in Plaintain Gnocchi. This was my least favorite dish - the soup ($12) didn't taste much better than canned and it was served cold twice. But the oxtail wrapped in the Gnocchi was very good, but not worth getting the soup for the three dumplings. The Crab cakes ($15)were very good. One hot/traditional crab cake and one cold crabcake. Accompanied by Guacamole, a rum raisn coleslaw and a corn blini. This was very good and the flavors mixed well. The entrees were just OK. I had the strip steak ($35). It was three medallions of steak, each topped with onion and served on top of a mix of mashed potatoes and sauce and veggies. It was a small portion, or maybe a normal portion but all of the other restaurants serve large portions. The steak was very tender and supposedly had jalepeno rub on it, but I didn't taste it. The steak and the sauce went very well together - but I wouldn't say it was extraordinary. My date had the veggie plate ($20), which was good but again a slightly small portion. Desserts: This was the highlight. It might be worth coming to Oya, getting two of their interesting drinks and sharing the Mini-Pinaple Baked Alaska. This was WOW good. It is served in a pineapple and filled with pineapple ice-cream and I think sponge cake and topped with slightly browned merengue. The other dessert ws Rhubarb soup with floating sorbet and strawberries. Pretty good but too acidic. The management gave us the two desserts for free. Not sure the occassion - possibly b/c it's they just opened and we ordered well and sent the soup back. In all, slighlty disappointed by the food, but happy with the service. A great place for drinks and very cool decor. Worth a stop. I would recommend visiting for drinks and dessert and waiting a bit for a full meal until they work the kinks out...

I'm not a publicist. Just excited about new restaurants FINALLY coming to downtown DC/MCI center area. I posted the Washingtonian article...i obviously didn't write that.

Oya just openend up downtown. I stumbled upon it - it is right next to Zaytinya. Went in for a drink and a wonderful dessert (banana bread pudding and rum/rasin ice cream) on Saturday night. I heard no buzz about this restaurant, as I usually do for other opening. Going there for dinner on Thursday, will let you know how it is. Place is super trendy and has a California feel to it, a hip lounge area and they also seem to focus on high quality cuisine. Hey they got their chef from Aquavit in NY! Here is write-up I found in the Washingtonian. website www.oyadc.com QUOTING FROM THE WASHINGTONIAN: FROM THE CARIBBEAN BY WAY OF SWEDEN With a red crocodile-skin bar, white marble fireplaces, waterfall illusions on the walls, and capiz-shell chandeliers, Oya—slated to open in February—doesn’t look like your average restaurant. Errol Lawrence, who grew up in DC and has run restaurants in Los Angeles, wants his Chinatown space to be both “a party every night” in the lounge area and a fine-dining destination. Lawrence lured St. Lucia–born chef Kingsley John from New York, where he worked for eight years under renowned Aquavit chef Marcus Samuelsson. John says his menu is “all over the place,” showing his Caribbean roots but also Samuelsson’s Swedish influence. Take the jerk-salmon gravlax flatbread: John uses the gravlax and espresso-mustard sauce Samuelsson taught him, then sprinkles it with jerk spices and lays it on the type of flatbread he grew up with. Other appetizers include baby-conch salad with pineapple sorbet and jerk-salmon avocado rolls. Featured dinner entrées are pimiento-crusted duck with taro root; smoked lamb chops with green bananas and black-eyed peas; and a crispy whole fish surrounded by dill broth. At lunch there’s curried goat, and mango barbecue chicken with callalou. Lunch entrées are $12 to $23, dinner main courses $18 to $35. John hired Aquavit’s Jean-Rony Fougere to craft the desserts. Look for chilled coconut soup with passionfruit dumplings, and a chocolate-mousse dome with spiced caramel. Oya’s favorite liquor is rum. Aquavit bar master Christian Post is helping John concoct a palette of infused rums. One cocktail blends spiced rum with ginger beer and sorrel. And flights of rum sorbets will be served in the lounge. Oya (777 Ninth St., NW; 202-393-1400) is open weekdays for lunch and dinner. A late-night menu is served until 1 am.

GO to Puerto Madera - there are a bunch of great places on that strip. I liked the Sushi place and the traditional steak places. I also HIGHLY reccommend Sucre.

INDIEBLEU The entrance on the ground floor opens up to a long bar that is perpendicular to the entranceway. This probably 35 foot bar ends at a series of large rooms with leather couches built into the wall with coffee tables in between. I'd say there is seating here for about 100. Very trendy setting (they give you shrimp toast to snack on) kind of like chi cha but MUCH posher. They give everyone a cocktail map that looks like a DC metro map at first, but each stop is a different drink and it’s a cool foldout type of guide to the drinks. They also have a pretty decent bar menu with fancy food. This looks like a huge upgrade to other lounges in the area and I asked them already about making reservations for a future night. They take reservations for the couches starting at 9:30 Wed - Sat night. Bottle service ($180 for absolute) is required but could split with up to 8 people so its not bad at all. By the time I left (10PM Thursday) The entire lounge/bar area was packed with ultra fashionable people and there was a line outside already. THE FOOD The restaurant is upstairs and along the pathway up are these gently sloping ramps to the top floor that sweep back and forth between the walls of the former row-houses that once occupied the space. The restaurant is ultra palatial and all white with black trim and high ceilings and doorways - kind of minimalist. Looks like a really fancy NYC restaurant. The menu is designed to be 3 courses and the menu is also gimmicky where it first shows you sets of courses that go with each other followed by a cheat sheet on the back with all the courses. The service was excellent (although a bit slow probably due to their recent opening). I split 4 of thir 1st and 2nd course dishes which were all very good. I didn't get a entrée b/c the other dishes looked better and I wasn't that hungry. I would highly recommend the shrimp beignets. They take jumbo prawns and use beignet batter to fry them (slightly sweet) and it is served over red onion chutney and with a tall shot of tomato infused grey-goose that you can either pour over the shrimp or drink yourself. Also highly recommended is the braised rabbit pakoras. These are stuffed pastry Triangles with some mustard sauce and other trimmings. The escargot weren't great. They were not served traditional French style and just put in a big bowl with a sweet sauce. Very meaty but a bit too sweet. The White tiger prawn appetizer also wasn't spectacular, but still a solid appetizer for shrimp lovers. The dessert all look great. The one that we had was called Spaghetti and Meatballs. They take ice cream (some traditional Indian flavor) and squeeze it through a pasta-spaghetti press right at your table. IT is served with soaked fried circle doughnuts (meatballs). All of the desserts look great and one even comes with hot chocolate. Although expensive, this restaurant far exceeds the quality of every other restaurant I've tried in DC. The Service and atmosphere by far trump other places and the food is at par and should get better. I wish they would expand their entree selection - it was two fish, three meat, a chicken and maybe a vegetarian and I think that is it. Good luck getting reservations - this will soon be the top rated place in DC.