This is a guest post from the GFF–she took me out to dinner recently. We enjoyed the restaurant and wanted to share. She also wrote the other restaurant reviews on this blog.

I have been on a quest since I moved to DC a few years ago to try out as many different restaurants in the city as I possibly can. Last night, a friend and I chose to have dinner at Casa Oaxaca, in Adams Morgan. The restaurant bills itself as "authentic Mexican cuisine," and the menu reflects it. There are not fajitas, or chimichangas, or any of the staples of Tex-Mex restaurants. Instead, a whole section of the menu was focused on mole. I’m not even going to pretend to understand what mole really is, so you can check out wikipedia if you’re curious. Regardless, we were intrigued as to all the different types of mole the restaurant had to offer, so we asked the waiter for help. He very nicely brought out a plate of all the different mole sauces with some corn tortillas to dip. We sampled them all and quickly picked a few favorites. This was very helpful in deciphering the menu.

I chose the Mole Coloradito, which was beef served with a red mole sauce. It was really very good. The meat was cooked perfectly and sliced very thinly, and the sauce was really amazing. My friend chose to eat the mole poblano, which was a mole sauce served over chicken breast. It was very tasty, the chicken was not at all dry and the sauce was just the right amount of spiciness. Both meals were served with rice and black beans–making them a very good plate all around.

Overall we really enjoyed our dinner. The food was great and the service was equally good. Our waiter was very friendly and helpful and at one point, a man who seemed to be the manager stopped by to ask us how the meal was. We chatted with him for a few minutes about the restaurant and Mexican food. It was interesting to find out that they tweak their menu often, and will soon be re-adding grasshoppers to the menu. My dining companion was excited to return to try the grasshoppers, while I remain a bit unconvinced.

So, if you are looking for a different type of Mexican food, a change from the usual Tex-Mex stuff, I highly recommend Casa Oaxaca. It’s a great place to go for a reasonably priced, very good dinner.

In our continuing quest to eat at all the neighborhood restaurants, we decided to try Mandu, a Korean restaurant a few blocks from our apartment. Now, I have never had Korean food before, so I can’t compare it to other restaurants, but it was quite good. We managed to arrive five minutes before the end of happy hour, which meant $2 Tiger beer and cheap mandu (dumplings). In addition to the dumplings, which were quite good, we were served several small dishes of vegetables and tofu. We weren’t really sure what they all were, but everything was tasty, even the quite spicy kimchee.
For my entree, I decided to try the bibim bap. Upon the advice of our waiter, I ordered it in a stone pot. Basically, the dish is a rice bowl with vegetables and meat and a fried egg. It comes with a spicy sauce to put on the top. The stone pot is heated and so the rice fries a bit as it sits. Once the waiter explained to me that you needed to mix it all together with the sauce, I found the dish was very tasty. The sauce on the side allows you to choose how spicy you want your meal to be. My one petty complaint would be that the dish never really cooled off to a comfortable temperature, as the stone pot kept it quite hot. While at first it was nice, eventually it is nice for your food to cool a bit.
My dining companion chose dwejee bulgoki, which is grilled and marinated pork with rice and vegetables. When it came, he remarked that it looked a lot like fajitas. Although there was the complaint that there were too many vegetables, he found the meat very tasty and overall enjoyed the meal.
Because I have no measure of comparison, I cannot say that Mandu offers the best of Korean food. I’m sure it is somewhat Americanized for its customers. Regardless, we enjoyed the meal. The restaurant is comfortable and the food was good. It is a good neighborhood place to go for a reasonably priced meal.

Review from the WaPo

Review from menupages.com

~ The GFF

This week is Restaurant Week here in DC. If you’re not familiar with the concept, a bunch of DC’s fancy restaurant’s agree to do a 3 course meal for cheap–$20.08 for lunch and $30.08 for dinner. It is a funny way to get to eat at some restaurants that are clearly out of our price range on a daily basis. To take advantage of that, one night we dined at a restaurant called Ceiba. It’s a Latin American restaurant, seeming to specialize in seafood.

The only reservation we could get was for 5:30, earlier than a normal dinner. This was only odd because there were empty tables the entire time we were in the restaurant, so clearly we could have gotten a later seating. But regardless, we ate early. The ambiance of the restaurant is nice, very soothing, with lots of mirrors that make the several small dining rooms seem bigger. The meal began with some pita-like chips and a dip that resembled a spicy hummers. We quickly devoured two baskets of the chips, so clearly they were good. For cocktails, my friends chose a Mojito and a beer, but I decided to be daring and chose a drink called a pisco sour, which involved many things, including egg white powder. A little strange, but actually quite good.

One of the nice things about Ceiba is that for Restaurant Week, instead of having a limited number of dishes to choose from, they let you pick any entree off the menu. It’s a nice touch. For my dinner, I had a ceviche to start, and a crispy whole red snapper as my entree. The ceviche was delicious, a bit spicy while still having the great taste of the fish. The snapper was also cooked very well. I was a little nervous, as they literally brought the entire fish to me in a platter, head and all (pictured right)…..yikes. But, under the skin, the fish was very moist and the accompanying sauce and vegetables were great as well (although I was nervous about accidentally eating the fish’s brain).

My dining companions both chose different meals. One friend, a vegetarian, had a mixed green salad to start and some sort of vegetable tamale. She said both were quite good. My other dining companion chose a shrimp cocktail (which he said was very good and spicy) and an Mahi tuna dish. Despite a little nervousness regarding the rawness of the tuna, and a general dislike of mashed potatoes, he also enjoyed his meal. Dessert was also quite good, with two of us choosing a guava cake (more like a banana bread) that was served with a cream cheese panna cotta, and the third choosing a Brazilian carrot cake served with chocolate ice cream. It was certainly a filling end to the meal.

Overall, I think we all agreed that Ceiba was quite a good restaurant. Of course, it was not a place to eat everyday, but it was a good Restaurant Week choice.

~ The GFF