Maté, Georgetown, Washington, D.C.

Last night one of my lonely married friends whose wife is in Europe this Valentine's Day rang me up at the last minute and wanted to go to dinner, so he took me to Maté, a trendy sushi-tapas bar across the street from Washington Harbor. I enjoyed our visit.

Maté is a brand new place on the corner of the building where the Loew's Theater is located, and everything is very vogue and modern. It's a noisy, vibrant place; a live D.J. was actually in a sound booth above the bar to play music for the dining room and bar area, but, interestingly enough, there is no dance floor in the place. The one thing I didn't like was that it was smoky, and I couldn't identify a specific "no smoking" area anywhere; we were seated in the dining room area, but some female at the next table was smoking like a chimney.

There is a small sushi bar in line with the liquor bar, but no one sat there; most people chose to sit in the low, modern tables and chairs in the bar or in the dining room area. They had some striking contemporary light fixtures in the place, notably some shiny spiral metal chandeliers in the dining room and a fascinating large fixture in the lounge area that looked like a lot of multi-colored Easter eggs suspended on individual wires.

We started at the bar. I had a glass of Morandé Casablanca Valley Pinot Noir from Chile, which was a lovely burgundy color and had an unusual sweet taste to it without the wine itself actually being sweet. My friend doesn't drink, so he just had pineapple juice. The restaurant is named after the herbal tissane "maté," a popular drink in South America that's packed with the stimulant xanthine (chemically related to caffeine and theobromine); several of the bar drinks included maté in the blend, such as maté martinis ("matinis") and maté mojitos.

As we moved to the dining area, we got these very original round menus with the pages riveted to the bottom half of the circle. Choices were limited mainly to sushi rolls and ceviche, but they also had a few salads and appetizers. We shared several different kinds of sushi rolls including one very spicy tuna roll and another one recommended by the waitress that was covered with shreds of crab meat the name of which escapes me. While I dared not endulge, my friend had the molten maté-infused chocolate cake.

On the whole, the food was adequate and the prices were consistent with average Georgetown prices. My main complaint with the place was that the service was rather lacking. The waitresses acted much more like cocktail bar waitresses than dining room waitresses, and some basics, like refilling water glasses, were forgotten. As long as one doesn't have any higher expectations, though, I kind of liked the place, and it would be a fun place to go before or after a movie when one is just wanting some drinks and some nibble food.