Last Thursday, Leo and I decided to stop by and try out the new D.C. location. The entire ground floor of the restaurant is a high-design, trendy cocktail lounge and it was crowded with the denizens of the young professional set. A modern grand staircase leads to the dining room upstairs (incidentally, I did not see an elevator anywhere). Even though we began to go upstairs, the downstairs hostess acted as a not-terribly welcoming gatekeeper (strike one for public relations), and called on a telephone to the hostess upstairs before allowing us to pass. Once upstairs, the hostess there sent us with an assistant to our table. The designated table was a small two-top along the banquette wall of the dining room, ordinarily not a problem, but it was in between two occupied tables and the chair side was right on top of a large structural pillar, so it seemed too crowded for us. Seeing a lot of empty four-top tables in the middle of the dining room and one over by the window, we asked for table by the window or one in the middle. The seater refused, though, and said they were for larger parties. Well, not fifteen minutes later, she seated a party of two at the four-top by the window. Strike two for public relations.
The dining room is large and sleekly modern, clearly the product of a trendy designer. On the major side wall is a huge art installation featuring a room-long painted rectangle. On the rectangle a series of plastic "rocks" on pegs are stuck into the wall in an organic design, with a few rocks scattered on the wall outside of the rectangle towards one end. Another wall has a series of standard windows looking out over the busy Chinatown streets. A third wall has a series of tables in curved booth areas, and then a large, long, glass-walled private dining room. The fourth wall heads off to the kitchen and restrooms.
Speaking of restrooms, they are quite interesting in this establishment. There are no doors. Facilities are down a long hallway, with the women's room first and the men's room farther down; a busy service area for the waiters and a much used doorway into the kitchen lines the side of the hallway opposite the restroom entries. Inside the facility, everything is in its own small room or pod (the toilet pods did have doors, thankfully, but the individual urinal pods did not). Both floors and walls are stone and fixtures are very modern; it did take me some time and experimentation to figure out how to wash my hands. On the way back to the dining room, as I passed the open, extra wide entrance to the women's room, I had a lovely view of several ladies primping in front of mirrors.
The menu is an interesting mix of Mexican dishes with a Japanese flair and Japanese dishes with a Mexican flair, probably leaning more towards Japanese with the appetitzers and Mexican with the main courses. Some things sounded interesting; other things sounded a bit on the yucky side. Nevertheless, there were several things we wanted to try.
For starters, Leo chose the gyoza dumplings and I picked won ton tacos. The menus talk about encouraging people to share their dishes, and they seem to enforce this "suggestion" by bringing dishes out one at a time, instead of together, not only with our table, but with other nearby tables we observed. The first dish to come out was the won ton tacos. It was an interestingly creative dish made by taking won ton wrappers to fashion small taco shells and frying them until crispy. They were filled with vinegared sushi rice, pickled ginger, and diced bits of barely-seared ahi tuna, then drizzled with a little bit of mango salsa and then each of the four tacos was placed in a little individual pool of guacamole on the long rectangular plate. They were quite unusual and I enjoyed the unexpected taste combinations. After a rather long pause during which we finished our rather small cocktails (a mango mojito ($10) for Leo which he didn't like cause it was too sweet and a regular margarita ($9) which I thought was rather ordinary for me), the dumplings finally arrived. These were the typical "potsticker" steamed dumplings, only with the unusual filling of pork, shrimp, and foie gras, a little ginger, and a sweet passionfruit-mustard sauce. I ate one and it was okay, but it didn't wow me.
When the main courses came, they did not come simultaneously, but there was only a short space between. Leo had a grilled salmon on shitake mushrooms and cabbage in a sweet mango sauce; he complained that the shitakes seemed to have sand in them. I had Chinese-style braised beef short ribs (I'm not sure what made them "Chinese") which was served on top of a mound of mashed potatoes that had white Mexican Oaxaca cheese melted on top; the entire presentation was decorated with a huge handful of frizzled green onion tops and crispy cross slices. The beef itself was very tasty and flavorful, but the sauce poured all over everything was way too sweet.
Salmon
Beef Shortribs
While we saw some pretty desserts at nearby tables, we opted to skip the sweets.
There was an uncomfortably long delay waiting for the waitress to receive dessert menus, to hear our dessert decision, then to receive our check. Considering the fact that our waitress personally removed our empty main course plates from the table, there was no excuse for the very long delay getting dessert menus. Fortunately, Leo paid cash, so we didn't have to wait around even longer for a credit card transaction.
Now, our waitress was a very pleasant, friendly young woman, but we just didn't seem to get the attention from her one would ordinarily expect for a restaurant in this rather expensive price range (our total check with an average tip was $110, and all each of us got was a cocktail, a mid-priced appetizer, and a mid-priced entree). It appeared that she had too many tables and was overworked, but I refuse to make excuses for a brand new restaurant that charges as much as Zengo does. Many of the waitresses, all of whom (men, too) were wearing black trousers and black t-shirts, were wearing little black purses on long thin straps over their shoulders to carry their ticket folders and what have you, but as the waitresses were maneuvering between the tightly packed tables they frequently bumped patrons (including me) with their purses. When considering the big picture of the waitress's performance, the fact that food expediters from the kitchen didn't know who ordered what (the won ton tacos were even inititally offered to the adjacent table), the less than warm welcome from the downstairs hostess, and the snippy attitude of the staff member who seated us, I have to say that the greatest failing of Zengo is service.
I'm not quite sure what to think of the food, either. Everything we ate Thursday night was sweet. The cocktails were sweet. The appetizers were sweet. The main courses were sweet. I think that's probably the main reason we didn't order a dessert. My understanding of the art of Asian cooking, especially Japanese cuisine, is that all five of the tastes—sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and earth—should be represented in a meal, and all we got was sweet.
Judging from the trendy crowds, it appears the general public isn't quite as particular about their dining dollars as are we. Whether the healthy bar crowds translate into dining room success is yet to be determined. While I won't veto a second trip for me (especially if someone else is paying), I won't likely suggest it the place and I doubt that Leo or I ever recommend Zengo as a restaurant option for our friends.
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