So says GQ magazine, which runs down the list of D.C. heavyweights in its November issue. Most of the folks on the list are pols or the power behind pols or the eyes watching pols. Ashok Bajaj makes the cut, apparently, because he feeds the pols and treats them all with respect.

Bajaj tells GQ a few of his rules for navigating the political waters in this town:

• Know Your Client. “You can feel the temperature of the person,” he says. Last winter, with our economy teetering, that meant giving Geithner the privacy of a corner table when he dined alone at the Bombay Club but seating the more sociable Bernanke “in the thick of things” when he took his wife to dinner at the Oval Room.

Read More “More Good News for Bajaj: He’s One of D.C.’s Most Powerful People” »

Tom Sietsema won’t confirm it, but sources indicate that Rasika, restaurateur Ashok Bajaj’s upscale Indian establishment in Penn Quarter, will receive four stars in the Post critic’s next Dining Guide, which should hit the Web on Thursday.

It would be the first so-called ethnic restaurant to earn four stars in Sietsema’s nine-plus years as dining critic.

Several people, after reading a prematurely published version of Sietsema’s guide on the Web on Sunday, have called Bajaj and told him the same news. “My gut feeling is that it’s true as well,” says Bajaj, the City Paper’s runner-up for Best Restaurateur this year. “But I want to see it myself.

Read More “Rasika Will Be the First Ethnic Restaurant to Earn 4 Stars from Tom Sietsema” »

Ashok Bajaj put his Bibiana cooks and servers through six different practice runs this week, in preparation for what was supposed to be a Monday, Sept. 7, opening. So why did the downtown osteria and enoteca open today instead?

“Practice, practice, practice,” Bajaj tells Y&H this afternoon. “Like everything else, we needed a little bit of work.”

Because Congress returns to work next week, Bajaj wanted to make sure that his latest restaurant would be performing at its peak before the power players start to stumble in following their fisticuffs over health-care reform. “No matter how good you think you are, you can always get better,” he says.

Read More “Looking for a Little Practice, Bibiana Jumps the Gun and Opens for Service Today” »

Bibiana has hired Douglas Hernandez, pastry chef at Central Michel Richard, to handle the desserts at the forthcoming downtown osteria/enoteca from Ashok Bajaj. Bibiana will have its “soft” opening on Monday, Sept. 7.

Hernandez has been with Central for more than two years, says Mel Davis, spokesperson for the celebrity chef. At Central, Hernandez has been in charge of executing Richard’s justly famous dessert menu, whether his clever, crunchy take on the Kit Kat bar or the chef’s luxe version of a banana split.

Read More “Bibiana Hires Central’s Pastry Chef Hernandez” »

Bibiana Osteria and Enoteca, the latest entrant in the area’s escalating Italian Restaurant Wars, will indeed serve pizza, just like a number of other combatants in this wide-scale skirmish, including Potenza, Ristorante Posto, and Kora. But owner Ashok Bajaj doesn’t want pies to define his new place at 1100 New York Ave. NW, which will have its soft opening on Monday, Sept. 7.

Y&H spoke with Bajaj yesterday, and he told me that chef Nicholas Stefanelli’s offerings will be purely regional Italian, none of this Italian-American silliness that creeps into some menus around town. The pastas, the owner added, would be made in-house, with prices ranging from around $14 to $20. Pizza will also be available, he said, but only at lunch and only at the lounge during dinner service.

So why downplay the pie?

Read More “Owner: Bibiana Osteria Will NOT be a Pizza Joint” »

One by one, we’re running through the 50 restaurants that made the cut on this year’s Young & Hungry Dining Guide. If you have visited the day’s featured restaurant, let us know what you think. If you’re planning to visit for the first time, tell us about your meal when you return.

Enough about the crispy spinach chaat, OK? We’ve heard about it a thousand times already. Yes, it’s a great appetizer—crispy and sweet, with an undercurrent of heat—but chef Vikram Sunderam can impress you in so many other ways. My current obsession is Sunderam’s tandoori lamb chops—these Frenched and marinated chops that are dropped in the clay oven until charred on the outside and juicy pink on the inside. Good God, I could eat those chops like Popsicles on a summer day.

Rasika, 633 D St. NW, (202) 637-1222

French Non-Resistance: Petits Plats goes Italian with Pizze.

It’s a sign of the times that local restaurateurs continue to place their trust in the good ol’ Italian pie. Cheaper to produce than many other dishes — and one with an expansive, built-in fan base — pizza has become the low-risk option for a number of new and/or established restaurateurs as they ride out the recession.

Two of the District’s newer Italian operations, Ristorante Posto and Potenza, made sure to include pizza ovens in their build-outs.  Restaurateur Ashok Bajaj has installed one, too, in his forthcoming Bibiana Osteria-Enoteca on New York Avenue NW. Vapiano continues its colonization of the D.C. market with its fast-casual pies, and the Fairfax-based Paisano’s plans to roll out 10 more ‘za outlets by the end of next year. Hell, even a Frenchman decided to bite the bullet and open a pizza take-out.

Now, two more pizzerias look to join the ever-expanding ranks.

Read More “Restaurateurs Keep Rolling Out the Pizza Joints” »

One by one, we’re running through the 50 restaurants that made the cut on this year’s Young & Hungry Dining Guide. If you have visited the day’s featured restaurant, let us know what you think. If you’re planning to visit for the first time, tell us about your meal when you return.

If I were ever to compile a list of the District’s most creative chefs, the ones who strive for unusual flavor combinations or push their ingredients in unusual directions, I would put the Oval Room ’s Tony Conte right near the top. How inventive is Conte? In the past, he’s paired a beet salad with passion-fruit gelee and veal slices with a Parmesan sauce and menthol purée. His latest menu features butter-poached lobster lounging in a shallow pool of young coconut milk, which itself is bobbing with peach and wasabi pearls. Sometimes this is all too much, and Conte is just overmanipulating his dishes to his (and my) detriment. I’d point to that lobster as a fine example. The shellfish in my recent order was poached to a downy consistency, but its accompanying liquid was far too sweet for my palate, the result, it seems, of Conte’s line cooks not adding enough wasabi pearls for balance. But here’s the thing: Conte fascinates me, even when he doesn’t always please me. When he hits the mark, though, few chefs in town can touch him. Period. His roast chicken with barbecue consommé—that’s right, consommé—and smoked mushroom is a knockout. So is his appetizer of foie gras brûlé, a small cap of caramelized terrine perched on toasted brioche and served with Meyer lemon and lavender. The thing is so good, I’d run through a gantlet of angry animal protectionists to eat it.

The  Oval Room, 800 Connecticut Ave. NW, (202) 463-8700

To many, Rasika has become the go-to Indian eatery in the District, but starting this summer, Rasika will also be available to go. Well, at least the restaurant’s most popular sauces.

Rasika owner Ashok Bajaj told Y&H this afternoon that three of chef Vikram Sunderam’s sauces will be available, starting in July, at Whole Foods Markets throughout the mid-Atlantic. Sunderam’s makhani, kashmiri, and goan curry sauces will be sold in 16-oz. jars and likely retail for about $6.50 each. Sunderam, for the uninitiated, was nominated this year for a James Beard Award in the Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic category.

“I wanted to do something different,” Bajaj says, by way of explanation. “I thought, ‘Why not sell them to the mass public who doesn’t come to the restaurant?’”

A contract has not been officially signed with Whole Foods, Bajaj said, but it’s a “done deal.” A facility in Pennsylvania is already producing the sauces now, Bajaj added, and the first delivery is expected in about 10 days. A Whole Foods spokesperson confirmed that the sauces will be available in July.

Read More “Rasika Sauces Available at Whole Foods This Summer” »

It was a subject neither Ashok Bajaj nor Y&H really wanted to broach, but there it was, lying like a dead body in the trunk of a car: the restaurant credit-card scam, as reported on Sunday by The Examiner. The paper wrote that three men were apparently buying stolen credit card numbers from servers at area restaurants, including Bajaj’s 701 on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Bajaj, of course, doesn’t want diners to think their bank accounts are vulnerable at his restaurants. Y&H doesn’t want readers to think he’s a dolt for picking Bajaj as the second best restaurateur in town. We had mutual interest in saving face.

Read More “Credit Card Theft a Common Occurence in Restaurants” »