If you want Ethiopian cooking, you head to 9th Street NW. If you want Vietnamese, you program your GPS for the Eden Center. But Mexican food? You might as well fly to San Antonio. At least that’s how desperate I sometimes feel when discussing Washington’s south-of-the-border offerings. Seriously, when one of the area’s favorite “Mexican” eateries is Lauriol Plaza, home of the bro polloi, you know you have a problem. Taqueria la Placita is the exception in this lackluster landscape. Owner Javier Martinez brooks no compromise with his Hyattsville taqueria. In true nose-to-tail fashion, La Placita leaves no part of the animal unused. You find gelatinous oreja (ear) tacos, salty cueritos (pig skins), and chewy cecine (salty beef, likely flank or skirt). Martinez also serves up one of the few authentic al pastor tacos in the area—two corn tortillas brimming with marinated pork roasted slowly on a spit, a technique borrowed from Lebanese immigrants who introduced Puebla natives to shawarma in the 1930s. Each taco comes sprinkled with diced onions and chopped cilantro, to which you can add your choice of radish slices, cucumber rounds, a squirt of lime, and one (or both) of the fiery salsas brought to your table. This, in short, is the true Mexican taco experience, right down to the blaring jukebox in the corner.

5020 Edmonston Road, Hyattsville (301) 277-4477

Even though Masa 14 plays more to the strengths of Richard Sandoval (Zengo, La Sandia) than Kaz Okochi (Kaz Sushi Bistro)— really, would it kill someone to put nigiri sushi on the menu?—the collaboration has proved beneficial for both chefs. It’s spread Sandoval’s influence beyond his two clownish local milieus (Chinatown/Tysons Corner Center) and dragged Okochi from his power corridor in downtown D.C. Their place along the trendy 14th Street NW corridor has made both men seem, I don’t know, cooler. Their pork-belly steam bun is certainly the coolest taco I’ve eaten in recent memory. The meat rests atop a sweet, slightly deflated Chinese bun, which stands in for a corn tortilla; the bite is garnished with mouthwatering complementary flavors: tart pineapple, sour pickled onion, cool cilantro. I imagine that after Sandoval and Okochi conceived the snack, they tasted it, bumped fists, and thought, ‘Yeah, we’re bad motherfuckers.’ I’d like to see more sublime plates like that on their menu (which, incidentally, is executed by former CommonWealth Gastropub chef de cuisine Antonio Burrell). But maybe that’s asking too much. Genius shows up only every once in awhile.

1825 14th St. NW (202) 328-1414

Photo courtesy of Masa 14

1924 9th St. NW (202) 319-1924

1016 H St. NE (202) 396-8733

Chef/owner Darren Lee Norris of Kushi

It’s a Saturday afternoon, and I’m sitting at the blond-wood sushi counter at Kushi, the expansive new Japanese restaurant in Mount Vernon Square. I’ve decided to put myself in the hands of the chef for his omakase platter. So has the stranger immediately to my left. It will be interesting, I think, to see how the chef tailors our platters to fit our individual tastes and preferences. I wait for questions from the chef, which aren’t forthcoming. Instead, he prepares two identical platters. My disappointment lasts only as long as it takes to dig into the 10 nigiri pieces. The sushi rice is loosely packed and lightly seasoned, as is proper, and topped with some of the freshest and most flavorful fish I’ve tasted in D.C. The swab of wasabi on the backside of my Japanese snapper may be too pungent for the fish, but every other piece on the platter stands up to scrutiny. The buttery bluefin belly is a pleasure that goes way beyond guilty; it borders on an offense against nature, which doesn’t stop me from defiantly letting the overfished flesh melt on my tongue. I have no such remorse about the meaty horse mackerel, a rich strip of flesh that has become my preferred nigiri topping. I chase each of my bites with a healthy sip of Dassai 50 unfiltered sake, which coats my palate with cool, sweet vanilla notes, the ideal counterpoint to those delicately seasoned pieces of fatty fish. This is how it is at Kushi. Owners Darren Lee Norris and Ari Kushimoto Norris have dumped the fussy, bowing formality of the American Japanese experience in favor of the laid-back izakaya, or pub, experience that rules post-work culture in Japan. A club-music informality dominates at Kushi, whether you’re at the sushi bar throwing down nigiri or at the separate robata grill counter, where I’ve noshed on soft, flash-fried tofu and devoured a whole charcoal-grilled bronzino, experiencing the power of simply prepared ingredients. I could go on and on about this newcomer, but let me say this for now: Kushi is my favorite new place to eat and drink.

400 North Capitol St. NW (202) 737-0400

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.

Before its move into more spacious digs just down the road in Wheaton, Nava Thai was everyone’s favorite hole-in-the-wall, that secret little place in the back of a cramped parking lot where natives and foodies alike went for an authentic taste of Thailand. These days at the new location, the waits can stretch to 30 minutes or longer, as if Nava had somehow morphed into the Cheesecake Factory. Some, in fact, will tell you that the place might as well call itself the PadThai Factory. Don’t believe it. While the space may seem flat, Suchart and Ladavan Srigatesook’s cooking remains vibrant. The floating market noodle soup still sends my mouth to the burn unit. The tom kha soup still curls my tongue with its sharp galangal sourness. And the sweet heat of the panang curry still makes all other versions seem like children’s plates. The wait, in other words, is worth it.

 Addenda:  Y&H's original review of Nava Thai from 2007, and the Y&H column, from earlier this year, about the restaurant's move into a larger space.

Nava Thai, 11301 Fern St., Wheaton, Md., (240) 430-0495

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

One by one, we’re running through the 50 restaurants that made the cut on this year’s

Let me boil this recommendation down to two words: patty melt. For all their innovative flavor combinations, chefs Jonathan Krinn and Jon Mathieson have devised a rather safe, if regal, interpretation of the humble hamburger melt. The patty in their version features ground, exquisitely beefy culotte, which is topped with two cheeses and black truffles, and then pressed between buttery, beautifully fried slices of crustless brioche. I ate this fine example of handheld decadence with a big fruity glass of Lopez de Heredia Rioja, for the kind of lunch that business types would have downed several decades ago, when excess equaled success. You can discover far more subtle delicacies on the chefs’ dinner menu, but whatever you choose, I predict great things for this pricy Tysons playpen as Krinn and Mathieson continue to explore the high and low ends of American gastronomy.

Inox, 1800 Tysons Blvd., Suite 70, McLean, Va., (703) 790-4669

Photo courtesy of Inox

A meaty homage to Michel Richard?

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.

Unlike some fine-dining restaurants that aim for the conspicuous-consumption set, Eventide has carved out a different niche for itself: It’s Arlington’s eccentric foodie destination. Eventide combines Komi’s OCD-like attention to detail with the chic intensity of the Source’s downstairs lounge. What’s more, chef Miles Vaden strikes me as a toque who will never be satisfied with his work. His menu reads (and tastes) like a man who pushes things about as far as you can in the typically conservative Clarendon dining scene. His bison carpaccio already assumes an air of Michel Richard; like a red-meat version of Richard’s famous “Mosaic,” Vaden plates thin circles of crimson-bright bison meat on a square of white china so that the dish looks like some monochromatic Pop-Art piece. The appetizer’s flavors and textures, however, are altogether original—the crunch of citrus-marinated jicama, the bite of ancho-chocolate mole, the salty umami of Parmesan, the plodding meatiness of the bison. While not as jaw-dropping as the carpaccio, other dishes on Vaden’s menu display enough invention and technique to justify any wild-eyed optimism you may have about this restaurant. Hell, even the upstairs dining room at Eventide, a former meeting hall for the Odd Fellows fraternal organization, strikes an odd, engaging tone. The ceiling is high, and the walls have an exposed, terra-cotta austerity about them. The long elegant drapes and the intimidating emptiness all around you—above your head and between the widely spaced tables—complete the image: You feel like you’re dining in some cool medieval castle.

Eventide, 3165 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, (703) 276-3165

Photo by Darrow Montgomery