Last night for our anniversary at my wife’s request we went to the Bazaar, the new José Andres restaurant at the Waldorf-Astoria DC (the former Trump hotel). Other than going to the top of the tower once in 2018 when relatives were in town (which doesn’t involve entering the hotel proper because you go through a passage under the hotel and then up an elevator that bypasses the hotel atrium), I hadn’t been in there since it was the Pavilion at the Old Post Office back in the 1990s.
Dinner was very good. Like his other restaurants, it’s a tapas theme. We both got the tasting menu and I got the wine pairings to go with it (Ms1995hoo can’t have alcohol right now). Several of the items we had reminded me of the sorts of things the late Michel Richard might have done, or Patrick O'Connell for that matter—interesting visual tricks with the food. One item in the first course, for example, was "José's Taco," which had the "tortilla" made of nori and the "fillings" were jamón Ibérico de bellota, Osetra caviar, and gold leaf. I even ate things I wouldn’t normally touch, like olives. The only thing that was a disappointment was the very last item, a beef plate on which the beef was just plain too heavily marbled (that is, fatty)—the amount of fat just made it too hard to chew and we wound up not finishing that one.
Otherwise, everything was very good, though overall I’d say it’s a restaurant for someone who’s willing to be adventurous. I’m not always that person, but when we go to a place run by one of these famous chefs (the Inn at Little Washington is, of course, the prime example), I eat things I don’t normally eat because I figure they’ll do a great job of it. We were discussing whether the Bazaar might be an option to consider for my mom's birthday later this year and we decided probably not because we don’t think she like the visual games and some of the stuff that goes into the food. If she takes us out to dinner, she tends to opt for the Palm or L'Auberge Chez François (although for my 50th birthday earlier this year, she and my wife took me to the Capital Grille instead, which I guess on the whole is comparable to the Palm).
Note there is no self-parking and the valet parking is $65 (and I assume they want a tip). Instead I dropped Ms1995hoo out front and then I drove around the block and self-parked at 1001 Pennsylvania Avenue (entrance on 10th facing the FBI); it was $12 and the only downside was that it had rained while we were at dinner, making the block and a half walk back to the car a bit of a steam bath.
(Edited to fix a punctuation error)
