Rasika

Maybe the deadlifts I had done earlier today made me hungrier than normal, but the food at rasika was pretty good. We came in at around 2045, place was jammed with striped shirts and their paxil popping dates. Got seated, and ordered tawa tuna, paneer shashilik, and shammi kebab as appetizers. Oh wait, this is the penn quarter striped shirt crowd we are targeting here. Make that “small plates” not apps.

For the main course we ordered Lamb Rojanjosh. This was the real deal, unlike the connaught place lamb dahiwala masquerading as rogan josh. Tamatar fish was excellent, dal makhni was outstanding, the palak paneer, not so good. In fact, I’d rate it as atrocious, I’ve had better palak paneer at chilmil dhaba on the delhi-ambala route, on the GT road, and it cost an order of magnitude less.

Dessert was the apple jalebi and they bought out a complimentary gulab jamun/saffron cream thing. The apple jalebi with cardamom ice cream was most excellent, the gulab jamun, not so much.

Ambience was outstanding, except for the aforementioned striped shirts, the service was adequate, better service at connaught. The very best dishes were as good as anything at connaught, the worst was considerably worse. All in all, a decent place to bring a date. Pricing could be 20% easily, but someone has to pay for the low lighting and the small plates.

This place is packed with striped shirts and consciously pretty people. We couldn’t even put our names down to wait for a table on a Friday evening.

So we took ourselves off to petworth for some tasty food at Sweet Mango... I suspect we got the better end of the deal.

OTOH the food isn’t that good. It would seem to depend on the dish and the night.

12/30/05 Not your typical ethnic restaurant, Rasika is going for the trendy Penn Quarter crowd with updated versions of classic Indian dishes. It’s a beautiful place, and the food is quite good. Expect to pay accordingly.