Connecticut Avenue for the Connoisseur – The Bombay Club and The Oval Room

Jordan Wright
Whisk and Quill
April 2010

Ashok Bajaj, Washington DC restaurant dynamo, is a 2010 recipient of a prestigious James Beard Foundation nomination for “Outstanding Restaurateur”. That no other owner has as many successful outposts in Washington, DC with seven diverse and prestigious restaurants in his empire, it is no surprise that he has achieved a status that others might easily envy.

On Connecticut Avenue, a stone’s throw from the White House, reside two of his especially patrician establishments, The Bombay Club and The Oval Room, both a draw for DC’s fine dining-driven elite.

I trotted off last week to visit two of Bajoj’s Executive Chefs, Tony Conte, at The Oval Room, noted for his clean-lined “Modern American” food, and Nilesh Singhvi who reigns over the kitchen at The Bombay Club and is known for his authentic regional Indian cuisine.

The Oval Room – Modern American Cuisine

“Modern American Cuisine” – the terminology gives pause for thought. It evokes everything from corn dogs to apple pie to Aunt Molly’s pickled beans. Even a lowly rib joint considers their food American cuisine, so it seems a convoluted coinage to slap the word “modern” on the front end for clarification. I remember when Betty Crocker was considered “modern”.

A far cannier descriptive to my mind is “Modern French” or “French Fusion”. It translates more accurately into an individual chef’s interpretation of the new French cuisine, that uses French techniques and incorporates American, Asian and Italian ingredients. Well, it’s too late for that now. The terminology is ubiquitous. I can’t change it and I won’t try, but I do feel it comes up short to express the beauty and innovation of what American chefs with French culinary training and global influences are creating in the better restaurants today.

Across Connecticut Avenue to another of Bajaj’s outposts, The Oval Room is a culinary paradigm shift with the cuisine of Chef Tony Conte and his stellar interpretation of the French dynamic. Conte has gotten the nod from the James Beard Foundation as well and is a semi-finalist for “Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic” 2010. Though the restaurant bills itself as “Modern American”, Conte has a light-hearted, eclectic, predominantly Euro sensibility in which I intuited a delicious blend of Thomas Keller and Jean-George Vongerichten, Conte’s former boss and muse, with a soupcon of Alain Ducasse. Conte however, has his own distinct interpretations.

His roasted baby beet salad uses a tangy-sweet passion fruit gelee with delicately earthy red, golden and purple beets, zingy fresh horseradish shavings, micro-greens and a sweet drizzle of ice wine mignonette.

In salads today most chefs incorporate elements of sweetness…fresh or dried fruits perhaps…and earthiness…as with multi-colored beets, radishes and artichokes, or legumes such as French lentils, lending a certain piquant rusticity and serving to balance out the bitterness in field greens. Conte’s design goes one better with its clean preparation and clever addition of fresh horseradish.

The food at The Oval Room is stylish and understated, echoing its décor. It is a pretty room but unfortunately I experienced one of my restaurant pet peeves…banquette seats so much lower than table height my chin was nearly grazing the plate.

I focused on the food instead…its flavors, textures and techniques. Whether preparing a Berkshire pork rack and belly with briny little neck clams, sweet peppers and lime; or a dish of Pennsylvania duck with red cabbage traced by an alluring persimmon and mustard sabayon sauce, Conte is able to tweak his ingredients to achieve something new yet quite un-twee. In these and some of the other dishes the combinations take their cues from the Asian kitchen and reflect a decidedly unorthodox direction.

Although the menu reads like a gourmand’s shopping list of intriguing, multi-ethnic ingredients (What, pray tell, is shrimp chorizo?), you can put your trust in the outcome when Conte is at his creative best.

Crudo of hamachi, a raw tuna appetizer oft-experienced elsewhere, is gotten right when dressed with a green apple mustard and yuzu vinaigrette to create a vivid flavor and color interplay.

Rockfish, as served here, crisped up and perched over slices of fingerling potatoes, nestled in a sheer peekytoe crab “chowder” and balanced by pancetta and licorice root, was perfection. The fish itself was lauded by Conte’s skillful balancing of his components, and never losing sight of his prevailing ingredient. Nothing is flashy, over-wrought or contrived here. In fact, although he incorporates a multitude of global ingredients in his cuisine, the result is quite harmonious, delightful and unexpected.

Pastry Chef Adrienne Czechowski helped draw the veil for us with a dessert of caramelized peanuts and hazelnuts, puddled beside a chocolate glazed hazelnut dacquoise, layered with peanut butter mousse, and served with salted caramel ice cream bringing the salty-sweet thing to a heavenly convergence. Another reinvention of a classic is her Asian pear tart served with homemade honey ginger ice cream.

If this is Conte’s “Modern American” call-it-what-you-will experiment, then I offer myself up as the thoroughly “Modern American” guinea pig!

Highly recommended.

www.ovalroom.com

The Bombay Club – An Ayurvedic Tradition

At Bombay I discovered that Chef Singvi pulls no punches in his use of lively spices, chilies and herbs; a kitchen that has neither chamber vacuum packers nor a thermal immersion circulator, but does have an ancient Indian coconut meat grinder and deep charcoal-fired tandoori clay ovens for baking off the delicious naan, paratha and kulcha breads. You could live on the goat cheese and tomato kulcha with its scattered bright green mint. Warm, grill-smoky, sassy and alluring.

Exploring the kitchen I saw boxes of cashew nutmeats waiting to be pureed into creamy curry sauces. Mace and fenugreek seeds in clear containers stacked beside whole black cumin seeds and nutmeg pods. More boxes stretching up to the ceiling were filled with cloves, bay leaves, cinnamon, ginger, mustard seeds and green cardamom pods, while dates and tamarind stood ready to transform into fruity chutneys. All chutneys and curries are concocted in-house, ground from these raw ingredients, and familiar Indian dishes are ratcheted up stratospherically with Singvi’s experienced hand.

www.bombayclubdc.com