Kosher Food and Drink

One of the more frequent questions I see on “kosher social media” is “what’s a good kosher restaurant in DC?” It seems like people from out of town are stunned that your choices are limited to a few vegan establishments certified by DC Kosher, and Char Bar or Oh Mama Grill (certified by Capitol-K) if you want meat. DC proper’s Jewish community isn’t huge, but between that and the surrounding communities, you’d think that more of a kosher restaurant scene would emerge.

Well, times have changed, and now you have another choice: Oro Nami. Oro Nami (2512 Pennsylvania ave NW, Washington, DC 20002; (202) 558-6330; oronamidc.com; under Vaad of Greater Washington “Capitol-K” supervision; fish) is a sushi restaurant. To the best of my knowledge, the DC region has never had a dedicated kosher sushi restaurant, with the closest example being the no-longer-kosher Sushi Sakura in Baltimore.

Oro Nami is located in the Georgetown area of DC, only a couple blocks away from Char Bar, and a pretty short walk to Kesher Israel (the local Orthodox synagogue). This is a pretty nice neighborhood, so walking in it is plenty safe. It is also very easy to get to from nearby WMATA (“metro”) stations, and there’s paid parking nearby if you want to drive.

Before this review goes any further, I should note that Oro Nami opened on June 26, and my visit took place on June 29. The first week of any restaurant’s opening is going to involve a certain number of rough spots. This review will take that into account and give them a fair shake, but also make sure to note those same rough spots in case you’re also an early customer. I get the strong impression that they opened in a hurry, so, if anything, it’s impressive that they had as few rough spots as they did. (The website appears to be a gutted and revised version of The Setting’s website, if you look at the source code.)

However, while Oro Nami is easy to get to, it’s not necessarily easy to find, at least right now. There’s no signage on the restaurant proper, and you have to use the sidewalk signs to guide you in. It is located next to/underneath Market Street Diamonds (which is the sign you should really be looking for).

Going inside, you walk down a flight of stairs into a small restaurant with strong “speak-easy” vibes, with a sort of trippy aesthetic mixed in (the lit-up floor and clocks on the ceiling being especially eye-catching). Oro Nami took over the location of a defunct restaurant called “The Setting”, and it appears they’ve made minimal aesthetic changes so far. That’s alright with me; it has charm, it’s comfortable, and it’s perfect for a date night. (Alas, it was not a date night for me, since we brought our two kids along with us.)

There is a large, fully-stocked bar (with seating) next to the stairs, as well as three booths and three bar tables. This imposes certain limits. If you have a party greater than six or seven people, you won’t be eating together here. In fact, if there’s more than about two of you, you’d be strongly advised to make reservations ahead of time. Oro Nami is just not a big restaurant. It’s super comfy and has an air of privacy that you don’t see in other spots around here, but I doubt they seat more than about 32 people comfortably, unless there’s a party room sequestered somewhere in back I didn’t see.

We had made reservations, so we were quickly seated. There’s no printed menu; you scan a QR code to get it. Fortunately, it’s literally the same menu that’s on the website, so you can do your homework ahead of time. I personally prefer a printed menu – not all kids have smartphones, for one thing – but perhaps they’ll get to that in the future.

The menu is gratifyingly large, and has all the best hits of kosher American sushi. There is even an omakase option, which we’ll discuss a bit later. Refreshingly, the menu doesn’t try to dip to a fusion style – this place is sushi, and pretty much all sushi. Kudos on having some focus.

The drinks menu, which appears to come straight from The Setting (with non-kosher options removed), is even longer, and may have been the most full-featured I’ve seen in the region. I wish I were a bigger drinker so that I could opine on its quality, but it’s hard to believe you won’t find a suitable choice. That said, there is one glaring omission: there’s no sake at all on the menu. Again, I’m not a big sake drinker, but if you’re a sushi restaurant, you owe it to yourself to have a bottle of sake on hand.

Service was excellent throughout the night. Orders were taken on an electronic tablet of some sort, water was kept filled, and we had a lot of attention from our server throughout. There was a tiny bit of the usual new restaurant fumbling, but I’m sure that rough edge will smooth out over time, and it didn’t meaningfully impact the dining experience in any event. I wouldn’t say it was particularly fast to get our food, but it didn’t feel terribly slow, either.

In terms of drinks and appetizers, my wife ordered a Mojito, and we split some Asian fries and kani poppers across the table. The Mojito was delightfully lime-y, and a very competent example of the drink. I was perhaps a little less enthused about the appetizers.

The “Asian fries” were just french fries and ketchup, not the “Asian spice with Japanese dipping sauce” promised on the menu. They were actually very well executed french fries, spiced nicely and fried just right, but I’d argue strongly they didn’t actually deliver what the menu said the item was. Again, this is new restaurant shenanigans and probably to be expected, but it was probably the worst error of the night.

Similarly, the kani poppers, plated nicely, were described on the menu as “crispy Tempura Kani, spicy mayo and sweet chili on the side.” I love kani poppers. I ordered them all the time at Sakura, I get them from Rollmasters when they have them at the kosher grocery, and if I was more industrious, I’d make my own. Oro Nami missed bringing out the spicy mayo, but whatever, that’s not a huge deal. What was a huge deal was that they were extremely spicy. Like “blow out your taste buds spicy”, I assume because the kani mix was sitting in a tempura spicy green pepper of some sort. I’m sure my readership is attributing this sad admission of weakness this to my proud Ashkenazi heritage, but I’m not as bad with spicy foods as I used to be, and this thing hit me hard and by surprise. There was absolutely no indication of this on the menu, and while I do think they overall tasted good (with an excellent sweet chili sauce), you shouldn’t be getting surprised like that by appetizers. Either mark it as very hot on the menu, or tone it down… dealer’s choice.

Anyways, for mains, the kids had the baked salmon poke bowl (my son is not a big sushi eater) and the salmon tempura poke bowl. Both were appealing to the eye and got two thumbs up from both children on taste. About the only critique I could give them is that they were a little more minimalist stylistically than some I’ve seen online.

My wife and I went straight to the heavy hitter, and ordered the 24 piece omakase. Omakase means “I’ll leave it up to you” in Japanese, and is functionally the chef’s choice. I would argue that what we got was not a real omakase experience – it wasn’t at the counter, it wasn’t all a bunch of stunning pieces, and there wasn’t any showmanship. If you’re expecting that, I wouldn’t bother with omakase here. My main service complaint with the omakase was that no one really explained what we were getting at all as it came out – and at $86 for 24 pieces, that’s a fairly minimalistic expectation.

The first item to come off the line was a truly stunning sashimi dish. Look at this thing:

The presentation was stunning, and it was absolutely delicious, some of the best salmon I’ve had in a while. The tuna was also quite good.

The rest of it wasn’t quite as awe-inspiring, and were a pair of over-sized rolls more or less off the menu – fair enough, but it’s not going to generate the buzz that real omakase can bring, either. We had no complaints about the plating or the actual sushi itself, though – it was fresh and tasted great. I think that there’s probably some room for improvement here if they want to keep on with omakase concept, though.

To be totally blunt, while the omakase tasted great, it didn’t seem like a great deal. By my calculations afterwards from the menu pricing, it was closer to $70 of sushi for $86. If they had kept the presentation standard as high throughout as they did on the first dish, I’d probably be be fine with that, but it feels like they gave up on that after that first dish. The waiter pitched it as “you’ll get more for your money”, but I simply didn’t walk away with that feeling at all. Either make it totally spectacular or make it cheaper, but the current implementation is not good enough.

The bill for the night was $170 for the four of us, which is about normal for appetizers, mains, and drinks in downtown DC. I imagine we could have shaved that bill down somewhat by forgoing the omakase, which I will probably do in the future unless they totally re-engineer that experience.

So, back to where we started: Oro Nami just opened a few days ago, and there’s always going to be friction points in new restaurants. I spoke to the manager and gave him brief constructive real-time feedback afterwards, and hopefully they’ll work on those few rough spots and get the omakase to where it needs to be. That said, I still very much enjoyed going there, and I think it’s a fantastic spot for a date night even as it is. I suspect that as they get their feet under them further and refine the experience, it’ll be a very popular kosher restaurant in DC. I’ll be going back, and I’d encourage you to give them a try, too.