Food Pics of the Week (FPOTW): Ottoman Taverna

Ottoman Taverna (***)

425 I St NW Washington, DC 20001

Last week, hubby and I took a “trip” to Tükiye for some yummy bites. Random thought: I don’t know what in my mind possessed me to think that it would be a good idea to drive into Washington DC for dinner. It’s kind of funny how driving 10 miles can take damn near an hour in these parts. I figured that it would be faster to drive to the restaurant rather than driving to the metro station, waiting for and then taking the subway, and finally walking to the restaurant.

Overall, we had a splendid time at Ottoman Taverna because the food and the service were amazing. Ottoman Taverna makes life a bit simple with its Trip to Tükiye deal for 40 bucks that includes a four-course meal.

Oppsss, I did it again and didn’t take pictures of everything. Actually, it was a bit difficult to get a good photo (then again, none of my food photos are that great) because the bar had a backlight. Overall, everything we had was absolutely AMAZING, and I definitely would return for some more bites. For my dining pleasure:

• 1st course: Ezme (sun-dried tomato paste with onion, green pepper, garlic, parsley & Turkish spices)

• 2nd course: Patates Köfte (potato cakes with crumbled feta & yogurt sauce)

• 3rd course (pictured above): Tavuk Sis (char-grilled chicken cubes seasoned with Turkish spices & served with bulgur pilav, ezme and carrot-red cabbage slaw)

• 4th course: Katmer (phyllo dough stuffed with cream & pistachio)

OMG! As I’m writing this, my mouth is salivating over my 3rd course because the chicken was beautifully seasoned and soooooo juicy. I don’t know why, but there is something about the “simplicity” of Turkish food that makes it so delicious – you just need a grill, some meat, and seasoning. There’s no need for fancy sauces with 85 million ingredients.

Food Pic of the Week - Get out Edition

The Pisco Y Nazca (***) 

1823 L St. NW, Washington DC 20026

The hubby and I needed to get the heck out of Dodge for a couple of days. By “the hubby and I”, mean me. Also, by “Dodge”, I mean NYC. We decided to make a trip down to the Hampton Roads area of Virginia (my hometown) with a three-day “layover” in Washington DC. Also, it just so happened to be the week of our second wedding anniversary. During this trip, I have to say that we definitely had some good food, especially in DC. It felt like we were eating all the time. However, in our defense, pretty much all of the museums (with the exception of The Museum of the Bible) were closed due to the pandemic so we spent a LOT of walking around to enjoy the sights. Funny enough of the museums were going to be open the week AFTER our trip. According to my Apple Watch, we averaged about 15 miles of walking each day.

Since we were constantly in hunger mode from all the walking, I was so glad that we stumbled upon Pisco Y Nazca. Just in case you did not know, Peruvian food is one of my favorite cuisines.

We were both shocked by the amount of food included in the restaurant’s tasting menu. For $55, the tasting menu included: 1) a flight of pisco sours; 2) a flight of leche de tigre shot (shrimp ceviche), toston, and ceviche cremoso; 3) a causa sampler (crocante, tartare, pollo); 4) a choice between lomo saltado, pescado a lo macho, or chaufa de mariscos as an entree; and 5) pionono a la mode for dessert.

I gotta say this was the first time that I was completely full from a tasting menu. Actually, there was so much food that we had to ask our lovely waitress, Luz, to pack up our entrees and desserts to go. I will say that the pescado was not super delicious on the reheat. :(

I definitely have got to keep this place in my mental Rolodex for my next trip to DC.

Random thought about DC:

Growing up (middle and high school age), I never saw the lure of or excitement with DC. Maybe this was due to only relating DC with school. I do not know, but there must have been some rule stating that all Virginian school-aged children had to go on at least one field trip to DC every year. For that reason, I kind of thought that DC was a “boring” city. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know that politics is very important and exciting. As an adult, I absolutely LOVE visiting DC because of the historical and (now) social significance of the district. Since visiting Georgetown (as a potential graduate school), I’ve always had a good time in DC. By “good”, I mean AMAZING. Honestly, if I was not so stubborn in attending a graduate program in NYC, I probably would have attended Georgetown for my graduate studies. I wonder where I would be now had I gone through with that decision.

That said, I CANNOT wait until my next trip to DC.