asian spice

asian spice
717 h stree NW(between 7th street & 8th street), washington, DC 20001
tel: 202) 589-0900

what was consumed: crying tiger salad, (chinese longevity) fried rice, a noodle dish (i don't remember what it's called, but it doesn't look like it's on the menu ... maybe it was a special?)

when the space next to matchbox in chinatown (which i love love love) opened as "asian spice," i was curious to see what was gonna go up. even after it opened, i would walk by and see a number of individuals inside the restaurant (though nothing like the crowds in front of matchbox. i wonder how frustrating that is to restaurant owners. you know - that an eatery right next door has people waiting for over an hour to eat while yours has empty tables. my food is good too!!! but i digress ...).

a friend of mine had gone and didn't give asian spice that great of a review, thus making me hesitant to try for myself. one day, others wanted to meet there for happy hour, to which i happily agreed.

we were immediately seated (we sat at the tables at the bar) and the bartender was pretty attentive (i know how hard it is to be both bartender and server, so maybe i'm being easier on the service part). they had a pretty good beer selection (my beverage of choice) as well as a number of house cocktails that i hear are pretty good. they look good on paper, anyway.

asian spice has a pretty large pan-asian menu (i should add pan-asian as one of my labels. does that even matter?). it was hard to decide what it was that i wanted to eat. did i want an entree? rice? noodles? salad? i'm often undecided about what to order because so many things look so good and i just want to eat it all ... eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and eat and eat ... oink oink.

once i (yes, me. i was holding up the table) finally decided what i wanted (and what i got, i don't even remember. i may have been the one who got the fried rice because i do remember having a conversation with marguerite about whether or not to get the interesting noodle dish), we put in our order. my friends and i did a bunch of talking and a lot of laughing as we waited for our dinners to arrive. in a pretty reasonalbe time frame, our entrees were delivered, and we enjoyed!

honestly, there wasn't anything special or out of the ordinary about our meals. that's not necessarily bad, of course; at the same time, there wasn't anything about asian spice that made it stand out, thus making me want to go back to asian spice over other restaurants. it offers a lot of the same (or variations of the same) sort of dishes that are available at pan-asian restaurants (that's one of the criticisms i have about pan-asian restaurants. why have ok pad thai here when i can go to a thai restaurant with good pad thai?). but that's just me. in other words, the food was good, but it was more about the ambiance and the great company i was with that made the night fabulous ^_^ thank you ladies!

online: http://www.asianspice.us/